Springfield City Council — September 20, 2021

0:02 when you're ready she's ready i guess she's ready i'm going to call the springfield city council work session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here counselors pits here moe here bradley here here woodrow here and pissionary i'm here all right we have two work session uh items tonight the first one's council vacancy charter amendment with mary bridget uh good evening mayor and council i'm here tonight to speak with you about a second discussion on the um potential change to the charter for

0:48 how the city fills vacancies for elected officials can you all hear me okay okay great so in your packet tonight there is a council briefing memorandum my intent with the discussion tonight is just to reframe the issue and then provide the council an opportunity to provide comment and feedback and questions i don't have a powerpoint or any other um written visuals for the meeting this evening uh this is our second time discussing this issue we were before you um i believe in february or march this time we're focusing more of the information on a survey of the 25 most populous cities in springfield and in oregon i should say and where springfield falls with those in how

1:35 other communities fill vacancies there's also some information following up on council direction about conducting a telephone poll and then a potential schedule just a reminder a charter amendment is something that is approved by the voters so the council would have to put a um ballot about title on um a ballot in order to have that move forward the issue um if you recall we had a circumstance where um when mayor lundberg stepped down she had recently been re-elected and that she had a new term starting in january so that complicated when her vacancy actually started and resulted in a situation where the city was operating with a pro-tem mayor

2:20 and then we um someone was appointed and the election for the successor isn't until the next general biennial that brought forward some community interest in looking like hey baby springfield can approach this differently in a way that has maybe more direct accountability to the voters and a faster process for filling they can see in this materials i really meant to just provide you with information about where springfield falls um and then just the last note i would note springfield approved its charter um in the early 2000s it's based off a model charter um i think at the time that was either through it's now through the league of oregon cities but before that had been through the university a group there there was a citizen committee but

3:06 our charter is aligned with other communities like ours it's not like we're dealing with an outlier charter so just to give you some frame of reference so i'd be happy to take any questions or direction that you have and um see how you'd like to move this forward a leonard so um thanks mary b um i i think there's reference made in the packet to possibly sending out a survey for public input and i think that's generally a good idea um the the understanding that i have been getting from the public comment at the meetings before we adjourned was that they wanted more transparency and more

3:53 accountability on more democracy in a way in this process and that would include potentially throwing this open to an election uh to a popular election and um i uh mayor van gorden and i were talking earlier today about the possibility of adopting some sort of hybrid plan where there would be an election that would be held if the vacancy occurred outside of a certain time frame from the next election cycle and i think that that's probably that that might be judicious but i i do approve the um approve of his plan to get public input at this point and um also

4:39 the i i think the other uh the the other item for um public input should probably be whether they um want to limit the field of possible candidates for a vacancy to the uh to the council and that's all i got thanks i had a couple thoughts um i think maybe a hybrid process might be might be something we could consider or look at i look back at what happened i don't expect all those things to line up again ever that just happened to be everything fell into place at one time

5:24 um i i don't expect ever to have a mayor uh be in a position where she felt she needed to resign you know six months after she was elected or whatever whatever the time frame was and then have to go through the process before she could then resign from her newly elected term all those things just lined up in a perfect storm i mean there just wasn't i don't expect that to ever happen again so i'm looking a little bit not as uh urgently isn't the word i want but i don't feel like i like we need to like this needs to be something that has to be totally new or different um i i look at it um my concern about going out for any kind

6:10 of a special election is number one the the cost but the other part of it is the time the amount of time if you put a special election out right away you don't give community members enough time to number one have an idea as to whether they want to be involved in the process or not get acquainted in the community i mean there's different there's other parts to that would be nullified if a special election happened right away so i kind of like the kind of like our being pretty much like a lot of the communities in the way that it's set up with the next biennium and everything but i'm not i'm i'm i'm i'm

6:58 i'm okay with considering a hybrid and and and what uh leonard was just talking about so but i i do i'm just not feeling the sense of urgency to just put everything out there and change the charter i don't feel like we weren't transparent we had everything out in front of the public with how we had to follow the charter and we didn't have a choice we had to follow the charter so i don't you know somebody's impression is their their issue not ours i feel like we were as transparent as we could be um so uh that that's that's my comments for now sorry and extra points for corey for raising your hand i'm learning now if i can just remember how to put it down so i think that there's there's two things that i remember that

7:44 are that were pivotal and key to this conversation one is this part that we're talking about in terms of the timing whether or not it's an election or appointment that part um so that that piece the other piece which i don't know is necessarily in the charter which is part of what created a lot of the hullabally was who was allowed to be considered for mayor um and i don't know if that's something that gets addressed by the charter or not but my my my memory is that that was a big part of the the challenges that we were trying to deal with and i wasn't on council at the time until i got on council and it was just we already decided what we're going to do so those are the two that the two big

8:29 pieces was um and so some of the transparency was not necessarily around um you know what's the process because the people were trying to figure out what the process was and what the charter says but also around who was going to be allowed to be considered for mayor so those are the two pieces i just want to keep that as part of the conversation um i also understand that a special election is expensive and we aren't necessarily the kind of municipality that has the money for special elections but and this is one of the things that i've said to a few folks is i i want it to be as absolutely democratic as possible so whatever election whoever can participate just to make it as open and transparent as we possibly can without

9:14 spending an arm or leg um so i i could probably go with a hybrid i could go with the let's talk about when's the next reasonable election but i think we also just need to keep part of the conversation it's like who get who gets to be considered to be the mayor or who gets to because you know we did a different process for counselor so that's part of it too thank you damian hi uh so i i definitely agree with what although the council stat said i mean i think the financial piece and wondering uh you know how much it would cost to do a special election but but on that piece like i think about

9:59 after i took office i think a couple of months later there was a school board election and what if that was the case where it lined up like that could it be possible to where uh the council mayor whatever that situation would have been on that particular ballot where you throw that position in with that but then also uh kind of what counselor stair mentioned you know time period like would it be different if it was you know the the for example the council position had three and a half years left on the term versus six months and i could see potentially having the election for something that's longer than two years maybe even you know one year but any shorter than that uh that might be

10:45 you know a lot of money especially you know you figure election season is getting ready to come up pretty soon and why would you spend that much much money for someone to be interim and then there's another process right after that so i think time is his other essence uh looking at it from a financial standpoint let's just especially as somebody who was appointed and thinking about that i mean if it would have been it won't i won't hold office for two years and if it would have been longer i could understand the election but you'll be surprised at how fast this time goes and how much money you know it would cost for something that's a year and a half that money could be utilized for something different joe excuse me so

11:31 um i guess i'm just going to be straight out um if it's not fixed why if it's not broke why try to fix it it's this has been with this has been working for years and years and years we have comparable cities of this size that operate under the same the same type charter almost verbatim what are the odds of something like this coming up again literally and if you if you look at the you look at this it's uh the way it's set up and it's just like what what councilor pittsburgh just said is if it's early in the term then it allows for an election halfway through you know it it has that time i'm not interested in spending extra money for a special election

12:18 when when no matter what happens no matter when that person's term ends it's going to be an election so the entire city can decide at that time i haven't seen anything in the city since 2004 that has been so urgent that we had to put some sort of a special election in there where it can't be done in its regular schedule time um i i get everybody's not everybody's i get like i understand what a few people are saying and i get that but again i think the city has been operating fine i think it's been operating fair it has been very transparent and i think that um again i i think we ought to go with what we're we're doing

13:03 and but if the council goes the other direction okay but if it does then i think we need to look at the charter and i want some other changes in that charter that um are way overdue in my mind um if we want to go that route as a money savings cut money savings i'm not interested in spending as much money going to the chart or going to an election to change a charter every year and it costs us money you know so we've done it once not that long ago the charter was changed not that long ago as far as historical times for a city but again if it's not broke i don't see the need to fix it especially at the price of fixing it at this point i don't see the same issue coming up anytime in the near future and even in

13:50 the far future so that's that's where i'm at all right so i'm here in go ahead merrily [Music] just to clarify in my own mind and i think i saw it in the packet that um a greater than and less than amount of time for a council council replacement so that if they have less than a certain amount of time then they serve uh they serve they serve out the term if there's a greater amount of time left in a counselor's position then they only serve to the next biennium if i'm correct because i think

14:36 that's what happened with sherry sherry replaced and she she was up for election within two years because of the and the term that she replaced so um if i am i remembering correctly i believe so okay so there is a there is a time element it already in in there that if you replace someone you only have you you basically have two years at the most and a year before you would campaign for your position so i think that's i think that's accurate that's my understanding too

15:22 so i think there's a couple things to consider and then we can kind of pull back and talk um and talk about well what is it exactly this does the hybrid sort of function mean one of them um and i and i and i will tell you that that having a charter amendment that mandates a special election without some sort of guard rails right like the concern i would have is that what what we would what happened would be we would have sort of off cycle elections and they would kind of be all over the place and you know that we would let five percent of the electorate sort of decide when we can you know sort of think through this a little bit more and get less politically motivated folks more people to vote right so i think having the appropriate amount like thinking through this becomes sort of critical to be able to um

16:08 to be able to turn it into something to to turn it into something that's sort of useful the other thing that i think is valuable to sort of pull back and then we can ask the question well what does hybrid mean to folks is um is that if in a in a situation where we have we would have played out the same event in theory we would have had two uh we would have had two sort of elections right like in from the moment of january one and i'm going to sort of talk about the term all the way like we had probably ooh damian i feel like damon got here in march maybe right like so we probably had that was a 60-day time frame and i think it's valuable to consider that um if we don't sort of think through this right like we could we could have just finally got

16:54 through that set of elections and onto issues and got sort of fully here you know just essentially recently because you would have to space those elections out you would we would have had two elections last year to get the same result if you will so i think it's valuable to sort of kind of pull back and go okay what's when we think about this high you know a hybrid approach what are people trying to solve right like because if it's if it's a timing question then it's valuable to pursue i mean in it's if it's who's in the you know how fast can how many years can you hold elected office before you actually have to be on a ballot right i think that's a different question and if it's more of a broad question about okay you know do we want to have more clear rules about how to approach this

17:40 um i think those are all valuable questions to go okay we were in a really rare thing but what what what's the question that's sort of pressing for folks because i hear a lot of interest in hybrid but i think we need to kind of think through okay well what does hybrid actually mean so i don't see any hands shooting up so i'll give you an example i'll go ahead leonard a little late on the draw there sorry um so i um i i guess um what uh what i'm missing here is the possibility of a survey are we still talking about possibly consulting the public on this

18:26 um i think we have to decide if we could do that that's within the realm of possibility but i think we would have to decide about well what are we actually asking right like just how without with how many things were happening at that time there could be two or three different questions that okay well i i see i saw two issues coming into this and now i see possibly three um one of the issues is definitely um whether there's going to be a special election um if uh to fill a vacancy number two within what time frame that's the new one and then three whether the field of potential fillers of the vacancy would be limited

19:11 to the council or not and i i think that that's i i would consider it useful to have the public's input on all three of those issues one of one of the things that i don't think that we have in our charter and somebody can correct me if i'm wrong is the time frame piece so when i'm thinking about a hybrid i'm like okay if it gets to a place where we don't go with a special election then i would want some time considerations um because i think some of them have them where you have to fill within 30 days or 60 days or whatever so that's what i'm thinking we don't have that on ours um and i'm

19:56 with counselor stair in that i think we need to clarify what the process is and again i'm not clear whether that's something that goes in the charter that says so that we can we can build in more inclusion in the process or if that's something that's a policy in some other way but i think that's the other piece so when i'm thinking about hybrid that's what i'm thinking about it's like we need to have some time constraints whichever way we go that's it joe so i i think you're they're still talking i don't know i'm not sure if the word hybrid is is correct i mean is we either going to change it

20:41 and call it this new one or we're not going to change it um so i you know i'm not sure you know there's there's multiple changes like counselor rodney was talking about you know doing a time limit which is a major deviation from what we're doing you're saying 60 60 days well that's eugene does it i think i tournament look at the chart and eugene has uh it has to be filled within so many days by way of an election um successor chosen by special election at the very next may or november election so you're still talking um a significant deviation from what we're doing right now you're talking about significant expense a poll is very expensive anywhere up to ten thousand dollars

21:26 and again i i just don't see the uh the huge need to dive into something like this when you look at it and say okay we're going to spend this much money we're going to talk about it for this many hours and potentially polls in public et cetera et cetera when is it going to come up like this when is it when is when is this need for this change and i so far have not seen a great need for a deviation from what we're doing what we've been doing is has worked fine we can add and please correct me mary be if uh in that charter as far as the council can include anybody they want they're not bound to choose within the council

22:12 so we already we already have that we already have that inclusion that the council can do by way of a majority vote and the public has elected us to represent them so we're representing the public and if we want to include 150 different people or open up the entire city with applications it's within the council's power to do that without violating the city charter so i'm not so sure why why that has to be in print when it's already there so very virgin if um if it's all right with you if i could just spend a couple minutes i think trying to ask some questions about what it is i think i'm hearing from you all that might help kind of move some direction

22:57 forward and try and lower my hands so i think what i'm hearing when you say hybrid is you're talking about um like kind of like there's two different issues here in terms of when the timing and the transparency for selecting the appointed person right who gets appointed and then later runs so i think that's one issue then the second issue is when does that person actually have to run what does that mean and what are those impacts and what is the cost so looking at if i'm if i'm right in that looking at that first issue about making the appointment so the way the charter is very broad now it just says the council by majority vote appoints the person one option and it and i think you know

23:44 charters remember like are the same level as your constitution right so they're not going to have like you know a b and c like a lot of detail now for example there's another community medford has the same council makes the appointment but does have more information in its code about how that appointment gets made that has more parameters for the council it's not just a wide-open decision by the council in terms of making a decision so for example it provides for um that the council will start the process for making an appointment within 45 days when a vacancy happens start the process not complete the process um that they will have us an application that everybody fills out

24:29 the same application that they have a committee that provides um feed a citizen committee that provides feedback to uh the council that they have an interview so they have some more sideboards on the actual making the appointment of the person that is in their municipal code it's not in the chart it's not a charter remember the voters but it could get at this sort of transparency issue maybe or this appointment issue what the downside to that is i would you know just to say in terms of being your attorney and advising you you're going to lose some flexibility there because the way those kinds of things are written is you gotta you gotta try you gotta follow the process that you adopt but that does provide some sideboards about how you select that person um which in turn is the person who most

25:14 likely will run to right eventually be elected so that's one option to think about in terms of selecting the other thing i would say about timing i think eugene is 90 days to make the um selection for the person they appoint other jurisdictions but bend has a very short time frame it's 30 days and the information i had from ben when i consulted with them is that it's just really a short amount of time to make an appointment you know to really get if you want public input or if you want to have some kind of process that that's a tough time to really make that so um that's what i can tell you in terms of timing um and if that helps at all i think what i'm hearing is the hybrid issue is the

26:00 appointment process of the person and then the other kind of part of the hybrid is when does the election actually occur is that does that sound like i'm more in the ballpark okay yeah we've got a couple issues that we're sort of unpacking here um leonard uh thanks mayor vanguard um i i i was listening with uh with some interest to what counselor visionary was saying about the about the process not being broken right now i i think that given the opportunity the council is probably going to want to maintain as much control of the process as possible i mean we're human you know we operate um with a desire to exert as much control as we

26:46 can and so i think this is a valuable opportunity that we've got right now to consider the public's opinion and ask them whether they want us to have complete um final control of the process or not and that's uh that's more or less why i want to bring them in at this point corey i think um councilor woodrow was before me oh i think you all right we can go with marilee first yeah i'm just going to be very blunt we were elected to make the decisions uh we're elected to represent the public

27:33 if we find it necessary to go out and ask them uh a certain policy or a certain procedure or uh what do you think about um a a zoning issue or something like that that's when we go out and ask that otherwise we've been elected to be aware of the public opinion they know how to reach us and they know how to get a hold of us to let us know i have not had a cavalcade of people telling me that they want the charter changed once we got settled in the beginning of the year with our with our appointments i haven't heard a word since so that doesn't indicate to me that

28:18 we've got 60 000 population out there telling me that they want to change the charter i just i i i appreciate the issues that came up a year ago but i still think it was a perfect storm of all things all the crazy things lining up all at one time i've paid attention to what's gone on on council now for over 20 years and we've had counselors leave we've had council care counselors resigned we've had mayors move on because they've been elected in a new position people have been have been replaced put replacing them and there's never been an issue the community has never jumped in and said hey we don't want you to do that anymore we don't like the way that

29:03 was done and like i said we just happened to be in the middle in my opinion we just happened to be in the middle of a perfect storm a year ago we were trying to figure out the char exactly what we had to do to align ourselves with the charter because it was different parts that we had not been in the middle of before but we made it through and we got it done but like i said since that point we haven't had i have not had anyone come to me and say when are you going to change the charter when are you going to put it out there and change it's harder i've not had anybody come to me about it and i've had people come to me about lots of things but they've never come to me about that so that's my two cents

29:49 thank you so um i think we did have people come and talk about wanting to change the charter here back when we were going through what we're calling the perfect storm um and i think that probably most people and this is this is um anecdotal and from conversations that i had when think this was going on have no idea that that is how that there is a charter that is dictating how this process happens so i think most people are assuming that in some way they are going to get to vote on who are their counselors are and who their mayor is and that's not i don't know whether that's right or wrong and we all know that a lot of folks get appointed to all sorts of elected positions and that's how the process works in order for us to keep government going but i think most people

30:35 wouldn't even know to come and say what's in the charter they just would say as they were saying to me when do i get to vote on the next mayor and the answer is well you don't because of this thing so the other second thing i wanted to say was i appreciate the sort of wanting to have flexibility in it but flexibility often really breeds inequity and it breeds self-selection so the more we keep it so that oh well we we or future weeds future counselors will get to make the ultimate decisions that takes it a little bit further out of the hands of folks and i hear because well this is what we were saying before too that while we're elected so we're elected to make these decisions maybe some decisions and i don't know that that

31:20 if we have the opportunity to give folks a chance to weigh in that that's not the best decision to make and that doesn't lean towards a democracy so that's that's that's what i have to say about that again thank you okay so i'm gonna jump in here and see if we can wrangle this back towards something excuse me trying to get a taco down at the same time yeah so i think this is really interesting because you've got this comp you've got you really have a conversation about what you think a role is that it's sort of going on and and i think it's kind of really cool that that's sort of an undertone about how you view elections right you know what right you know how you know that we carry you know the public's

32:05 um the public's will with us because effectively you know as a group we we've had elections and when do you weigh in and would you not i think it's a really interesting discussion and i think it's really interesting that you've got kind of two polls about how you view that and how you tap into tap into the public because ultimately what we want to do is we want to serve their will um i think if we like if if we think about all this conversation that you know we have i think maybe if we just take a step back and kind of get to it get try to answer the question about what we're trying to solve we can go through right we know do nothing's an option and i hear very distinctly that having a special election within like 60 days people are a little bit

32:51 that's a little bit sort of soft when people sort of talk right so i think basically the question that we need to have is we have kind of two paths that we need to go down and maybe we don't have to work out the details but if we can do nothing and that would effectively leave the system in place that we have today done we can look at what medford does which is provide some sort of process and maybe it's less rigorous than medford maybe it's more rare so i don't know what that means but kind of govern help govern the process for sort of future councils and maybe use municipal code to um address some of the concerns that people have brought up or we can um or we can put out a wholesale charter amendment i think the i think the the idea that

33:38 forcing a special election no matter what is probably a disservice right because we have a regularly scheduled set of elections if we were going to do that we would probably want to hit one of the one of the places people are used to voting anyway right that's a pretty pretty broad distinction but what i want people to do is maybe just back up and kind of go okay don't worry about the details about what we put out there but where are your head do you think would you want to solve it through maybe maybe address some of those concerns through municipal code or would you want to distinctly put out a charter or sort of do nothing because we kind of have to find our we're trying to find our path forward here leonard yeah thanks uh mayor van gorden so i um yeah i i i think you've um

34:25 you've delineated the options pretty well i i would like right now just to uh for us as the council to take a step back right now and just send it out for uh public comment i i i think we've got the public in a bit of a double bind here as we usually do i think you know we we either don't hear from the public at all in which we in which case we think they don't care about it and then sometimes we have people show up at the city council meetings and comment and say that they do want to change to the charter and then we say well these are just a few loudmouths who don't um really represent the public at large and so i think that it's incumbent on us right now to send it out i mean to find out what the

35:10 silent majority so to speak actually wants anybody else have kind of an opinion and again i'm less worried about the details i'm more like trying to firm up where what kind of directions people want i know that steve i haven't said anything i've been listening to everybody everybody's got great ideas basically i don't think it's that broken it was a it was a situation where everything happened at once and the public was really involved politically in some other issues which made them pretty passionate what was going on and and um i i wanted to do a poll i want to see what people think and i want us to to talk about it

35:55 and hopefully we can tweak what we have now that will satisfy everybody one thing that's always been in the back of my mind was christine resigned in august in may we had a major election in which two candidates spent a hundred thousand dollars campaigning for the mayor position and and then we had elections christine wanted but we forgot everything we went that's how long they had a campaign for that election so we go through with something that's like 60 or 30 or 60 days for a new campaign for a new mayor that's way short and and the expense i don't want to see it spend that much money on a special election i want to spend our money on other issues i think it's an important issue but uh

36:42 if we don't have to spend it on a special election i want on jobs and housing stuff like that that's it joe yeah i'm i thank you steve i appreciate your comments and and i didn't think about that other part as far as you know in in reality the feasibility of having a a a campaign in that short amount of time is is somewhere short of impossible but and plus i don't think people would be able to get to know the candidates in enough time to be able to make a informed decision so i agree with what you're saying there i don't support at all a special election they're expensive i think it should go under normal voting cycle like i said before

37:28 and and again it's it's not a broken system it's something maybe yeah maybe need a few tweaks maybe we should go with the medford model a little bit and say okay under these parameters i'm okay with that because that's not that's not a major deviation from what we're having although i gotta say that if we start making these uh putting these parameters up it and as mary b said it it may we may find ourselves in a spot where it's more restrictive than where we're at i i really like to be able to say okay we don't have anybody here on council that's really interested in doing anything moving or whatever generally when are we going to be feeling uh under those circumstances in such a short time frame it's just not going to happen and if it does okay well then

38:13 maybe we need to go back again but it's happened once it doesn't necessarily create a pattern this it was a i believe an anomaly in history and that uh we can move forward like we have in the past many many years so again i don't support a special election i think it should go on a regular uh election cycle i don't think we should spend a bunch of money in regards to a poll i think too that when when councillor steer my esteemed colleague he he didn't you know he's talking about uh you know putting it out and and he himself said well let's sign up majority so if you put it out then what do we expect uh something out of the silent they're not gonna they're not gonna all of a sudden speak up they're gonna

38:58 remain silent which is going to skew what we're looking at in the first place so i think that again i if it's not fit it's not broke i just don't see the huge need to fix it and i don't believe it's broke but i i would look at something as far as somebody wants to add some as uh mayor ben gordon said throw some guard rails up there and you know as far as some of the decision making i can i mean i'm okay with looking at that and if it's if it makes sense i can get behind that but but again i i'm not that excited about throwing out any type of special election i'm not that excited about doing any major deviation from our charter that's been working really well and i'm i'm definitely not excited about spending money when like counselor moe

39:45 says we've got a ton of things a mile high list of things that we can spend it on instead of something like this all right somebody else want to jump in and kind of talk about kind of where you're at and again trying to get a sense of why we kind of have to work towards some place here cory um [Music] oh okay i was trying to lower my hand and make sure i was off mute and it was just too much technology all at once i um i also am not inclined to want to do a special election because they do cost a lot of money and would take a lot of coordination and organization um i am very intrigued by looking at the municipal code as i said i'm not clear

40:30 as to where things go and so i really appreciate mary bridget sharing that that's a place where we could put some of those parameters and some of those guidelines for future for future times and the only thing that i would like to think and if and i this is where it would be a charter amendment is that we don't put any time parameters um in terms of with the appointment or the process needs to be done in 90 days or anything like that we don't have that on there now um i'm not gonna like it's it's it's not a hill that i'm gonna die on but that's a piece that i think that maybe we should think about for future people too

41:23 um to clarify municipal code policies and procedures are two separate documents is that correct okay that's correct policy um think of the charters your constitution municipal code is a statute and policy procedures like an administrative rule okay so is it possible if we had something we wanted to put into policies and procedures that could clarify maybe clarify in writing or however if it's not already there that it isn't limited to counsel for a mayor replacement or i mean could those kind of things go in policies and procedures or does that have to end up being in the municipal code i'm just trying to

42:08 clarify where something like that might fall um that would answer some of the questions maybe that people had sure i think my answer is i think so um i've seen it in municipal code um but i can check around other jurisdictions i think you can put in your policies and procedures however you want to work something um so i would say i would give that a qualified yeah i believe so okay so we could actually even if even if we found out different we could actually start with something in policies and procedures and then if we found out we had to formalize it in the code we we could but i'm just trying to think there are certain things that maybe that cropped up that maybe would give people as you know the the

42:53 transparent information and a place to go to find it um and maybe policies and procedures or something like that might be a weird place to direct them as opposed to going through all the processes of a poll and charter change and spending special election money and all that kind of thing that might be a start okay um leonard thanks um well let let me just reiterate i think the next step should be a a survey of the public but um if we're looking for endpoints at this point i think that what i would um advocate is a special election outside of a certain length of time from the next election cycle whether that's six months or nine months or a year i don't know i mean we can

43:39 discuss that but i um i would um advocate for the the most democratic solution which in my mind is while expensive a special election i had the hand thing and now i forgot the microphone thing okay so yeah cory's going to yep so uh just so uh mary b just i'm not sure if if everybody or maybe just clarify for me but my understanding you referred to and i think actually as one of the best illustrations i've heard in a long time in regards to the uh the charters is like a constitution

44:27 and the policy procedures would be like our codes would be similar to ors and in policy procedures would be like ordered administrative rules so there's a hierarchy and that being said is that the lower down that change so your your ors or your what we would call city codes can be more restrictive than the constitution so to speak can be laws could be made more restrictive but they can never be made greater and allow more uh be be a lot be more permissive than what the the what the constitution or the charter says so if you codify anything

45:12 it's it's gonna be narrowing down or less permissive than a charter and so what i like in in and i'm not sure if it's if i'm under maybe i'm not understanding it correctly but the charter is very permissive in regards to these type of decisions and if we go to codify things then we can't allow more than what the charter allows but we can only be more restrictive than what the charter allows and and based on that i don't know if again i don't think i would want to go down that road because if the charter allows this much room it's like what's the accounts for stairs talking about being the most open and the most allowing um i don't know if we want to restrict it

45:57 more than what it is because if we go down the other road of a codification then it's going to restrict more than what we have so i'm not sure i want to jump down that rabbit hole all right uh damian i saw you pop back up you're do you have an uh you have an opinion here about charter nothing or sort of some sort of uh statute change not necessarily i mean i i i want what the people want but at the same time uh if we're going to go that route then we need to make sure that they understand the pluses and minus of everything and so that could be a little convoluted but

46:42 i mean life is convoluted man you know so uh yeah i mean because i i don't see anybody reading that whole document but i also think that you can pair key points down to where it's a little bit more clear and concise well the general problem is not saying that they can't understand it but still uh but yeah i mean so i'm kind of impartial i mean i can i just i want to go what people want but then on the same time i want them to know exactly what they're getting into whether we stay the same or whether we make a change because i think in some situations that you know the grass is green on the

47:27 other side but then in four years are we going to be like that didn't work we're going to switch back and honestly i mean even though this was a perfect storm this could easily happen again i mean globalization's real people move you know people leave office and i mean who knows there might be a chance where all of us or whoever's on council might end up leaving or being called to resign or whatever and so how do we deal with it then and so it'd be great if we get some all-encompassing that has primary alternate tertiary causing routes to success to where the people are happy whatever that means so i think public input is very important uh yeah so i'm gonna try to sum this up and see

48:12 if anybody doesn't uh throw something at me um so what i'm hearing is really there's some interest and maybe it is sort of pursuing make the like maybe the medford model if you will and that it you know i hear some people say well we don't want to go that far i hear some people saying we don't you know maybe we want a little bit more information to answer um you know answer our questions and whether or not it's in the policies and procedures to sort of outline our thinking or if it's an actual the actual statute and i'm not hearing an interest that is to go down like i'm hearing some interest but not a majority of the council really wanted to put a poll in the field and go down a charter amendment

48:58 i'm looking around see good job no i actually think he encapsulated it correctly and again i i i would absolutely have nothing against checking out what medford's got and seeing what those options are i think i'd be foolish to say i'm not interested in looking at anything i i will i would be happy to look at those things and and provide an opinion based on from my perspective whether i can support those or not so um you know don't misunderstand me i'm willing to look at options but again i go into it looking at okay what we have here today is is most inclusive that i can see and i totally get what what counselor piss is saying is is uh hey we need to look at the options we need to look at scenarios and and if it's already you know if it's happened once doesn't mean it can't

49:43 happen again so again i i just uh i think that it would be incumbent upon us to look at those options but i'm skeptical at this point all right leonard and then we'll go go to mary bridget so my understanding is that with the medford model the city council retains control over the process and controls on an individual case-by-case basis how the vacancy is going to be filled is that correct the medford code uh counselor stare just has some more detail about how the council appoints someone to fill a vacancy in terms of they require

50:29 many of the things that springfield required an interview and written application but they do have a citizen committee and they have a nomination process for 25 you know you have to do similar to you to an election so um it just has more details about the process okay thanks well with that um with with that said i'd um i i would very i would greatly value the public's uh the public's input at this point um i would love to send out a survey as stipulated in the um in the packet this afternoon and if if we don't do that if we don't send out a survey then i would advocate for a special election outside of a certain time frame

51:15 um i have a suggestion to see if this would work for the council counselors who are interested in doing a survey if um you know because one thing we could do is just sort of sort of take this incrementally in terms of provide you the information about um similar to what medford or if there are other communities out there who have some more sideboards on how you appoint some how a council would appoint someone to fill a vacancy because if maybe you would see that information that could help inform some of the questions on a poll you know what i mean like that could kind of help about framing those issues up because what's critical of the poll is that you all are comfortable with the questions that are asked so you can feel like you can really rely on it i think and so um

52:02 so i if if it works for you i could i mean the pull the opportunity to do a pull we have the information we can if you give us the direction we can move that forward but maybe what we do in time is first get you this other information similar to what medford does and you can kick that around a little bit and evaluate that and then see about moving forward then does that work or is that a is that's possible so the pull could always go i mean like the poll doesn't go away but it just may not happen at the same time as you're evaluating the information merrily um yeah i counselor pitts made a comment that made the ring with me and that was making sure that when you get information from the public that they are coming from a

52:49 uh informed uh position um i as he was saying that i was thinking back to a year ago and i was thinking okay we had uh not everyone but we had a certain group of people that were not as interested in the transparency of the process as they were in telling us what the process should be so i think that we need to be careful uh when we do a poll if and when we do a poll that the information provided and the question asked clarifies um having somebody uh from an informed point of view because like i said when i think back after he

53:34 said that i thought back at that and i thought well yeah like i said not everybody but there was a certain group that was more interested in telling us what we were supposed to be doing than they were trying to figure out what we were what we were trying to follow uh the process and that and the charter that we were trying to follow so i i'm glad that damian brought that up because that's important that if you're going to do a poll it needs to be from an a point of view that people have an informed uh informed knowledge all right joe and then we'll see if we can wrap this one up okay so i'm confused it sounded like mary bridget was advocating for a poll and i didn't see a whole lot of interest in regards to a poll

54:19 um am i mistaking that no so joe i think what um i think what i heard was a hey why don't i back up and get you the information about medford right and i heard that and then if you got because that's not going to inform informal poll at all and that if you guys look at the information from medford and decide you want to do a poll you can say go forth and do did i get that right mary bridget so okay it's like you get some more information okay okay well good good i get it now i'm that that relieves me sorry mary b but i i just want to make sure that it's like it sounded like it was going sideways in my head and of course when that starts to happen i start running for cover so okay thank you damian

55:09 so um i guess one thing i want to see whether we look at memphis or not is look at other cities where the structure is is same in the sense that the councils in the mayor aren't paid because i think that the way if if citizens know that they're if their taxpayer dollars are going towards any type of stipend or salary i guarantee that the way that they see things going to be different now i don't think any of us are doing this you know for pay obviously we're not doing it for pay but i i i i do see that being a large factor in other cities because where i think we're one of the few uh and i'm curious to look at other cities that do not pay their mayor their counselors and see other processes similar because a

55:55 stipend especially that comes from taxpayer dollars can make a huge difference in who even runs okay i can definitely look at that and we can do some cross-referencing in terms of um other jurisdictions and stipends and compensation and how they feel vacancies no problem joe that was that was actually incredibly insightful counselor pitts because it's come around before in serious and i'm not doing it just to make it saying that to make you feel good at all it is simply you're on the money because uh that is important to see the different cities and and we have comparables for population that's easy we do that on google what we need to look at is that okay so they have counselors and a mayor how are

56:41 those counselors mayors themselves uh treated by the public so to speak what's their expectations are they paid out of taxpayer dollars is there is do they have the answer to their decisions because they're spending taxpayer dollars doing their job and there is there a different level of expectation of what the citizens want out of their counselors because they are getting paid so now i think that's really insightful so and that's come up before we take we've and i completely concur is that we need to get up to the year 2000 well get out of to 1958 and up to the year 2021 22 and and look at cities our size their cities smaller than us that pay their

57:26 their marine councillors um our sister city across the river has paid their folks for many many years so you get it's a whole different dynamic you get a whole different group of people i think or at least you get larger amounts of people that really want to be interested in in becoming part of the voice so if we're going to do any city charter instead of this i would rather i would rather look at it to see okay well if we're going to do a city charter then or change or even consider a change that should be another topic that's that's a package a package deal i i totally agree i think that's charlotte sorry joe marley and added to that is how the elections are held

58:12 we have our sister city next door to us that elects according to ward and only the award votes for their counselor whereas we're voted for city-wide that may make a difference too but that's definitely a clarifying factor as well when you stop when you start to look at some of the dynamics that's what that's a different dynamic in how uh the how account board counselors are selected and elected so that if we're going to look at that that that should be one thing that's looked at as well okay um so i mary bridget you have enough direction here so let's bring back the information about medford and then we can revisit a lot a lot of this conversation yes i think i got it okay perfect really good discussion

58:57 folks um the one thing i would just offer one last parting thought is we're talking about sort of technical instruments of government right like you know whether or not it's statute or whether or not it goes into a charter whether or not it goes into our policy and procedures um i think that you know whatever we talk to talk to voters we really need to focus on the outcome right like the technical the how you do it right they're just people just don't necessarily have a lot of experience with the technical part of government talk to more about where what our goals are like what are we trying to achieve and the last thing i would offer i saw at the end of this there's a lot of different ideas for charter amendments that are going around it it's going to take a little bit of time to put some of this stuff together so it's going to move like it's going to move forward based on our direction but it's not necessarily going to get done

59:44 on tuesday right so just be patient we'll get there all right thank you mary bridget brian i think you are up with the street light program yes i am and glad to be here with you this evening operations division is glad to make a presentation about streetlight condition and also the financing opportunities and also the contracting opportunities on how we can handle it um so i would like to start by introducing scott miller to you he is our traffic operations engineer he's an electrical engineer and i have found him to be an outstanding guy after a year

1:00:29 well i knew that earlier but very happy to have him on board and he's going to participate in tonight's presentation i have really two parts plus questions would prefer to do questions at the end so that we can move through our presentation at pace but if it is your desire to ask questions throughout then we will certainly be happy to to respond um so we have an existing situation that i'm going to cover and then then scott will talk about a prospective project um so for background i'd like to indicate that we have um about 4 500 lights it's growing um

1:01:14 almost daily about 3000 or 70 of our system is low pressure sodium high pressure sodium or metal halides low low pressure sodium dominates the the legacy white portion of the system and 30 are already led um some of that's new construction downtown lighting replacement and also the biggest factor is the low pressure sodium light fixtures are failing at very very high rates both the lamp inside and also the rest of the components you probably have seen some of those low pressure sodium lights are wrapped in electrician's tape and that's keeping the lens on so that's an indication of the overall condition sub is replacing those low pressure

1:02:00 sodium lights with led lights as those failures occur and that is creating a financial strain on us so let me continue on springfield utility board maintains all of the city-owned streetlight assets and we have a you know the legacy lights the high pressure sodium metal halide there's still a valid lighting source they have about a four to five year lifespan on just the light bulbs themselves and so they require frequent weight maintenance lps replacement parts are really really very much uh either hard or impossible to get they are a legacy type of technology

1:02:46 that is not being used many parts in the world in fact phillips which was the major manufacturer of low pressure sodium lamps exited the market about four or five years ago and so it's been second tier and third tier manufacturers making that product so it's it's very expensive to try and get that product we also are relying on our citizens to report outages and that leads to longer repair times sometimes citizens don't choose to report and we no longer are doing our quarterly surveys um that was a activity that was cut due to budget reasons many many years ago so this leads us to having both physical and financial needs

1:03:33 so i'd like to show you a cost breakdown of our prior year fiscal year the first two bullet points are our regular energy and operations and maintenance cost on an annual basis those um the energy bill is constrained by the uh the rates that sub announces each year and our energy rate is basically equivalent to the general service one schedule um that they have which is for commercial users and then our operations and maintenance charge is a monthly rate by fixture type so low pressure sodium pays one rate led pays a different rate based on the

1:04:18 actual cost of that maintenance within limits our maintenance bill can go up five percent per year per the existing intergovernmental agreement with so as a result of that it leads to the third bullet where we have um a significant deficit that we've been paying separately and apart so that we do not have that deficit continue to grow and there's a correction on the slide there we no longer have a hundred and twenty five thousand dollar remaining deficit we actually have a three hundred and five thousand deficit as of june 30th 2021. we have been trying to make payments against that deficit um at end of year when there are street funds available um

1:05:04 and so that has tried to whittle that down but that deficit will continue to grow because the cost of maintenance is exceeding the authorized amount that we can pay them because of the iga's five percent annual increase limit the city also purchases repair materials and we contract for repairs that can be anything from a you know a light pole that gets knocked down in a collision and so then we do that work to restore that light it also includes the kind of work where we have many decorative fixtures in some of our older neighborhoods and some of our not that old neighborhoods that were low

1:05:49 quality fixtures and those fixtures are um pretty much unusable and so we need to replace those fixtures outright so that's part of that forty three thousand and hundred and three thousand dollar cost so our total fiscal year 2021 cost was 650 000 now i will make note here before i turn the page is that right now um we if we were to replace our system fully we would be able to save about fifteen thousand dollars per month on bullet number one and bullet number two um we still would have the deficit to extinguish um and then we also would have the ongoing repair um of knockdowns which would be much less than the cost that we're currently

1:06:34 dealing with so our current operator operational challenges are physical needs on the first three bullets citizens reporting outages timeliness of repairs and the increasing frequency of those needed repairs because the infrastructure is uh degrading and is at the end of useful life in some situations timeliness and i want to make an a special point to note that we have numerous examples where repairs have taken several years because of budget limitations for example john hammer has a commercial subdivision just to the west of 42nd street and in that subdivision there was theft of wire there was damage to poles and there was destruction of the fixtures

1:07:22 mr hammer has been requesting repair of that for at least five years and we made a special effort just recently to put that under contract and so that will be taken care of but i'm not at all happy with having an entire subdivision out of light for five years but our budget constraints required that we also have in a neighborhood called riverglen north of haydenbridge road there's some of those older low-quality decorative fixtures that i mentioned previously those have gotten to the point where they have failed due to leakage water gets in them because of the deteriorating globes

1:08:07 we've replaced them with some to screw in led kits but they continue to repair fail and so we're working with that neighborhood to try and see if they are able to help us out a little bit and we're going to try and get that taken care of um but that's that's two examples of situations where it's taken quite a long time to uh do any work um we have not yet done river blend but we're we're about ready to launch that we have had extensive wire theft over the years and we have not yet been able to replace all of the wire that has been stolen as of yet so let me move on to the other three bullets there we have increasing operand and maintenance cost increasing energy

1:08:53 costs the rate of energy of course is going up um and then also just the total number of lights that we have is increasing so both of those increase on that basis um i mentioned low pressure sodium unavailability um so i'll move on from that so what is our current strategy our current strategy is simply replace the low pressure sodium fixtures with leds as they fail sub is doing that work for us um and we are doing the occasional fixture replacement of decoratives when those fixtures uh are failing so we're quite candidly we're falling a bit behind in how we're managing the system but that has a opportunity here for us and that

1:09:38 would be what are the advantages of leds i think many of you are probably familiar with that so i'm not going to belabor this we they use a lot less energy and they even use less maintenance over their 20-year life cycle we can also do a better level of lighting promoting traffic safety and also security in neighborhoods we oftentimes get citizens asking us for an improved light level um or a repair of a light because we you know they they perceive that there's a a problem with either vandalism or car prowls or burglary and so they they really like to see their lights restored there's also a wider range of colors available with leds from bright white

1:10:24 [Music] and into warm yellow the warm yellow is kind of like our low pressure sodium i'm not a real fan because there's not a great deal of actual eye to object visibility under that kind of light so we have pretty much standardized uh on on one kind of medium type of light and it seems to be working pretty well um on the leds we also plan to be able to incorporate lighting controls that allow a remote control from my desktop i could turn a light on turn it off i could change the output what's most exciting is that the controls will allow us to have automatic error reporting and we would be able to

1:11:11 dispatch repair much more quickly and without the citizens even needing to make contact with us we can also meter the energy use and because we're metering then we would choose to do some dimming and trimming and scott will cover what that means a little bit more uh later on and then we would okay so i hit the last bullet out of sequence there so um i would direct you also to look at uh we're not going to look at it here on screen but be just be reminded in the council briefing memorandum is an example of the services that an energy service company could provide and also there's an analysis of the city system that relates somewhat to the financial aspect that we discussed a moment ago

1:11:57 and should we go forward with a energy services company at the conclusion of today's meeting we would select that energy services company via an rf p or rfq request for proposals or quotes so now i've gone over what the problems are now i'd like to hand it off to scott and he can tell us what the solution might be and then we will ask for some direction at the end hi good evening uh mayor and counselors so i'm gonna go pretty quickly through this part to save a little bit of time for questions at the end uh you have you know you can see before

1:12:42 you a nice graphic this is not from springfield but it's kind of representative of what uh this type of lighting upgrade could look like and uh you can see you know the existing led lights that we already have in the city in a lot of places uh downtown and uh any of the new developments that we have tend to look more like the lighting on the right and less like the lighting on the left um so we're really excited about this opportunity but one of the best things about it is uh kind of the fact that the the project essentially um pays for itself so i'll explain that here in just just a minute um so we have an opportunity to uh well i guess i shouldn't say an opportunity we have a need to upgrade

1:13:28 all of our non-led fixtures to led there's a few different ways we could go about doing that there's we we looked in detail at uh kind of three different options one would be continuing the ad hoc status quo sort of replacement that we're doing now but that could be expanded to include the other legacy fixtures another option would be to do a conventional design bid build sort of process both of those options can take quite a long time and as brian mentioned it's actually costing us about fifteen thousand dollars a month or a hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year to

1:14:13 keep going down the path that we're going with the legacy fixtures um so really the faster that we can implement a solution uh the sooner we can start saving that money so an esco or an energy services company is um basically the fastest way to do it it would be essentially bringing on a company and esco is a pre-authorized pre-vetted by the state of oregon to deliver energy savings performance contracts and those are it's essentially a special part of the state law that kind of is in between a normal design build sort of thing and a construction project and so it would allow us kind of all in one shot

1:14:59 to put out a request for proposals and then hire a hire an energy services company so that company would before they do anything else they would audit our entire infrastructure and using that audit would then come up with a maximum project cost so they they're legally uh required to guarantee us a certain level of savings and then uh id they do it very conservatively so that ideally we can save even more than that so i'll show you a slide here next um with sort of a project cost uh timeline and these are conservative estimates um

1:15:45 keep in mind we haven't done the audit yet so it's uh it's based on our what we believe our existing inventory is and that will change somewhat when the audit is performed um in terms of paying for the project uh there's various different options to do that there can be you know a loan from a local bank or we could choose to finance it ourselves we will also look at any sort of grants that might be available or credits there may be arpa funding that might possibly be available to fund a project like this even if we don't have those grants or additional monies it's still a

1:16:30 financially beneficial project for us to pursue regardless um because even without those grants basically the the grants just make it so that we're saving money earlier on in the payback period um hey scott we're running a little bit yes sir on time um so can you flip maybe to the updating slide and see if uh and we can open this up for some comments sure absolutely so this is actually the last slide i have right here um it's just an example of kind of what the cost picture could look like so the the blue line on top is kind of our current baseline cost so if we don't do anything that's kind of what our cost would look like and projecting an increase year over year due to inflation and

1:17:17 energy costs and maintenance costs and then the blue bars on the bottom are a post implementation cost and then everything in between so it starts out as light blue and then it turns into the brownish color that's uh the light blue is essentially paying back the the project cost and then the brown is is savings so once you get to the end of life of these fixtures about the 20 year mark uh you're looking at potentially saving two to three million dollars over if we just maintained our existing system um so that's all i have for slides so uh thank you for pushing me along there and i'll turn it back to brian really quick

1:18:02 uh how about joe brian do you have anything to add before we open it up here no sir all right count for a pissionary thank you thank you uh thank you very much for the presentation um you realize that in 2004 is the reason why i ran for council because of the low pressure sodium lights that were present on main street and that there was a meeting on 2005 in re in regards to doing this very same thing and getting out of switching over the lights and how much money that would be saved going to the high pressure versus the low pressure lights so this whole thing is i this is anyway so big history here and and i am very

1:18:47 excited that the thought of of seeing how far we can toss those bulbs and lights out of the city i'm so for this i'm very excited i want to get right down here to some of the probably follow-up for me to get that information to me instead of burning so much time but i'm going to give you kind of some questions and i'd love to have some background because i want to support you and i want to support this project okay so um don't look at it as me trying to torpedo anything i i am excited okay so uh i want to look at the sub costs that we're getting charged um and plus the op you know we don't have any choice or any anything to do with the rates but i'm i'm very interested to see what our maintenance fees we're paying them and if there is any private sector that we

1:19:33 would be permitted by whatever whatever constraints we may or may not have i want that we have a duty to look at what private businesses can be doing that service for us because if we own the equipment then we have every right to choose who works on that equipment i believe um so let me let us know about that in regards to is there a cost savings potential there um on those uh those uh the the costs that we're so far behind um i guess that would just be uh made up by way of savings if we're shifting over to the leds so i'm really kind of shocked and kind of dismally shocked in regards to owing on 305 000 that we're behind that's totally uh no good

1:20:18 um i am is now that hammer property slash uh i know which fixtures you're talking about it's big globes with the ornate stems um but are we also are you talking about the replacement back clear back on the old one one mile pathway on 42nd is that not a lama lane facility now and are they partnering with us in regards to that or paying their their fair share in regards to the lighting on that or is that just going to go away and we're going to remove all everything out of there it is a city facility and we would need to repair it okay and and right on top of that then is that what type of i mean we already know what can happen there we already know we can they're going to strip lights or strip the wires out of there so i don't i can't support um replacing

1:21:05 those unless we have found a a a way to mitigate that and if it's effective otherwise there's no point in putting it in here but but if if we can mitigate that then then the quicker we can put them in there the better as far as i'm concerned so i'd be interested to see how that's getting mitigated and also the uh re coming to the remote access cost i want to see the cost benefit for that i it would be a great tool and it would be fun but is it is it really uh the cost benefit balance out is there you know is it uh something where with these lights with the with the great engineering they have and the less likelihood to um go out et cetera do we need that

1:21:50 you know as far as being told hey this lights out so i'd like to have a little more background in regards to that remote remote access and the justification if unless it's very inexpensive but if it's expensive then i'd want to take a look at that and then i totally agree with and support i think it's our responsibility to use the rfp process whenever possible instead of going to a straight you know i know you're using looking at mckinstry and etc so but i want to give other companies the shot at doing the work we may be able to get a better better price for it and that's that's our that's what we're supposed to be doing and that esco i was very i didn't know about the esko which is pretty pretty great to have that type of of background or the back door for us so if if is there different

1:22:37 is esco a company or is it different companies or a type of company i wasn't quite sure what you're saying there but if it's different companies then of course then i would want to see an rfp process for that as well i know that's a ton but it's something it's a it's a great topic i really enjoy it and and it's very important for the city because that's their appearance is everything and safety is everything and i'm really excited to get some of our darker neighborhoods lit up because the the car prowls or car clubs are getting very prevalent and a big issue okay brian or scott do you want to take a shot at some of look

1:23:26 multi-part question yeah um given given the the time frame um i would just request that we would be able to reply independently we will obviously give every member of the council uh the information but let's just can let's use a communication packet or something similar very good leonard and then we'll go to steve yeah i can make this real quick um i um i like the strategy of replacing the sodium lamps with the leds i think it makes sense and as fast as the sodium lamps are burning out i don't think that it's going to be a significant difference from just going ahead and preemptively replacing them all um the the one thing that i like

1:24:12 better about the sodium lamps just from an aesthetic standpoint is the warm yellow light i i like the warm yellow light i think it's prettier so that's uh that's my vote well i'm glad joe and you are on opposite sides of the city he hates the warm yellow light all right steve okay there's no time for me to ask my questions but i do have a lot of questions and quite frankly i have a lot of arguments against doing this program but i will put them in writing and we'll talk about it later thank you um can you make sure yeah can you make sure you send the questions to the staff so we may have to find a little bit more time and then i've got a piece i'm going to write them out i'll give them to you thank you all right i'm sorry i would i'd definitely like to hear what you what questions you have steve for sure okay

1:24:59 anybody else all right so um it sounds like we're probably gonna need a little bit more time with this um one one question i did have was when you look at the third party vendor and i looked at this when i looked at the slide for total savings and the payoff period uh does it if if we when if uh when you look at the cost associated to it does it actually benefit us a little bit more to sort of front load that with one time cost like so if we came up with the money and did the whole project now right like what would the savings difference be it would be everything under that curve um that's in light blue all of that light blue was debt service so if you pay for

1:25:45 the project up front then that is no longer death service that's automatically savings to the street fund okay so i think my i think my question is i think we're nancy i think we're gonna have to find a little bit more time to kind of get to get to an answer i think we definitely want to pursue this right and i think it's a matter of the how and especially with um consideration about how we're using those relief funds um i know this project was on that list and it may be some combination of that like all in the relief funds or you know all through this third-party vendor okay we will follow up with that in our discussion regarding those funds perfect all right anything else brian or scott thank you very much we appreciate the

1:26:31 input and look forward to our next discussion i am going to adjourn this and we will be back in three minutes on this very channel so stay tuned we are adjourned

1:30:42 aj are you ready to go yes all right i'm going to call the springfield city council regular session to order uh with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here counselor mo okay here sorry counselor rodney here counselor here councillor woodrow here and counselor pictionary i'm here all right please join me in the pledge of allegiance

1:31:30 i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states the united states of america into the region to the republic for which it stands one nation one nation under god indivisible with liberty as we begin our meeting tonight i would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us online to please keep yourself on mute until you are called on to provide public testimony there will be two times this evening designated as public testimony and will be listed as public hearings and business from the audience on the agenda if you're joining us online with a tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak during that time please use the raise hand feature when the agenda item is called

1:32:16 when we're when when we call on you please state your name ward and gen our general location for the record first item please here the first item is the consent calendar ready i'm ready steve i'd like to make a motion that we uh we adopt approved the consent calendar second all right so we have a motion and it's been seconded by counselor pictionary uh neil can you call the role please yes counselor pitts aye councillor mo here yes councillor bradley yes councillor stare aye councillor woodrow

1:33:10 all right motion passes 6-0 next item please mayor the next item is public hearings you have one public hearing this evening public hearing number one annexation of territory to the city of springfield annex 0.4 acres of property located at 186 deadman ferry road assessors map 17-03-14-0 tax slot 1500 and a portion of the deadman ferry public right-of-way of budding the property this is ordinance number two an ordinance annexing certain territory addressed as 186 deadman ferry road assessors map 17-03-14-0 tax lot 1500 and a portion of the deadman ferry public right-of-way butting the subject property to the city

1:33:56 of springfield and willamelain park and recreation district withdrawing the same territory from the rainwood water and fire district adopting a severability clause and providing an effective date this is a second reading and melissa courinho is here for the staff report thanks neil greetings mayor and city councilors this is the second reading for this annexation application on september 7th the council continued the hearing and held the record open until today no additional testimony has been received by staff at the first reading there were still some unresolved issues one confirmation of availability and capacity for sub-services and two finalizing the annexation agreement now that the issues have been resolved i

1:34:42 would like to go through the four approval criteria for annexations again listed in the springfield development code section 5.7-140 and go over how the proposal meets these criteria one the subject territory is contiguous to city limits along the western boundary international way is already in city limits two policies from both the city's metro plan and the 2030 comprehensive plans urbanization elements are met through this application the subject territory is within the city's urban growth boundary otherwise known as the ugb and is currently covered by the urbanizable fringe overlay

1:35:30 three if annexation is approved the subject territory can easily obtain key facilities and services from deadman ferry road just south of the site again these facilities and services will include sanitary sewer connection sub water and electric service fire protection services from eugene springfield fire department police services from springfield police and willamalan parks and recreation district and the final criteria is about the annexation agreement um so an annexation agreement is included in the second reading packet tonight the agreement covers obligations for the applicant and for the city including any financial responsibilities the applicant has already signed the agreement and if the annexation is approved by city council the agreement

1:36:15 will be ready to be signed and executed by the city the agreement would then be recorded with lane county because all applicable annexation criteria have been met and annexation will help facilitate um full street improvements in this neighborhood when future development happens as well as bring this property into city limits staff recommends the council approve this application thank you counselors i'm here for any questions you may have i believe the applicants are also in attendance if you have questions for them all right so mary bridget with the hearing with the public hearing still open do i need to solicit additional comment from the publisher yes we'll go ahead and ask if there's anybody wanting to testify and then you can report and close the hearing okay

1:37:01 perfect so if anybody wants to testify to this matter um please raise your hand in the chat and neil will invite you up mayor i'm not seeing anyone with a raised hand at this point i am not either okay um i'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing and then turn it back over to council for any deliberations or additional questions i uh i don't know how to turn my microphone off i don't have turn on we don't make a decision tonight do we

1:37:48 that's correct answer mode no decision tonight okay sorry to interrupt there sorry to jump in this is the continuation of the public hearing and a second reading no action requested okay joe just a quick comment look at this packet i appreciate all the work you put into that it was it's uh very clear and it's a good job that's all thank you all right any other comments it isn't very good then it is no action required so i think we're ready to move to the next item next item please mayor the next item is business from the audience

1:38:36 all right if you have business for us please raise your hand and then neil will invite you up mayor we have a hand we have a few hands going up or a couple of hands um just a reminder we have 36 attendees in the audience today our first speaker is elizabeth utterbeck followed by amy cothron elizabeth you should be able to unmute your microphone on your side thank you i'm unmuted i hope you can hear me we can okay this is lizzie utterback from ward 3. i was listening to the work session this evening and i find it interesting how much you don't want to spend money

1:39:21 on a special election but you'll shell it out for lawsuits for harmful and deadly policing exorbitant liability insurance as a result of these lawsuits and for police toys without batting an eye for example i've seen some hefty policing expenditures in the consent calendar tonight included that you approve without even discussing so when you say you're trying to be fiscally responsible i don't automatically accept that you know spd's budget keeps rising yet the city apparently doesn't have the funds to replace street lights things aren't adding up i also found it interesting when councilor woodrow stated tonight that you've all been elected to represent us but that isn't exactly true um currently

1:40:09 there are at least two of you that were not elected and i do um recall if i recall correctly mayor van gorden was first appointed as a counselor and then appointed as mayor so there's a concerning domino effect with these appointments moreover counselor pictionary says the system isn't broken but how are you measuring that i actually didn't want to talk about the charter but i really didn't like how you handled the mayoral appointment so of course i had to throw in my two cents about this which is hard to do especially after i listen to you say that you think of commenters as uninformed and potentially as loud valves anyways what i wanted to comment on tonight is some of the comments at the

1:40:55 last meeting i heard man mayor van gorden encourage us to trust you to trust that you are working on policing and taking care of it i just want you to understand that when i hear that i cringe i cringe because lives have been lost i cringe because it took a settlement to mandate better policing in springfield i cringe because you regurgitate mandates from the settlement back to us as if those changes were your ideas as if you had a choice about whether or not to implement those changes i want you to know that i noticed that so my question for council tonight is how do you plan to continue to improve policing without being forced to as a

1:41:42 result of a lawsuit and mandated reforms thank you thank you lizzy mayor the next speaker is amy cothran followed by and deal brown amy you should be able to unmute the microphone from your side yes uh good evening everyone my name is amy catherine formerly of ward 5 but thankfully no longer a springfield resident uh tonight i'm going to talk about something that's not quite as near and dear to your heart of you know as near and dear to your heart as like you know high pressure or low pressure sodium lights uh i am talking to you in reference to a

1:42:30 police complaint that i filed earlier this year uh at the back end of it i had realized based on what the officer who had conducted the original investigation that he had lied in a report i forwarded an email showing this lie i forwarded a video illustrating that what he had said was indeed a lie and none of you thought it was worth your time thought it was worth any type of effort to get back to me concerning an officer clearly and blatantly lying on a report in action which might i remind you got the last chief of police in a point where he

1:43:15 resigned from his position because of it so i just want to know from each one of you uh why you're fine with police officers faking information on reports and i will see the rest of my time thank you thank you amy i think we're ready for the next person here the next person we have is andeal brown and we don't have any other hands at this point so andy you should be able to unmute the microphone on your side hello can you all hear me we can hi my name is andy l brown i am um in ward one and um i want to speak to you all about

1:44:03 um generally the the relations between the city of springfield and uh and its non-white residents um uh as we've seen in the last year and some months there has been a lot of civil unrest and my fear is that if if things aren't changed that it will just take the next event to spark another um another issue an incident because there are some underlying issues that obviously have not been uh addressed and or resolved um and uh fixed so um i would like for for something to be done

1:44:55 so that this this uh relationship can be repaired and that the the community as it stands definitely is um is divided and that is a problem um the city of springfield in my estimation cannot be a great city with that continuing um i definitely feel as though we can come up with solutions and strategies to make it a more inclusive more uh communal city that will support and uplift every one of its members but i know that from from many conversations that i've had with many different uh uh citizens for of many different ethnic backgrounds that there is

1:45:40 definitely a feeling of um uh unwelcomeness uh for many different reasons um but we definitely i feel that we should have a conversation and find a solution to these issues um and i am definitely open for having that conversation and assisting in any way that i can um and uh that's all i have i'd see the rest of mayor it appears those are all the hands we have up at this point

1:46:27 all right uh does anybody want to make any council response leonard thank you mayor van gorden i i just want to thank all the speakers for coming out to speak tonight um lizzie utterback and um amy kathryn and um especially andrea brown who i don't think we've heard from before i i i want to say that your words are definitely not falling on deaf ears tonight and i also want to say that the very unfortunate incidents that have brought these lawsuits down on the city of springfield have also not gone on unheeded by the by the council and i am hope i'm hopeful that it's not

1:47:13 that they're not going unheeded by the uh by the pde either um i am very grateful to the kenny family as part of their settlement making a use of force policy review part of the settlement and that the the reform of the use of force in springfield has resulted from that i'm also hopeful that some of the um if if there is an adverse ruling from some of the others from some of the other um litigation against us that we'll learn from that too without any further comment on those um anyway i i'm very grateful to the public for coming out on a weekly basis and uh speaking to us

1:47:58 and i want to encourage everybody in the public who is speaking to continue and anybody who's out there listening to this meeting tonight who has an opinion to please come out and state it thank you all right next item please what damian welcome well once again thank you all for commenting now and i just want to commend indiana brown for speaking up i know that uh that means at least since i've been on

1:48:44 council i haven't heard his voice and i'm really glad that we have other voices uh and i will say that i think that many of us are very open uh but one thing that i've seen is that when we say we're open it's not an actual conversation it's a chastisement and granted i get real real thick skin but you're not going to talk to me and i'm not talking about you india but i don't want anybody to talk to me like i'm some child and so we need to get to a point where uh we can be civil uh to each other but then also we need to get to a point where we don't have the same people speaking for other people i mean you have and i've mentioned this before the word allies thrown around so much in the

1:49:30 state of oregon and sometimes the loudest voices are those who actually aren't even going through it not all the time but a lot of times and so uh i would love to see the you know those people those minoritized individuals come to council reach out to us uh that way we can talk to them directly versus second and third hand information um and so like i said and i think many of us are pretty open and transparent but we are on a pandemic and so meeting all the time in person is probably not going to happen and i need people to give us just a pinch of grace thank you

1:50:18 very good next item please here the next item is ordinances you have one item under ordinances tonight item number one a request for a metro plan diagram amendment and zone change for 1.14 acres of property located at the northwest corner of marcola road and 28th street this is ordinance number three an ordinance amending the eugene springfield metropolitan area general plan or the metro plan diagram by redesignating approximately 1.14 acres of land from medium density density residential mdr to commercial sea concurrently amending the springfield zoning map by rezoning the same approximately 1.14 acres of land from mdr to community commercial cc adopting a severability clause and providing an effective date this is the

1:51:04 second reading and andy limbert is here for the staff report yes good evening mr mayor and counselors at the conclusion of the public hearing meeting um on september 7th my understanding is that counselors still had questions related to some of the information that was presented through the applicant's transportation study unfortunately personally i was called out of town for family reasons and so i was unable to respond but i believed that information was conveyed to counselors making inquiries and so

1:51:50 staff's request is either to confirm that all questions have been satisfactorily addressed through the information in the record or alternatively if there are still questions unanswered to allow staff to address those by reopening the public hearing and also allowing the applicant to provide any supplementary information that might be necessary to answer any questions that council might still have um it it was questions that came after staff's direct involvement with the hearing on september 7th so i was not partying to all the communications between um i believe was the city attorney's office and counselors that were making inquiries so um i'm here to answer any questions and i guess i would defer to

1:52:35 um our council legal counsel for protocol um should there be a need to reopen the public hearing all right corey thank you i was one of those troublemakers maybe i was the only one of those troublemakers and you're just being super diplomatic um but all i i want i just want to say that yes all of the questions that i had were answered and additionally i went this is the the marcola meadows in that corner is in my ward um and i also went there twice and got out and wandered around to make sure that i had a good understanding of what

1:53:20 was in the transportation plan because as some of you may recall my concerns are just just the increased use and what's happening there traffic wise but i did get my questions answered so i don't i'm not no need to reopen and derail um and i just want to really appreciate that staff were so responsive and gave me what it was that i needed so that i could get up to speed on it because we do want walkable neighborhoods and we do want to improve the transportation and we do need housing so thank you i'd just like to state uh for staff's perspective it is no trouble um and certainly there's every opportunity to address questions um whether through normal um

1:54:05 channels or through the public hearing process it's staff's intent to have counsel completely satisfied with their decision and fully informed i just had a question the questions that corey asked was she only was she the only person that got the responses the communication of the responses because sometimes we somebody asks a question we're interested in the answers and so it would be helpful if we all received the information i'm not sure that that happened i i don't remember seeing it but i could have been my fault

1:54:51 too so i'm just checking um counselor woodrow i can help answer that question there were questions about the transportation system plan and um those were just um given to counselor rodley um i don't think they went out to the whole council okay okay i just sometimes that questions come up and it and it isn't just the individual to ask the question that's interested in the in the answers so sure we could um if you could give me a second i might be able to christina's listening in and she's the one had that conversation and she might be able to give a summary here if you just hold on a second

1:55:37 neil is it possible to make christina a panelist and then she can put it in that it's information that's already in the record she could just give a little summary she's already been pulled up thank you great and i just need to go switch tabs to get to that um get to the right place where i sent the email [Music] okay so um i first it was a link to the transportation system plan which is in the record um and that was and then also the background information which i think is already reflected in the record or in the legislative history of the council that the tsp the transportation system

1:56:24 plan was developed when the subject property was previously zoned for commercial mixed use and it includes project r28 which was originally planned to serve a mixed-use commercial area before that area was changed to residential in 2021 and then before this request to change it back to commercial again so essentially the planned projects that are in the plans and those planned projects haven't been um changed in the tsp reflected in earlier commercial zoning that were not going back to an identical version of but similar um and then i also provided follow-up information about um this the step that is required to follow this it's a condition of approval on the zone change which is to amend the marcola meadows master plan to reflect um the

1:57:11 change of zoning in that in the master plan and the master plan modification includes criteria of approval that specifically get at transportation system capacity and parking and ingress and egress so those criteria would be applied at the level of modifying the master plan to the extent that the master plan doesn't already capture um those items with the previously planned and zoned residential use my understanding was that is that um there the requirement will be that it can it will continue to reflect things that were in there that would accommodate transportation capacity but that's a condition of approval on your decision recommended condition of approval for your decision tonight thank you yeah

1:57:56 and i have noted that really good feedback about providing the response next time to the entire council i um wasn't really sure that other people had similar questions sometimes we nod in silence when somebody asks a question [Laughter] all right any other questions all right steve i think you're up okay okay i'd like to make a motion that we adopt ordinance number three got the right one yeah yes second all right uh we have it has been moved by councillor mo and second of my counselor pictionary i'm neil can you call the role please yes councillor pitts

1:58:41 all right councillor mo yes council rodley yes councillor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and council missionary hi all right the motion passes 6-0 next item please next item is any business from the city council yes hey dude steve i've got about four things here i've saved up and it only takes me a couple of minutes first first one is since a year i've been trying to help change our police culture and and that's just a simple word for i want to make things better but another thing was our appearance and i suggested a year ago that we

1:59:26 changed our police car colors black is like a swat team and it sends a bad message and in our our purchases today they change the colors to silver i hope my suggestion helped make that happen but but i i love that direction and that was the right thing to do as far as i'm concerned so thank you now going on uh there was a reported police vehicle crash into a tree you know i don't know much about that but i've been asked about it and can i get any information about the incident and is there any any dash cam footage available yet or some way to look at that incident and that's all i have there going on west d street there's a lot of discussion of dealing with it with the interaction of bike

2:00:12 traffic and remodeling of west d street i've got arthritis in my thumb it's hard for me to write it's hard for me to read my writing by the way so go back and uh dealing with the increase in bike traffic and regions in the redesign of west 11th that is a in a process right now in the meantime the car traffic is increasing in lots of bikes but the speeding of cars is a big problem in a presentation some months ago staff showed a profile of a traffic slowing speed bump i'm not talking about the big ones because they cause anger in me but but gentler style that encourages traffic slowing what can be done to add a couple of those and stripe them

2:00:57 as possible it'll be changed later but for the time being so uh one other question there's been a request to find ways to slow traffic on summit drive going up kelly butte it's curvy road no sidewalks some people walk in the street i live up there and they do speed by one last thing here i've mentioned many times the fatalities that prank the bull bird in front of marbles the past year past two years i've seen six to eight deaths the curve going towards eugene has some warning signs i'm not sure how good they were were but they helped if they helped a little a life was saved the last couple of car crashes some of them were motorcycles and wiped out those warning signs they laid on the

2:01:43 ground for a while and then disappeared and not replaced uh i can go on with some other things but what could be done to look at the situation uh i know we're going to get infrastructure sometime franklin boulevard is going to be rebuilt but in in the meantime people are still losing their lives the presses thank you so and i i guess i have maybe two comments and then nancy if maybe you can talk more specifically to steve's questions um so

2:02:28 the when i want to hear steve sort of just described kind of some of the infrastructure issues that we're having and i know we've kind of talked about some of this uh long term when we talked about where the biden money and sort of building sort of capability to start getting somebody's addressed could you talk about is something happening out that portion of that not phase one of glenwood but like steve's steve's right about that corner out that's further up glenwood are we involved in that in any way what's going on out there i would need to check on that um neil if you neil is our contact with public works i don't know if um if you have any update on that one particular area i know we are aware of it um

2:03:14 and certainly signs are not a difficult thing to do i just don't know if it's already in the project queue yeah so the the franklin boulevard area as you know is extremely dangerous there are utility poles that are not undergrounded and i think that's mostly what folks are often hitting when they are driving on that road and so it is a concern we do have a list that our development and public works department has put together of recent incidents so we can track them and i will talk to that talk to folks tomorrow and see if there is something in the works i know it's it's part of potentially a phase two of franklin boulevard i think it goes down that far but yeah you are correct councilor mo it is

2:03:59 um unfortunate all of main street into franklin boulevard is a relatively dangerous corridor so there is quite a bit of safety improvements going on uh both on main street with councillor woodrow and the mayor working on a lot of those safety improvements and also in glenwood oh i know that and and i was going to say something i've seen 17 fatalities in that corner over the years and they're human lives and they're precious but they're all vehicle uh fatalities no pedestrians so it has not become very important to the public and like i said they're still precious but i know i know franklin boulevard is going to be rebuilt infrastructure money i hope is going to do it but that's going to be a few years down the

2:04:44 road in the meantime i hope that maybe we can get some signs up there and help maybe save a few lives in the meantime that would help very good um one other comment i would like to make is the main street facility plan i saw the email come out from uh public works that the draft plan is available it is open for public comment right now um we've worked on main street for a very very long time and this would be the blueprint um that both the planning commission the council will be taking up at some point in the near future about how to design improvements along main street so i would encourage folks if they haven't seen it haven't read it um like

2:05:30 it's on the city's uh social media channels please take a chance read it get your public input uh get your public input heard and then i did have the opportunity um i went out with uh bonnie mickelson today we we had a chat about springfield economic progress and um and what the chamber is doing and what the city is doing out at the lions club this afternoon at uh roaring rapids pizza was great the scenery was great but it was a really good conversation that went from everything for with uh with a local community group from everything to you know uh infrastructure to uh economic development to you know as we come out of 2021 how do we really just come together as a community and

2:06:15 move forward all right any other business from the council all right next item please there we have two items under business from the city manager item number one the dlcd grant application for natural resources inventories and protections this is a resolution number one a resolution in support of a grant application seeking planning assistance from the oregon department of land conservation and development to update the springfield natural resources study and adopt water quality limited water courses for springfield's urban growth boundary expansion areas monica sather is here for the staff report good evening mayor van gorden and

2:07:01 council in a belated welcome back um a topic of focus for planning staff has been to define a framework for development in the areas where our urban growth boundary recently expanded this expansion set out to accommodate a needed long-term supply for employment sites and to bring key public lands into springfield's jurisdiction i can share a map visual later on if needed and one of several early steps we are taking to understand where development may be best cited in our expansion areas um is to figure out which of our non-built assets like wetlands and riparian corridors in the expansion areas warrant our local protection in addition to state and federal requirements so this natural resource project started

2:07:46 last year and we've made steady progress but still need to better understand our wildlife habitats and to establish some of our stormwater protections once this is done we'll be able to come to a decision point for how to protect these resources next year and seek direction from council then to get us there this is another project that planning proposes to seek a grant for from the oregon department of land conservation and development's technical assistance grant program we're grateful for our success in getting this type of funding from the last grant cycle and we think we have a good chance at an award this year this next round of funding would primarily support consultant work and additional expertise in staff capacity from the lane council of governments

2:08:31 at this time we propose that the amount of city funds that would go toward the optional financial match for the grant not exceed the amount we've already budgeted for the project this fiscal year lastly one required piece of the application is council support for the project hence the request before you this evening for a resolution as demonstration of this support with that uh are there any questions i can help answer your thoughts council would like to share joe did you have questions you popped back up pretty quick no i just re-established connections so i could uh see everybody ready

2:09:16 go for it okay i make a motion that we approve resolution number one second all right uh it's been moved and seconded uh neil can you call the role please yes counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes council bradley yes counselor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and counselor patient area all right all right promotion passes 6-0 next item please next item is any other business from the city manager no further business thank you any business from the city attorney

2:10:03 all right then it looks like we are adjourned thank you everybody have a good night everybody