The Tualatin City Council held a work session on July 27, 2026, to discuss three homelessness-related topics: updates to the time, place, and manner camping ordinance, intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) for homeless services, and eviction prevention funding. The meeting also included a round table with updates from the city manager and councilors. No formal votes were taken, but the council provided clear direction to staff.
Are we ready? Not waiting. Yep. I think I'm Maria C and let's go. Same thing with Cindy. Recording in progress. Good evening and welcome to the July 27th, 2026 Twalton City Council work session. Our first time on the agenda tonight is camping time, place, and manner ordinance update and discussion led by Megan Cohen and Kevin McConnell, our city attorney. Welcome, Megan and Kevin. All right. Good evening, Mayor, City Council. My name is Megan Cohen, and I am Twalton's City Liaison on homelessness, and I'm joined by Kevin. So we have we have all the attorney expertise in the room. And we're here to chat about our time, place and manner ordinance, and about some potential updates to that ordinance, explore uh sort of where we are, um, how that ordinance has been working and where we might want to go from here. So with that, uh next slide, please. Okay. So for some background, I'm sure you're all very familiar, but Twalton's time, place, and manner ordinance was passed in July 2023. That was, of course, in compliance um with uh House Bill 3115, which was passed by the Oregon legislature. Um since then, um we have actually I think seen our ordinance working um in a way that has been uh advantageous for the city and has been running pretty smoothly. Um there have been some changes, um policy changes uh since then. Um and one of those is that the Supreme Court actually overturned the Martin v. Boise decision in June 2024. Um and so for many states um that meant that there is no longer any um protection for public camping, but for Oregon, since we have House Bill 3115, that was still in place, but it does uh have an impact on some of the language, as we'll talk about later on um available shelter, which is written into our ordinance. Um part of this is just to make changes that uh recognize some of the changes that have happened um at the national level. And then as a reminder, House Bill 3115 requires all cities and counties to ensure camping ordinances are objectively reasonable to time, place, and manner with regards to people experiencing homelessness. Um so we end up getting those three parts of the ordinance. Um and in the last year, I know you have heard um from businesses uh here. We've seen an uptick in vehicle camping, specifically RVs. Um despite you know, trying to have sort of one off uh responses to those, whether it's you know, um on the enforcement side or um making no parking rules uh to specific areas. Um we wanted to look at what may be a more comprehensive um response to that would be and to some of the impacts that we're seeing from that vehicle camping, which include like public materials um uh uh or camping materials uh outside of the vehicle and in our public spaces. Next slide, please. So this is our current ordinance. So just to go over what's in there, this is the ordinance is in the ordinance language itself that's also accompanied by um definitions as well, um, which we'll get into in more detail. Um the time uh is that uh camping time between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Uh and then place really the dedicated places that that lawn on um our public safety building, everything else, uh including public right of way is prohibited within our current ordinance. And then um in the manor really talks to sort of the specifics of that, which include um not accumulating, discarding or leaving behind trash, excavating, those types of things. We have seen um folks camp on the lawn by the public safety building. Um they've complied with the manor pieces with the time pieces. Um we've had outreach go out and touch base with folks there on the lawn and see if they can offer services. Um, and it's been a good place to be able to meet people there and see uh what connections we can make. And I would say overall, this current ordinance is pretty similar to the other ordinances um throughout the county. There's some differences, small differences in time and in place, but overall um really not too different from what we're currently seeing, with um I think one piece that we're gonna talk about this evening. Next slide, please. Okay. Um so updated language options. There are a couple revisions that we're exploring, and I'll let Kevin go into a little bit more detail. Um, but one is to add language within the definitions that uh defines vehicle camping as camping. So at the point at which you all um uh initiated the ordinance for time place manner, the decision was not to include vehicles. Um defining vehicle camping is something that several other jurisdictions in Washington County have done, including Beaverton, Hillsborough and Cornelius.