Second 2025 to Walton City Council work session.

First time on our agenda tonight is a visit from County Commissioner Jason Snyder for his quarterly update.

It's usually an interactive dialogue, but I'll give the floor for you get the floor to you for a few minutes.

If you have a few things you want to say first, and then we can dive into the QA.

I really want to dive into that.

I mean, I I think that you all have been continually giving me, or many of you have been continually giving me feedback over the last couple months, and I appreciate that.

I'm also very appreciative of being invited back, you know, relatively on a quick time frame from our last visit on this front.

And I know I was before you to talk about the public safety and the library levies, and I have no no belief I'm going to get out of this conversation today without some discussion of one or both of those.

Um, but really want to open it up.

I I think I've been pretty uh pretty clear on the work that we're doing as a county commission.

I have my staff assistant Bryn uh with me in case there's any follow-up that we need to document and get going on.

So I I just want to open the floor up.

All right.

Uh open the floor.

Council Pratt has there a hand up first.

Okay, let's have some fun.

And thank you for sharing.

Not even a bit it.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to understand this um the library funding going forward, or what well, what's what we're seeing in our pack later tonight as the funding allocation that's proposed.

So the first thing I want to understand is um there's an allocation by kind of the area being served.

And then for the what are called nonprofit libraries, there's an allocation to support their, I guess their building and operations of their building.

Um what I'm wondering is the people that live in the cities, aren't we paying taxes to operate our buildings through the city level?

So which are these nonprofit organizations and why was this decision made to give them additional funding?

So comparing it to a city?

Yes.

The uh so first I should share that we are still as a commission having, I think we have a long session scheduled tomorrow to continue our dialogue on all of these subjects uh related to the library funding.

Um the I've been asked the qu the question you just asked in a couple different ways from other city councillors, and actually city council president Sherwood asked me the same question or very similar question around just you know, why who who's contributing or who should be contributing the sort of like city portion of the money to those nonprofit libraries?

And I I think the question is just sort of like who would like where where would that come from?

There is they other than them fundraising, um, there is not a mechanism by which they get to tax in a different or in any sort of a specific way.

I think the implication from at least the discussion I had with the Sherwood counselor was that you know somehow the county should be contributing a different amount, and we can do that, but that just means there'll be less money to you know give out.

In fact, that you could say that's what's happening now.

I mean, that that is what the the allocation formula is has more going to them.

That that would be equivalent to the same as the county contributing more.

I guess if the implication is that it should be not from the levy, it should be from somewhere else.

Then the question would be where we're moving more and more towards uh levies having to fund everything.

No, it's not the levy, it's the idea that I guess that cities are paying to have their operations, and these are nonprofits, so therefore they don't have a funding source.

But doesn't that kind of um doesn't that kind of mean the people that live in the incorporated cities are helping to pay for these libraries outside the incorporated cities?

So I think it means that, and I think that we all, given that I've lived in Tigered my entire Washington County existence.

We all have been doing that on a bunch of different fronts for decades.

And that's what the nature of having the urban unincorporated areas allowed to sort of both persist or even flourish, that's what that means.

I mean, ultimately, I don't think there's any way around that.

Now, there's a lot of things that have been done to sort of try to correct some of that and make some of it being paid for through whether it's like the enhanced sheriff's patrol district.

There's a variety of uh like there's an urban roads maintenance district, there's a variety of things that have been done to sort of try to help some of that, but there's I don't think there's a way to back it all out.

Yeah, okay.

No, I just wanted clarification of that.

I mean, I think the solution ultimately is that those areas um eventually, sometime between now and 30 years from now, all need to end up in a city.

Okay.

And going on in these areas and places that should be cities.

When I look at the allocation increases, I'm sure you've heard this one too, but like we're gonna get a 5% increase as projected in the latest model we've seen.

But ALOA banks and planes get a hundred percent or more increase.

So I guess I want to understand why their increase is so much higher than it looks like almost all the cities.

And and this is definitely a subject that's gonna be and has been uh discussed quite a bit at the commission, and I think there have already been some adjustments made because I think some of the increases were even higher in previous models than they are now.

Um but it's really a question around trying to uh balance out and be as equitable as we can be around where there's demand for the services, and just because a place has been wildly underserved before doesn't mean it should just keep remaining being underserved, I think is the the basic premise there.

I'm just gonna put in one a little plug for um the service areas were looked at, but did was there any time spent looking at how many people like use the libraries, different libraries already?

I I believe that that was part of the analysis that was done.

Okay.

And then my last question on that is the um it shows a 5% increase with the levy for next year for Tualetin.

Is that just a one-year thing?

So I I mean my concern is people are are gonna be paying for a levy, and it's gonna be a one-year increase.