Good evening and welcome to the November 24th, 2025 Towalton City Council work session.

First item on our agenda tonight is a development code update, clear and objective standards for housing.

And this conversation will be led by Madeline.

Welcome, Madeline.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Madeline Nelson.

I'm the associate planner with the City of Twaleton.

And tonight I want to bring to you a new project to update the Tualton Development Code with clear and objective language related to residential housing.

All right.

So as a quick look at tonight's agenda, we'll start with an overview of the project, which will include the timeline, next steps, and then we will conclude with any questions you may have for staff.

So as previously mentioned, this project is to update the TWALT and development code with clear and objective language related to housing.

The purpose of the project is to audit and update the TDC to create an adoptable code that meets Oregon revised statutes 197A.400 or Senate Bill 1564.

For this project, we partnered with consultant group MIG to assist in the audit and draft code development.

And this was funded by a grant with DLCD.

So ORS 197A400 mandates that local governments regulate housing development using clear and objective standards, conditions, and procedures.

The statute is intended to reduce discretionary barriers, uncertainty, delay, and costs that could discourage housing development.

Clear and objective standards are intended again to reduce barriers, support housing needs, and improve accessibility and equity to development.

For some additional context, here's an example of discretionary language that a jurisdiction might find in its code versus clear and objective language.

So a discretionary standard might say new buildings must be compatible with the character of surrounding development.

In this example, compatible in character or subjective and open to interpretation.

The ORS would require clear and objective language, like the example on the right, which states building facades must include at least 30% windows or doors on street-facing elevations.

So in this example, it is the language is specific, measurable, and enforceable.

So our project consultant is currently completing an audit of the Twalton Development Code to identify sections that do not conform to clear and objective standards related to housing.

This final audit should be complete in January.

At that time, we will return to seek the council's feedback on the code audit and receive recommendations on code concepts that are policy driven.

A draft potential code update will be prepared in June of 2026.

This draft will then also be provided to the council for recommendations.

The final draft of the code update should be made available in August of 2026, and that will be revised based on your previous feedback.

And then a final adoptable code and formal hearing is planned for fall of next year.

So when looking towards our next steps, we will return in January with the code audit memorandum, and we'll seek policy direction based on the findings of that audit.

And that concludes our very short introduction of the project.

Are there any questions for staff at this time?

Questions from Madeline.

Council Halligar.

Thank you, Madeline.

Um I'm curious about, and I I haven't looked at them in a while.

What will the audit also look at places where there's might be opportunity to push back on certain things that the state brings as their standards?

I know the goal is to get us in line with state standards, but I think our community is pretty clear about the parking, you know, requirements at the state level and different things like that.

I'm assuming the answer to that question is absolutely not.

We're just making this in line with the state, but I am curious about where we can have local any local autonomy on the rules.

And so that is something that I would look forward to seeing in the January report.

Yeah, absolutely.

And just to provide a little bit of extra context, um, our consultant is has a very narrow scope on just housing and how that relates to our clear and objective standards, but they will probably provide some additional guidance within the memorandum.

Other questions?

Council Brooks.

Um, do we have like a like a rough estimate of the percentage of changes that we need to make?

Not at this time.

Once we get the memorandum in January, it'll kind of give us a better scope of how much of the development code will be impacted by these changes.

But again, within the narrow scope, we're just going to be looking at our code standards related to housing.

And then I guess my other question is does it feed also since it has to do with well, some of the work has to do with environmental things.

Do we have an opportunity there to look at updating the code for more environmentally?

Again, with the narrow scope, if the consultant can identify sections within our environmental code language that have to do with housing, that could be an opportunity to make some changes, but within the narrow scope, they're gonna be pretty much looking at the housing.

Great.

Yep, thanks.

Council Pratt.

Council Pratt.

So it says um ORS when they seven eight four hundred um that regulate housing development using clear and objective standards, conditions, and procedures.

So does this is it more focused on meeting these CFAC rules, or is it actually also looking into making the process easier for the actual housing to get built and processes simpler?

Yeah, so within the memorandum that we're going to receive, some of our procedures also aren't in line with the clear and objective standards.

So yes, the idea is to make it easier for um developers to implement housing within the city.

Um other questions.

I just got a couple uh so uh the consultants are doing the audit and the code updates, or is the staff doing the updates in the what's the role of the consultants?

Do you do both or just one thing?

Correct.

So the consultant is doing the draft audit, and then they will also be providing draft code language that they will be working with staff on and consulting with both our planning commission and city council to implement.

All right, and then um terms of housing, that's everything from multifamily to single family housing.

It's just a whole spectrum, not just a subset.

Correct.

Okay.

And then finally, um, so we come up to the example of like when you said you know, the 30% of blah blah blah.

Um what's gonna be used to get us to like that number that is uh clear and objective?

Because I'm like, say I'm like for the example you had, say we did have something where said, you know, it blends in with the rest of the neighborhood versus 30% of the building's facade has to be windows.

If they recommend the number X, is that something that's gonna be reflective of the rest of our code?

I'm just concerned at how we're gonna write with these numbers to get to that clear and uh precise kind of thing.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's part of the policy direction that we're gonna be seeking from both council and planning commission.

We're kind of gonna come up with different scales for some of our different ways to measure okay.

And then last question, promise.

Um, does ARB have any feedback in this loop?

Because I mean ARB sometimes has to look at some of these things too.

That's a good question.

But they're not currently scoped to have any sessions to provide feedback on the scope of work, but I can bring that back to our consultant team to see if that's something that could be included to provide.

If you could, because I'm I'm considering there a bunch of them are architects, they might help us with that conversation.

No, that's good feedback.

Okay.

That's all I have.

Anyone else?

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

See, that was an easy fork session here for the short and sweet.

Thank you.

All right.

Have a good evening.

All right.

Next thing up on our agenda is an update on a Twalton Tourism Program.

And we have Jill Coleman and Megan George.

You're gonna introduce Jill too.

Most of us don't know Jill yet.

Welcome, Jill.

Uh hello, Mayor, Council.

I'm Megan George, Deputy City Manager in Twalton.

And this evening I am joined by Jill Coleman, who was the intern this summer in the city manager's office.

So you got a slight introduction to her, I think in July, when I made her take minutes at the council meeting.

Um it was a an enriching experience, I believe.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So I'm uh one of the projects that I assigned to Jill over the summer was to take a peek at our tourism program plan.

Um, it had been accepted by the city council a little over five years ago, and so we felt like the time was right to do a status update.

So the bulk of her project was to look at all of the actions in the plan and come up with a report on where we're at with them.

So she's gonna deliver the majority of the presentation, and then I'll chime back in at the end.

So with that, take it away, Jill.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Megan.

So this first slide here is just a little bit of background on the transient lodging tax or TLT as I'll refer to it.

This transient lodging tax is a tax on hotel stays that tourists pay for, so not businesses.

We as City of Twalton receive TLT both from Washington County and for a local city tax.

Washington County's TLT is divided among a lot of different places.

26% goes to the Washington County Visitors Association, 28% to Washington County General Fund, 11% to Washington County Fair Complex, 7% to the event center, and then the remaining 28% is split among all the cities in Washington County.

So that leaves 2.5% coming to the city of Tualton of the TLT.

The intergovernmental agreement that the City of Tualton had with Washington County prohibited us from collecting our own city tax until 2017, which was the inspiration for the 2019 tourism program.

The City of Twalton tax is also 2.5%.

They're the same percentage, but that was not by design.

It's just how it worked out.

Of the 2.5% City of Tualton TLT, 30% is unrestricted, and 70% is restricted for tourism promotion or tourism related facilities, which I will define on the next slide.

And another important point at the end of the slide there is that Tualton ended fiscal year 24-25 with $882,145 in the restricted tourism funds.

So the definitions here, um the Oregon legislature implemented these restrictions on using TLT in 2003.

So the two uh restricted uses are tourism promotion, which is defined as advertising, publicizing, or distributing information for the purpose of attracting and welcoming tourists, conducting strategic planning and research necessary to stimulate future tourism development, operating tourism promotion agencies, and marketing special events and festivals designed to attract tourists.

Lengthy definition.

So 70% remains restricted for tourism.

My next slides, I will transition to more to Walton-specific TLT and the tourism plan here.

As I mentioned, the TLT in Tualton was accepted by council in 2018, and then council accepted the tourism program in 2019.

The stated goal of the program is on the slides there to encourage visitor attraction by investing the transient lodging tax in five key areas.

Each of these key areas in the tourism program has focus and potential targets.

So the next series of slides will kind of dive into those.

First, though, this is some examples of how City of Twalton has actually used the TLT.

This is not a full list of all expenditures of the TLT money, but I pulled out the last two years as well as the current budgeted items for fiscal year 25-26.

As you can see by the breakdown, the majority of the funds have been used for events and then to the Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber of Commerce receives 5% of that 70% restricted funds since they're the Tualton visitor center.

And that's why it changes a little bit each year.

It depends on how much tax is collected.

Yeah.

And the next set of slides go into the five key areas I mentioned earlier.

Each slide has the focus and potential targets from the program, which you have a copy of in your packet.

I also added little progress graphics to each target and an example.

The first key area in the program is capital development.

The focus here is to plan and invest in priority tourism infrastructure projects to enable and expand the potential in visitor attraction.

The first of the two targets is to investigate the feasibility of building targeted tourism attractions, amenity, and spaces.

As indicated by the graphic, there has been some progress made.

For example, as written on the bottom, the establishment of the core opportunity and reinvestment area in 2022 aligns with this target one.

Target two is to reserve tourism revenue to leverage for future tourism capital development.

That remainder 800,000 or so dollars in the tourism fund is aligning with this goal.

So that's why it's nearing completion on that bar.

The next key area is events.

The focus for this was to ensure a mix of demand generating events throughout the year that attract visitors.

The first target is to expand event hours to encourage overnight visitor stays.

Significant progress has been made here since the program was accepted.

For example, the extension of the pumpkin regatta from a one-day event to a multi-day event is directly aligning with target one.

In target two is to create new event opportunities that increase visitor attraction, which City of Twalton has also made a lot of progress on, adding events such as Share the Love since 2019.

The next key area is placemaking.

The focus of this key area is to support design standards and activities that encourage and maximize space and resource utilization that contribute to Tualton as a place to visit.

There's only one target in this category, and it is to enhance primary visitor spaces with beautification and wayfinding signage.

One action in progress towards this is a wayfinding signage inventory that I got to kick off this summer as one of my other projects.

Okay.

Visitor services is the next key area.

The focus in the plan is to develop and encourage visitor satisfaction and promote Tualton amenities.

The first target is to contract services with the Tualton Chamber of Commerce, which in the example on the slides there, and as I talked about earlier, we have done by providing 5% of the 70% of restricted funds to the Chamber of Commerce due to their designation as the visitor center.

The second target is to enhance heritage and cultural tourism amenities and attractions.

There are several projects in progress towards this.

And the first target is to update the image library to utilize in promotion and marketing for the city of Towalton.

This progress bar shows completed because this summer 2025 there was a major update to the image library.

The second target is to create video marketing to highlight to Walton assets and amenities to encourage visitor attraction.

Unlike the first target, this target has not made much progress since 2019.

Yeah, but aligning with target one, the example I included is the redevelopment of the City of Tualton website, which is in progress now, and we'll utilize the images from the updated image library.

And now I'll pass it back to Megan.

Thank you, Jill.

Okay, so the question is why now?

Why are we providing you a status update on the tourist program at this exact moment in time?

And there's a few different reasons.

One of which is that the plan is over five years old, and a lot of the progress bars that Jill put up on this screen are mostly complete or complete.

And so we've made a good amount of progress on those projects that were identified five or so years ago.

A few other reasons in the larger context, of course, is that we have embarked on a large project called the downtime revitalization project.

And one of the key areas of that project and our eventual hope for the area is that there will be an increase in tourism.

And we have invested other funds in projects to learn more about the data around that, specifically with the parks department and pumpkin regatta attendance.

Another example over the last few years we've added a couple of staff positions, one being our communications program manager Heidi Stanley, and the other, of course, being our economic development and urban renewal manager Sidson.

And together, those two share responsibility for our tourism program to the extent that it exists in Towalton.

And then the other reason that Jill highlighted in several of her slides is that one of the primary goals of the plan was to save up some of that TLT revenue for a future project.

So we didn't identify how much we wanted to save, but right now we're getting near to the million dollar mark.

And so that felt significant.

So for those reasons, we thought it would be useful for the council to hear a status update on the program plan as it was designed five years ago.

Timing right in this moment is in part because Jill's internship is completed and she was ready to present the findings.

But also because you all will be meeting early next year in your annual advance to talk about priorities for the coming year, and shortly thereafter, we will embark upon another riveting budget cycle.

I've been promised maybe a theme idea, Don.

I'm not sure.

So we thought this might be a good time to provide the update to the city council.

So as part of Jill's project, she did the status update.

She also looked for a few other comparative examples from local cities to see what their tourism programs and their tourism strategies in particular looked like.

And she put together a list of recommendations.

One of those recommendations that she identified was for the Twalt for the city of Twalton to look at hiring a consultant to help put together a larger strategic plan for the program.

So unlike the plan that we currently have, which is quite simple, as was appropriate at the time, given that it was the first time the city had begun collecting TLT, a strategic plan for the tourism program would be much, much more robust.

It would include things like specific timelines, measurable targets, and then short-term and long-term priorities.

So this evening we're happy to answer questions.

If the council would like additional information at a future point in time, we'd be happy to take notes on that.

If there's direction on of any form, that would also be welcome.

So we'll leave it at that.

All right.

Thanks, Jill.

Thanks, Meg.

Questions?

Well, I'm just gonna say that I think it is time to relook at this.

And you um mentioned the downtown revitalization project, and you know, the consultant from that, like the our first tour lake.

I we said something about bringing like events there, but she also said what we need to really do to promote people coming to our town is to have things all the time.

So I'd really like to see something where we're um I'm not seeing it in this, but like we're doing trying to attract businesses here, not just hotels and restaurants, but like activity centers, shops that people want to go in, and you know, they'd actually want to stop and come to our town just for that.

So I'd like I'd like to see me.

I'd just like to see like a rethinking at least of those priorities.

Council Brooks.

I had a couple of questions as well.

I should turn my microphone on.

I'm rusty.

Um as far as the um place making and diversification.

I'm just curious for things that's standalone, if there's also any thoughts around having a visitor, a visitor center that focuses on the Ice Age Trail, um, the national water trail, and we have another um national trail that um I think there's three of them, which is very unusual for a city.

Um, and I talked to Metro when we have the informal round table, and there's money to also match for things like a nature center, maybe with a gallery or something like that.

Um as far as the um here we go.

The other question I had was we have two identified um staff.

And I'm just curious because the majority of the things that we have now go through the parks.

If like how does that all work?

Or if we were gonna do something with the library and the ice age trail, how does that work with so is there a way of diversification, or is that already managed in the plan, or is that something that we should look at strategically so that we don't have everything in silos and then everyone can come together with ideas that they're you know, fostering in their heads in their imaginations?

Yeah, I'll jump in.

Um, to your first question about the Ice Age Trail and National Water Trail.

I believe at the point in time that the tourism program plan was adopted in 2019, that uh the Ice Age Trail uh uh in the Ice Age Foundation was considered as part of that plan's development, and one of the videos um that was put together, I believe was paid for with um TLT dollars that the Ice Age Foundation put foundation put together.

I'm not sure that the National Water Trail was considered as part of that, but I think it would nest under that same category that we see the Heritage Center, for example.

Um so for the current plan, I think it was in a way considered for a future plan, whether it be strategic or an updated version of the type of plan we have right now.

I think that there is relevancy there.

Um when we looked at a couple of other plan examples, one of the things that strategic plans did um was figure out what your unique profile was, like why would somebody come to your community?

What makes you different than your neighbors?

Um in Oregon City is an example, the history of Oregon City is obviously relevant, and so I think some of those features that you identified could be relevant for Tualeton in addition to things like the river and our wonderful events and programs.

To your second question, um we I think as staff are fairly comfortable working in multi-departmental groups.

So as Jill put together her report, we formed a committee of internal staff that included Dustin, our parks and recreation director, as well as Heidi and Sid, Dawn, Sherilyn, um, maybe Aquila, uh, a few folks from across the city to talk through the plan initially and then come back after Jill had done her research to review her findings and the larger report that she wrote.

Um I think in future we would employ a similar um practice in including multiple folks.

Um you are correct that the majority of our large scale events are planned and delivered by our parks and recreation department, but they do require quite a few staff to participate.

Obviously, our library attends every pumpkin regatta event and Viva Twalton event.

Um so I I do think that the collaboration amongst departments is necessary for the plan to be successful.

Yeah.

Um I think the third one was the um like the bike path, and I think it's a state or national, whatever it is, but they're there's a rare thing there, and I I keep thinking about you know, when you the fact that we're an endpoint for that Ice Age Trail, which is a national trail, that were uh seat where the really involved people are with the um water national water trail, which is really rare.

Um that having some kind of like actual center um that's dedicated to those kind of things like you see for national parks and things like that.

Um I think that we could capture dollars from different levels of government on that.

So that's what makes me curious, and I think the timing is good with the downtown redevelopment and the riverfront park.

So those and I know the other thing I want to just say is and maybe this was the arts, but I don't think so.

I think the community is really hungry too for more cultural experiences that have to do with art and um and learning about their um have the habitat too.

So just those couple things I hear a lot about um maybe the lack of creative opportunities that we have.

So anyway, those are the things that I think about, but I'm really excited.

Thank you, and good luck on your next adventure.

Thank you.

That's right.

Um, just some clarifications as you were giving your presentation.

So if I if you answer the question and I dismissed it because I was writing it, sorry, I apologize.

So um, so as part of being of this um Washington County tourism program, um, we get 888.

Oh, we got a received 888,145,000.

Yeah, that amount is um actually from the local our city of Twalton transient lodging tax.

Okay.

So it's uh 70% of the transient lodging tax that was collected in our city is restricted for tourism uses, and that's that 882,000.

Okay, so that's not that it was a collision of cities, and it was just us here in Tualeton that we saved over time.

We saved over time, correct?

So it's not an annual thing that we know.

I'm gonna look to my right I need clarification.

Yeah, that's my um, Don, do you recall how much we collect annually?

We collect about 300,000 from the county collection and about 300,000 on the local.

Okay.

And then that's so 210,000 of that is the restricted portion.

Okay.

Um so thank you for clarifying that because I was just trying to write a few things that I um missed.

The um can you re can you repeat that part where it says as part of this Washington County, we don't we don't promote tourism or I mean there was something about not promoting that we cannot do as part of being the city.

Can you repeat that again?

I'm sorry, Mr.

No, it's okay.

Um there is an intergovernmental agreement between City of Twalton and Washington County up until 2017 that said that cities themselves could not collect their own local TLT, only the county could collect this tax.

But then in 2017 that changed, and so City of Twalton was then able to establish their own tax.

That's why we have the tax requests.

Thank goodness, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Um this is a curiosity question.

What is the share the love or something?

Oh, that's yeah, the glass heart.

Okay, yeah, the glass target.

Okay, all right.

Sorry, I think of them as glass the glass.

Yeah, it's not as share the love.

Okay, thank you.

Cool, yeah, of course.

Um how do we distribute the five percent per quarter to the chamber of commerce?

Do we give them a like a grant, or is it just uh we cut them a check quarterly?

Um initially there was a contract drawn up between the city and the chamber for that five percent of the 70 percent.

Um I'm not sure what the contract terms were initially for the length, but uh it currently our practice is to quarterly write them a check based on that calculation.

And then they are uh in turn promoting tourism and making sure that we have amenities for tourists or things that they people can do when they're here.

Yes, um the initial discussion was because they would serve as the official visitor center for the city of Twalton.

Uh and there are I think requirements to be a visitor center, you have to have a sign, you have to be open certain hours, those types of things.

So that was the initial agreement that was made for the provision of funds.

One more question.

I don't know if this pertains to this, these tax dollars are not, or um I have noticed that every time we come to the city, there's a sign out and it says welcome to Tualatin.

And I I really like that because I never knew if I were into in Twiliton or not.

So is that part of this as well, or is that something else?

It was separate actually, although it happened in the last year, I think.

So we've had existing welcome to the city of Twalton signs, um, but we were overdue for a replacement, both because our population has grown, but also because aesthetically they were quite um faded.

And so we redesigned those signs in the last year and put them up just I think in the last six months or so that they've been installed.

So I'm not sure that we put them in any new locations, but they're quite a bit more visible than the previous ones.

They're definitely visible more than before, because I uh when I go to Sherwood and come back and Wilsonville and all that um tiger coming from that part.

I never knew whether I've if I were in Tualiton or not, especially on that part of um like Bridgeport area.

So I really have seen them and I just want to say that I didn't know whether it was this part of the um related.

I actually just received Twalton's updated population estimate from Portland State, and we have officially crested 28,000.

Yay.

All right, thank you.

Other questions?

That's President Pratt.

Uh this is just a suggestion that I've um had for a while, but like our our city website I get, we just have events going on like at the library and stuff.

And um other cities like I'm using Lincoln City because I know they do this that really promote tourism.

They have like a calendar and I don't know that the city needs to maintain it, but like a link where we could have like um we have a lot of other events that go on that aren't city run, and that I think should be promoted.

Like a broader events calendar for the community.

Yeah, like and I'll use maybe like the Grange Farmers Market.

That'd be good to let people know we have that, but we have a lot of other great events that happened here, and I think it you know that brings in people too.

I don't think Heidi and Julie have to, you know, manage every event.

So anyway, thank you.

Thanks.

Other questions.

Um the only comment I have is I think the the time with the Quora is super important.

Um I could see yes, yes, discussing this in our uh next uh advanced meeting and what we want to do next, but I definitely see ideally um you know, wait on a tourism study until phase two is done of the Quora.

This way we'll know what we're gonna look like, feel like, and we you know we're transitioning to the code phase, so it'll be kind of cool to tie into the objectives of uh phase two into a tourism plan.

So I think timing is good for that.

Uh and it'll segue very nicely.

Awesome.

All right.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, so that brings us to uh agenda review, communications, and round table.

Uh so tonight I have Councilor Brooks is up for the Pledge of Allegiance.

And then looking at the consent agenda.

Anyone uh anyone go to consent to generator has someone want I pull away, pull out the agenda.

Okay.

Seeing none.

Uh with that, what am I missing here?

May we have no proclamations, correct?

All right.

All right, so we'll go ahead and start uh council communications, and I'll pick on Don.

Let Don go first.

Well, thank you.

Uh sure.

I think last time I had to remind the uh someone that I was especially because I had a good list before.

Well, so thank you.

It was my uh pleasure to introduce or to fill you in with a few different things.

Uh first I'll start off with uh you will have seen just if you recently because uh as this meeting was going on, I forwarded a meeting invite to our annual holiday breakfast where the exec team uh cooks breakfast for all employees as an appreciation, and we asked we invite the mayor and council to come and join us in that uh in that event and serving of all our employees.

So that will be on December 10th, starting at 7 a.m.

Uh, it is the same day as the boards and committees summit.

So get up early, come do that, stay late, and do the uh that summit.

In front of you uh this evening also is the new Tualton River water trail map.

Uh, this is a just a wonderful document that is part of an exciting collaboration between the National Park Service and the Tualton River Keepers.

Uh the Twalton River, of course, is a natural water trail.

It interesting enough, Dustin gave me this statistic earlier today.

It's one of only 35 national water trails in the nation.

Uh, this collaboration between the river keepers and the National Park Service has been fantastic.

We're excited to be part of this collaboration as we move forward with our riverfront uh park project.

Uh so there's a lot of uh good opportunities and partnerships coming in the near future.

You also had in front of you this evening a gift bag, uh which is the same things that we'll be giving our volunteers this year, uh of which was the 2026 calendar, which has a number of just a it's full of great pictures, events, things like Viva and Blender Dash and a couple others that I'm gonna point out here in a second.

Uh the other part that I thought was really uh cool and interesting was the hot tips, the fun facts.

There's a lot of just neat information in there.

The one thing I did notice was missing was my birthday.

So let's as I as I went through this to show a few things.

Of course, the uh you know, right inside the cover is a great picture of all of you at a at a council meeting.

See if I can turn pages very well.

Uh again, and then in May, I think some great pictures from the Veterans Plaza uh ribbon cutting and event.

Of course, the mayor and the state of the city, we'd always we have to mention that.

I I think I'm required to mention it if I'm up here.

Um as you get into which side did I do this on uh into August.

We've I'll point out August 18th is the city's 113th birthday.

Uh so some of us were around when we uh celebrated our centennial 13 years ago, but we are getting close to the 115th, and maybe we'll have a little celebration for that as well.

But we were incorporated on August 18th of 1913.

For those of you that want to mark your calendars in October, the pumpkin regatta is set, and so on uh October 17th, pumpkins and pythons, and October 18th is the regatta run and the and the West Coast giant pumpkin regatta.

So you've got this on your calendar, but mark any other calendars you might look at.

Again, some very uh exciting photos that are this is this whole document is filled with just some outstanding photos that we have in our library, and I'm sure we got them from other resources as well.

The other thing I'll mention is the Twalted Lights Parade.

This is also set for next year.

So I would say mark your calendars again, but you've got a calendar, it's already marked.

Uh Friday, December 4th, Saturday the 5th, and Sunday the 6th is the Twalton Lights Parade for 2026.

So we're excited about this calendar this year and uh passing this out to all our volunteers.

Speaking of the Twilight and Lights Parade, it is also December 5th, 6th, and 7th this year.

Uh so we look forward to uh any of you that want to participate.

I know there's a lot of excitement on the city staff that participate in that event as well.

We received, I've got word this morning from my municipal court staff that we have received our first wedding uh uh event that will be happening on uh uh December 18th at noon.

Uh so we're really excited that someone is taking advantage of that opportunity.

Uh the InPipe program project, you may have seen some of the uh work out here that is started and will be uh it's planned to be um completed by the end of December, and so that'll be up and running if you have any specific questions about the project.

Rachel Sykes will be here this evening, and uh she can fill in any other questions.

Uh the housing forum and resource fair will be held this year on December 17th, right here in this uh this room at 5:30 p.m.

It's the opportunity to have a community conversation that will help staff understand the challenges of our community members are facing finding housing, especially renting rental housing that's affordable.

Uh we will be having representatives from local service providers that will be on site sharing information on resources that are available to the community.

Lastly, uh we just want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving holiday.

Uh just some reminders related to that.

The library will close early on Wednesday, they close at 6 p.m.

Uh city offices and the library will be closed Thursday.

Well, city offices are closed Thursday, Friday, the library is open regular hours on Friday.

At that, that's my report, and happy Thanksgiving to all.

Councilor Gonzalez.

Thank you for that.

I have no updates.

All right, thank you.

Council Brooks.

Um, I think my updates are pretty old, but I've gone to the um the water consortium board meeting.

I think I mentioned that Rebecca Geisen is retiring, so there was a retirement party.

Um there was a Xerxes film that I watched.

They have the meetings about um non-chemical management for beautiful buzzing landscapes.

Um, there's a lot of really good ideas, and it was specifically for you know, um, cities and larger organizations.

Um and then I had a couple I was at the arts advisory um meeting on the uh 21st of October, I think.

And then um also met with uh re Armitage and Juan Carlos Gonzalez at separate times about um just uh uh opportunities for the city and um those kind of connections.

Um I unfortunately couldn't make it to the NLC summit this year because there was just a sudden death of my in the family, so um, so I was disappointed in that, but um I was very glad that I went to the memorial service.

And I also just wanted to mention um when I was in Michigan, I have a friend of mine that is an architect, a very good friend, and has been working on a um a many phase uh war uh veterans memorial uh design, and they had the second phase, a big party, and um one they had a big sculpture for Rosie the Riveter, and the one of the original Rosie the Riveters came to the party, and she was 106 years old, and she came on the back of uh motorcycle from the butts.

So I just thought that was a really cool story and wanted to share it with you guys.

The other thing I wanted to share was there was a very this seems kind of odd to share, but there was a very interesting article podcast with Patty Smith and one of the New York Times guys that does podcasts, and they got into a little side conversation around development and a lot of the conversations that we're dealing with today, and it was an interesting perspective.

So if that's interesting at all to you, give it a listen.

Thanks.

Councilor Sacco.

Thank you.

Last Monday we had the idea committee, and we have a lot of new members.

And so we'll be in front of the council in January.

And then later this month we'll be taking a visit to the Grand Ron Museum just to do some education for ourselves around the discussion of how we can support the Native peoples of our community and the people that were here before us.

Thank you.

Council Hillier.

Thank you, Mayor.

I've had no official meetings in this last period.

Council Reyes.

Gosh, the 21st, I think it was December.

Thursday, the 21st, or I think that was the day, but it was last Thursday.

And it was nice to see the Midwest CIO, and we were just we just wanted to have an update on the city.

And a lot of people that were there, there were a few people that were new I never seen before.

Most of them were already known faces.

But it was nice to hear from also the Tuala Tin Fire Department.

Um what they're doing.

So it was an update on it.

They also gave an update, and that was pretty cool to kind of hear what they're not in the police station, also the police department.

Um so that was pretty cool to hear.

And we presented, and everyone seems to be happy with us so far.

So thank you.

Council President Pratt.

Um I went to the River Grove CIO meeting, but the mayor got presented and did a great job.

And what I have to say about the CIO program is that not that many few years ago we were worried that this wasn't gonna hold together, and I saw a transition to a new group of leadership at River Grove, and we have finally Sally Olson.

We have someone to take on the president role in Martinowsy Woods.

So I'm really glad to see that these program, the CIO programs really successful right now.

And then um the only other thing I went to was the Lamb Ribbon cutting last Friday, which it was really interesting um just to see all they do, and um they um I didn't know they partner with Girls Inc.

so they helped um young women learn about the STEM programs and kind of promote that as I say, girls can do math too.

All right, uh quite a few meetings uh so on November 13th had the Metro Mayor's Consortium meeting.

Uh TriMet presented their projected service cuts.

Uh there's quite a few.

They have to cut approximately 300 million dollars from their budget over the next 10 years.

Uh so they're doing the rounds trying to get uh input from all different uh agencies and boards and committees.

I'm gonna try to see if we can get a trimet representative to come here and present to us what they're anticipating uh and get our ideas.

Uh the ACLU gave an update on the trends they're seeing in terms of ice ice detentions and apprehensions and how um things are progressing in the region uh in terms of what they're seeing and violations, and I think they just filed a lawsuit uh this last day or two against the federal government in terms of ice detentions.

Uh later that day I had Greater Portland Inc., the small cities consortium.

Later that day, I had Greater Portland Inc., the small cities consortium.

The AARP gave a presentation on age-friendly cities, but this one was a little bit different than what Council President Pratt and I went to.

It was more focused on economic development and the realities of an aging population.

Fun fact to it is most of the sole proprietorships and small businesses that are being created now are people 50 years old and older.

So that's a new trend, and then the need to address the needs of seniors is gonna balloon here.

So our economy might change tremendously, and if you're ahead of this, you know, ahead of the curve, the better.

So that's what we're looking at in terms of economic development for Twalton.

As Council President Pratt mentioned, I went to the River Park CIO meeting.

It's interesting because they had to review the police officer, police department gave an update.

And then there was a discussion, you know.

Uh Brett Hamilton uh discussed the Lamb decision and talked about Grimms a little bit.

I'm gonna follow up with him on Grimms because there's some interesting conversation about uh smells are starting to come back from Grimms because Grimms was given a waiver.

They used to have 12 inches, a requirement for 12 inches of top cover on the stuff that was decomposing.

Uh Grimms asked for a six-inch cover.

Uh I filed a lever letter on behalf of the city saying no, it should stay at at 12.

Metro decided no, they can go down to six, and now we're having issues again.

And Brett's um findings, as we all know, Brett is pretty good at digging this into this stuff, is that no one's really measuring the six inches out at Grimms per hem.

Kind of follow up on this, that Metro doesn't send people out there with rulers to measure.

They're just taking people's word for it.

So I'm gonna get into that a little bit with him when I next meet with him.

Um the 14th, the Twelfth and Chamber of Commerce had its board meeting, their strategic uh planning meeting for next year.

On the 17th, I attended the Washington County coordinating committee.

That one was packed full of stuff.

Uh there's a micro transit pilot, micro-transit pilot going on uh that's being funded using STIF money, transit money.

It's kind of interesting.

Picture ride connection, but it's on demand.

So they're gonna have two vehicles out in Cooper Mountain, uh River Terrace area in Beaverton Tiger, where you can use an app to request uh a ride.

Uh there's no uh everyone's eligible to do it, there's no income uh mandates or anything like that.

It's gonna be a 15-month project to see, you know, does this thing fly?

Is there demand?

Um so we're a lot of people are pretty excited about this.

Uh, it is small.

We'll see if um this can take off because it's one of those things with last mile uh because these uh microtransit uh vehicles will connect to transit.

Uh the main stop is Washington Square Mall.

Uh it's a 15-month project.

Uh the thing that I'm more kind of nervous of is there's no long-term funding.

Once the pilot's over, there's no more money for the for the project.

And if it is popular, then we're gonna have to have uh trimet and the state have to try to figure out where they can get funds to keep this microtransit going and to grow it into other areas.

Um Rachel gave a great presentation on the Toaleton e-scooter program to uh the coordinating committee.

And then West Westside Trans uh West Side Transportation Alliance.

Um a lot of people haven't heard of them, small organization, but what they're really cool with is doing transportation demand management and helping your employees connect with transportation like ride share, uh car pools, uh e-bikes, route planning.

Uh so they give a presentation on what they can do for businesses and uh government agencies, you know, a hundred or so employees are higher.

Uh they have all kinds of resources on shared micro mobility, um, they have lending libraries and solutions, so they're more than willing to help any companies, it can be small or large, uh, helping their uh employees get to and from work uh affordably and you know do it better for the environment.

Uh what else did we have?

Uh e-scooters and then JPAC, uh, again I'm the alternate on JPAC right now.

Uh Metro is gonna start a future vision update.

So Metro had a vision of what the Metro region should be like back in 1995 and hasn't updated it since.

So it's a little bit out of date.

The requirement is to update it every 15 years, and they have not.

And the concern is from these cities is that shouldn't the vision generate from the bottom up and not from the top down to the region.

Shouldn't Metro collect division statements from the city as a comprised Metro, somehow consolidate that consolidate them and act as a regional convenient and coordinator of these things rather than trying to tell us stuff to do.

So we'll see how that goes.

Mayor Beach Pace is on the committee and we're tracking this pretty well.

It just started up and they seem very flexible right now.

Listening to us what we have to say.

And the whole idea behind this was how can we better use the freight rail that's out there for regional mobility for longer haul trips, not the two, three mile, more like the 10 to 15.

And is there a way we could better use that, you know, though those railways?

Some of them aren't even being used anymore, some that they've been abandoned.

Uh, some are used twice a day.

Uh so what can we do, for example, from getting you know people from Salem up to here.

Interesting factoid in there is there the amount of trips generated from Yam Hill County and from Marion County heading north is upwards of 50,000 trips a day, going down I5 and 99W.

And there's no transit options really for those folks to get here.

So what we can what can we do to get those vehicles off the road?

Um, maybe with rail being an idea.

Um I have a feeling you know they're gonna finish basically they're pretty much wrapping up this study.

It was the study they were required to do, and I don't know if anything's gonna happen from it.

But what was included in it was the idea of let's look at the southwest corridor again, but maybe not as light rail, but using right the um freight lines for those trains instead of having to build a whole new light rail system.

Uh on the 20th, I had the GPED board meeting, which is the Greater Portland Economic Development District, which is interesting.

There is uh woman from California presented with the California jobs first presentation.

It was fascinating, they did divided California into 15 different regions.

The challenge for each each region was tell us what your challenges are economically and how you can fix them.

And now the state has taken all those different uh that feedback and created uh 10 targeted sectors of the economy which they can grow throughout the state and work with each of these regions to help them develop that in California.

Purpose, of course, is to just build more and more jobs in California and attract more companies to it.

So you know, we looked at it, it was kind of interesting because it'd be a nice model for Oregon, because you know, California has the same thing where you have the urban rural divide.

They have the same challenges that we have, similar ones, high tech versus agriculture.

So be it's you know, something where we wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, and we could look at what they did and uh do lessons learned kind of thing.

Uh finally, uh the Lamb ribbon cutting, which is a beautiful building, uh Building G is now open.

It's 74 million dollar building.

They you know invested into our community very well attended ribbon cutting.

I think all the seats were full and I enjoyed doing it.

So with that, we're I'll go ahead and close the city council work session for now, and we'll come back at seven o'clock for the regular Twalton City Council meeting.

We'll see you in 30