All right.

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

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

If you would like to address counsel, you may come to City Hall or participate via Zoom.gov for those on Zoom.

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

Spanish translation services are available upon request.

The public is asked to request translation and other meeting accessibility services at least 48 hours before the meeting.

For more information, contact the city recorder at 503 786 7502.

Servicios de tradución en español esta disponible cuando se solicitado.

Se pide al público que solicite servicios de tradución y otros servicios de accesibilidad, por lo menos 48 horas antes de la reunión.

Para obtener más información, llama al secretario de la Ciudad.

Cinco Cerro Tres, Siete Ocho César Siete Cinco Cerro 2.

Translation services are also available in other languages.

Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the United States of America.

And for which it stands.

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 with that, we will go to our announcements, which usually have a bigger slide than that.

Okay.

I'll go ahead and start reading though.

Weigh in on a draft policy to name parks, recreational facilities, trails, natural areas, and other city assets by taking a short survey on Engage Milwaukee.

The last day to participate will be December 1st.

And the website link is right there, engage.milwaukeeOregon.gov.

And there's a few different uh items you can find there to engage on.

Stop by the King Road Open House tomorrow, November 19th from 6 to 7 p.m.

at Llewellyn Elementary School to review the plan sets and ask questions about the King Road Improvement Project.

Join Council President Will Anderson and Greer Ryan, neighbor and climate activists at a town hall this Wednesday, tomorrow, also tomorrow, from 6 30 to 8 p.m.

at the Chapel Theater.

The town hall begins with a community workshop and QA from 6 30 to 7 30 and then transitions to a community mixer from 7.30 to 8.

And one other thing tomorrow is the Island Station Neighborhood Association meeting, and I'll be at that one.

The city is once again holding free leafdrop opportunities for city residents.

The next one will be held this Saturday, November 22nd from 7 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

at the public works yard on Johnson Creek Boulevard.

Please bring along utility bill for proof of residency.

Volunteer to help main train maintain trails and remove invasive species along Kellogg Creek this Saturday, November 22nd from 9 a.m.

to noon.

The event takes place at the Milwaukee Presbyterian Church Outdoor Sanctuary and is led by the North Clackmas Watershed Council.

The Thanksgiving Farmers Market returns this Sunday, November 23rd from 9:30 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

And I know the rotary will again be selling wreaths.

They all sell some beautiful wreaths every year at that event.

Join author and historian Mark James Carpenter for a discussion of his book, The War on Illahi: Genocide, Complicity, and Cover-ups in the Pioneer Northwest next Tuesday, November 25th at 6:30 p.m.

at the Letting Library.

Please keep in mind that city offices and the library will be closed for Thanksgiving on Thursday, November 27th and Friday, November 28th.

Lastly, help the city's beloved mascot Millie T.

Goose find a new best friend for 2026.

Nominate your pet today on Engage Milwaukee.

Nominations will be received until January 2nd, but don't wait to nominate your pet because the winner will be chosen by the total number of likes on Engage Milwaukee.

And then this was a special uh item I wanted to add to the announcements, which is the Thanksgiving dinner at the Milwaukee Community Center this weekend.

But out of that, it's become clear that the funding for senior services at the Milwaukee Community Center is is going to be a big challenge again this year, as many people might know that some things were cut this past year.

We're well restored under duress under our outcry, but there really are some tough calls uh on funding for that programming.

And so this fundraiser for meals on wheels is really an important way to support the meals on wheels and the uh nutrition program for older adults.

So I encourage people who uh like their Thanksgiving dinners to have an extra one this Sunday.

Okay, and then uh Paiku this week.

I love the graphic.

Nice job staff.

Honking from above, a V on the wing, sky blue, daily miracle.

So submitted by Julie Matney.

So thank you.

All right, and with that, I will move on to the outstanding Milwaukee High School, Milwaukee Academy of the Arts student of the month.

I want to welcome um Principal Louis Mayer, Louis Louie or Louis?

Louis Mayor.

Um it's his first time bringing a student to us.

He's a new principal this year, and we're glad to have him here, and maybe he can come say a few words about himself and his time at Milwaukee High School, and then go into the student.

No, no, no.

Please come up here, please come up here and sit there.

And yeah, you have to have the light on to be caught on the recording.

So yeah.

I didn't plan to speak about me.

It's about my outstanding scholar right here, but um, I'm Louis Mayor.

I'm proud to be here.

I'm proud of Principal Mayor of Milwaukee High School, Milwaukee Academy of the Arts.

Uh I've moved here from Atlanta, Georgia, month of August.

Um, been in education is my 28th year.

Um 14 years as um elementary school, eight years, and then six years at middle school level, and then I was an administrator for 14 years, so half and half right now.

Yes.

Well, welcome.

We're excited to have you.

Um, it's a long way to come.

Yes.

I'm happy to be here.

I am I'm enjoying Portland, Milwaukee, Oregon, all what it has to offer.

Pacific Northwest.

Great.

Well, then go ahead and introduce your student to us.

And I think we have a slide about her.

Well, good afternoon, council members, Mayor Betty.

I am here, honored um to hear to introduce you all to Bellile Bibles.

I my first foray with her was when I was hired, and within two weeks I had a meeting with Miss Pennile.

And to say the least, I was so impressed.

Um she was just so astute um her organizational maturity and ability to lead a conversation.

Um, in the conversation she led with the plan of action of how we were going to um conduct our meetings for for the school year, what we're going to be the outcomes and the expectations.

Uh I referred to myself as Pro Principal Mayor.

Is one of the reasons why the Proud is in Pro Principal Mayor, because of what she represents for our school.

So let me give you her accolades, uh, academic goal.

She has a 4.0 GPA.

She's on track to graduate with an honors diploma.

Leadership and involvement.

She's on a principal student council.

She is the president.

She's on a speech and debate team.

She's in the Decca Club, which is a club for marketing.

She's with the Gilda Lerman Historical Institute Student Advisory Council.

She's in the Indigenous Students Association.

Her community and professional experience, internship and local politics.

She's a barista at Boost and Brew Coffee Shop.

Coming over now.

She takes a course there currently, American Politics and Public Policy.

And she took a course uh at um with Cornell University, International Law Course.

As you can see, there's a theme about law, law, law here.

So we could kind of get where she's going.

Um so I'm just so proud to have her as my first uh student of the month for the Milwaukee City Council.

And I have a say a few words.

Absolutely.

We generally uh especially would like to hear about what your plans are after after graduation.

So yeah, please.

Um hello, my name is Peloli Bibles.

I'm a senior at Milwaukee Academy of the Arts, and it's nice to meet you all.

I am currently working towards applying to colleges.

I want to study political science for four years and undergraduate and then go to law school.

Great.

Are you thinking you'll stay in the Northwest are you applying everywhere?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's an amazing resume.

Uh it's interesting that you're at the Academy of the Arts because I'm not seeing what do you do?

What's your art?

Um, I do oil painting.

Oh, you do oil painting.

Very nice.

Very nice.

Um, well, I I didn't know Reed had a program that uh you could take as a high school student.

That's pretty cool.

You go actually go to campus for that.

Yes.

Um, I have a course on Mondays and Wednesdays.

It's a scholarship program that allows 15 high school students in Oregon to take one class for a trip.

Yeah, awesome.

Well, that's great.

Do you will you do another next term?

Or it's uh yeah, awesome.

Well, that's that's exciting.

Um, I we generally let all the other counselors ask you questions or yeah, yeah.

Uh Lily, I'm sorry that I didn't recognize you in the elevator.

So we wrote the elevator together, and actually last year she had a project where she did an interview and asked because it was along the lines of of government politics and all that.

I did not recognize her when I walked in.

Oh, she had to remind me.

So thank you for that.

Um I'm glad that that project went well.

And here we are now with you as a student of a month, and I'm putting it all together from a year ago.

Um this is impressive.

Uh, I I especially appreciate the constitutional law, clearly.

Um, we could use all the help we can get with that.

So um my question to you is what what sparked your interest in politics as well, just in government?

Because you've clearly had had it have had that interest for a while.

Yeah, um, first I was just focusing towards law and then constitutional law from there, and then my work with my AP government teacher, Mr.

Alves at Milwaukee High School, really helped me find like narrower that pathway down to policy and wanting to do policy in my undergraduate, and then also gaining my internship.

Do you see a potential run for office in your future?

I want to focus on law school.

That's what they all say.

That's that's a very politic answer.

Yeah, that's very political.

Um, congratulations, this is amazing.

Um, I can't say enough about the young students that come out of that school, and I just appreciate your commitment.

So thank you so much, and best of luck to you.

And hopefully, one day we'll see you up here or even at a higher office.

Council president.

I know you've got to go work on your midterm, so I'm gonna keep it quite.

But I cannot believe that you were a sophomore when I met you and Valentina when she connected me with you, she was like, You need to be.

She is incredible, she can walk on water, she just sung your praises.

Um, and I I'm just so proud of the work that you've done, the person that you are.

You seem like a senior since you're a sophomore, but you have such a bright career ahead of you.

You're gonna make so many lives that much better, or you're gonna make a lot of money, whichever one you do.

I'm gonna be so proud of you.

Um, I I just think you are so amazing, and I'm so excited to see what you go next.

Thank you.

I think you uh left off one of your uh most uh important accomplishments uh, and that is you've somehow conquered the space-time continuum because I don't think it's really possible for anyone to do all this in 24 hours a day.

Yeah, that's a good point.

So uh it's really impressive.

Uh I know you have a great future uh ahead of you, and uh you know, we will just say in the in the future years, we knew her win, and we'll be so proud of uh of you doing great things as one of uh Milwaukee uh so uh just great, great work and best of luck to you.

Uh well, thanks again to the principal for bringing uh Bell LA to us to meet us.

And um, I will say uh I'm a lawyer, so if you ever want to chat, um feel free to look me up.

I'm happy to talk about law school, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Um and um I will read the certificate now that we have.

I'm I'm sure that counselor Steven George, she's uh unfortunately not with us tonight, and but she's always eager to talk with the students.

She has her own student in her household who's uh I believe a freshman this year.

So um anyway, I'm I'm sure she's sorry to have missed this opportunity, but we really appreciate you coming.

So uh the city of Milwaukee is proud to recognize for outstanding student achievement and academics, civic engagement and extracurricular activities at Milwaukee High School, Bell LA Bibles.

Let it be known to all that on this 18th day of November 2025, the City Council of the City of Milwaukee, a municipal corporation in the county of Plackham's in the state of Oregon, recognize this student as an excellent example of the bright future of this community and nation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

I think we have no proclamations tonight.

So now we are to community comment.

This is the part of the agenda during which council will hear community comment on city business items that are not otherwise on the agenda.

Before we begin, is there any follow-up from the November 4th comments with Sagar?

Mayor, there were no comments made at that meeting, so no comment there.

We did receive one written comment about the uh same incident at the library that um I addressed previously, and I'll say from the staff perspective, we consider that matter to be concluded, but um want to acknowledge that that is in, I believe, in your packet.

And um if you have a further questions for us, please let us know.

Okay, thank you.

I do not have any yellow cards.

So if anybody wanted to comment on something not otherwise on the agenda, this is your time.

I do not have anybody.

Uh Ms.

Manigan, is anyone online?

Uh we do have some people online, but nobody has their hand raised.

Okay.

So if we don't have anyone wanting to make community comment, I will forego that script, and we will move on to the consent agenda.

Tonight's consent agenda includes minutes of the city council October 14th, 2025 retreat, a resolution appointing the inaugural membership group to the Climate Action Committee.

Congratulations and thank you to Summer Yesanovsky, Greer Ryan, Rodney Smith in the audience, Marcus Mitash, Brad Reed, Michael Micah Meskell, and Eric Freed, and a resolution acting as the local contract review board reinstating a personal service agreement with FCS group, a Bauman company for water and wastewater rate study services.

Does any council member wish to remove a consent agenda item?

Seeing none, I will entertain a motion.

I move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

None heard.

The consent agenda is approved unanimously.

I will just say on the Climate Action Committee, we had an amazing lineup of applicants.

We had 22 applicants for the 11 slots, and uh uh it was a tough, it was a tough call.

Uh Councilor Kostrabati did interviews along with our climate coordinator Katie uh Guevarez and I, and uh, but I think we have an amazing amazing group.

So we look forward to them starting work in January.

Okay, next item is am I skipping anything?

Okay, next item is speed limits on local streets.

Uh a discussion and uh present presented by our engineer Jennifer Garbale.

All right.

So you received your packet.

Thanks for having me here tonight.

We're gonna talk about speed limits on local streets in Milwaukee.

And the first thing I want to discuss is, you know, why reduce speeds?

Um, I think there's five really kind of important elements to that.

One, it enhances road safety, two, it improves pedestrian and cyclose safety.

Three, reduce environmental impacts, four, it enhances quality of life, and five, it encourages active transportation, which are all goals we're trying to achieve in our transportation system.

So here's a uh road classification map that we have um lined out, and this would mean the potential of reducing roads uh speeds on our collectors and our local streets.

It would not include our trials.

So are the blue arterials?

Uh the red, the red area.

The red is arterials.

Okay, yeah.

Red and kind of purplish.

Okay.

So we did over the last couple of months a engaged Milwaukee survey.

We had 268 people complete the survey.

Um results of that is a majority 54.5% wasn't supportive of um reducing speeds on our streets.

Um, this is also in line with our proposed TSP of looking at reducing speeds um throughout the city.

So this is my proposal on the city's proposal is we would like to roll out the program over multiple years.

One, this would allow us um to complete the work in-house so we don't have to hire a contractor, which will save money.

Um it'll also allow us to install it with other engineering tools that'll also help slow people down.

So it's not just putting up signage, it's actually looking if there's other we need to put speed cushions or diverters or ball bouts or other things to improve reducing speed on that street besides just putting up a sign.

I would like to focus if this is what you'd like to move forward with, is really our bikeways.

Um, our bikeways are by showing that we can reduce speeds on those streets, would be the most or the largest impact at this point.

And so that's what we're proposing to work on over the next two years.

This our bikeways um based off of our TSP and our new um bike classification map.

And this would allow us to really focus on those streets, making sure we're installing things properly.

It is a combination of possibly collectors and local roads.

Example would be Monroe Greenway.

That's going to be installed.

It's a 25 mile per hour.

I would like to drop it to 20, to be honest, to make it safer because those bikes are on the it's a shared road environment.

Um, this also addresses our most vulnerable people using the roadway.

That's our cyclists and our pedestrians.

Um, it allows us also to educate the importance of reducing speeds over the years as we can move through the other neighborhoods if we want.

So questions.

So I have a couple clarifying questions and then I'll open it up to others.

Um I know the um that came out of the TSP, uh TSP advisory committee support for this.

How strong was that support?

It was very strong.

Very strong.

Okay.

And did you discuss phasing in with them?

And did they have a view on that?

We did not discuss phasing in.

Okay.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Yeah, uh, thank you for this.

I appreciate the information.

A couple of things.

So when I'm looking at this map, does that mean that because when I when I was first thinking about this, I was hoping that within the neighborhood streets, we would be doing that too, because those are becoming a lot of cutthroughs uh with people speeding.

Um neighborhood streets would be included.

They are I just want to make sure it wasn't just a major bikeways.

No, no, no, no.

I just want to start with so if we want to do it in-house, we can't do everything at one time.

Otherwise, we'd have to hire a contractor to do that.

We just don't have a capability.

So I'm proposing that we start with the bike ways first as the first implementation, and then we would move.

Okay.

Um the other two the other two things because I am supportive of this, but I I think we do need to uh have a little bit more transparency in terms of cost.

Um people need to know what this is gonna cost.

Um, and also the data that supports this as well, I think is important to have to share.

Um, because is this is kind of similar to what Portland did with their 20 is plenty.

Um and I know that there's data that people are probably gonna want to see that uh show that going from 25 to 20 is gonna have uh a positive impact.

So just for not in your packet, there's a bunch of material from right.

I'm just saying for the public.

Okay.

Yeah, just when I just want to make sure that this is out and available for the public as much as possible.

Um just for you know, again, the cost and just explaining why and showing the data behind it.

Counselor to your quite good question about cost and Jen and Peter can't come get this wrong, but I think if there's direction tonight to move forward, this would be put into your CIP.

So as we go through the budget process, you would see it as a line item in that, but it's a daylight both staff costs and and material cost of implementing this.

So you'll get a chance to it's not like you approve it tonight and then it's happening, you're still gonna have to budget for it through the budget process, and we can definitely make sure that cost information is clear.

Right, no, I understand.

I just usually when we talk about these things, there's usually like some sort of a barometer as to how much.

And we've we've just talked about doing this, but not really the data or the the and again, I know the data is in the packet, but not everybody out there is reading the package.

So I just want to make sure that we're on point with making sure that that information is accessible.

The TSP hauled out a line item as 400,000 to do it outside of um to do it at higher contract or to basically install it all right.

So I don't know what the cost would be at the moment to look at it in-house.

Yeah, that's fine.

Just as long as we get there as well.

Thank you.

Um I appreciate your work to phase this in because I wouldn't want to add on.

I think we contract out a lot of services, and more and more I think the extent of the in-house is really valuable.

Um I I guess my I I would agree with what Counselor Chris Roboti is saying.

I think it would be helpful for folks to see the impact of something like this.

And I wonder if it would be possible to collect any data on the speeds before and the speeds after.

That's too burdensome, I totally understand.

But I do think the narrative of this is what we saw before, this is what the impact of this change um would be really helpful for folks.

100% we can do our own speed studies in-house as far as that goes.

So before we implement um any of these changes and then have a study afterwards.

Um you yeah, usually you want a few months afterwards, so people get used to the um new implementation of what was installed.

Okay.

The other thing, I know that someone is working on a spot grant right now to do um signage kind of like what was proposed on 29th.

Um, that has if you go on Clinton Street, they're bringing way in Portland, they've got two little sign dumpers that show this is a bikeway.

Um, and I wonder if it to do that type of signage concurrent with this signage change, creates some type of economy of scale.

Um maybe that's something to follow.

It hasn't even been submitted to PSAC yet, but that's going down the pipeline.

Maybe that's something to be aligned with this timeline as well.

Um, yes, that's potentially uh, I mean, we're looking at this basically a bike way bucket for the new CIP that I was hoping to plan this change would be interpreting all incorporated, anything for me?

Yeah, I just uh echoed the uh the comments made earlier about um um making a case for the public about the advantages of this.

And the reason I say that is that you know, I I can personally be for this, but when I looked at the results of the survey, yeah, there was a majority, but it wasn't an overwhelming majority.

It was a fairly significant uh uh percentage of people who were against it.

And so I I think that we have some uh some uh you know outreach work to do that.

I just think that's darn near as important as you know, is putting up the new signs.

Sure, and that's why I think also phasing the project, you give us time to continue that education and continue informing the public of what's happening and what's why this is important.

Uh and so well, I think it's also I mean that's a comment I was gonna make.

I think it's also more understandable for the public.

If you have 29 that is 20 miles an hour and Boyd and Malcolm and all these others are 25, like people aren't gonna remember the law enforcement piece of it.

I I do think there were a lot of comments and the public comments about how enforcement is key.

And just basic understanding, you know.

Because yeah, you can see the signs, but people are creatures of habit as well.

Yeah, I think um the uh the I am concerned.

I do feel like in terms of public compliance and uh you know and really rolling it out, it would be more it would work better if it were rolled out like one summer, um, you know, one sort of three-month period all around the city.

I did ask the police chief for his views on that, and he was more generally supportive of the staff recommendation.

He noted that they're down a patrol officer right now.

Um we you know, we we hopefully later tonight we'll be approving some more hiring for the police department.

I guess in my mind, I still think even if it's put out to 2027, I still think doing it all at once may make more sense.

I guess that's kind of my gut feeling about uh public compliance and actually you know, having some enforcement and actually actually bringing down the speeds.

Thanks, Mayor.

And I think that that last part of the it might delay it.

I kind of wanted Jen and or Peter to speak to.

I think you know that that's totally doable, but to this point of the CIP budget and other transportation priorities.

Would you guys say it's accurate that if the direction from council was to do it in a shorter time frame, likely with the contractor that we're talking about not implementing in the near part of the next biennium because we have other transportation work slated, or is that TBD?

Or would it maybe delay some of the other bikeway bucket um or safe street enhancements improvements if we did this first?

Like this would be the first tranche of safe streets enhancements.

Can you speak a little bit to the sequencing if it was supposed to be the whole thing?

I think there's a little bit of TBD there still.

I mean, we're still in our draft phases of developing our our our capital, our our next capital improvement plan.

And you know, I I think I'd mentioned before one of the things that we're really trying hard to do is look at our capacity to execute projects uh and not have lots of projects that we're not executed.

So, you know having having a larger scale uh uh project that's that's citywide in terms of uh putting out there puts certainly put some burden in terms of capacity, both uh uh on gen staff and developing the traffic regulations and all those all those pieces.

But if we're if we're trying to do it using in-house staff, uh and I I'm fairly confident that you know if we have a phased approach, we can do it cheaper than going out and contracting.

You know, uh and also we were able to also take advantage of other projects that we might have going on in those neighborhoods to uh include those changes uh to speed limits as we're doing those projects.

So I I do think you know there is an additional expense uh for us, both in terms of staff capacity and and and resources, uh the cost to do that all at once.

Um I I I do think uh just in my experience do it changing from yield signs to stop signs in in another community throughout the city.

Uh the police were uh the police there were overwhelmed with the enforcement piece on that, you know.

The uh and speed, you know, stop signs maybe at uh at intersections.

Sometimes people will, you know, people aren't necessarily calling up the police.

Sometimes people will, you know, people aren't necessarily calling up the police, somebody stopped this, you know, didn't went through that stop sign, but like when you've addressed when you've adopted a new speed limit going through the neighborhoods and you're doing it throughout the city, we're gonna have a lot of uh a lot of people calling about people speeding.

So I think that's that's part of it, uh that it's a little bit easier perhaps to to phase uh certain certain areas in the community, whether it's a bikeway or or or or neighborhood phase, uh to sort of help uh help with that enforcement and uh educ public education with the with the community as well.

Um I don't know if I answered everything there.

Yeah, I think so.

I think that's that's I I I would also say you know, you know, I think statistics, there's there's there's lots of studies, and I think much of the studies show like if you if you drop the speed limit from 25 to 20, that you're you know, effectively reducing in half the severity and risk of severe injury and fatal injuries, right?

Just that five mile an hour difference if they actually slow down if they well, sure, of course.

I mean, but I I think in many of the neighborhoods that we have, you know, we're what there's a lot of on street parking, much of much of the neighborhoods, the speed limits aren't really that much higher.

I mean, we certainly do have some core, you know, some places on collectors where speed limits probably exceed uh 25 miles an hour of the posted speed limits more than we would like to see them, but it's it's about sort of setting that standard and you know building compliance through through education and and and enforcement, right?

And it takes time to do that.

Um I think it's harder doing it all at once throughout through throughout the intercity.

Can you help clarify for me?

If we went out and contracted this work, how much maps and maths would that add to cost of the project?

Well, I think Jen mentioned that the TSP outlined uh conceptually the project is about 400,000.

I think we could do it a lot cheaper as a phased approach.

You know, we can buy we we we're buying the we're buying the you know the signs and using our labor to do that, and we're not marking it up to to make profit and and and mobilize, you know, mobilize a crew to do that.

That being said, we're still gonna be rely on in in some places contracts to do the work because we're doing other street projects.

So we would we would include that work in those other street projects.

And so I think um kind of what I was what I think and I think TBD is a finance.

We have a capital improvement uh budgeting process where we're gonna explore this, but I think I was kind of there's a bit of a trade-off of speed and cost and scale and cost.

And so I think what again we're not making decisions tonight on those things on the cost, on the speed, but if the direction is to move forward and the direction from from the from the consensus is to do it in a bigger format, it would be helpful to hear if it's do it big and do it fast because that might change what we prioritize when we bring you the CIP in February, or if it's do it big, but it's okay if it comes in three years, that's also helpful um for us.

I don't know if that's making it at all clearer.

Well, it sounds like I'm the only one really advocating for do it big.

I I would say, I mean, I I just think it's gonna be an enforcement nightmare because people are gonna be like, I was it was 20, it was just 25, and I'm on 20.

You know, I just think it's it's it's gonna be I don't know, but um police chief is fine with it and and it's the staff recommendation.

Um I'm not it's not something I'm gonna uh follow my sword over, but I would have said do it big and it's okay to go to 2027.

Yeah, I kind of see your point there.

I don't know if you guys know like there's a street off of Johnson Creek going north or going northbound.

I think it's a 50 second case, going northbound.

It's a side street, but going northbound on it on one side of the street's 20.

Going southbound is 25 is very odd.

So I'm assuming it's the same unless there's a border discrepancy with Portland.

Um I can yeah, if you're going into Portland, it's 20.

And if you're coming back to us, it's 25.

Very strange.

So I can see how there can be some discrepancy right like that.

So I see the benefit of doing it all at once, too.

Because you also wanted to have an impact.

And I don't know.

I mean, is I mean, have we has there been any impact concerns in terms of the effectiveness of it when you roll it out or whether you just do it all at once?

Microphone, Peter.

Just my experience back in in a previous job, like where we it wasn't speed limits, it was changing, you know, providing additional regulation at intersections and move taking away yield signs and stop scenes and doing that throughout the city.

I mean, it wasn't like every single street, but there were lots of lots of interceptions that we had to go through and do that.

And uh it was a it was a bit of a challenge with the uh with the community uh with that engagement and also the and some of that enforcement.

So uh so I'm just using that as an example.

It might not be apples to apples there, but it I I have seen some of the challenges with that type of track traffic regulation throughout throughout the city, but doesn't mean we couldn't overcome it, but uh yeah, I I'd be curious to so our collectors are signed, but a lot of our local roads aren't.

They're just assumed as 25.

So when we start putting up 20 miles per hour, it will be the new sign that is actually placed, um, which will actually need that clear about what it is on local streets.

Uh counselor president, you were on the uh TSP advisory committee, and I know you are often attend the PSAC as well.

Um particular views on this.

I think that I guess part of the reason I asked that cost question is after sitting on the TSTAC, I know that every dollar, I mean, we kind of swabbled over this on the guys.

100,000 dollars makes the world a difference.

And if we can save 100,000 here, that's 100,000 that we can spend somewhere else.

Um and it helps me just in understanding that a lot of these you're saying a lot of the local streets don't have any signage right now.

So if the only sign you have in your neighborhood now is a 20 mile per hour sign, even though the other streets don't have the 20 mile per hour sign, it's not like Balfour Street is gonna have a 25 mile per hour sign, they're only gonna see the 20 mm hour sign.

And I think that that hearing that, I think that makes me feel a little bit more at ease with this change.

But in this, I don't guess my surprise you.

I'm getting to be more and more of a fiscal hawk.

And the fact that we can save money on this project that can be spent in other transportation projects, I think is a worthwhile endeavor because we have so many transportation means across the city, and to stretch those dollars out as efficiently as possible.

I think we'll councillor Rancy.

Um yeah, I I think you know, you know, it's been you know, sort of a perfect world if we could do it, you know, quickly at low cost, you know.

Um I would you know in a fantasy land here, you know, but that's not gonna be possible.

But when I I support this, and I'll tell you the the the reason that that I I want to support it, and and I really didn't consider it until tonight, is that um in Jen's testimony, she said, you know, if we do this over time, we can integrate it with the other work that's going on on the on the on the streets, uh, which can be a lot of the traffic calming enhancements, you know, as this goes in.

And uh to me that's just a multiplier uh for safety.

If when you know we do this, we can bundle it with some other work, and and you know, that will probably be like contractor work, but it'll be add-on contractor work, so it won't be you know huge amounts of doing the whole city or anything like that.

So that's kind of the thing that uh the kind of the factor that has put me in the category of supporting the incremental approach.

Okay.

Well, it sounds like we generally have support for the incremental approach.

I do take the point that uh a lot of the streets don't have signs, although I will say in island station, we've had signs that say 15 miles an hour for several years because for a decade, because there's a state law that says streets under a certain width can be 15 or 15 miles an hour, skinny streets.

Um tell you the people on the other streets are not driving under or not driving 15 miles an hour.

But um so uh anyway, but I think I think you've got the I think you've got agreement with your staff recommendations, so we'll watch for that in the CIP next year.

Thank you.

Uh huh.

Thank you.

All right.

Uh middle income revolving loan program.

And this was placed on the agenda by our council president and counselor Scavenger, who unfortunately is not here.

Uh, do you want to say any uh introductory things for it?

I understand staff does have a staff presentation.

Yep.

I can say a few things of introduction, and then I've got a few questions to ground us after the staff talk.

Um I can just give a little bit of background in this program.

The middle income revolving loan fund is a fund that the legislature passed to be able to help address one of the real barriers that we see in housing production.

Um we've heard even in this council um this last year, housing developers are struggling with really high interest rates, and if like money to finance projects, it's really hard to identify.

Um but if you're able to bring money to the table, you also can get some give with developers who are more willing to build affordable units and contribute something of real value to our community and help address a lot of the challenges that we're seeing in our housing production strategy where we need housing at set-aside rates, um 128% AMI and below.

Um, this is a program that some other cities and counties have started to take advantage of, or I should say city and county, a few other jurisdictions are looking at this as well.

Um it's a program that is fairly new, but it is only 70 million dollars.

And so I think if I could import anything at the start of this, um, that 70 million dollars will go really quickly and just as a little editorializing.

Portland requested some technical changes to the mural program this legislative session.

Um they got implemented and go into effect January 1st.

And so at this point for jurisdictions, it's kind of a race to finish.

Can you get the 78 million dollars before the city of Portland gobbles them all up?

And so that I think sets the tone for how we might consider the moral program and if it's something we want in the law.

Okay, I will say that the idea that something's changing January 1st is different than what I've heard.

I've heard there's a rulemaking that's not even gonna wrap up till next summer or something.

Um, but I guess we have some people who may be able to testify about that um later on.

Okay, uh, with that, I will turn it over to our assistant city manager Joseph Relio and development project manager Mandy Bird.

Yeah, thanks, Bear.

Uh as previously stated, this was uh an agenda item placed on the agenda by Council President Um Anderson and uh Council Member Stavinge.

I'm good introduction from the council president.

I have some, I think we for the others, I know Mayor, you have been very involved and are kind of in the have been in the uh the conference calls about this uh this program and know quite a bit, but in case for those that don't know, I have some slides that could be helpful.

And just some perspective if it's also helpful.

I'm a little rusty because I've been out for a while, so I've been trying to pick up this uh moderate income and revolving loan program concept.

And uh I know Nicole, I'm looking at you because I do believe we have some state reps, or not reps, but um from Oregon uh housing duty services department are online.

So if I get anything wrong, we got experts being ready and waiting.

And also we have uh developer here that helped put this on the agenda.

So that jump in.

Um yeah, we're talking about the Oregon revolving uh middle moderate income revolving loan program.

So as the council president stated, this is part of the legislative session 2024, or the governor's bill, um Senate Bill 1537.

Um basically for the the moral as a state program administered by the Oregon Housing Community Services Department.

And just the gist of it, again to reiterate incentivized middle housing production.

And really the goal is to hit that um moderate income level, which is considered 80 to 120% AMI.

However, the allowances you can go lower depending on uh what what you wish to see happen as far as income restriction goes.

How that happens, how it occurs quickly stated, state provides no interest loans to sponsoring jurisdictions, that's a city or county.

Um those loans are then transformed into grants that the city or county gives to an eligible housing project developer.

Uh how that happens is through property tax exemption of at least three years on the building improvements that are developed by that project, and then the program fee is paid in in lieu of property taxes on those housing improvements, and those are to use to pay back that loan.

Um, and hopefully it makes some sense more sense as I uh dive in the other slides.

But those funds are obviously it's revolving loan.

We've I feel like we've heard this name quite a bit at the state level.

Uh so the intent is that funds go back to continue to serve the purpose of the program.

We're not again detailing how it works or how it's supposed to work, at least how I understand it.

So the city is to adopt a ordinance or resolution that basically states that we adopt this program, we have a program to administer.

After that we that program is adopted the ordinance or resolution, uh there's two IGAs in sports city that we do occur.

There needs to be an IGA between OHCS and the county because that is the tax assessor, and those that's how funds kind of travel through the system back to the state to pay off the loan.

Um, and then once that's established, there's an IGA between OHCS and the city to say that we both agree to this pro to run this program.

Umce that's established, we have a live program, and developers can apply uh for a project.

Once they apply the city or and county determine the funding eligibility for that project, so whatever the gap is, whatever the need is for that project, that's that's how you determine what the loan requests will be back in the city to OHCS.

Uh so the city applies on behalf of that project back up to OHCS.

Uh OHCS, everything goes well, they were they award that loan to the city.

The city is the loan um has the loan agreement with the state.

Um, and then the city then turns that loan agreement, those funds into a grant agreement with the developer, and the developer is able to use those funds to for infrastructure for soft costs and for rebuilding their project.

And again, the project once it's built, the homeowners essentially, and sometimes in the case of the developer has to do that, they are the ones that typically pay back that loan through the pass through of that exemption for that 10-year period, it goes through the assessor's office back to the state.

Basically, the city foregoes the tax institutes, I should say, besides the fire district forgo the tax that they would receive on those um those building on the improvements themselves, not the not the land.

We forgo this for 10 years, and that's how that money goes back to the state.

And is somebody calculating when the state gets paid back?

I mean, what if the state's paid back at year seven?

Does that stop?

That's my understanding is yes.

Okay, yes.

There is um according to the manual, yes, it's allowed to you can then pay it out early and stop that.

Um, stop that that period, that's upgrade for sure.

Uh as I understand too, the the payments and like the the time period is also it's worked out with OHCS and the county and the city.

That's all kind of per project basis, depending on the need.

So there are obvious benefits.

Uh, council president already hit on some.

So it obviously to support middle housing, which is a huge goal of the city and modern income or just income restricted housing, obviously, this is also pursuant that's missing in our market.

Tracks private development, private investment with predictable short-term incentives.

That's the that would be the tax exemption.

No permanent loss of property tax revenue over the you know, over the life of the project, and reinvests in future housing through the revolving loan program stuff continues to do uh provide value.

And then obviously it aligns with not only state goals but also our own goals in the HPS.

So those are that's the high level, and it's a it is a complicated program in my experience, and you know, for my professional view, uh, but I hopefully it made some sense there.

Uh on the local responsibilities, I think it's worth noting that there's these things are um worthwhile to really think through a little bit because this is where I think the heavy lift is for the local jurisdiction.

So we'd not only adopt a local ordinance, which we can tweak and we can add, we can add what we've what we want to see as far as income restriction goes, or even the term, the limit, uh the a lot the amount of time a unit is in income restricted.

We can kind of tweak those per the ordinance, but there is a template that we use, but there are some uh some parts of that ordinance that we can move up and down as far as like what our design priorities are and um what type of housing we want to see.

Uh so that's that's number one.

And number two is that we coordinate with the tax county tax assessor along with OHCS because that IGA needs to be put in place.

So the county does have to agree to participate in this program, as I understand it, in order to get those payments back to OHCS.

Um and that needs to happen before we can the city can actually enter into an IGA with OHCS because they want to know that that tool is is in place.

So those two IGAs need to happen.

And then obviously it is the establishment of a new program.

So we're talking about a new program.

This isn't just what as much as we're gonna talk about probably one project tonight.

This is establishing a project program that's going to be ongoing.

Um, and therefore we're gonna have to administer this program.

These things, things to consider have another slide to that we can walk through is um, you know, so city staff will be partly identifying eligible projects with developers, review those project applications, and work with the county to apply for those those loan requests to OHCS.

Like I stated earlier, defining local project selection and design priorities that were part of that ordinance.

That's what we'll also need to do.

The cities obviously, since the loan agreement with the state, we are we do assure that loan repayment.

So and then I as I mentioned before, and as we've had income restricted affordable housing conversations, uh like we just did a few months ago about the affordable housing code update.

Um we we would need to enforce and be part of compliance of those affordable income restricted units.

So there's there's whatever we establish this program that actually creates income restricted units that need to be verified every year, and that also need to be the people that purchase those units would also need to be verified.

And as it stands, there's without a partner that it would fall to the city to verify and make sure that we are in compliance with those affordability restrictions, and that also requires any reporting and tracking to OHCS.

So things to come in mind.

Lastly, just some key considerations uh that I think about quite a bit um that I'd like to so you know think about them as well.

So there's liability exposure, obviously.

Um that's just we hold the agreement with the loan or between the city and state.

So if anything happens, there's a default.

If there is um a bankruptcy or something doesn't happen, that is on us, as I understand it.

If I'm wrong, um happy to be wrong.

There's accountability accounting, Gordon.

Just there's gonna be some back and forth and some coordination between city staff, our finance staff with assessors office.

Uh that takes uh staff time, not just my own time, not just Mandy's time, but also our finance staff time.

Um the new program administration in general, as I mentioned earlier, just requires staff to further reporting and the prioritizing of our projects, but also really that monitoring, the compliance and enforcement piece is is a big piece for us when we create a new program that involves income restricted units that we have to uh make sure stay restricted and are actually serving the community that we wanted to serve.

And then finally, uh there's some uncertainty around this program.

Yeah, if you refuse, I know uh Coos Bay is the first city that adopted units.

I don't know where they are as of today, and I believe there's there's a county that also is, but there's still, I think if I'm to be fair to our colleagues at the state, like I feel like there's a little bit of figuring this out as we fly the plane together.

Like I do feel like that's kind of the the piece that we're at with uh the mural program.

So um there's just there's some there's some uh unclear components to it.

One being I'm still not clear on this and um love to get maybe answers tonight.

But since it's a tax exemption, I know in other cases when there's a tax exemption as far as a program, usually we just have to go to the taxing districts and get 51% approval.

And that's what I'm not clear on here if that's addressed, because there is a fire district um the fire district, yeah, carve out, but I don't know what that means for other taxes.

So that's something that I'm still not clear on.

Yeah, because we are I I did the math with my own utility bill, and um we are tax people always complain about the city's tax, but the city of Milwaukee has three line items on your tax bill, and all together they are 22% of your tax bill, and the fire district was something like I don't know, between 10 and 15 percent.

Um so even if you take them out and say it's 85% of the total tax bill, we're still not 51%.

So I was curious about that one too.

And I don't know the answer to that question.

I think it's a great question.

Maybe our friends from the state can answer it, but um, just for your kind of recollection, we we have adopted a program for our nonprofit low-income housing tax exemption that did require approval from the school district who combined the school district and us represent 51% of the local taxing authority.

So I'm not sure if a similar agreement would be required in this case.

And before we did that, we also held a meeting with all the other where we invited all the taxing districts to come in and be heard because it's like the big kahuna, like waiving their taxes.

It's kind of like you know, not good partnership with other entities.

Um that's just another that's an outstanding question that I have.

That's um that's it.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

I don't know if uh won't allow time for for others, but and I'm sorry, can I just add up the one logistical thing?

I guess our in-room speakers aren't working well tonight, so staff in particular, but all of us, if we can just project, use your musical theater voice, be really animated so that our folks in the audience can hear you.

Okay.

Uh questions for staff.

I feel like OHCS will have a lot of technical expertise as well.

Um maybe they would be a good person to direct some technical questions about the program too.

Um, unless Joseph feels particularly applicants.

I'm just going off of manual on our conversations that we've had with them, but they're the experts.

We we do have it looks like Jason Mackie has his hand raised from OHCS.

Okay.

Um so uh shall we go ahead and go to OHCS.

I thought maybe we were gonna hear from the developer team.

Do we want to hear from them first?

Do we want to go to OHCS first?

I think it's your prerogative as chair mayor, and you're also your prerogative of how much time you want to give our guests to speak.

Uh I mean, I'm definitely we have a lot yet on our agenda tonight, so I do want to keep this tight.

I I do want to wrap it up by um eight o'clock at the latest.

Um, so um Mayor, if I may, I I know it's it's probably out of order from our normal sequence.

But I think that the a number of issues have been raised, and I'd like the state to just pop in and give us their opinion on this.

Okay, because I think that that would just inform the rest of the discussion.

Okay, fair enough.

All right, we will invite Jason to uh Jason should be able to go ahead and speak now.

Hello, counsel.

Is everybody able to hear me okay?

Loud and clear.

Great.

Um well, just a quick introduction.

My name is Jason Mackey, and I am a technical advisor in the affordable rental housing division for OHCS, um, assigned to focus on the Mural program.

Um so thank you for the opportunity to um speak in front of this audience.

I think I heard a couple questions, so feel free to ask them again if I missed something.

I I think the main question I heard is related to um notifying taxing districts.

Um I just want to um clarify that all taxing districts are exempt other than fire districts.

Um that's legislatively mandated that fire districts remain whole.

Um there's not specific legislation um requiring a sponsoring jurisdiction to do any specific outreach to taxing districts to inform them that taxes will be exempt.

Um I think staff feels that that would likely be a best practice um for you as a community to ensure that everybody is aware of um decisions that affect um taxes, but it's not legislatively required.

Um and I do well before I move on, I'm happy to expand more on that particular topic.

Yeah, let's take them topic by topic and get all the questions out.

So that topic, there is this general rule in state law about 51% of taxing district having to approve a tax waiver.

You're saying the Merle Act actually supersedes or exempts this from that.

Uh that's correct.

It it is not legislatively mandated to um provide outreach to taxing districts.

No, that's a different question.

Outreach detaching districts is one.

And I appreciate that.

I asked this question on um email actually.

Um, but the 51% agreement.

Like if we were we as the city manager mentioned, we went out, we adopted a uh tax exemption for affordable housing in Milwaukee, and we had in order to do that, we had to get 51% of the taxing districts to agree.

So that's somewhere in state law as a requirement.

And you're saying this state law exempted cities from that state law.

I guess I will be careful in answering the way that the question is being asked.

What I can confidently say is that the mural program legislation does not require um the 51% you're mentioning.

Um in full transparency, I'm not familiar with the specific state law that you're referencing, uh, but there is not a legislative requirement for mural to um have the 51% as you mention it.

Okay.

Any other questions on that?

Okay.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Mr.

Mackie, you wanted to go on to something else.

Um, this is maybe uh a simple response.

Um, I just wanted to call out there was um a reference to January 1st being an explicitly defined date for um SB 48, Senate Bill 48, the mural technical fix bill to go live.

There's not a hard um deadline of January 1st.

The agency does intend to have the program, the new rules implemented by early of 2026, but it's not specifically January 1st.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

You sound like you had another question.

Yeah.

My my question, and I appreciate you being here to answer these.

My question was about what happens with non-payment.

What happens with the homeowner, the house gets foreclosed, the life happens, what happens?

Is a state on the or is the city on the hook for the rest of that?

Does a new homeowner then take over the remaining payments that are left?

How does that work?

The short answer is that the city will take on the liability of repayment for a loan that goes into default.

And it was I I participated in an online webinar that OHCS uh led a couple weeks ago, and it was clear that if the project itself defaults, if the developer defaults or goes into whatever, for whatever reason the city is on the hook for the whole loan, not just that one house that might default.

So council president?

Can I clarify?

We have uh Joseph, if you could go back to the timeline of Merle, that circle.

Um if we pass an originating ordinance, are we required to accept any project in Milwaukee?

Or sorry, this maybe is a question for OHCS.

Uh well, go ahead.

Just without our city attorney here, but um, yeah, as for city administration, you pass an ordinance, it becomes law, and you're you're creating a program that we at least need to administer, whether that means doesn't mean that we automatically approve all applications that are provided to us, but it certainly means that we have to run a program, you know, and that we actually have to have the ability to.

But in order to run that program, we do again need all those IGAs in place.

It looks like the ordinance happens before the IGAs.

Is that what's happened in other jurisdictions?

Yes.

Uh-huh.

That is what the manual, I think, their their handbook calls for.

Um, Mr.

Mackey, can you answer that question?

Does it have to come first?

Uh the originating ordinance does come first, yes.

Before the IGAs.

And I guess what I'm just trying to clarify here, and maybe Mr.

Mackey, you can expand on this.

We're really focusing on the details of the Merle program and what implementation looks like.

My understanding is we pass this originating ordinance and OHCS will begin to work with us to shape and define our program.

We're not bound to the specifics of the ordinance, even on individual projects.

We can set different criteria on these projects.

So the originating ordinance is really signaling that that city will begin to participate in mural and that starts the dialogue with OHCS.

Is that a correct framing?

Uh that is generally correct.

Yes.

There are some standards around what is required in terms of language that um is part of the originating ordinance that requires things such as a compliance plan.

But yes, once you adopt the originating ordinance, OHCS is still a partner in the process.

Um, there's still several steps that happen along the way after the originating ordinance is adopted, and we can work through some of those uh finer details once the um originating ordinance has has been adopted.

And you mentioned a compliance plan.

Can you just detail when we're considering an originating ordinance?

What are the components that we need to decide before then?

It looks like on your draft ordinance, it's the percent AMI that we're looking at as a threshold, the unit types and this compliance piece.

Yeah, the this the in the case of this presentation, the city of Milwaukee is ultimately empowered to define um as long as it's within the minimum standards of the Mural program, um, it's up to the city to define what compliance looks like.

So say for example, you wanted to target um 80% or below, or um let's say maybe you only wanted to specifically target um homeownership projects.

Um that could be something that your local jurisdiction would define.

And I guess one last clarification here.

Whatever standard, if we said 120% or below, that doesn't bind us to only accepting projects.

We we still, as we're selecting projects, can choose the criteria that we want to establish for that project.

It's just as the eligibility of people to come to us with different projects within Milwaukee.

Does that make sense?

I think I followed you.

And yes, there are projects, but you will, as a council, be reviewing project applications.

So just to put a finer point on the council president's question.

If we did an originating ordinance, it said, you know, we would entertain applications up to 120% of AMI.

But then, you know, knowing that the funds are limited, you know, and our bandwidth is limited, we actually decided we were going to apply it.

We we were gonna only put forward applications that came in at under 80% of AMI or under 100%, something lower than what our ordinance said.

We have the discretion to do that.

Yes, that is correct.

And can you explain to me, just for context, the compliance piece that you're mentioning?

What is Coos Bay and Tillamak County done for their compliance piece, or I guess what does that compliance look like in other jurisdictions?

Um, I do have my colleague uh Megan Ellertson on the call.

Um, she may be just a little bit more familiar with the specific language of the compliance plan for Coos Bay.

Um are you available, Megan.

Yes.

Can you all hear me?

We can hear you.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Hi, everyone.

Um, my name's Megan Ellerson.

I'm actually the Mural Program Manager.

Um, and thanks.

Thank you all for uh for having us.

Uh, we appreciate being here to be able to answer some questions.

Um kind of like Jason mentioned, uh, in that originating ordinance, and I think maybe I'm gonna jump back to one of the original questions as well.

Uh, like you mentioned, that originating ordinance really sets your you up to do this program.

We anticipate that a lot of the um programmatic structure and how you want to do it will happen down the line.

But part of that is the compliance plan.

That compliance plan just kind of allows you or outlines how you're gonna ensure affordability requirements are met.

Um so the city of Coos Bay um and Tillamook County is the our other county, uh, other jurisdiction that is adopting the role program, has kind of left that um simple.

They outline how um they will what their affordability requirements will be, whether it's the 120 and below, or if they wanted to be more restrictive, and then some basics around ensuring that that affordability um is maintained through the duration of the loan.

Part of the purpose of the compliance plan is so that when your projects come through, they can kind of refer back to that to show you that they're gonna how they're gonna meet um maintaining that compliance uh to the affordability.

That's really the intended thing element of the compliance plan, but it's also a tool for you all to use um if you kind of want to bulk that up.

Again, those pieces could also come later in your program development um and how you want it to look.

But the main purpose is to um kind of state that you will be ensuring affordability requirements are met on all the projects.

And just to clarify that assurance has to come from the city.

It can't, it is not something we can ask the developer to do.

Um part of the the elements of the program is to have those um feed restrictions or um affordability covenants.

So there's there's gonna be some of those uh kind of legal elements that would be added to those projects just by nature of the program.

So part of it will be your developer will be um referring back to your compliance plan and saying, hey, we're gonna be making sure we're selling at this right point when we get when we reach uh construction completion, and that's how we're meeting your affordability requirements.

Um, but it at baseline is just a way of saying you're going to assure that those affordability requirements are met.

I can submit this into the record, but the city of Coos Bay, it looks like for their compliance plan is requiring certain reporting requirements of the developers receiving the grant funds.

So they would report back to the city about their compliance with that.

Is that a correct interpretation of Coos Bay's plan, or do you not know those specifics, Megan?

Yes.

No, that's a thank you for bringing that as an example exactly.

And I guess to really clarify this point, because I did hear concerns about if we accepted a loan, what would our liability be?

We're not required in adopting an originating ordinance to accept any project.

We still have time and the ability to determine what risk factors we want to take in, what that tolerance is going to look like.

Um the originating ordinance just says that we want to opt in to or begin doing the moral program and working with OHCS to develop that.

Is that a correct interpretation?

Yes, exactly.

So you're adopting your ordinance is saying, hey, we want to do this.

And then it's not requiring that you accept any projects.

All of that will be up to you.

I think how you described it, it kind of perfectly articulates how you as a city then have full discretion over the type of projects you want to accept, the level of risk and assessing that that comes with those projects that get submitted to you.

That's within your complete discretion.

Ultimately, you know, you can pass your originating ordinance and set up your program.

And it's it's completely up to you all if you have projects that you feel meet your your standard and what you are willing to accept in terms of that risk on the loan and move it forward from there, if you would like, uh but you're definitely not mandated to.

Okay, that's super helpful.

Thank you, Megan.

Yeah, of course.

Other questions?

Mayor, I have one.

Um thank you very much, OHCS staff.

This is this is really helpful.

And my question is kind of piggyback off what the council president was saying.

And it's really about kind of clarity on on timeline.

So, you know, I hear that the originating ordinance is that first piece, but if the county does not adopt an IGA with OHCS, we then have code that I my understanding is then we can't and we we couldn't accept projects until that happens.

And then second, and this is less a question for OHCS, but more kind of my musings to the council.

I think, you know, as you heard Joseph say, there's operational capacity needed to administer this, both on the compliance piece that would have to be a part of that originating code, but also the financial administration.

And so I think, you know, if we took the the originating ordinance step, you'd also then be seeing probably me proposing some resource uh either reallocation or additional allocation to make sure we could administrate that program when those next pieces fall into place.

So I just I again I'm trying to kind of understand we adopt an originating ordinance, but then are we at the mercy of Clackamas County getting an IGA before we could even implement this?

I think that's what I'm understanding, but maybe you can correct me, OHCS staff.

Um, yes, that is correct.

The county is a required stakeholder.

Um, you know, generally speaking, OHCS staff recommends that the conversation with the county happens before the originating ordinance um is adopted.

Um but really that conversation is between you and your local county.

But um the answer to your question is yes, the um county is required as a stakeholder.

So I had a related question, which is um are there other cities in Clackamas County that you're talking to?

And you don't have to tell me which ones if you feel there's some confidentiality, but are there um, you know, I want to say yes.

If you give me just a quick moment here, I'm well I know on your training uh a couple weeks ago, there were some folks from Wilsonville.

So I assume Wilsonville is kind of looking at it at least.

Um but I guess where I'm going with that question is have you had any conversations with Clackamas County?

Not that I not that I have had personally.

Are you familiar, Megan, with any conversations specifically with Calacamas County?

We have not talked with Clackamas County yet, or they've not um chatted with us about Merle that I know of.

Yeah, not sure what their position is yet in considering the program as well.

So I asked on, I asked you by email um about who at the county has to sign the IGA.

And you you sort of said uh, you know, that's up to the county, basically.

Um, which I I get it.

You uh maybe can't maybe some counties are different.

I know in our case, the development team has talked to the tax assessor.

Um, and then the tax assessor, I guess, uh has indicated some uh willingness, but I kind of assume they have to it has to go to the you know, the county administrator level.

Um can you tell us what the experience has been with Coos County or or uh Tillamont County in terms of that?

Yeah, um, it's a great question.

And I think uh like you mentioned, and I think part of uh where we kind of as the state want to be a helpful and also I think uh the program is also made in a way that we know that counties and cities all kind of work slightly differently.

So it will depend.

But for example, I know um Coos Bay's uh county commissioner was the one that signed their agreements.

Um so that is who they utilized.

They've had conversations with their county um tax assessor's office.

Um, but that agreement essentially is kind of consenting to the to the process.

Um, and so I think it will just depend, particularly on, you know, with that agreement to do the process, and then who signs that is kind of if it if it does look like a county commissioner um agreeing to it.

Um so far, it seems as though folks have had kind of smooth transitions.

Usually when we're working with folks as partners, um, oftentimes we're able to meet with both the county tax assessor office and the city or the county, whoever's thinking about doing it, or if it's folks that are already working on adopting it.

And so we're kind of in ongoing conversations with them.

So they're very aware.

Um, or like we like we want to make sure that they're aware when they get this agreement from us about what it entails, what the responsibilities would look like.

Um, and they're very well aware when they receive it.

So when they sign it, they know what they're um kind of agreeing to.

Um, but so far that has gone fairly smoothly.

I think both locations have um had those kind of prior conversations.

And so when they go to sign it, um, usually they're kind of already on board to move forward with it.

Um, and that piece you has moved very quickly in terms of timeline.

Um, of course, the county technically has to assign that agreement first.

Um, but I believe that that's moved very quickly for the folks that we've worked with so far.

Okay.

Counselors, any other questions or staff?

Any other questions for OHCS while we have them on the line?

Okay.

Um, we will thank you then uh for chime for calling in.

I did want to give the development team here a chance to uh uh up to 10 minutes to um present to us.

Um before we wind up, and you guys are fine to stay there if you want.

We may have more questions for you down the line.

Okay.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration, and thank you, OHCS, for being there.

Uh, we were hoping to answer questions for you more than present less.

Uh, I think I have a few comments, and I think Austin has a few also.

Um, speaking directly to your concern regarding the administration costs, uh, not sure if you got that deep into it yet.

There's a five percent administration fee that gets tacked on top of the loan that would go to the the sponsoring jurisdiction, which will help cover that cost.

For instance, the loans we're talking about, 5% would be a $50,000 uh amount, which covers almost the full-time staff for the year that you're working on that.

Uh county also gets an additional one percent administration fee to cover their costs.

Regarding the default on the loan process and the concerns there, any time you have a taxpayer default on their property taxes, the city already has methods of pursuing that and you deal with that independently.

It's not like the city all of a sudden takes on the entire burden of the loan because one homeowner doesn't pay their property tax.

Uh so you would go through those same methods that you would normally if you have a default on that regarding a builder defaulting on the loan during building up it.

That's really where the council's and the staff's knowledge and expertise comes into defining those agreements with the builder during that review process for the project.

You have the ability to put the teeth in there that you need to make you feel comfortable with the project, so that you're not worried that the builder will try to back out on you.

Um finally, a lot of the affordability devices that we've seen utilized for these types of programs are through those deed restrictions.

Those deed restrictions are not something that you need to look at yearly.

They're not something that you report out on yearly.

There's something that gets looked at by your title company when you sell a home.

And on that deed restriction, you can't sell the home unless that next homeowner meets those deed restrictions.

We've brought to the city an opportunity to bring in NOAA and other nonprofit partners to help administer those type transfers and be that dedicated transfer of these properties to help keep that affordability going as long as council dictates that it should happen.

Keep in mind the council can dictate the duration of your affordability period.

So if you choose to have it go the length of the loan only, then that's the end of it.

If you choose to go 99 years, that's the end of it.

But that truly does come to council.

And that's part of the beauty of this program is it allows council that ability to adjust that period and set those terms for what the council and the city are comfortable handling and managing over a long-term period.

And the final feedback I had based on tonight was you talked about the concerns with the costs and the loss for taxes associated with this.

It is true.

You are deferring property taxes or foregoing property taxes for the duration of the loan repayment period.

If you look at similar projects in the city, like Short Stack or other projects that are funded using lift funding or state funding or using CLTs, you're gonna be losing that that property tax over the improvements in that property for the lifetime, the duration of that affordability period, which normally is 99 years.

To put that in perspective on the one project that we're dancing around with Sparrow or with Winwood, that equates to six to eight million dollars of lost revenue that the city would lose going through what you're already using with Lyft funding and with nonprofit CLT programs versus what you could be making with mural.

So you're talking a six to eight million dollars loss by not utilizing mural and deciding instead to pursue these other funding mechanisms.

Your calculation there is based on the land value, because CLT, we still collect taxes on the structure.

We just don't collect tax, and I'm not even sure about that, but it's sort of my probing that I've done the last couple days.

It sounds like uh we may forego taxes on the land, but we still have taxes on the homes that are built.

If you've ever looked at your tax statement, you'll see the assessed value of the improvements on the property.

They normally result in a very small fraction of the total assessed value of that property.

Majority of that value does lie in the land, and that's what you're for going with those programs.

That's specifically why we've addressed and you and focused on the MIRL program is it keeps that money in our pockets in the city's pockets.

The other ones, and we can look at the hypotheticals on it, but you have to run out what property taxes may look like over a hundred years, which essentially that's what we did to come to that number was just looked at a an average increase in property values over that 99-year period.

It easily could be far more.

It easily could be far less.

But that would be a reasonable estimate based on a million dollar loan over a 99-year affordability duration.

Hi, I'm Austin.

I'm a development partner as well.

I'm looking at the Linwood project.

Um, I just I know we're really, really tight on time, so I'll just hit on a couple a couple of things to clarify.

You have five minutes.

I'm I mean, I'm not yeah, we're gonna go past eight in case I cause any more questions, right?

Um, so it just uh a three couple of big points that I saw visually that might have disturbed the council and thought um was uh obviously the mitigation of guarantees and risk and what happens with this seed loan that essentially we're looking at to be able to take down land to be able to get a development going, which mitigates our incredibly high costs develop any kind of housing these days, right?

Um your ability to dictate how we guarantee what kind of tea what happens if if we fail to develop in the middle of construction, how we need to guarantee that we can iron that out.

We're doing that on other projects, we're doing that in Portland as well.

Um, I could show you an example uh deed restriction and covenants agreements that we have with the city, and that that dictate what happens if we fail to deliver after we've received this grant, right?

Um we had a conversation that cle that was clarifying with OHCS a couple weeks ago, a few weeks ago, where um we we don't necessarily have to do this as a grant if we're receiving this this money.

We can do it as a loan and it operate as a loan in the same way.

So if we failed um and you wanted a program that sounded like it had more teeth just because it made folks feel better, we'll we could do that.

That's not a big deal.

To get around guarantees is something we have to do for the construction loan itself, and the amount of money that we're actually asking to develop these projects is a very small amount of the total project cost.

And what we have to guarantee and put skin in the game on as well to develop this is like a regular development.

It's not like a lift program development or um a CLT kind of development.

It's do you have a dollar figure that you're seeking?

We do have a dollar figure, and it's the cost of the land.

We're not asking, well, we're we're in our loan, we're gonna be asking obviously for the cost of um you know administration fees, things like that, which is also a small portion of the loan amount.

But to for us to be able to make our projects pencil and how we've been able to make them pencil in the city of Portland, which is why the city of Portland gave us two point eight million dollars to do one of these, um, is is really the cost of the dirt.

If we can leverage that dirt at the beginning of the construction loan, especially, just that difference in interest to make these things pencil and give us the ability to sell these units all at 80% AMI.

Now, this loan, this program doesn't mean you have to do that.

You can choose you know, that spectrum between 80% and 120% participating in this program.

If you're doing a for-sale type of model, you could also use this model to model to do rental income or rental housing, which is why probably the city of Portland is going we want to take that money as fast as possible.

All right.

Um, but to develop real affordable first-time home buyer opportunities, which is what we're doing in Portland, we're leveraging their 100% AMI program, we're doing with their grant to do 80, 80% housing as well as the same thing we want to do in Milwaukee twice if we possibly can.

So it's really a small amount of of a seed fund, essentially.

Now we will fully guarantee that makes the project pencil, otherwise it wouldn't, or you'd have to have a specific organization that has capacity to go out into the to the state, get in line and find another program to get that money, which there is that thing about it it exists, it's called lift, right?

But it's highly oversubscribed.

And it's very difficult for organizations to get in line for that funding.

Um so as far as guarantees, I just want to hit on hit on that really quickly.

And OHCS can clarify really quickly too, as far as compliance goes.

Um, yeah, we're going to uh at at the at the onset of of the transaction, we build these things, we get them sold to income qualified folks.

It's at the point of that transaction is where we're looking at the most administration because we're doing the income qualifications.

The way we're doing elsewhere without the need of necessarily a county housing agency um or necessarily the city after the first transaction, um, we these things are these things are built into the covenants and deed restrictions.

So the escrow folks do this stuff.

Um insurance covers um and in some cases, you know, that oversight to make sure that um that income qualified person is is the right person that can purchase the home.

Um that's also happening through the lenders, all right.

So lenders are gonna see this.

I mean, there's a lot of there are a lot of uh checks and balances, I would say, that are already kind of naturally in place if you have the right covenants and deed restrictions in place.

And in the city of Portland gave gave us that money in the form of a grant, a very large sum amount, sum, frankly, um, to do it and do it just that way.

So we feel like we could successfully convince you that we have that that that item in place.

You have a question, yeah.

Just a quick question for you, Austin.

You mentioned a development on Linwood.

Um, how many units of affordable housing are you considering there?

Right now we're looking at about 42.

If we can get it up to 50, we'll be great.

And if we didn't have funding for Merle, do you have a guarantee that those units could be affordable?

No, absolutely not, especially because those units that the comparables for the same type of units, three bedroom, three bath with a garage, homes, same comparables quarter mile away or 450, 460,000, then those are selling.

And those are market rate developers selling to folks who are earning way more than under 20% AMI per metro.

Those are not, those are not home buyer opportunities for first-time homebuyers and folks that are making 80 to 220% AMI.

Yeah.

They're just not, and it's not going to happen, especially in this interest environment.

In fact, you have developers out there on the market rate who are who are absolutely selling there's no way we're going to participate in those programs because they need those appraisals to back up their construction loans.

So that there's a there's a whole other, that's a whole other mess in getting getting this stuff developed.

But if we just have the seed funds and we can go to the bank and say, hey, you know what, we're mitigating, we're mitigating the risk.

We have a we have a partner here within the city, you know, here are guarantees that we'd be giving you anyways for the same type of project.

Um, let's, you know, let's get this done, right?

Um, but to really one quick uh on top of that compliance period, right?

So if we're if we're looking at at what happens at the point of that first transaction, right?

On average, and you could ask Bill Van Vliet, he was in a he was in a conference with us, you know, recently.

Um, he's the executive director for NOAA, um, who's a brain, kind of the brainchild of this whole this whole uh new program through the state.

I mean, he was absolutely right.

If you're looking at the average amount of time people are actually having to do this transaction over and over again, it's about every seven years somebody's selling a home.

You're getting in the home.

So yeah, even if the city wanted to say, okay, well, at the point of a transaction, you need to send it to somebody so that we can see the title and the lender, income qualified you, how much administration is that really over the lifetime of this?

This is not rental housing where you need that compliance, not only through the state or usually through cities, like the Portland Housing Bureau does in Portland, um, where and whether you're participating in inclusion here housing there, you got to comply with that.

And there's a huge program, a huge division that that oversees that type of compliance.

We don't need that for the type of program that we're trying to implement here with just for sale first-time homebuyer moderate income housing opportunities, right?

Um, and to clarify one last thing.

Uh so I think the reason why the 50%, 51% test is really around, okay.

Um is when you when at least in Portland, at least how I understand it.

Um, and I maybe OHS can clarify this.

Um, but when you're perpetually abating taxes forever, right?

Yeah, you gotta have you gotta have some you have some bigger sign-off.

This is for just the period of the payback of the loan.

And I think we've shown you models where we can pay that back faster, depending on your choice and how we how we implement that unit mix, right?

What are we trying to offer with that stuff?

So we have some flexibility there, and that and that that can be that can be your choice, you know, if you're to choose to move forward, yeah.

Okay.

Uh you got your question.

Yeah, because I'm not sure.

Yeah, I have a question with um so what happens if somebody sells it five years into it, who's on the hook for the rest of that money at this one.

Sure.

It it then it just transfers to the next homeowner, uh, and then the title still plays it, stays in place, as do the deed restrictions when they go to sell it again, so long as it's within the counter affordability period that council sets for that project, it would go back through that same affordability metrics and test.

So the deed restriction can be for a period of years.

Absolutely it's not for it doesn't have to lay for the whole uh time of the of the property.

That's correct.

That's correct.

You can dictate the affordability period.

That's very different from the payback period.

That payback period, we have to go to HCS and say, hey, we gotta pay this thing back within 10 years.

So the amount of money that we can take in a couple of years.

No, I'm asking you a question about Oregon deed law.

Yeah.

Can a deed, I haven't ever heard of a deed restriction that is time limited.

There's 99 year deed restrictions enforced pretty commonly on deeds.

That is most commonly with CLTs, but you could make it you.

I I don't know what the law is for how long you could make it, but certainly beyond our our living years and our grandchildren's probably.

As it's a deed in the covenant, the title companies have to check that prior to transferring title.

And if you're not meeting the criteria of that title, then that's where you're you're identifying that you're either in or out of that period.

That's exactly right.

I was gonna wrap this up here actually.

So uh my ask to council tonight would be that we provide direction to staff to prepare an originating ordinance for us to adopt that has an AMI threshold of 120 or less, has all of the unit types that are allowable under the ordinance um and models off of Coos Bay's um compliance system.

Um we can still set different qualifications for any projects that come forward to us, but I think in starting this conversation with the originating ordinance, we're able to get into this program early and allow developers in Milwaukee the chance to begin to coordinate OHCS on a project that could bring three sparrow sites equivalent of affordable housing into um neighborhoods in Milwaukee.

I think it's a really important starting gun for this work.

I think concurrent with that direction out to staff to prepare that originating ordinance.

I'd love to start conversations with the county.

I think staff can start to do that.

I'm happy to talk to um a county commissioner as well, but I would ask um that we provide direction to staff tonight to begin that originating ordinance work.

If I can, Rick could if we're going into council deliberations, I'd ask you gentlemen, we're we're finished with you.

Thank you.

Um I feel like there's way too many um unresolved issues to go.

And I will say I have brought this up at the county.

I first you know heard about this like two months ago.

I went to I brought it up at the mayor's uh meeting with the chair and the county administrator, and kind of trying to plant a seat, are other cities interested.

Um at the time, about six weeks ago, uh, the answer back from the county administrator was nobody's approached us.

Um the I'm hopeful, like I said, Wilsonville was at this latest training.

Um, and maybe you brought it up at C4.

I don't know if that's happened.

Um, you know, I'm hopeful that some other cities uh in the county are looking at it and we could have some effort uh, you know, where we're you know, where the burden isn't all on Milwaukee and Milwaukee staff to educate the county and move the county toward doing this.

I uh it it seems to me there's a lot of burden here in terms of this the burden on staff.

Uh and I would feel much more interested in moving for a uh starting toward a development or the ordinance if we knew the county was on board.

Counselor Massey.

Yeah, I have lots of concerns about this.

Um, you know, I I I look at the you know, the the staff work is required, and I've tried to rack my brain trying to figure out what what the corollary of what their organization would be doing in this.

And the the only thing that kind of comes up is they're sort of a uh at least at points in the process, they're almost like a mortgage company.

Um and uh I go back to what I said earlier in the um uh in our previous session.

This is just not a core competency of our city, okay, to be administering programs like this.

And I gotta tell you, I see a huge administrative burden on this.

And so even if we got the through the uh you know the hurdles of uh of uh you know getting the uh administrative uh task uh under control so that we could do it more effectively, when you look at the total um uh project uh for the state, 75 million dollars, uh how much of that would we get?

I don't think it's very high.

Um, because you know, states are like states, and they're they're gonna want to spread this out to as many people as possible.

So uh this is gonna be uh you know, kind of spread pretty thin.

So I would know support an ordinance at this point.

I I would also add, I've done a lot of reading up on this, and um, and I know Councillor Massey went to a session at LOC where they talked about this.

And I think it's a I think it's a useful tool.

I'm not saying we don't pursue it at some point, but I think there's so many things in flux with their new rules and what's changing that what the legislature changed.

Uh I think um, I and I guess the other thing I thought a lot about is if what is needed, you know, we had a conversation earlier about land banking, and we know we don't have a big pot of money to do land banking, but boy, if we had, you know, if there was some CET money that we could earmark and just create our own loan and then it's paid back after the uh units sell, um, it would be such an easier thing to administer than this very complicated state project with all the IGAs and all the different applications.

And I mean, this this thing is very process heavy and therefore very staff development heavy.

Um yeah.

I mean, I wish, you know, yeah.

I know we don't have we don't have magic pots of money, but it seems like we could administer our own uh revolving loan fund as it were, uh, if we did have a little pot of money to do that.

And it'd be much more easily manageable than this.

Um council president.

Council Professor Bonnie was um I would say, so I want to ground us back to what Austin talked about.

There are 44 units of affordable housing that this project or this um program can walk in our city.

When we're talking about this, we're talking about whether we want to create a pathway for these 44 units to be placed in our city or not.

And I think that when we talk about the core competency of our city, I think we have an obligation codified in one of our three council goals to support the affordability of our city.

We have a housing production strategy that looks at delivering housing at different EMIs from below 50 to up to 120% AMI in our city.

And I think that this is a really important tool that allows us to do this.

There aren't many magic plots of money in the world, but this is a relatively magic pot of money.

The state is giving us funds to be able to administer these programs and allow for a deeply affordable housing to be paid in our state.

It gives us funds for the administrations of these programs.

Let's not make too much of a case of deeply affordable.

We can set those terms though, but this is, I guess the other thing we'd say, you said the city would be so much more competent if we could administer our own version of the road program.

The city does have the ability to administer the specifics of projects that apply for the new program within our jurisdiction.

We have the ability to set these restrictions to say if we want this housing for I think that this is a real shot at a real important program that the state has provided to us to be able to deliver on what we're hearing from our residents who want to get affordable housing.

And I think it would be a real missed opportunity if we decided not to pursue it some more.

Counselor.

So I'll be honest, my first for this program, but I loved it.

I was like, this is going to be amazing.

There's finally some money out there to help bring down the cost.

But the more we got into the details, I mean, it's it's it's it's it's a really clunky deal.

Uh it's not very well streamlined.

Um, and it's a pretty heavy lift.

I mean, look at what we're dealing with with just doing an IGE for a park.

Right.

I mean, I didn't think it was this complex.

I mean, this is this is pretty complex.

Um, and there's just a lot of holes that I see potentially.

There's just too many, it raises too many questions.

Um, and it leaves the city on the hook unnecessarily for things, um, in my opinion.

Um I get to 44 units, but it's not just about 44 units.

We want to do this, but we want to do this right.

We don't want to do this that puts the city again, the city in a in a compromising position, and we don't want to jump into something where only one city as of right now has done an order.

They don't have a project under it.

Um so I I just I would I would want to see more because I think there's a better way to do it.

I mean, we have the CET funds that has funds in it, and again, going back to Councilor Masley, who he was saying.

I mean, how much we what would that project get?

How much would we get?

And if it was something that we could do administer to help with the CET funds that we have now, I mean, we can we can use those CET funds now.

I just I don't want to look at this like this is what's gonna get us just for just 44 units, right?

I I do I like I wanted to be applied for other projects as well, but it just seems so I mean, look at that.

There's a lot of stuff in there.

I mean, just the IGAs alone um are gonna be complex.

And you know, I get the you know, the difference with the with the tax uh amount and doing something like Sparrow or something like that, but those are those are more affordable than what this is established for.

So I'm okay with that.

I mean, you look at Harvey Street or short stack, that's 250,000.

I'm okay losing the tax money for 250,000 home that's something you could buy.

That's huge.

Um there's not that many of them, anyways, because again, penciling it out is a big problem.

But I just with the way the state put this together, it just does not like I feel like it's the city more in the compromise position than anybody else.

The city's the ones that that's that gets left with the bill if anything does happen.

I'm not saying that would happen, but I feel like there's got to be a better way to do this.

Um, I don't feel like this is the only thing to do.

And I feel like we should wait to see how a few of these projects go through before we jump into.

We're not poorly, we're not even close to being bored.

We're we're we're I mean it's just I it's it's a it's a massive risk, and I just think that at least the state needs to clean it up.

Has nothing to do with developers, it's nothing to do with city, but I just think the state needs to go back to the drawing board on this one.

I guess yeah, what I'd like to um propose as an alternative to directing staff to go into uh developing an ordinance is to say let's come back in March.

Let's see where that state rulemaking is.

That may that gives people time to try to talk to the county.

I I really encourage OHCS to do that.

I think it's really unfair to put all these burdens on small cities.

I think they could be talking to the counties, and I have I've made that point with them a few times.

Um and also it gives Emma a chance to be further into the budget process and really assess what the ask would be in terms of staffing.

So that's kind of my proposal is uh is let's not say no, but let's not start staff on a uh drafting an ordinance till we get some more clarity around uh all of that.

Um I want to point out that chart there, the orange pieces, just three pieces are what's required about the sponsoring jurisdiction.

There's draft IGAs that OHCS provides for us.

There's ample technical support that OHS will provide for us after we do an origin and ordinance.

Um there's a lot of support that OHCS does for this program.

Um we have an affordability crisis now, and unnecessarily delaying this to March to me seems pretty offensive to the folks who are struggling to afford housing is this.

Um, if we have to wait till March to get this passed, I mean, it will be good to get this passed, but I would hope that we have some haste and adopting programs like this that have such potential to deliver housing for our community.

There's a lot that can be worked out here.

After we adopt the originating ordinance, we're not on the hook to accept any projects automatically.

We still have ample time to be able to define exactly the terms that we want to do.

The thing that the originating ordinance does that's so important, and it allows developers in our city to working with OHCS to making sure to make sure that their program is moral eligible.

And I think that is a really key component of this.

Actually, this development team that just spoke to us has already been working with OHCS.

So I don't think they need an ordinance to do that.

Um I will say I have found OHCS's answers to my questions for two months now to be less than complete and less than fully inspired.

Um my two things to your point, uh Council President is this.

We still regard if we did an ordinance tonight, you still have two ITs you gotta put together.

Who knows how long that's gonna take?

It's not like they're gonna break ground tomorrow, right?

So and I'm I'm a little bit opposed to putting an ordinance together and then cleaning it up later.

That to me seems a little bit backwards.

I feel like we should get it right first, figure out what exactly we're getting into, and then put an ordinance together.

Just to put an ordinance together hastily, because again, if we pass an ordinance tonight, they they can't, they're not gonna get anything because we still have to get the IGs.

That could take months.

So it either way, it's not like you know, you're you're you're you're you're your comment on um you know, people struggling like I think we're all aware of that.

I think we all care about that deeply, or else we wouldn't have affordability as a goal.

But to insinuate that this ordinance would make a difference overnight, I think is a little bit more well.

The other thing is to the staff, the staff um the other thing is the staff burden means staff is coming off of other things that could help with affordable housing.

So it's not uh as you know, it's not like we're not doing anything if we don't do this.

I think that's the important and the last question from council president Are you not concerned with any of the potential issues that the city could be on the hook for?

Does none of that bother you?

I'll I'll speak to a few of these things.

So the developers have been in conversations with OHCS, but OHCS, there is a burden that they can speak to more that they're prevented from talking to OHCS about certain specifics of their projects.

There's some threshold that after we pass this originating ordinance, they're able to cross in their conversations with OHCS.

So if we did pass something tonight, there would be a difference for them in their project.

The IGAs, we've heard from OHCS that none of the IGAs and other jurisdictions that have adopted this have been overly controversial or overly complexity mister and deliberate.

The IGAs are given draft IGAs or example NGAs that OHCS provides for us to work with the county.

And I'm sure that if we wanted the county and said we have a project to bring more affordable units into the county that you would see county commissioners who are really excited about that prospect.

In terms of the risk that the city might take, that certainly is a concern that we can cross as we're accepting projects specifically.

That's not something that we have to determine in our originating ordinance.

The originating ordinance does not put liability on the city.

It's accepting projects.

And I think that we can pass the originating ordinance without imperiling the city from a large financial loss.

Okay, counselor Calbari.

We also have the issue of maintaining it, right?

But I know they said about the nonprofits, but don't I mean, doesn't the non, they're not gonna operate at a loss.

Somebody has to get paid for them to do that, right?

Don't they?

Or if the nonprofits do that for free.

You mean the compliance part?

Yeah, to make sure that everyone's in compliance, is that something like I'm all in favor of the nonprofits being a part of it, but doesn't somebody have to pay them for that.

Um, yeah, let no, you can't answer from that there.

That's not on the record.

Um councillor Massey.

The comment about you know, one of the backstops uh for the city providing you know negotiating the terms, uh, repayment terms and like that gets to my point of core competency.

But you know, we're not in the underwriting of loans, risk evaluation and that kind of thing.

We don't do that.

The city does not have that as core competency.

If you want to, you know, rely on on that, uh, it just goes to my point that we're not equipped with the skills to do this.

And it's easy for us to set up here on a bias and uh say, uh, yeah, we can do all this.

It's easy for the person who doesn't have to do it to tell someone else to do it.

And I'm too late there, guys.

So much work on this project.

Not to mention the risk.

I'll give the council president one last uh statement, and then we will do our straw poll, I guess.

I was about to call the question.

I hope to be nervous at this soon.

Um I know I might be on numbers here, but we can reflect on this and memorable as quickly as possible.

Um we can work on that.

Yep.

Thank you.

So five minutes, come back at uh by that clock, eight thirty-five.

All right.

Microphone mayor.

We are back on the air and uh moving on to agenda to our public hearings for tonight.

And the first one is solid waste franchise terms change and ordinance.

The public hearing on the proposed changes to the solid waste franchise term is called to order.

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

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

Seeing none, uh, I will turn it over to finance director Michael Osborne.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh tonight we're here to talk about a topic that I've learned a lot about over the last year.

Uh solid waste and franchise agreements.

A little bit of history here.

Uh in February twenty fifteen, uh council adopted the latest resolution seven uh two thousand fifteen.

And in that, it's uh had a provision that franchises shall be for a rolling term of ten years unless council canceled by either party pursuant to chapter thirteen point two four.

Uh fast forward uh into fall of last year, council's had a number of different discussions on the performance of the current franchise system, and in February indicated the interest to reconsider the ten-year rolling nature of the agreement.

Last month we met with uh Chris Bell from Chris Bell and Associates, who is an independent uh entity uh who looks at um solid waste franchise agreements in the uh local area.

And he directed staff um.

Sorry.

Um last when Chris was here last month, he had said uh gave a little bit of notice on what the implications of if we uh terminated the agreement would be announced some of your questions.

And then at the end of that meeting, um, council directed staff to schedule a public hearing to consider terminating the franchise uh system.

So today we're here to consider that termination of the current agreement.

Terminating the agreement.

Um thirteen point two four point one oh oh, uh, if the city chooses to terminate the agreement, it would be as follows.

And um, in it, it's saying that we must give thirty days notice prior to January first, which is why we're here tonight.

So with that, uh, we have an ordinance before you that would consider the following.

Uh, if passed, ordinance would terminate the ten-year continuing franchise agreement.

Umchises would transition to a ten-year fixed agreement with an expiration date of January one, twenty thirty-five.

All other terms would remain in place.

And the ordinance only considers uh termination per council direction.

Um, with that, the question for us is does council wish to terminate the current solid waste system tonight and transition the current agreement to a ten-year fixed term that expires January first, twenty thirty-five.

Um, sorry, Major.

Sorry, yeah.

Uh per my script, I'm supposed to ask if we've received any additional correspondence.

There was correspondence from uh Ms.

Vargas, which is in the record.

Um, beyond that, has there been any additional correspondence?

Um, I know that Ms.

Vargas is here, and another gentleman um is here both to speak, and I know that the callers kind of pulled their time together.

One's gonna speak for five minutes, the other one for two minutes.

Um, just kind of to summarize uh what they put and what they want to uh let you guys know.

But we have not received any other written correspondence.

Okay, so correct.

Okay.

Um you ready for me to go on to public testimony, or do you want up?

Um I would just add, Mayor, there was one bullet on Michael's last slide that I want to make sure you guys saw, which was just that the last yeah, terminating tonight.

It's right, one one forward mic.

There you go.

Terminating the agreement tonight does not preclude council from considering code changes that would amend the franchise agreement in future years.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely terminating it just as like come back in three years, come back in five years, come back, you know.

Um, obviously you have to wait till 10 years is up, and the city wouldn't want to wait till 10 years is up.

Um, okay.

So with that, um, I'll ask anyone wish to comment on the proposed uh term changes.

We will now take public comment.

I will recognize speakers and any questions should be addressed to me when you begin to speak, say your name and city of residence for the record.

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

You can do that after the fact uh if you would like, but please do that before you leave.

Um if you're on Zoom, do we have anybody on Zoom?

Okay, and I won't bother reading that.

Um so we will give you, I mean, we'd ordinarily give 10 minutes as a group.

Sounds like you're gonna be under 10 minutes anyway.

So okay.

So Ms.

Vargas, she first.

And if there's somebody else, please do spill out a yellow comment card.

Yeah.

Good evening, Mayor Beatty, members of the council.

I'm Beth Vargas Duncan.

I reside in the city of Salem, Oregon.

I'm the regional director at Oregon Refuse and Recycling Association, and in that capacity, I'm speaking tonight on behalf of Aura.

That's the abbreviation.

Our franchised garbage and recycling hauler members that serve Milwaukee.

So you'll see that it's Clackmas Garbage, Hoodview Disposal Waste Connections, and WM.

Representatives from each of Milwaukee's franchise garbage dealers are here with me.

Keith Miller, who will be up in a moment, and Chris Wright with Hoodview Disposable Waste Connections, and Dave Huber with WM.

WM has been providing solid waste and recycling services to the city of Milwaukee for over 30 years, which currently includes 4,500 residential, 450 commercial, and 60 industrial customers.

Waste Connections acquired KHO waste services in October of 2021, bringing here view disposal into their family companies.

Hoodview has been providing solid waste services in the city of Milwaukee for many years and currently serves 1,500 residential, 20 commercial, and 17 industrial customers.

Thank you for your opportunity to speak tonight.

And after Mayor Beattie's comments at the October 7th City Council meeting, we reviewed the previous council meetings in 2025, realized we missed the mayor's request back in February to offer alternatives to existing ruling franchise term.

And we apologize again to the mayor for this.

It's never our intent to disregard a request to discuss franchise issues with our elected officials.

We understand you're considering whether to terminate the current franchise agreement this evening.

We recognize there's concerns about Milwaukee's solid waste franchise having a rolling term of 10 years.

As noted in our letter of October 30th, 2025 to you, the City of Milwaukee can amend the franchise at any time without first terminating the franchise agreement.

We asked that you consider our proposal to amend the franchise instead of terminating the franchise agreement.

There are costs to termination.

If the franchise is terminated, the city council would need to start all over for Milwaukee Solid Waste Services, which is both labor and resource intensive for the haulers and for your staff, which I know from the previous hearing and discussion that you care about deeply.

Terminating the franchises creates new costs to either negotiate a new franchise agreement or develop and implement a request for proposals, the process, analyzing bidders, and deal with potential objections.

And a new provider would need to purchase equipment while Milwaukee's repayers have already paid for equipment, trucks, carts, containers that the current franchisees use to service this community.

Instead of terminating, amending the franchise, which you could do now, provide stability for Milwaukee's community and the franchised haulers.

It can be done seamlessly within the current agreement.

Termination of Milwaukee's franchise starts the clock, rolling toward ending the garbage recycling and organics collection services in 10 years, which would that's a 20 January 2036.

Changing the franchise term could be accomplished through an amendment to city code, as we had proposed in exhibit A of our October 30, 2025 letter.

The City Council can also add programs as it did in the past.

For example, as noted in our October 30 letter, back in 2017, the Milwaukee City Council adopted a voluntary food scraps recovery program along with a new solid waste rate to support that program, and noted that commercial food waste collection would be included in integrated solid waste collections.

All of this was done within the current franchise as the council worked with its service providers to make the changes that allowed for seamless continued enhancement of services.

Another example of a program that other metro jurisdictions such as Gresham have successfully added under existing franchises is a reduced rates program for garbage services for eligible low-income customers.

That's helped to alleviate cross concerns for those who are least able to pay.

For many decades, the haulers have demonstrated a strong commitment to providing excellent service to the residents of Milwaukee while also producing sustainable results and consistent operational safety.

We look forward to partnering with the city in the future and appreciate the opportunity to serve Milwaukee.

In closing, we respectfully request the council work with the franchise scholars to revise the rolling term within the current franchise, maintaining the security and stability of keeping the franchise in place and avoid starting from scratch to secure your solid waste collection services.

We're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any questions?

No.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I'm sorry, sir, I don't know your name, but please come forward.

Yeah, and turn in your yellow card.

Yeah.

Good evening.

Thank you.

My name is Keith Miller.

I'm reside in Peaverton.

Um, taking the time, all of you members of council.

Um, like I said, my name's Keith Miller.

I'm a third generation owner of uh Glackham's garbage, and we've been uh we've been in the excuse me, in the Milwaukee area serving people for uh 70 plus years now.

Um we're small business, we only have 10 employees.

Um the city of Milwaukee's franchise system is pretty essential in our business and our ability to operate.

Uh without it, we couldn't simply compete with all the large national companies that are around.

Um, as you can imagine, securing some financing is pretty difficult and uh comes with a challenge in the the existing franchise agreement with the city is critical in that asset.

Um often rely on that kind of stuff, that information and uh to determine whether or not on what terms to extend the financing to our company.

Um if the franchise is terminated, that asset is effectively lost or significantly diminished, and uh a fixed expiration grade in 2035 adds some uncertainty to that as well, and it makes it far more difficult to obtain these um capital that's necessary to provide in the service to these customers.

And you know, just quickly just for those reasons.

I respectfully request the city retain the existing franchise agreement, and you know, we're all happy to work collaborator collaboratively with you all on any amendments needed and move this thing forward.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

That's pretty much okay.

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

Public closed.

It's moved and seconded to close the public comment part of the solid waste franchise terms change hearing.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed.

No.

Uh it passes unanimously.

The public comment part is closed.

Uh I wanted to ask uh the finance director if he wanted to say anything in response to what we heard.

I don't um I thought what Beth said was fair and good.

Um my working with them, they've been great partners in working on my end from it.

Um that's all I have.

Okay.

Council discussion.

Uh Council Gravinant.

Can I clarify?

And maybe this is a question for Justin, but we have an amendment put forward to our contract.

We had heard in the past that we could necessarily amend it.

The pound seems like we can.

Can you just clarify what it would look like to amend um our franchise agreement?

Well, the current council direction has been to schedule a hearing on whether or not to terminate the 10-year franchise or continuing franchise.

So that's where why we're here today.

Um, I've looked at the code and I understand some examples that the testimony provided.

However, I'd point out there's a couple of things that are different from amending a term such as this.

And I think it's important to point out why we have a franchise that's consistent that's in our code as opposed to individual franchise agreements.

Individual franchise agreements are essentially a contract.

Uh, and in essentially every contract, every franchise agreement I've ever looked at, there is an amendment term that talks about amending the terms that the parties mutually agree.

We just did that not too long ago in our Century Lake uh franchise.

The council adopted an ordinance that amended that to add some additional terms.

The examples that the testimony pointed out are items that are, and I've just looked really quickly, but adding an additional service and changing rates are both things contemplated in our current code.

Um there is not a provision in the code that uh that inhabits that hey, let's change the terms of the agreement.

Uh like unilateral, and you gotta remember at the time this code, this is a model code, so it doesn't fit everything perfectly.

At the time this code was likely adopted.

Um we had multiple franchisees, right?

Uh and so if we were to amend something to add a particular service or beyond adding a service or a fee, uh, and put it into the code, that would substantially change the agreement.

Um I would point everybody to MMC 1324140, which is in our current code, and it's called suspension modifications or revocation of a franchise.

There's no mention of just being able to unilaterally amend the terms.

Uh I know the testimony indicated that there would be a mutual agreement to amend the terms, but what if we wanted to amend without their agreement?

There's not a there's not a term like that in the code currently.

Um so I haven't been faced with this question until just the last couple of days.

I've kind of looked through the code, particularly today, and I don't find a provision in there that does that.

And it hasn't been provided in their October 30th letter either.

You might have to simplify it a little bit.

Are you saying that I'm kind of wondering if both parties agree to an amendment changes in our code, would we be able to move forward with an amendment like they're proposing?

It sounds like you're saying that.

Yeah, the the code is drafted really points out it's a 10-year continuing rolling franchise, and the off-ramp for that is terminated, the continuing rolling franchise.

It doesn't really go any further than that.

So if you look through the code, and I don't want to bore anybody, so I'm gonna be quiet.

But if my read of the code does not provide for an amendment, what would happen if, for instance, one hauler wanted to amend the terms, but the other haulers didn't.

The whole purpose for the code is to keep everybody on the same sheet, the same rules, the same thing.

Otherwise, we have independent franchise agreements.

Now, at the time we entered her, we draft we adopted this code, we had five homeless.

And I realized through consolidation we're down to three, but I think the same argument holds true.

We don't amend the code uh to allow for you know changes into terms, uh, a very specific term, which is the term of the agreement, uh which is the tenure rolling franchise.

The off ramp for that is terminating franchise.

The continuing franchise.

I'm far less intelligent than the lawyer to my left, but just a couple of things I'd add on to that.

So um I I agree with Justin.

I always agree with his legal advice.

Um, but I uh I I think the other piece to note, this goes back to that bullet I pointed out in the last slide.

There is nothing that precludes you from taking this action tonight and then directing us to come back even next year.

I would probably ask if you have to my maternity leave, but even next year to discuss amending terms.

Um you don't have to wait till you know a certain period way down the road, you could do it quickly.

Um, and two, the I just want to remind folks that you know the ordinance in front of you tonight is about termination.

If um, and this is our last meeting before December 1st.

So if you do not terminate tonight, what will happen is it will roll forward again, and you can take another termination hearing next year, but I just want you to know that January 1st, 2035 expiration date, that's only valid if you vote tonight.

Um if we if we have if we postpone or we consider an ordinance that has you know, or two ordinances, a termination and an amendment in the in the next year, which is your prerogative, that that will that will add an additional year of then the eventual fixed term contract, if that makes sense.

I think.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

I do think Ms.

Bargas pointed out the uh type below though, we it is 20 January 1st, 2036.

We believe it is 2035 because the code says it is 10 years from the date of last renewal.

The date of last renewal was January 1st, 2025.

Okay.

So we believe it is 10 years from that date.

So the fixed term contract would expire January 1st, 2035.

Um if you did not take action tonight and it rolls forward from December 1st, which is the 30 days before January 1st, then yes, it would be if you terminated in January, it would be 2036.

Okay.

Okay.

On that code section, I was talking about the term uh 1324 100 of our code.

It talks about this continuing rolling franchise, it provides the offering to terminate the continuing rolling franchise.

And then it has a handful of other uh offerings.

It says that we can initiate to terminate at any time.

A decision to council or a decision by council to terminate it, doesn't affect the franchise obligations under the existing franchise.

So they get to continue under this franchise.

Nothing in this section restricts counsel from suspending, modifying, or revoking the franchise for cause pursuant to another code section.

And a franchise who desires to terminate its rights or obligations can do so under this code.

It would be it would have been very easy to insert something in there to allow an amendment to the franchise if the parties agreed, but we don't have to do that, or council at the time didn't do that.

Council didn't do that, and again, it's a model code, it might be the oversight, it might be something that they might want to look in at their other code language, but I don't read an opportunity to to change the terms with the franchise in our code as it exists today.

Thank you.

I mean, I do take, I mean, I think that's an important point.

They have a 10-year.

If we vote to terminate tonight, you still have a 10-year franchise, or I guess a nine-year franchise, really.

Um, I thought, uh, wait five years.

I mean, I do, I mean, I take Mr.

Miller's point about you know clarity and investment.

I mean, they've all made that point, really.

Um, and I get that, you know, they may not want to wait five years.

Um, but I mean, I I still think it's personally the right thing to do to um uh to terminate and revisit it, whether it's you know, in a year, whether it's in three years, whether it's in five years.

Um that's my personal view.

Thoughts?

Anyone else?

Right.

Um, yeah.

I spoke with uh Miss Florian and Ms.

Haber earlier today, so I appreciate your guys' time and I was really hoping there was uh an amendment there.

Um but it sounds like it it's only we have to do today regardless.

Um this is our only way I would not want to put it off at five years though.

I would want to get it done sooner than later because I don't want I don't want to put any undue and unnecessary burden on the holders and uh five-year mark really got some calls from our conversation today.

They really explained to me um more in depth about their challenges in the finance room and you know appreciation of the truck and things like that.

So I I think five years is gonna hurt them.

Because I think we all kind of kind of have an idea of where we're kind of going with it.

So I don't think we need to wait that long.

Well, and there's nothing in the just you know, there's nothing in this ordinance terminating that dictates how long they how long.

Um other thoughts.

Um I came into this thinking that there was the opportunity to amend.

So I think that that is um helpful clarification test and I guess I do I'll echo what Councillor Passar Bonnie is saying.

I hear the financial challenges of depreciating assets over a long time period, and the extent to which we can quickly work to establish a new franchise agreement, one that allows that has an amendment clause in it too, um, to be able to provide the stability that the haulers need.

Like I recognize there are only so many franchises that are gonna bid in the new RFP process.

And I think that with that in mind proactively working with haulers to give them the stability banning to not have to like really overly burden our ratepayers by trying to price in the uncertainty of a like change in the contract.

I think that that is a real worry that I have and extend to confront on that is important, but knowing that we can't amend the contract, um unless we terminate all right.

No further discussion, I would entertain a motion.

I move for the first and second reading by title only and adopting the order of terminating the solid planning uh system pursuant to chapter 13-24 of the Milwaukee read the support code.

Do I have a second?

I second.

It's been moved and seconded for the first and second readings by title only and adoption of the ordinance terminating the continuing solid waste franchise system pursuant to chapter 13.24 of the Milwaukee Municipal Code.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say no.

Uh it passes unanimously.

Miss Well, I guess I'm not supposed to say that, but I uh preempted Ms.

Madigan.

Um Ms.

Segar, could you please read the ordinance two times by title only?

Sorry, Miss Madigan or Miss Sagor.

Okay, I already got sorry, I got my name's confused.

Yep.

There it goes.

An ordinance of the city of Milwaukee, Oregon terminating the continuing solid waste franchise system pursuant to chapter 13.24 of the Milwaukee Municipal Code, and again, the ordinance of the city of Milwaukee, Oregon terminating the continuing solid waste franchise system pursuant to chapter 13.24 of the Milwaukee Municipal Code.

Thank you.

Ms.

Badakin, would you please pull the council?

Councilor Couser Matty.

Council uh Council President Anderson.

Aye.

Councillor Massey.

Aye.

Mayor Beatty.

Aye.

Ordinance 225E passes unanimously 4-0.

Mayor, just before we move on from this agenda item, and it's okay.

But I just, you know, we there was some chatter tonight about bringing this back, bringing this topic back.

And I just wanted to ask if there was direction tonight to staff about when to potentially pencil that in to our forecaster.

Um again, this is the type of thing I don't want to lose sight of, but I it does take some staff work.

So I would appreciate direction if there is any on a time frame we'd like to bring the conversation back.

Well, I guess I mean I appreciate the you know, sort of urgency that Councillor Cosabati uh mentioned, but we are going into budget season the first half of next year.

So I mean, I feel like maybe if if if there is that urgency on this part of the haulers, they can approach us, of course, but I would say uh later, latter part of next year after we've gotten through the budget.

Susan, what do other people think?

I didn't say I respect that this is going to be a challenge on the haulers and letting them kind of dictate what the timing should be able to understand this impact that they'll have on the long-term pricing.

So I think that there's some deadline or some urgency that they feel to meet back to us and I'm happy to be responsive there.

Yeah, um I'm I'm fine with that unless you know I like like council president said if there's an urgency there that specific deadline or something, then I'm open to revisiting that as well.

Yeah, I I I don't say this is uh it's terribly urgent.

Um, there's a contract for 10 years now or nine years, I say, still pretty long time.

Uh so yeah, I would um perfectly fine with uh uh you know you know putting a pen in it for uh post uh budget.

Thank you.

That's helpful microphone, Mayor.

Sorry.

Uh so now we have uh another item with Mr.

Osborne, our finance director, the budget adjustments adoption.

I call the public hearing on the proposed budget adjustments to order.

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

Excuse me.

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

Seeing none, uh turn it over to our finance director, Michael Osburn.

Good evening, council.

Uh, tonight I bring before you a supplemental budget adjustment in the amount of $890,000.

Uh this was for uh to recognize revenues from the public safety fee that was uh voted upon in August.

Um these funds will help fund part of the um uh FTE count that we uh highlighted before budget committee.

Um just to be transparent.

Uh 775 is for two officers, a behavioral health specialist, a uh library assistant, and a court clerk.

And then the 115 is for uh a public works admin uh FTE.

There were two more positions that came in, one under stormwater and one under wastewater, and those budgets were already sufficient.

We're just allocate reallocating costs that would have been for uh capital improvements.

So those uh those budgets in stormwater and wit and stormwater water are sufficient, but the what I'm bringing for you for you tonight are to uh true up the general fund and uh for the public safety fee.

Um that do you have any questions?

Anyone have questions for Mr.

Osborne?

Um not seeing any.

Um have we received any correspondence on this topic?

Okay.

Uh all right.

No questions for Mr.

Osborne.

Do we have anyone who wishes to does any member of the public wish to comment?

Um we only have one in the room, and she said no.

Do you have anyone online?

Yeah, no.

Okay, so I will forego all that script about commenting.

Uh uh and I will and I guess I'll entertain a motion to close the public comment part of the hearing.

You know, I would be closed the public comment part of the proposed budget adjustment hearing.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to close the public comment part of the proposed budget adjustments hearing.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say no.

Done heard.

The public part of the hearing, public comment part of the hearing is closed.

Is there any council discussion?

If not, I would entertain a motion.

Move to approve the resolution authorizing a supplemental budget for the 2025 326 biannium.

Aye, second.

It's been moved and seconded to approve the resolution authorizing a supplemental budget for the 2025-2026 biennium.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say no.

Done heard.

Cast as unanimously.

Good job, Michael.

Thank you, Mr.

Osborne.

Okay.

Uh, so we're up to council reports.

I have a few, but I know the council president has a couple.

So I'll let him start us off.

I can go really quickly with one on page 92 of the packet as a letter.

Um, it's RS89 and 92 if you're looking at the PDF file to honor the boys cross-country team at Milwaukee High.

Um, I had one of the coaches reach out asking if there was something that we could do to help honor these kids who had frankly really amazing season.

Um, and I was more than happy to put together a letter.

If you would like to sign on, um I wanted to give everyone the opportunities be a full council thing.

Um we could see if I don't know what it would look like to allow counselor staven door to sign on.

Um if we all agree tonight, could you still bring it to her?

Or is that serial meeting?

But that's an interesting question because the decision will have been made by the majority, right?

Can't she just for the city attorney's benefit if if the four of them choose to sign on to this letter tonight?

Congratulating the high school cross-country team.

Would it be a violation of public meeting law for me to ask Councillor Stavanger if she would like to sign on, even though she is not here?

Yes.

This one should be easy.

But I can wrap it up there.

Do folks want to sign up.

Everyone wants to sign on.

I think you got it all here.

And um yeah, I'll defer it.

You and Emma to sort out the uh the rest of it.

Okay.

And then you have something else, right?

Oh, yes, I did.

Thank you.

Um I wanted to also follow up on our work session that happened on November 4th.

Um, I think I put my foot in my mouth, and I'm gonna apologize to the county clerk's office for sentence communication at multiple points in that work session.

I said that there were I think it is asked from the county clerk.

Um, what I was trying to convey is if Milwaukee were ever to deploy a system of rain trace voting, these were from our conversation, things that I gathered best practices that I would feel the city should implement um to be able to make it less burns on the clerk's office to implement the system.

Um in saying ask multiple times.

Um I think I gave the wrong impression that that was direction the clerk's office had given to me, and that is not the case.

So I'm gonna clarify that now.

Um I'm gonna apologize for any consternation that I had a class at the clerk's office, and I'm happy to follow up with it once more.

Okay, thank you for that.

Uh other council reports.

Yes.

I have uh a couple.

Uh one of them is from the CAB, just to give you an update uh for those that don't know and for everybody watching at home eagerly.

Um the CAP is a community action board where we focus at the county level on um uh fighting the war on poverty.

Um we're an advisory board to the county commissioners.

Anyways, we uh are can do we're adding more members, so that's good.

Our membership is growing.

Um and we are currently in the works of creating two subcommittees for the CAP.

One of them is gonna be the community needs and outreach, and the one is gonna be legislative.

Did we say this?

Did I give this report a lot?

You gave a CAP report.

That's probably the same one.

Anyways, we we just talked a little bit more about those solidifying the.

I think Robert wants to do it again.

Legislative those subcommittees, and then the other one was I actually attended the uh chamber, had a like last-minute discussion for this petition to put the transportation well parts of the transportation bill on the ballot.

It's it's the group of no tax organ.

Um so representatives uh deal and representative deal and Senator Leek were in the meeting as well.

Um, and they it was just a QA mostly and kind of just uh hey, this is what this is about.

There was there's four points in particular that they they wanted to put on the ballot, and it all had to do with the increases.

Um of them is a gas tax, the other one was the uh pay-per-mile.

Um stiff, and then I can't remember.

I haven't written down clearly not here.

Um yeah, so uh there was no vote taken on if the chamber was going to support it.

It was just again more of discussing what that would be.

And there was a couple of questions.

I had asked the question of you know, if they do repeal those four uh increases, what replaces them?

Because I mean, you still have to come up with set funding.

Um, and uh didn't really get a good answer.

Uh I also asked if you know additional accountability measures would be would be provided for ODOT um so that they don't have their same budget failure.

Uh didn't get really an answer to that, as opposed to just saying that, yeah, well, now the governor can fire or move the head of ODOG.

Um whether that will happen, we don't know, but apparently it's better than the independent board that was doing it.

And then my other question was if the legislature would stop giving ODOT unfunded mandates.

And uh that was a bit of a no with a little bit of a chuckle.

So um, so yeah, uh, all in all, there was no position taken by the chamber.

This is what they're working on.

Um, I would anticipate uh a vote coming soon from the chamber, probably the next month because they are out collecting signatures right now that no tax working group.

So uh once that happens, then I'll let you know.

And I actually probably should talk about that before because I don't I'm not personally I don't really know if I I don't think I support this uh ballot myself.

I appreciate you going to that meeting.

I had seen an email from them, and I kind of expressed my uh dismay to the chamber executive about them taking a position to undo what little bit of transportation funding we got out of the last legislature.

Um council councillor Basley.

Yeah, so the uh water trade council that uh uh board met last uh last week.

And I will tell you that um uh if you're if you've ever dealt with uh PERT charts in and work, you know, it's uh how you plan out complex projects.

Uh this catalog project is starting to look like uh building the Apollo missile to the moon.

Um because there is you know so many you know checkpoints and everything like that.

So a lot of this may sound like gobbledygook, but basically uh the middle design acceptance phase closed out uh last Friday.

Uh so now that they're moving into development plans, uh, and the technical advisory committee has gone ahead and started meeting with the regulatory partners before permitting so that they understand you know the permit requirements uh beforehand, which should ease the whole process.

They are looking at uh uh when they start construction of extending uh the work window for the seasons, because if they don't extend those work uh um uh seasons, uh then the project ends up taking a lot longer.

And so I don't know exactly what months those entail, but you know, the typical construction season in the Pacific Northwest is like four months or something like that, and I think they want to see if they can extend it to like six or something like that, so that they can shorten the construction phase.

Um at December, ODOT is gonna have a constructibility report, uh, which kind of gets to the to the uh the point of uh they have the plans and and ODOT does a hard look to say is this really constructible given the schedule and uh the budget.

Um the other thing that they have going on uh now is there's still always seems to be some new drilling going on that you know for uh sediment, not sediment samples, but this is not a sediment sample.

Uh this is a different kind of drilling.

They're having to drill around the areas of the of the railroad track and bridge because when the water gets drawn down, there's the potential for the bank to become unstable.

And so my first when I heard that, I said, oh no.

Railroad, have you talked to the railroads?

They says, Yes, we're talking to the railroad, so they know what's going on.

Because the railroads can be difficult to difficult to deal with.

Uh that's kind of it on the on the project itself.

Uh I will also tell you, like many uh organizations, uh they have a fundraising uh uh project going on here toward the end of the year.

And so uh if you uh can uh give to the watershed council between now and the end of the year, that uh donation will be matched up to a total of $2,500.

So if you give 10 bucks, some nice benefactor is gonna uh match that up to a total of 2500.

So that's good value for your for your uh contribution.

Uh we went around and just heard reports from everyone on the board.

Um, and uh it's been reported.

I looked this up after the meeting, is that uh the Emerald Ash boar is making its way into the state.

I think it's in six counties now, including Clackmas.

And uh it's nasty, it can do a lot of damage, especially they've only found it evidently in White Oak this far.

Uh that's what they said.

They said it was only in White Oak at this point, and they're uh they're saying they're not it's not precluded that it couldn't go into other species, but for whatever reasons, uh the Emerald Ash board likes the white oak right now.

That's the only place they're gonna find it during their sampling.

Well, that sucks.

Yeah, that that is horrible.

Yep.

You could be on the technical committee.

Well, I'm about to talk about that a little more in my council report.

And uh as you may remember not that long ago, we were we were all out at Three Creeks to kick off the construction, and the contractor's been fired.

And the contractors did fire.

No, it's been fired due to poor performance.

And so this is uh the construction is uh been halted, and they're probably not gonna get it started until next year.

Oh wow.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, I have quite a few, but I will try to go through fast.

Um first is from the uh North Claphas Parks and Recreation District Advisory Committee meeting last week.

Um the first thing I was gonna say is they had over 2,000 people at the Concord Park opening back on October uh 18th.

Um and then the second thing I was gonna say was about Emerald Ashbore, and they are doing a tour of parks with someone from the state forestry office, but they have identified, but they were only talking about ash trees.

So I'm really alarmed by this idea of white oak because white oak is the species we're trying to foster everywhere in the in Three Creeks in North Clackham's Park.

Um, but they have identified over 200 ashtrees in North Clackham's Park.

So um there are a lot of ash trees in our area.

I don't, I can identify a white oak.

I cannot identify an ashtray, and I'm gonna have to learn how to do that.

Um some little stats about the rec program.

And 361 kids in youth volleyball, and they have over 1,500 in Hooper Little Hoop, the Hoopers, which is their base, their basketball program.

It's really interesting to me that the Parks District runs sports leagues that when I grew up, the schools did that.

It wasn't the parks district.

Um they use the same auditor we do, Baker Tilly, and they got a uh clean audit apparently.

Um they had 3,000 uh swim lesson participants in the last year.

Uh they are holding um Kia is called out um in terms of budgetary goals, like you know, it's kind of like a bleeding, you know, bleeding budgetary situation, but they are trying to hold uh drop-in hours at the Concord Concord Community Center from nine to one every day.

The um Oak Grove Community Council raised 15,000 on a fundraiser to help fund some of that staff time.

Um the and then the corollary piece at um at the Milwaukee Community Center is about the senior program funding.

And um they did manage to fund uh the the Milwaukee Community Center Foundation has funded keeping them open on Friday.

I don't know if you guys remember, but in the budget this summer, they were threatening to close on Fridays and to cut the transportation program, and they agreed to keep both of those things up till December 31st.

Now the um foundation is keeping them open on Fridays till the end of the fiscal year next summer.

Um, and they are working on some uh solutions with some other transit providers to try and backfill the transportation program.

They sounded it wasn't signed, sealed, and delivered, but they sounded relatively optimistic that they were gonna be able to do that.

Um director Savas in this case, um, did note that if that um if that uh no tax organ referral of the transportation bill uh were to pass, that would make it even harder to fund these transportation services because the funding for um vans and shuttles and things like that would be cut.

Um and then um they closed with a I mean they had um they had everybody on the DAC do a dot exercise, and we've all done dot exercises, but I had we had not done one on the DAC in my two and a half years there.

And the dot exercise was to prioritize um what programming, like we got six green dots for what programming we thought was most important to keep and six red dots for what was most dispensable, and I think most of us felt like none of it was dispensable, but we kind of had to put our red dots on.

Um I think the upshot of it all is um I mean part of the part of the task was to read their kind of mission statement, which is about you know, parks and green spaces and outdoors, and does not include uh older adult services.

And I think the upshot of it all, I mean, I think Kia was getting us to feel a little of her pain in terms of managing the budget.

But it I do think we're gonna see moves to cut more and more senior services in the years ahead.

So I hope there is some indication that they are working on, you know, trying to find alternate sorts of funding and alternate sources of funding for some of that, but uh I do think there are some hard conversations coming in the years ahead.

And I mean coming with this budget year this spring when they do their budget and beyond.

Um so I'm a little concerned about that.

Um because yeah, I mean, they may not have older older adult services, senior services may not feel like a core uh mission of a parks district, but it is.

I mean, I think the uh the uh documentation that came out last May when they were doing their budget from the night from the ballot measure from the you know voters pamphlet back when the the park system is formed, made clear that the senior services were a key part of it at the time it was formed.

And so I have definite concerns about um how we you know what can be done to keep senior services uh because we know in this current uh time of snap cuts and uh potentially Medicare cuts and other things.

Um seniors are even more uh in more precarious positions.

Um so I'm pretty concerned about that.

Um the next day after the DAC meeting, I had the Metro Mayors Consortium meeting, and um there was a little bit of conversation about SHS.

The Metro is re um configuring the SHS program, um, doing some uh some good work to try and align the counties and make counties data and county terms used by counties more interoperable, interconnected because each county had under the initial program had gone off and done its own thing and had its own terms and its own measures.

And so Metro is trying to create some um some consistency across the county.

The mayors did, and they are also uh establishing a new oversight body.

They're kind of merging two prior existing bodies into one sort of oversight body for the SHS funding.

The mayor, the MMC is definitely sent a letter to Metro requesting that mayors be at that table on that oversight body.

So we'll see.

I mean, you know, some some mayor representative.

Um also at the MMC, the uh general director of TriMet spoke about you know the challenges they are facing.

Try Matt will be coming out in January with a new slate of service cuts and um of proposed service cuts.

Um they are willing to come talk to our council, and so I um I will work with staff to get that on uh an agenda maybe in February or March to hear from TriMet.

Um did they mention uh where ridership is uh as compared to pre-pandemic.

Well, they said so in in characterizing how they got in the hole they're in, and um they said inflation has been 53% over the five years since the pandemic, and fair revenue is down 60 million dollars a year, presumably.

Um so I don't know what that means.

I I did not ask for, I did not offer and I didn't ask for specific ridership first, but it's clear uh ridership is down.

I think they feel like they are uh like they are have moved away from the all the buses go into Portland because everybody works in downtown Portland.

They feel like they've uh met the reality that you know people need to go different ways across the uh community.

I think most of the mayors were skeptical that they've done enough on that on that.

Um I personally have been skeptical that they haven't introduced small some smaller buses.

Um when I lived in Washington, DC, there were a lot of sort of half-sized buses that were the last mile connection from the light rail to or in that case the metro to the neighborhoods and stuff.

So um I think there's a lot of conversation about uh whether they are um you know, sort of meeting the realities of today or not with their service models.

Um there was some, I would say some skepticism from the mayors.

It's very interesting because the yeah, the Portland mayor was there and he was all in because Portland, of course, is the center of their service, and some of the mayors more outlining areas are less uh supportive.

Um but anyway, I I I do um I I do think it'd be useful for them to come talk to us.

So we'll try to see about getting that on the um on the agenda.

Um Mayor Wilson also talked about his work trying to move unhoused people into shelters.

And one of the things he brought up, which I had not realized.

I mean, they Portland is apparently sending cease and desist letters to some uh hospitals and clinics, which are putting people out on the street without you know, connecting them to shelter.

Um he said that uh OH will see more, we are seeing, I guess, is what he's saying, more people going to the private hospitals because OHSU has the capability to under the law to garnish wages, and so people know that, and so they avoid going to OHSU and they go to um uh the other hospitals.

Um it's an interesting point that I've never heard before.

Um we also had a presentation from the ACLU on sort of rights education um for you know immigrant communities as well as for people who just want to be monitors of allies.

Um the city, I I've talked with Emma some, and I think we are going to have our own website with some information and some resources for people.

And I don't know if Emma, you want to say.

Sure, mayor.

Um, yeah, we're we'll be getting that up this week.

It's it's drafted, it's just going through front of the review piece.

So we've worked with the PD and we've been really kind of scoured other sources.

The mayor's been very helpful in sending some resources from MMC and others, but they get me hoping that it can be kind of a compendium of information because we know a lot of our community members are very concerned about this and concerned about what the city's you know response is, and and frankly, this in the city, there's a lot that the city can't obviously I just wanted to, but they also can't do, and so I think this one website will be very clear place for big folks to go and kind of find all those resources in one place, including the chief statement on immigration enforcement that he made earlier this year.

So thank you.

Looking forward to that.

So there were two things.

One came out of MOC and another that I wanted to um raise with people about whether they felt we should have any kind of statement.

Um so some cities are trying to do, I mean, we've heard that the state legislature and maybe hopefully it'll move at February.

And so maybe we wait for that.

I don't know.

But um some people are trying to uh to put out statements that we don't, you know, that any law enforcement working in our community should not be wearing masks, should be wearing name tags, you know, those kind of transparency things.

Um and so I kind of wanted and actually one of those.

I've seen a few cities, I think Hillsboro's one where they have a they have a page that that's sort of a flyer that's no year uniform, and they actually put out what their police department uniforms look like so that people will know like if I use something else, it's not a Hillsborough police officer, right?

So I I wanted to just raise the question of um whether we thought we wanted to make any kind of statement uh about masking and use of force in our community.

I do see that that's a little bit of a double-edged sword because it could make you a target, more of a target.

We haven't had the level of activity that some communities have had.

Um I didn't know if anybody have any thoughts on that.

Um, I see your point on the negative side, but I I think it's it's worth um doing something.

We we gotta figure something out um some way and whether it's symbolic in nature or not.

I mean, even if we can tell on rights knowing your constitutional rights because how many people actually don't want their constitutional rights or just whatever we put out there, there's these red codes too.

Yeah, the know your rights on this, yeah.

So many different languages.

I mean, anything anything that would be beneficial to our community um to make them feel somewhat more for that.

Um council presidents this year, day job involves the legislature.

Um, do you think that um no mat, you know, that prohibition on masking is likely to move in the new session, or you have any particular insight on that?

I think there's a handful of um like federal responsibilities detailing or responding to retreat that we're seeing this ballot mature referral.

I think is more likely to 31 votes, and I think there's a huge caucus to do something like this.

Um I would go back to me through statements in the police chief statements to see if we talked about masking specifically.

I don't know if we did.

Um I think we could say something, but also testify in support of the bill and then public testimony or just there or could be just amendments I didn't testify.

So I think it's a worthwhile colour as I think there's the act principle.

Just to quickly respond, Council President, I don't believe the chief statement did say anything about masking, but in this draft content that we've got ready for this website, we've got clear statements that Milaki police department officers always display their name, never wear masks, we'll always show you identification of requests, and it's very important to us that the public feel very safe always to call for emergency services.

Fire officers will never ask about immigration status.

Um and do not participate in federal enforcement.

So I think we will do on our side uh, you know, what we can to make that statement clear, but I welcome additional um behind that from the elective level.

Well, I prefer that that method is the in other words, we're highlighting what they can expect from from our uh people because I I quite frankly don't know what to expect from from other enforcement agencies because you know it's an alphabet soup of people involved and that kind of thing.

Uh and so I just prefer that that we focus on what we know.

Okay, well, I think we can I mean there was nothing that had to be decided tonight anyway.

I mean, we can all think about this, and I mean before the December 2nd meeting.

We'll if somebody wants to come up with a statement, we can I'd be happy to work with someone on that.

Um we can decide if we want to do that.

And that sort of segues into a different kind of a statement I wanted to bring up, which was um we had an incident this weekend uh where uh hate flyers, hateful sort of white supremacist flyers were um posted around um the historic Milwaukee neighborhood and maybe other areas and uh a very vigilant Mr.

Smith who was here with us earlier, but it's not here, um, really went out and um cleaned up a lot of those himself.

I know our police department did some of that as well once they were notified.

Um I will say uh over the you know 11 years I've been on council, we had another, we had one incident like this with flyers, probably maybe during the pandemic, I don't know, um several years back, and we've had a couple of incidents we know like our pride flag gets um damaged from time to time.

We know there was an incident where somebody went out on El Cork Island and hated swastikas and red paint on rocks and things.

And um I'm always torn about I mean I think I I hope that our community realizes that um we are totally you know against such things and we want to uh to have a community that is welcoming to everybody, irrespective of your color, your creed, your sexual orientation, your gender identity.

Um, we try to give out a statement to that effect in in February is uh after our retreat.

Um I'm always sort of torn as to whether to make another statement, or does that just give the people who did it some satisfaction and knowing that you know or some attention that they are seeking by their conduct?

Um I wanted to put it out there as um something for people to speak to if they felt like there was something they should do, or it's the better course to always just remove things and not uh draw any sort of attention to it.

Yeah, I think you know, remove things and denounce them, you know.

Um how would you do this?

I mean let's let's be real.

Okay, people that go around doing stuff like that that don't want to be seen.

I mean, that's just cowards, right?

It's just a cowardly act.

Like really you're gonna do it in the middle of the night with ski mask on, it's nighttime.

You bring masks, really.

So again, I mean you're talking about a bunch of cowards.

So I think that's really what you're dealing with.

So it's like I I'm just super proud of this community and the city and what we stand for.

That that just shows it.

I mean, we didn't, none of us went out and took this.

I mean, I I got a text from a community member, Rob Smith, and next thing you know, he's got other community members coming up to him.

They're going around turning this stuff down.

And I mean, I uh that's it all right there, right?

I I don't, you know, we can denounce it just by saying we don't stand for that, we don't believe in that, but I think our community does a hell of a job denouncing it themselves.

And you know, again, this is cowardly stuff.

So you know, move on to those individuals.

Yeah, I'm kind of in the in the in the camp of uh not giving those people any more air time.

Um that's not saying that that you might have to at some point with uh but I think uh you know at this point uh I just don't want to give it any more attention because they're crazy.

I'd say also I I mean I see this, and I was on a trip to my boyfriend who is my threats this weekend, and I was really like, I don't want to tell him that this happened because I don't want him to think this is Milwaukee, because this is not Milwaukee.

And I think that if we do a statement, it kind of like it it enshrines as part of what Milwaukee is.

I think there are moments when you should denounce things, but maybe in this case, we brought forward some like an uplifting statement that we put forward like I would rather in this instance uplift something something good that we can point to that is like what we don't aspires to be what we are today, as opposed to um yeah, saying this is happening.

Um okay, well, it seems like nobody wants to give them attention.

Um, but in terms of what you're proposing, I mean, what does that look like?

Uh uh what do we I mean we can just say in right here on the dice.

And you know, I mean, everybody knows that Milwaukee doesn't stand for that stuff.

Um if that's what you're coming here to do, I would tell you move on for long, go down the road, um, maybe go east, I guess.

Um, but that doesn't belong here, which nobody finds it amusing.

And clearly our community showed you that because they're the ones who took care of it.

So, you know, cowards will be cowards.

And maybe we could see.

I mean, is there something that our equity steering committee thinks that we could put forward in the pilot?

Is there we have so many great cultural programs that were uplifting some of the great things that we're doing?

Maybe this is a good excuse to lean into those and talk about those in small programs.

I think that's a great great question, counselor, council president, and we'll um we have our next PSC meeting, I believe this Thursday.

So I can kind of bring this to them.

Um and I'll also just say, you know, we we we've already got a full pilot for December, and we never you don't publish a pilot in January.

But February will be a year since their last statement.

And it might be a time if you do want to think about another joint statement.

I would I would agree with your recommendation to not point put a spotlight on this particular incident, but to maybe talk about a year on from that statement, how you've shown your and and demonstrate your commitment to that continued uh values.

And I'd be happy to help facilitate that.

Maybe whoever has counsel porner for that month would want to kind of give it up.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, so with that, I think um I'm done with my council reports.

And it's not even 10 o'clock.

Oh.

Say.

I'm so sorry.

I heard that Robert moved, um, but who's seconded?

Okay, thank you.

Uh all those in favor say aye.

Opposed no.

We are adjourned.