Springfield City Council — October 4, 2021

0:02 when you're ready aj i am ready i will call the springfield city council work session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillors pitts here no here bradley here stare here woodrow here missionary and counselor pissionary is excused for the evening we have one item tonight which is the eugene springfield fire consolidation update with chief heppel hello chief over are you ready for me to go or is there i am reading an intro

0:53 you're the whole entertainment i'm the warm-up and the show here we go all right thank you mayor i'm going to share my screen with you mayor councillor city managers uh good evening chris huppel i'm the interim fire chief for eugene springfield fire and uh here tonight to give you an update on um the consolidation of eugene springfield fire you should receive a short aas on this as well as um the slides before this evening that i'll be using some of the topics i'm going to address this evening we'll talk a little bit about the history of eg springfield fire and the functional consolidation and where we're at today we'll look at our total service area um where we're providing operations on a daily basis we'll take a look at

1:39 some of the finance pieces as a consolidated organization we'll also look at some challenge areas that we deal with on a regular basis as well as many successes that we've seen over the years of consolidation and then i'll provide just some thoughts um going forward and then i'll certainly open up to questions at the end um from a historical perspective um you know what's been the overall objective of the of the functional consolidation and potential eventual merge of the organization is first enhance our service effectiveness as well as safety and that safety for our community as well as the firefighters themselves and folks working the line every day the other piece is moving towards standardization and service delivery

2:25 so just from a you know equity perspective every community member whether in eugene springfield or in one of our seven contract districts receives the same level of service as everyone else the other piece is uh to improve some uh cost efficiencies um so you know when we start to reduce things down to single supply lines um you know one ems chief one fire chief those types of things we wanted to take advantage of and improve some cost efficiencies there a couple of things um just as we talk about just some terminology many times folks will use the same term and try and understand the same thing so i'm going to start with some definitions just to begin with we as an organization started as two separate organizations so we were literally units apart from themselves

3:11 and then we started coming together just over a decade ago and we consider ourselves consolidated around 2014 and that's when the line so those folks who are working on the engines the trucks and the ambulances every day um work together as a single unit um regardless of the employer um they could work in any station and so consolidation is where we're at now where we've combined a number of things um to work in a single more effective and coherent hole as a mature hole and then certainly the one of the directions we could go is for a full merger and that is where we combine or bring everything together in a single entity and so um right now we are considered a consolidated for me we are

3:56 considered a consolidated organization um as we continue to operate i'm going to talk a little bit more about that um on this next slide so if we go all the way back to 2007 yes 14 years ago um this the concept of being a consolidated organization came around and it started at the operational level first to increase our efficiency across um the um geopolitical boundary or simply the the city limits of both cities um because we had three separate battalions and so each battalion is made up in our system as anywhere from five to six stations each of the battalions is supervised by a battalion chief on a daily basis um we had a baton we have two battalions in eugene and we have one battalion in springfield and so when we bring those

4:42 together we call that the three battalion or the third battalion system um the way they're numbered today is uh battalion one and two um are in eugene and three is in springfield and so um the both organizations started operating while maintaining their separate identities um across lines just to improve service delivery as a whole and also for firefighter safety in la 809 we started having some joint elected officials meetings where we talked about a functional consolidation as well as improvements to the ambulance transport system we continued to move forward with some integrating some responses with our standardized metro operating procedures we call them sops so that again we're more and more in

5:27 alignment with the way we operate on a daily basis and then around 2010 2011 we did the first mou or memorandum of understanding where a single fire chief was over both organizations so that corresponded with chief murphy's retirement and then at the time chief groves became the chief over both organizations yet still very separate organizations about a year later we saw um another mou that started to combine what some would call our support entities so fire prevention investigation training programs etc we started to see those functions or divisions within our organization come together and operate um together to provide standardized services uh we also started to dabble

6:13 with um taking battalion or division chiefs at the time on the eugene site putting them in springfield and also bringing over some folks from springfield over into the eugene side so we could start gaining some experience from the top as we move down through the organization in 2013 we saw a billing um was merged so we now have a consolidated billing organization or unit as we still do today um and then in 2014 was the big move um we got we had moved forward with one single um contract um for the firefighters and uh in august of 2014 so seven almost seven years ago um is when all the firefighters engineers and captains um and and battalion chiefs on the line um were assigned um to the appropriate stations regardless of who

6:58 their employer was and we continue to operate in that same capacity today um since 2015 and up until you know 2021 we've just continued to focus on efficiencies to improve our level of services we tried to reduce like the number of types of computer systems and applications that we use um we've also just streamlined many of our normal internal processes as a whole so that's been our history our historical timeline um for the consolidation to this point with or four eugene springfield fire therefore to take that and put it into four phases um first phase would have been um the three battalion system and really bringing things um together um phase two was a functional was really starting to bring us together is a

7:44 functional consolidation so that's where um two government entities working together for a common goal and we would do that through what's called an iga or an intergovernmental agreement or what's also called an ors 190 agreement we continued on to phase three which was trying was to operate as a functionally consolidated organization under the moniker of a single department which is eugene springfield fire today to help normalize our workforce we're more integrated integrated scheduling logistics and i'm also moving towards more common record management systems and then the fourth phase which would be a final phase would be a merged form of governance um for the organization but right now um we're at this phase three point right now

8:33 if you look at our service delivery as a whole we actually service about 287 000 citizens over 1500 square miles yes that's much larger than the geographic city limits of both eugenia springfield but not only but we have our seven contract districts um as well as our ambulance service area if you didn't know goes quite a ways up um the mckenzie highway um and then we have a priest large area over on the eugene side as well but certainly not as large as our uh springfield ambulance service area which that highway 58 corridor and again all the way up highway 126 up in the kinsey river so quite a ways up there our fire suppression rescue and ems response within those cities in our contract area is about 92 square miles again our annual service area is about 1676.

9:19 calls for service in fiscal year 21 we saw almost 40 000 calls and in fiscal year 21 we saw just over 40 000 calls for this year if you're just looking at the numbers we haven't broke down into three categories the top line of the red line is our ems calls for service which account for about 80 to 85 of all of our calls for service uh the next line is our non-fire type calls so this could be like hazardous materials water rescue lift assist public assist those types of things and then the last line is our fire calls and so we're still we had a change in our data management system um this year so we're still tweaking our numbers we know the whole numbers are pretty close uh but we'll be

10:04 tweaking them for accuracy here in in the next couple of days as we finish up our annual report but we did see um certainly a rise in number of fires in fy 21. just want to make sure that they're that high remember i talked about the three battalion system um and again we work um you know across both cities um in this fashion and this graphic here just shows our general layout um of not only the contract districts we serve but also where our fire stations are located um if you want to talk about funding or the finance for the department so this is for the department as a whole um so we'll look at the first pie chart on the upper left-hand corner about 73 percent of our funding comes from general fund we have a small portion that comes from

10:50 the springfield fire levy we've got some building permits as well as the airport um on the eugene side we do operate the second busiest airport in the state of oregon so we have a full-time um aircraft rescue firefighter team or crew out there and then we also about 20 of our revenue comes from ambulance services uh if you bump down to the horizontal graph right below that pie chart the first one is our general fund breakdown and where do things predominate our funding predominantly comes from uh in terms of our tax base um is about 91 percent uh seven percent come from our fire districts because they're like i said those are contract districts so we receive reimbursement for service to those areas um and then about two percent is our permits and fees

11:35 now ambulance services is a significant amount of what we do as well remember it's 85 percent of our calls and certainly has a large impact on our funding if you go to the next bar down our ambulance transport fee component here we get about 68 comes from actually doing the transports and reimbursement medicare and medicaid our largest reimbursement or largest payers is the term that we use here firebed accounts for about eight percent of it um our beginning working capital at the beginning of the year usually accounts for about one percent we have gent money which is um brown emergency medical transport funding which we started to receive a couple of years ago and that is for funding to help us make up

12:21 the difference between our medicaid patients for our oregon health plan patients and costs to provide service i can certainly go into further feedback on that and then certainly our recoveries fees as well so this is where we go out for service for motor vehicle accidents um use of flares minor equipment lift assist etc um you'll also notice there a transfer in so that was on the eugene side where we saw a infusion of funding from the general fund as well as the newer community safety initiative funding so that covers all of our funding sources on the left hand side if you slide over to the right side is our expenditures so about 87 percent of our expenditures our personnel costs

13:06 um about seven percent are m s or materials and services um a slight amount and this was just um for this year coming up we don't have a whole lot of capital outlay that would be different um we looked at last year where we did have some more significant capital outlay we also have our indirect service charges and then our dispatch fees so overall um eugene is just under about 50 million dollars springfield is about 21 million dollars for a total of about 70 million dollars for our total budget uh for the gene springfield fire um looking at some current challenges um of the phase three to phase four um transition um just with our current governance model it certainly presents some challenges across the different areas and in this particular case i i

13:51 highlight three different areas one is employee equity the next is hr policy and the third is standardization of service and you'll know that in many you'll notice that in many of these cases they can be or be perceived as being overlapping um so probably one of our first ones is um one of the challenges with just having two separate employers can can sometimes be an issue that drives some differences between payroll systems um and then we have multiple drives multiple labor agreements so for us we have four four separate contracts within our organization that are managed uh we have six separate labor slash management groups and we experience challenges while on the line it's really simple to move a firefighter from one station to

14:36 another when we start talking about our administrative staff it becomes much more difficult because they are they're assigned or employees of um a different employer next one i'm just kind of moving around the clockwise turn here on just some pay disparity whether it's between benefits insurance employee resources certainly much of that can be driven by the different labor contracts and again separate employers we also see some differences in in permit fees between the fire marshal's office and we know that there's some frustrations with like say contractors as an example who's like well why does it cost me this in eugene for the same permit as it costs for me over in springfield it just doesn't make any sense and so there are some disparage

15:21 challenges there contract and purchasing processes are different between the two cities while we've gotten a little bit better over the years still in the end it's two separate contracting systems and then certainly i.t issues and challenges as simple as it could be with emails to what computers are operating and how they operate in springfield may be different than the way that they're used and operated in eugene as a springfield person getting access in eugene computer et cetera those types of i would say many of us experience in the i t challenge world so um those are some of the challenges um that we experience um here as we move from as we live in phase three and then move towards whatever phase four may be but certainly we've had a tremendous

16:06 amount of successes that are associated with that and in this piece whether it's standardization or gain through efficiencies and shared strengths we've had consistency of operations what is probably the best part is our community members are receiving the same level of service every time that our system can support and so that's that's just awesome and amazing um code application um while the prices may be different we do our best to standardize our code application as well as training our ems equipment fire equipment etc and we've also developed a more appropriate tiered ambulance response and that's been our effort over the last few years to get the right patient the right uh the right patient to the right resource to the right level of

16:52 care via the right mode of transportation so i call those our patient rights um efficiencies um we've had reduced time and structure fires because we have the ability to put more people on scene mitigate the fire clean up from the fire and get those units back into service single training i talked about supply order distribution systems as well as admin some other shared strengths is our interoperability and depth of resources we can reach back or reach deeper in to our pool and bring them forward whether it's for major incidents or general alarms or even supporting um conflagration across the state we've also modified our computer-aided dispatch pieces so it doesn't matter what jurisdiction you're in it's going to start picking the closest most appropriate apparatus for your emergency regardless of geopolitical

17:38 boundaries talked a little bit about search capacity already and then also a system for sharing reserve apparatus um you know does the springfield need to have a whole another ladder um reserved ladder if eugene has one and we have three ladder trucks and we just use those around or trucks however that works so we've been able to reduce our reserve fleet a little bit which certainly saves us some money because we can share equipment across the board so going forward uh considerations certainly for the direction as we can as an organization we are continuing to function as a consolidated organization to this day there could also be some considerations in the future to move towards more of a single budget single employer single governance model and certainly there's um there's a an

18:23 option to discontinue the functional consolidation and there could be some other things in between there as law or rules may apply but overall our focus is on providing standardized delivery of safe and effective service at a more efficient cost and i think we've certainly done that certainly from the standardization delivery um and safety perspective and so i'll end with um two things one is our next steps um we are currently just so you know we're currently we finished a updated version of our intergovernmental agreement that's being reviewed with legal right now and as soon as that's done we'll move those up to the city managers for consideration um basically the updates that i've made with the team this summer was to just have the iga reflect more of how we're

19:08 operating today for us to be more efficient and hopefully break down some barriers i certainly make a recommendation as i did to the eugene side was create a joint jurisdictional oversight committee i know that mayor van gorden has assigned a couple of uh council members to that i'm just looking forward to maybe starting that that committee up sometime in the near future as you know i'm the interim chief so we'll continue on with our chief recruitment process so we did one this summer it looks like we're probably going to take a little bit of a hiring pause and i will move forward probably with another process in the future under the direction of the city managers now i dropped a whole lot of information on you in a very short period of time so i will send you home as any good person with plenty

19:54 of reading if you want to read a little bit more in depth there you've got specific questions um we do have our annual report our latest annual report which closed out in july hopefully we'll be posting the next week or two we also completed a community risk assessment last year and this goes across both cities as well as our seven contract districts and last year we also updated our standards of response coverage for our whole system and basically what that does is that tells us what capacity capabilities and things what we can do it also addresses things that we can't do um as well just from a liability perspective uh with that um mara turn it back to you and thanks for the opportunity and happy to answer any questions uh thanks chief um leonard um thanks chief that was very informative

20:40 uh i um i've heard anecdotally that with our ambulance services one of the cars is parked usually near the city limits near eugene and makes most of its stops in eugene most of its service calls do you know if the the the budgeting that we've gotta the the way i've got it broken down um city of eugene is uh footing about 70 percent of the bill and springfield is footing about 30 percent of the overall budget of the merged fire department does that percentage reflect the call volume of each city relatively

21:26 so we mixed multiple topics there and so i will start with the first one and that was you asked about an ambulance sitting on the city boundary correct and is it running in so i would assume you're probably talking about medic 5 which is at our gateway station yes it does run into eugene pretty regularly if i would propose if you went back to our budget committee pieces and for fy 20 and you would see that between fy 19 and 20. and i apologize if i had my fiscal years wrong but when i first became the interim chief you saw a drop in ambulance transport um revenue by around 20 25 and what that happened was is we added the bls program over on the

22:13 eugene side and we started to see more bls ambulances coming over onto the springfield side hence springfield was not going to eugene as much generating as much revenue so in the next fiscal year the way i what i did to correct that problem is we stood up a bls car at station 5 with medic 5 to help uh blunt some of that revenue stream um i would call that a cost shift from springfield sorry from eugene over to springfield because eugene was pulling it where springfield had traditionally had it um so that showed a tremendous impact and to where it's now balanced out a little bit more to where we don't have nearly as many springfield units going into eugene

22:58 collecting revenue in eugene it's balanced out to where more springfield ambulances are collecting revenue in ambulance in springfield transports and eugene is getting or receiving revenue more appropriately on their side um for years before the bls program springfield was able to come into eugene because they had a better um had a greater capacity for transport um and when the bls program came up that caused that revenue shift and so if you want if we want to we can go back into the fiscal year budgets and i can demonstrate how that shift and how that shift came back so um the next part was um was that about uh

23:43 21 percent i said 30 percent of the budget came from springfield versus uh 70 comes from eugene we do operate off of about approximately a one-third two-third um uh budget component um and yeah that we're pretty close at one-third two-thirds um it's not going to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination but in the end it's about um i operate a system um i and so my goal is to balance the system as a whole so yeah i would say it's it's pretty close to that um but it would take a whole lot more to drill down further into that i think you got a third question and yeah well i i find i i mean that that's really um it's surprising to me just because spring um springfield has roughly a

24:30 third of the greater eugene population um am i wrong about that well i my understanding is springfield's around 70 000 and eugene is about 168 000. okay so more like two and a half so the other piece is you have to consider the contract districts as well so springfield has some more populist contract districts than what eugene does so if you look at like rainbow water district for an example and um oh gosh the one to the south i'm sorry i forget the name of it um they are uh more heavily populated than say um eugene eugene bailey spencer area which is more of a urban interface as to where springfield's contract districts are

25:15 more urban so they're more dense and so how those play into it i would say probably drives up springfield's maybe a little bit more um but i'd say the populations are pretty close to one-third two-thirds how close to self-financing is the ambulance um operation so on the springfield side it usually does pretty well um on the eugene side we do run at a deficit okay that the only other question i had was um this is going to seem largely symbolic um do the springfield and the eugene firefighters all wear the same badge now yes they do okay because i i had heard that for a while after the merger they were

26:00 still wearing springfield and eugene um badges and it just seemed to me like a morale builder for them all to be wearing the same one no sir i'll tell you now you're going to get my chief hat so um yeah they all wear the same uniform and if they're not that's a policy deviation very good and and badges yes yeah uniform includes badges it's all the same good deal that's all i got thank you now i forgot my questions were leonard thank you for watching um first of all i'm gonna put my hand down

26:45 um i kind of feel like counselor pictionary because i have like a thousand things to save i'm gonna pace myself i'm gonna take my turn so i'm going to i'm going to model a little bit here um so one of the things that we didn't we i i have thoughts about how people experience so the their employment so that's one thing but one of the things we didn't talk much about is i'm looking at the map and i'm looking at the stations and i'm looking at the locations and i'm thinking about just the difference between eugene and springfield and eugene is kind of a ball and springfield is not um so i'm interested in terms of do we have the stations where they need to be one and the second part of that question is just around station

27:30 maintenance and wondering if there are any challenges with that or because because of the way we have things um because of the consolidation um is there are there any particular challenges with maintenance or plans for where the stations are because of the consolidation that's my first big question okay so i'm gonna say you got two questions one is station location the other one's maintenance so so uh station location those stations have been there for a long time um and uh they were planned out based on geographical growth and location at the time so in terms of meeting our time compliance and trying to get the closest most appropriate asset to our community in a timely manner yes

28:15 they're appropriately spaced could we certainly be in a place to add more stations because of density and those things absolutely we're in that place especially we just look at the normal growth for springfield the other piece that we look at in terms of station location and are we meeting our needs is we look at response reliability so what is that the quick definition is um when someone calls 9-1-1 we want that the closest the closest appropriate station is staffed and responding 85 of the time and so that's the metric that we use and i actually present that annually in my budget report and you'll also see that in our um i presented my annual budget as well as my annual report which will be coming up

29:01 here in another week or two and so we are we do meet that but i will say it's precariously close to meeting that 85 um the reason being is just um call volume goes up and we haven't added um fire suppression response which also doubles as our uh ems first response in quite a few years and so certainly that's a that's a challenge and so as our call volume continues to go up that reliability is going to go down and our service delivery community goes down now with response to the station maintenance main station maintenance is separate regardless of the of the consolidation so um there's no mixing of those funds um both um we uh we keep those those separate um

29:46 and i would say from the spring springfield perspective we have five stations station 16 and thurston um as well as our gateway station station five um are um certainly in better shape than our other three stations which are three four and fourteen um in springfield they're very dated um the other piece or concern i have is they don't meet seismic responsibility um and so you know if we do have you know you start thinking about the cascadia type events that's certainly a concern for me just from a continuation of operations perspective as well as firefighter safety who work in and out of those buildings on a daily basis and so um yeah i would say at least three of our springfield stations um

30:32 need some rehab um they're pretty pretty dated steve was that your hand yes it was i don't know how to push buttons around here by the way what happens if the springfield fire levy does not pass and actually how how is are those funds incorporated into the budget okay um council i answered the first one not to come back to the second one uh first one is is um so we were successful in passing that ballot measure um this last november it was the fifth time i believe that we have successfully passed that in 20 years um so that's wonderful as a great reflection of how supportive of the

31:18 citizens of springfield are for us um but we operate um um basically that supports about nine of our firefighters as well as all the associated materials services equipment et cetera uh that support those folks if you go well how many is nine firefighters well um a fire engine in our system has three people on it and we run three shifts so that essentially would be a fire shift one shift of firefighters for one apparatus and so it has a tremendous impact on our system when you look at operating um five suppression units on a daily basis in springfield um that could potentially be one of our five units that we operate daily you know what was the second question

32:03 sir not sure but uh anyway the the fire levy is we have we have our property tax part of that goes into paid for fire fire stuff but a better fire levy adds to that so it's i've been above our normal uh property tax so um anyway i was asking where those where those dollars go uh i've got more questions but go ahead with corey and then i'll come back with another one okay corey we can take turns steve with our questions yes okay so and plus i'm realizing that we have we have a culture here of tucking as many questions as we possibly can into one question and

32:48 fortunately chief helpful is good at teasing those out so this question is 75 parts i know this might be a you question and it might be one where a nancy question and it might be one where you all say we don't want to talk about it but my question is how how influential was our structure the sort of consolidation structure that we have how it did that impact the first round of recruitments for our new chief um and whether or not we're having to to kind of regroup if that's a piece of us needing to regroup in terms of how do we find the right chief for the next thing that's the second part of that question and then the third part is a hypothetical which you may all just

33:33 ignore or not want to answer if we pushed forward and got to a shared governance would that make recruitment of a fabulous chief easier so i'm gonna i'm gonna dribble past this to my boss to begin with and if it's an easy layup at the end i'll take it thank you chief uh counselor good question hard to tease out right um i think as uh first of all we have um myself and sarah dairy so i'm just speaking from my perspective on that i just want to be clear because she's the city manager for eugene um she is great we work well together um but i don't want to um

34:18 say that i'm speaking on her behalf um my my perspective on the way that we're structured is that it certainly adds um a layer of complexity and and it's it's unique in the state um and the more i have interfaced with this department and and chief heppel i have a lot of respect for the employees there and the way there's just a lot of smart great people that work for this department so i think that a lot of the complexity has been met with very capable people but that doesn't take away the fact that the complexity exists so when when we were doing the recruitment

35:04 process one of the things that we learned um was really teasing out that um the uncertainty of the next say three to five years in this department would was having an impact on on that recruitment i i you know i don't want to talk a lot about a personnel uh process but i think that's a pretty safe assumption um you know we wanted to take a pause on the recruitment and really to get a little bit more certainty from the elected bodies about what might be possible or at least get some you know a little bit more clarity and and sometimes what

35:49 teasing that out involves what you're not going to do as well so you know when we have uh i know from our city council we have representatives we we are in close contact with eugene i know there's they're working that out still so there's a lot of layers to this onion um so we're i think that um it did add a lower complexity that um in some situations i think people that might be aspirational to a chief position may not have applied for this position just because of the complexity of it for instance if i let's pretend i was a battalion chief somewhere um in a smaller city and i thought hey you know i want to grow up

36:34 my career and be a chief i might look to our model and say that might be more than i'm able to do or more you know i don't have experience with that it might have been a little daunting for um for some people um so i don't want to rule that out and that's that's why we wanted to take a step back and try to get more clarity around the future of the department so that certainly when we move forward the permanent chief will have a role with that but we feel like we needed to to get further down the path than we were so i hope that answers your question

37:19 thank you so um and i'll add just a little bit more context here um that's one of the reasons why we we're having an intergovernmental comm well i guess an inter-city committee um with the with corey and steve on it to have a conversation with our colleagues in eugene and the city managers to sort of figure out what the path forward looks like we've appointed the two folks from our from our side my understanding is eugene is waiting is still in a holding pattern to appoint the the two folks from their side and the they're gonna go have a conversation and then kind of report back to the bodies to figure out sort of where the where the political like where the answer really is um and that's gonna that's gonna take a little bit of

38:04 time to play out when this was for first proposed 10 years ago i thought it sort of they sort of sold it to it says the trial run see how it worked and the numbers i don't know what the numbers came out as and in this document which i did read 200 249 pages i read the whole thing last friday by the way but most of that information is 10 years old it's been updated in some places but the other part the other part i want to say is i'm territorial i'm springfield i'm here to represent springfield and i have this feeling that springfield is sort of being pulled into eugene in this in this issue

38:50 and i don't care for that uh one thing i've noticed in the community is when people in eugene sort of say yeah someday we're all gonna merge together in eugene and springfield you talk to people in springfield that way they said no way we want to do that we want to be springfield so if this goes on i want springfield to be recognized as what for what it is it's a good part of the merger and right now i see eugene springfield on things then i'm also seeing a lot of that what i call assets or not not fire stuff all being pulled over to the headquarters eugene so uh we had the fire marshal here we've had i think that firemen billing some other apparatus in city hall those are all gone i don't know where they went to those people shocked downtown we don't have that

39:36 anymore so so we're losing some of that i don't want that uh if we can spread some of that out in the long run i'd like to see that but i guess maybe i'll be cory and ida to try and work out what we meet but my my inclination is i'm very resisting on this right now i'm early you're on mute merely thank you steve that's exactly what i'm sitting here thinking that was where we were 12 years ago when we sat here and had this conversation it's one of the reasons why there is that out that says we can deconsolidate if need be um and that was that was the concern then that was vocally uh

40:21 put out there that we didn't want to become be part or be under a eugene umbrella um sure population may be two-thirds to one-third but the communities are completely different and springfield is very much springfield um in a way that they look at themselves and we look at us so that has been a concern all along there's been different things flying around about the potential putting together a district or whatever and the first thing that flies into my face with the district is all of a sudden you're talking about compression with tax dollars so that is a that is a con rather than a

41:08 pro to it in my mind to a district and what it does not only for the possible fire district but also what it does to the other uh issues that are underneath that that tax um compression so but outside that i uh if i just want to put my two cents in because you and corey are gonna be working on this so i just put my two cents in after having and it was a great uh presentation by the way chief um i just want to put my two cents in that whatever ideas or avenues are explored looked ahead at or whatever that it puts serious consideration into um anything beyond what we have now

41:54 put serious consideration into the fact that there is equal um not two-thirds to one-third but equal in at the level of governance or the level of decision making um that those kind of things don't they don't line up with population they line up with an overall system um of deliverance and that's that they to me the two those two um are not equitable population and and deliverance so but that just might you sense i'm from from my not only from my own perspective from people i've talked to for the last 12 years um they're they're very concerned that springfield stays springfield um in that regard so

42:39 it's um um it just might like i said just my two cents so um and i and i think this is probably the the start of the the start of the conversation uh when we put when when this topic came up is really to get our get our arms around you know one of the more more complex um departments that uh that we have at the city so i'm going to offer uh a couple of well one kind of iga question here in the iga revisions did our role as an equal partner for our city manager with uh eugene city manager get straight well get more solidified i guess is the right term you know let's stay the same so like that's one gap that i think is

43:26 actually in there that is worth sort of adjusting in the in the term and i recognize that our city manager and the eugene city manager you know are connected at the hip and can act as one body but like that may not always be the case as people change world like change roles is to really give our you know our city manager equal role in the actual iga um the second point that i that that i would make is like i think this i can tell that that um this conversation is going to take a while right and my sense is like when i read all the material i don't see a way that that we can stay where we're at i don't see a way that we can that we can effectively go

44:11 back from a cost effectiveness perspective and i don't see a way like and i would not support going to a fire district and that's something that can that really um really plays itself out in the material right like is is that you know there's always a suggestion about that we're we're sort of defining our policy by sort of a fear of going to a fire district i think the conversation and i'm hoping where stephen cory and the eugene folks can line up it's like well that leaves plenty of places where we can end up and it can be better when i talk to elected officials on both sides to you guys and eugene i hear a desire for both bodies to get more involved with fire policy and be more involved in running it running the department and i think there's an answer

44:56 in some place that brings us closer together is is a governing board um and provides more direction to to the actual department because i can well i haven't talked to everybody in eugene but i can in conversations that uh that i hear and chatter that i hear in meetings it feels like they feel as disconnected as we do and i think that when i think about solutions from a governance perspective i think understanding that our role as an elected body to set policy for organizations that are city organizations and at its core a fire department as a city organization is going to become really um is re is really important in being able to actually get us back more involved we would love to see you you hear more in front of us chief

45:41 apple and more in more fire and policy issues and to kind of get to a point where we feel like we fixed some of the gaps that you've identified in the presentation because they're just it's harder than it has to be um so i know that that's a narrow path but if i think about where i am right now right understanding that on one hand that i don't think we can go back right because we can't like we can't pull this thing back apart again and that a fire district is proud is is not going to be something that politically and like i'm willing to support that leaves a room where we make it better and get some clarity around the administrative and you know and leadership functions around here so that we can kind of get to a place where we're just not as hard as it used to be

46:36 all right other questions or comments where people want to jump in nancy go ahead mayor family i just wanted to take a moment to thank uh chief heppel for his outstanding work that he's done um it seems odd to say interim chief because he has been such a great leader and really um taken the reins um in a in a very thoughtful way and so i just wanted to um thank you for it's been at a great cost i know to you um it's very it's a very hard job and you still have that whole other job that you're doing as well so um i just wanted to uh acknowledge that

47:26 yeah i'm i'm looking forward to what cory you and steve come back with um because i think this is like we just have to give a space for this conversation to run and you know come up with come up with an idea here all right anything else before we adjourn until seven o'clock then we are staying on this link so feel free to drop the link and then come back and then i will see you at seven we are adjourned the work session is seen all right i'm gonna call the springfield city council regular session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here counselor mo

48:11 here counselor rodley here counselor stare here councillor woodrow here and counselor pictionary counselor missionary is excused for the evening please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and angry republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty liberty and justice for all as we begin our meeting tonight i would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us online to please keep yourselves on mute until you are called

48:57 to provide public testimony there are two times this evening designated for 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 we will call on you uh please state your name in ward in general location for the record first item please mayor the first item is the springfield upbeat mayor's recognition indigenous people's day proclamation and mayor this is your item and i will read the proclamation into the record

49:42 whereas the city of springfield recognizes the indigenous peoples of the lands that would later become known as the americas have lived on these lands since time immemorial and whereas the city honors the fact that the city of springfield is built upon the traditional homelands of the caliph peoples and recognized inherent sovereignty of the nine federally recognized tribal nations in the state of oregon and all indigenous people everywhere and whereas the city values the many contributions made to our community through indigenous peoples knowledge labor technology science philosophy arts and cultural contributions have substantially shaped the character of springfield whereas the city is the responsibility to oppose the systematic racism and colonization towards indigenous peoples

50:27 in the united states which perpetuates higher rates of poverty income inequality and exacerbates disproportionate health education and social crisis whereas this the indigenous people stay was first proposed in 1977 by delegation of native americans to the united nations sponsored international conference on discrimination against indigenous peoples in the americas whereas the city is committed to protecting and advocating for justice and human rights and dignity for all people who have lived and worked in springfield and vows to uphold the united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples the declaration endorsed by the united states on december 16 2010

51:12 now therefore i the may sean van gorden the mayor city the city of springfield proclaimed the mon the second monday in october to be indigenous people's day and ask citizens of springfield to utilize this day as an opportunity to reflect on the ongoing struggles of indigenous people of this land to celebrate the thriving cultures and values of indigenous peoples of our region and to stand in solidarity with indigenous peoples everywhere encourage other businesses organizations and public institutions to recognize indigenous people's day on the second monday in october and commit to the continued efforts to promote the well-being and growth of springfield's indigenous community

51:57 next item please here the next item is the consent calendar i guess are you ready for me i am ready for you okay i'll make a motion we approve the consent calendar a second all right it's been moved and seconded um that we approve the consent calendar neil can you call the role please yes counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes counselor rodley yes spencer stare i cancer woodrow yes and counselor patient areas assets uh motion passes five zero and one absent next item please mayor the next item is public hearings one public hearing tonight justice justice assistance grants and chief

52:43 shear is here for this for the report chief i don't we can't hear you yet it appears we are having some technical difficulties and we will work to get this straightened out as quickly as possible

53:35 all right um then i would say let's keep moving and then we will come back onto chief shear's item when um he becomes available unless there's an alternative nancy do you have an alternative from the pd that could present chief shearer is working to get back on he just had a computer freeze for a moment so he should be back on shortly then we will pause for station identification i would just like to say mr mayor you did date yourself with that reference but i understood it so i also dated myself on that as well

55:03 all right chief we are ready for you when you're ready thank you sorry about that little technical difficulties there um i appreciate everybody giving us the time to share some information on the justice assistant grants spd received for 2020 and 2021 my understanding is like in prior years we're going to share the proposed uses for the funding moving forward and this is both to inform council and to provide an opportunity for a public comment the 2020 jag grant award is for just over eighteen thousand dollars and the proposed uses for those funds to help with the upfitting of the new cahoots van i think we all understand what that is but cahoots is the crisis assistance helping out on the streets and provides a specialized response for persons experiencing mental health crisis

55:49 it's a tremendous resource for the city of springfield and in particular spd that van has reached end of life and is the process in the process of replacement the purchase and updating of the van far exceeds that eighteen thousand dollars but with the multiple partners contributing to this van that that dollars will help pay for some of the upfitting of this replacement van the 2021 jag grant award is for just over 21 000 uh the proposed use for this is to support or administer specialized training that exceeds the existing training budget for spd some of the trainings that are currently under consideration for that is digital forensics evidence training that's required to train certify and enable

56:35 detectives to more effectively investigate internet crimes against children and human trafficking we're considering management level trainings that emphasize recognized best practices nationally related to community policing de-escalation and procedural justice another training we're considering pursuing it's called active bystander for law enforcement training and it is kind of a follow-on to house bill 2929 that passed recently related to duty to intervene and that requires police officers who witness misconduct to report it within 72 hours but what this active bystanders active bystander training does it rather than just reporting the incidents after they occur it provides officer skills and strata strategies to intervene with their peers prior to some action that might rise to the level of

57:21 conduct and by doing so that's going to both mitigate risk and also improve public trust so with that those are these the um proposed uses for the jag grant all right um before i open the public hearing is there any questions from the council damian uh yes i'm i'm curious do uh any of these trainings that you talk about uh address bias or you know stereotypes based on race gender sexuality things like that uh especially thinking about some of the stuff that has gone on in springfield a lot of them are based on those things and i'm just curious if any of these trainings uh will encompass that

58:07 uh that's a great question i think the the one the training that we want to interweave throughout everything we do as well as being a stand-alone curriculum is related to procedural justice uh the four tenets of procedural justice are voice neutrality respect and trust and one of the key components in that procedural justice curriculum is to specifically address bias and the the need to remain neutral in how we do business how we recognize our biases but i i think that would tie directly into that procedural justice training damien again uh i'm curious uh are springfield citizens allowed to be any springfield citizen whether they hold a position not are they allowed to be in these trainings or is it just for

58:54 spd uh that's a great question and that's why i don't really have an answer to it probably have to consult with you know the city attorney's office and some others on that i think there is probably a space for certain individuals to be invited and watch some of those trainings potentially whether city council members other people in city government potentially some community members but i can't say they're just wide open for anybody to show up and and and be there for the whole time but that's that's definitely an interesting idea okay then i'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearing

59:40 and if you are interested in speaking to this topic um could you please raise your hand and then we will call on you [Music] all right neil i'm not seeing anybody are you seeing anybody mayor i do not see anyone from the audience um actually i do see a hand up um speaker is neil box neil you should be able to unmute your microphone now okay um i would just like to comment about uh the cahoots um

1:00:29 we've we've called it uh quite a few times in my neighborhood and um they've always been really professional i'm glad you guys are putting support there um i know the police have to deal with a lot of different kind of circumstances um and obviously drunk and disorderly and and people that are uh displaced for whatever reason is a um is a is a big piece of that that the cops probably can never like fully get away from but um i as a citizen want to just say i super value uh cahoots they've always been really professional and we've in our we've lived here 13 years and we've interacted with them like gosh probably 15 times or so between where we live and

1:01:16 some other places too so um yeah glad to see you putting money there that's all i have to say about that neil could you state your name in your award or general location for the record too please yeah we're ward 2 um my name is neil box all right i do not see anybody else up it appears to be the only hand we have up from the audience oh sorry there's another one that has come out so apologize um our next speaker is sabrina white and sabrina you should be able to

1:02:02 unmute your microphone on your side thank you can you hear me we can hear you oh okay my name is sabrina white and i'm bored too and i also wanted to make a comment about cahoots they are wonderful out here in the glenwood district they have helped so much and there is a lot that they are lacking in supplies and ability to help certain people in this district particularly with there is quite a few mental health problems and drug use as well as homelessness out here and

1:02:48 they just don't have the help that they have often said that they wanted kahoot so i'm really glad to see that money is going to go into their new vehicle and getting them more education too as well as supplies and thank you thank you here our next speaker is colleen hunter and i apologize for not letting you know who's in the queue or just getting these one at a time so um colleen you should be able to unmute

1:03:34 your microphone hi um as a former springfield public school teacher and a resident of springfield in ward 5. i would really like to applaud you for having cahoots even be part of the conversation and i was wondering if when you were talking about other community members being able to be um to uh view or be part of that training that you were talking about earlier or the information um if possibly somebody on the police advisor the community advisory committee for the springfield police department would possibly be able to do that or just any community

1:04:21 member that is interested who goes through the process rather than just like shows up mayor that that appears to be all the hands we haven't then i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing um and see if there's any additional comments from council we do not need to take action on this um just having the public hearing was what was required go ahead and leonard thanks sean i'd just like to thank all of the commenters um for speaking tonight and i'd like to echo their um

1:05:07 praise for cahoots and i would love uh for us not only to help them um get their van uh or their their vehicle up and running or refurbished but i i'd also potentially down the line like to see the budget for cahoots go up to where they can expand their operations as as the unhoused issue becomes more and more prominent i i fully expect mental health issues to start to increase as well and cahoots is going to be needed desperately to address that need thanks

1:05:55 all right thank you very much and then i think we're ready for the next item thanks chief mayor the next item is business from the audience all right if you can start raising your hands to get in the queue we'll give it about 10 seconds here and see and then we can start bringing folks up the mayor just for transparency we have 31 attendees in the audience tonight and 11 panelists and we have hands starting to come up so the first speaker is listed as washburn resident

1:06:42 followed by neil box and washburn resident you should be able to unmute your microphone hello can you hear me we can hear you okay hi uh i wanted to speak about um ongoing issues at 506 8th street i'm speaking anonymously because i'm aware that the residents of that address have used threatening language towards other people in this neighborhood and so i am afraid of retribution for speaking here i have two points that i want to make one is about what's happening at that property the other is about what i consider to be the city's poor response to it the root of most the issues at the property is that the residents run what

1:07:27 appear to be a junk hauling scrapping and reselling business at least partially out of this residential home this has been going on for at least six months some of the unattractive and dangerous conditions like obstructed sidewalks are obvious even to casual passers-by including many of the kids that walk on a daily basis around here to springfield high i'd invite you to pass by for yourself and see it if you haven't already i wish i had more than three minutes to get into all the details but i would draw your attention specifically to springfield development code 4.7-165 regarding home occupation which states that that quote the occupation should not affect the residential character of the neighborhood and goes on to prohibit things like outside

1:08:12 storage and materials creating offensive noise or glare creating hazardous traffic conditions utilizing on-street parking of nearby properties etc these and more are being violated on a regular if not daily basis businesses like auto repair shops and dance studios are specifically prohibited from operating out of residential homes by that code perhaps the city council should consider adding junk scrapping businesses to that list but what is the city's response to the problem been so far people living in this area including myself have called code enforcement have called the police have called the city manager we don't always feel heard and we certainly don't see results when i tried calling the city manager's office i was brushed off to code

1:08:58 enforcement even though i explained that i had already talked to them once i was told by someone in the city manager's office that the easiest solution would be for me to just move an email sent directly to the c manager has been ignored code enforcement on the other hand has been mostly responsive and professional but to my knowledge these six months of daily violations and many complaints have resulted in one possibly more warnings and exactly one citation being issued this not only feels entirely too little relative to the scale of the problem it has also had no real effect on non-compliant behavior i've been told by the city time and time again that there is a process and these things take time my message to you today is that the process is not working and

1:09:43 the time taken is unreasonably long i'm not asking the city council for sympathy concern or platitudes i want the city councilors to make whatever calls or pull whatever levers you can to help the residents of this neighborhood actually get some resolution to this issue thank you our next speaker is neil box followed by sabrina white and neil you should be able to unmute your microphone okay thank you um our city is very concerned with um equity and to um

1:10:28 to squash discrimination and uh so i in that in that vein i would really like to discuss um the the discrimination and the the difficult time that that has been and hardships that have been placed upon people that have been unbacked that are unvaccinated in our community um they're being uh they're losing jobs they're being put in very difficult circumstances and i'm sure many of you have uh talked to friends and family that have chosen not to be vaccinated for various reasons um

1:11:13 many of them are medical many of them are conscious many of them are they um just just really good reasons and um to all be lumped together and said you can't work here you can't work there um i don't think this is a conversation that gets you know you know it's not an argument of of medical it's about our citizens not being treated not being treated fairly and people that have put a lot of hard work into their careers just being ripped ripped from them hundreds of people in our community hundreds it's their livelihood and so what i would uh really love um

1:12:01 i'm gonna be working with some people trying to put together a uh some kind of job fair for people gather some employers that are are uh willing to um that want and good employees and i was wondering if the city council would be interested in putting any resources such a venture that's all i got thank you our next speaker is sabrina white followed by someone listed as community member community member so sabrina you should be able to unmute your microphone now thank you can you hear me we can hear you sabrina

1:12:46 okay i just have a quick comment um about the 8th street house there is no there is no diminishing of the the items that are all over the yard and in the sidewalk and um it almost caused a wreck today when i was by there actually there was two cars that were stopping and one person got out on the street side of their car to load up stuff into the back of it and they were parked to where their nose of their car was going into the center of the road it was just ridiculous and that's all i have i just wanted to make the comment thank you

1:13:39 all right thank you speaker is community member and they've just put their hand down so we'll just give them just a moment in case they want to put their hand back up there it is and community member you should be able to unmute your microphone thank you you're welcome i'm a community member from ward 2. i live in the washburn district and i'm just here to echo the concerns of my neighbors concerning 506 as my neighbor so eloquently outlined it has been going on for some time the neighbors have been calling code we've called police the non-emergency line when appropriate for things like vehicle moving violations noise ordinance violations illegal

1:14:24 fireworks etc we've been working closely um with code um i would echo the concerns about the trailers and the traffic on the street that's a very tricky intersection there's a two yield signs on uh d and it doesn't have yields and um it causes a lot of visibility issues they're just there are many safety concerns that are ongoing at this property and i feel like we are all very exhausted and very um disheartened um so any action we can we can take together as a community member as a community we would really really greatly appreciate your help thank you i yield my time

1:15:24 mayor that appears to be our last hand very good um so i think before we i open this up just generally for council response um do we have an update on the d street property that was mentioned a couple of times mary i do have an update on that we have had multiple contacts with our code enforcement officers for this property in question my understanding and i might need to get a little bit of help with from our city attorney is that this particular address is in the court system right now as um when there is a violation of the

1:16:10 code you have to um you know in this particular instance i think that this is also in the municipal court system so i wanted mary bridges to comment on that if she has more information good evening mayor and council the municipal code or i should say the municipal court handles code enforcement infractions as you're aware so those run through municipal court fines can be levied against people who are violating the development code or the municipal code for traditional nuisances or home occupations i don't know the status of this particular matter but we can find that out and then get you some more information if it goes through municipal court it's just like a typical um

1:16:55 court action like similar to a um infraction or misdemeanor criminal it's not a criminal issue but the process is similar so that means someone would be arraigned or brought into court given an opportunity to present their side of the story and then the judge would make a decision and that would be run by our code enforcement officers who probably been speaking to some of these folks it sounds like tonight so we can get some updated information for the council about the status i would also air oh i'm sorry mr go ahead no good i would just also add that i have personally driven by um this location and i um admittedly it's probably been a couple of weeks since i've seen it so if it has accumulated since then i you know i'm

1:17:42 more than willing to go out and take a look at it again i i do agree that there is definitely um it's very problematic and needs to be addressed on on a number of levels so um we are addressing it i know it's and i do want to say to the community members you know um it's a it does take some time to work through a court process and people are afforded their ability to have due process um especially in regard to property rights so i just wanted to let you know that but i will take another look as well so could we do this and i know that we're doing um everything that we can and recognizing that if we were all in the same room i would ask you guys to somebody to go meet with those folks and just talk about where they're at but

1:18:27 maybe you know maybe somebody from the staff can reach out and try to get a contact information and maybe we could set up a community zoom so about with interested neighbors and just give them an update um and sort of connect them you know close the loop with them um obviously you know we've got the registration information but at least we can have a conversation about what they should be looking for and what they uh you know what where we're actually at okay we can take a look at that so i don't know if yeah i don't know if that if neil you're gonna maybe try to chat with them privately and get some contact information or you've got their information so we can maybe make some contact with them

1:19:13 we have their information we'll reach out perfect i appreciate it all right um i think leonard was first but cory popped up in the first part of my uh so leonard why don't we start with you and then we'll start working down the line okay thanks mayor um i believe all of washburn is zoned residential is it not i mean this address is zoned residential so it seems to me that uh quite aside from the potential code violations where we're looking at a zoning violation too if they're operating a junk business out of their houses so i mean that's another angle

1:19:58 that we could possibly pursue here how long has this been a problem has has anyone got an idea you know i'm not sure um what the timing is of this particular issue because i think when it first kind of presented itself it was it appeared to have signage as though it was like a yard sale or a you know that type of of situation um certainly it has evolved from that um and has become more than that so i i timeline i think it would be difficult to trace from when it evolved from that initial um uh process to what what it has certainly

1:20:44 become which is seems uh out of control um in that for that property in that location good deal thank you all right um i you know steve i've two comments under under business from the audience but on the 8th street house that's in my ward people think i have been doing anything i've been working on it man i've talked to the police i've talked to code enforcement i've talked to city manager it's going through a legal process which just makes things not happen and i would like to do something and i can't i'm frustrated as everybody else there and uh so i'm concerned i'll i'll be

1:21:29 part of any anything anybody wants to help make that go away i think the best thing right now right like we've all heard these stories of pro problem properties and i think the best advice that we that that we can give people is it it's exhausting people are at the end of the rope because it's their homes and their families involved but please just keep with the process right like keep understanding and reporting things that you see they get work these things get worked out in the end it's not nearly as fast as what you would hope but understand that this this as far as a process actually works um and that that's why i'm hoping when we have that conversation with uh with

1:22:14 my guess is there's probably some other issues that we can pull on with the neighbors and see not like just support that community a little bit you know in that in that conversation i think did we lose corey we did well okay any other council response before we will have to come back to our own business from the audi our business from the council uh steve i i have a response to somebody who spoke two weeks ago and that was he he spoke pretty seriously about bias and discrimination and when he was done nobody said anything we were just quiet and it bothered me what what bothered me

1:23:00 about it was i didn't i didn't want to hear what he said i didn't want to believe that i know what happens but i would like to talk to that person and if he would call me email me i would like to meet with him and know more so i really care and i'm sorry i didn't send him two weeks ago steve i had a conversation with him on friday um we're supposed to talk again um when that happens i will let you know so you can join the conversation thank you very much corey did you did you have a you had your hand up and then you disappeared so i wanna don't wanna walk past you thank you did you guys do all the votes without me yes we did all the votes we annexed mapleton without you the joy of zoom maybe this would be a good time for me to yell at you some more about wanting

1:23:45 to be in person but no um really you started you addressed what i was going to address which is just and i'm learning along with the neighbors who came to share today um just how do we stay connected with those folks so that they know that even though the process may take a while and even though we have like a legal process that we can just keep the neighbors informed and make sure that they know who they can connect with that was really it is like what can we do to stay connected with them and give them feedback and make sure they know who to talk to so they don't feel like nothing is happening so that's all thank you

1:24:33 here the next item is business from the city council we have one item under business from the city council is committee appointments appointments for the springfield representative on the lane regional air protection agency on rap board and aj nydis is here for the staff report good evening mayor and council um this is the formal appointment process opportunity and i'm here to answer any questions you may have does anybody have any questions before i entertain a motion i had two two excellent candidates for that it was a hard choice but i believe we selected the right one

1:25:19 all right steve i think we're ready for you sorry that's up to me now okay i make i make a a motion to appoint terry fitzpatrick as a springfield citizen representative on the lane regional air pollution agency ii right we have a motion by steve and the second primarily uh neil could you call the role please yes counselor pitts aye councillor mo yes council radley yes mr stare aye councillor woodrow yes and council pictionary it is the motion passes five yes zero knows and one absent next item please any other business from the city council barely

1:26:04 yes um i have a i have a cheer um the oregon animal control council had its uh a meeting here last week conference here last week and i wanted to recognize our animal control officer brian austin from our springfield police department because he was awarded recognized as the 2021 uh annual award for animal control officer animal welfare officer of the year so i wanted to recognize i work with worked alongside brian with animal control welfare rescue everything he's done an incredible job [Music] organizing that department that it did not have and i want to i go back at least six years i'm

1:26:50 thinking maybe even longer but i think he's been at least over there for at least about six years but he's done an incredible job starting at a very low level and increasing it he's got the he's got community members that recognize him and are happy to to work with him and go to him for help um and i just think it's really great uh that at their conference and animal awards banquet he was awarded the uh control officer and welfare officer of the year and then he's from our springfield police department so i just wanted to give a yay out for brian steve okay i'm i'm i'm starting to learn how to prepare some list of things to bring up under business from council of the

1:27:36 business and one and the one i had on my list tonight was at 8th street house which you guys already addressed and i'm really glad everybody's aware of them talked about it uh the other things i want to see is address and that's housing for people anyway as eugene's pre-approved plans for accessory dwellings interesting direction i don't know whether it's any good or not but there's lots of little things out there i think we can be doing to at least put somebody on our heart under a hard roof and that's what we need i want to go that direction as much as we can i don't have any i don't have any solutions but i want to address the problem best we can thank you i would be interested in learning about the pre-approved plans i know like

1:28:22 i'm interested sort of curious if that would be helpful um i've heard varying opinions on it um but if somebody if if somebody hears something from their counterparts in eugene i would love to hear about it all right the one thing i had was tomorrow's visit with van gorden the second time we're doing it so at 6 00 p.m uh there's a town hall the zoom link is online um on the city's website and facebook it's an opportunity to come in and have a little bit of a q a with me about things that are happening happening at council um and then prop we'll do it again next quarter and then uh you know maybe i'll i'll have a special guest

1:29:08 appearance by somebody all right next item neil next item is business from the city manager thank you i just wanted to remind viewers and council that we are embarking on our city link program again first i want to give recognition to neil lagati for the origin of this program this program empowers underrepresented leaders in springfield to better understand and participate with the city um it's a five year uh five year five week might feel like five years a virtual course and it will go from october 20th to

1:29:53 november 17th there is an application on the city's web page if you are interested in applying and i encourage people to apply you will hear from our elected officials and myself and department heads on how the city operates what we do um and just you know how they can better interact and we can have stronger communication together that was all signaling is a really great program and i hope people sign up for it it's training that when i got on council i wish was available to me it's good yes all right next item please any business from the city attorney uh i don't have any additional business

1:30:38 tonight thank you all right then we are adjourned thank you everybody have a good night good night