The Tualatin City Council held a work session on January 12, 2026, the first of the new year. Agenda items included a summary report from the December 2025 Board and Committee Summit, a detailed update on 2025 city council priorities, discussion and pre-approval of recurring proclamations for 2026, a proclamation request for Vietnamese Lunar New Year, and council member round table updates covering regional transportation, housing, and community events.
Recording in progress. Good evening. Happy New Year. It is January 12th, 2026, and this is our first Twalton work session of the new year. Our first item on the agenda tonight is board and community summit summary report. Megan George will be presenting. Welcome, Megan. Hi, everybody. Good to see you in 2026. I'm Megan George, Deputy City Manager in Twalton, and I am here this evening to provide the summary report for the board and committee summit. So we held what we believe is Twalton's first ever board and committee summit on December 10th of 2025. For you all were there, so you'll recall, we had dinner at 5:30, and the event lasted from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Juanita Poll Center. We closed the place down for the evening. Of the folks who were invited to attend, there were 58 potential attendees, and about 37 people attended, not including yourselves or city staff that were there to support, so we had a really nice turnout. The permanent boards and committees that are appointed by the council committee are appointed by the city council and are interviewed by the council committee on advisory appointments were those who were invited for this first ever event. And those are listed up on the slide. We had at least one representative from all committees with the exception of the core area parking board. As articulated at the event and before, we had four goals. The first was to provide the city council, so you all with information directly from board and committee members who are charged with advising you on matters of interest to the city. Two, to connect board and committee members to the city council's 2030 vision. Three, to provide an opportunity for board and committee members to interact with each other and the city council, and four, to show appreciation for board and committee members and enhance the positive sense of community and service in Twalleton. So we'll come back to those four goals at the end, but I wanted to set the stage for what we were hoping to accomplish before we get into the summary of the event itself. Fairly simple agenda. Throughout the presentation, I've got additional photos from the event. We had uh several really excellent photographers that specialize also in being an attorney, but you know, photography. Really strong suit there. So please uh enjoy those throughout the presentation. So for our seven small groups, we each gave them a confidential folder of information that included four questions that we asked them to pick three to answer. The questions were trying to assess Twalton's strengths, um challenges or concerns, opportunities, and priorities. But they were all different. And then we asked each of those groups to document their results on chart paper, and then we asked them to share out to the larger group as a whole. So on these slides and in the summary report, I included brief synopsis of some of the themes that came up from each of those questions. The full accounting from each of those small groups is included in the appendix of the summary report, which is included in your packet. So jumping into the first question. If you were putting together a resume or cover letter for the city, what would you highlight as Tualton's special skills? Um, I don't know about you, but I don't necessarily have a special skills section on my resume anymore, but I I thought it would still hold up. Um, some of the themes that came out of that were friendly and welcoming community, family-friendly, safe, parks, green spaces, the Tualton River National Riverway, the Ice Age Trail, community support for city services like the library, parks, public safety, the Juanita Pole Center lunches, good governance, stable government, fiscally responsible, events, library arts, high quality of life, and the transportation network. And specifically what folks meant by this is that it's easy to get everywhere. We're in a metro area, you can get to the coast, you can get to the mountain. For question two, what are the most pressing challenges we are facing as a community now? And what do you expect to be the challenges in 2030? Is the list different? Largely, people had the same items on both of their lists for present day 2025 and 2030. Some of the things that came up there were the lack of a downtown, traffic, transportation, and lack of public transit, as well as traffic signal light timing, the cost of living, housing availability, housing costs, senior housing, accessibility, lack of local businesses, employment opportunities, lack of community gathering spaces, places to display public art, new technologies, preserving community identity as development occurs, diversity in past mistakes and harm, environment, and education and school district boundaries. Question number three if you could apply a dose of innovation to a community challenge, what challenge concern would you choose? Senior housing, community engagement, healthcare affordability, especially for seniors, third spaces, safe spaces, gathering places at Rhymes, underused or empty lots, food carts, farmers markets, community gardens, and other local food, environment, cost of transportation, cost of living. The fourth question, what have you observed in other cities that you'd love to see implemented here in Twalton? Farmers markets, food carts, incubator space, small business support, more diverse businesses, enhanced storefronts, community center, indoor recreation space, event space, performing art space, less parking, an active, vibrant downtown, better utilization of the lake, more events or festivals, protected bike lanes, pedestrian bike bridges over high traffic areas, mental health response, senior living community, and a population that lives and works in the same community. Alright, the second set of questions, five through eight.