Springfield City Council — January 18, 2022

0:04 i'm going to call the city council work session to order with the roll call mayor van gorden here counselors pets here mo here rodley here here woodrow here and pictionary i'm here thank you and i want to thank everybody for the patience while we had technology issues um we have two items in the work session tonight one is american rescue plan of 2021 arpa guidance with nate bell so i'm going to turn it over to nate uh good evening mayor and council tonight's item is just a continuation of the conversation we started on december 6. just a quick recap we brought to you um a staff prioritized list of urpa projects and uh we were unable to get through

0:50 that entire conversation that evening uh tonight was the first night uh that i could get that back in front of you um that evening we did discuss two items uh one was the uh share of arpa funds with our partner willamelain which he provided guidance to share up to one million dollars and then support arpa's support of the legacy light replacement to the tune of about 2.75 million so in this updated ais i've removed those two items and we have a new committed total of 6.15 million to date leaving us roughly uh 7.8 million dollars of our funds still to allocate and with that i can just start working down this list or i can turn it over to you

1:35 to lead the conversation so you're looking kind of you're looking for a little bit of direction about what to what to move forward to programming and then what to sort of hold off um you know and we would have to look for other other money for correct and we don't have to allocate the total amount tonight i i think what i'm really looking for is guidance for potential inclusion into a fiscal year 22 supplemental budget or programming into our fy 23 budget which we're working on right now um and to me why it's it's time important is there's a lot of dollars out there competing for limited labor and resources and i think part of our success in terms of spending the entire allocation as well as getting the best value for the dollars is for us to

2:21 get out as fast as we can ahead of others okay merrily i went down through the list and i made arrows and all that kind of stuff but what i'd like to hear first from you nate since you just mentioned it is what um oh you just said it um inclusion of this supplemental yes yes what do you see um that isn't that it wouldn't necessarily what do you see differentiating between what we spend now and what could be included a year from now um i'm my my list

3:06 um i went down through my list and what i had on my list the differentiation i had was looking at what could be potentially the difference in cost um that a year from now is probably going to be higher than we're looking at it right now and so would be would it be advisable for us to really look close more closely at the things that could really drastically change in cost um materials and labor as opposed to maybe the the situation maybe with the library that we might be able to work hard on for grants and and help through the foundation and that kind of thing with things so i'm just i'm trying to look all around but you you just mentioned a kind of a fine uh dotted line dividing line

3:53 between what would be more important now and what could be put off and i'm i'm anxious to hear what you have to say on that okay um would you like me to speak to that now or uh get uh counselor stare's um question out there yeah why don't you see if you can address that now and then we'll move on to leonard okay um so you know we have until december 31st 2024 so that's less than three years at this point um even if we get the green light on some of these items for some of these we'll need to do rfps and all of that takes time once we get to that point where we've selected a contractor there's also getting into their schedule um so when i look at things you know there's a lot of

4:38 competing i think elements that sort of have caused some of these projects to rise to the top just starting with the justice center roof replacement this is one that i would include in a supplemental budget so that we can start the process on finding a contractor to do the work and get into their queue but it's also protecting an asset of ours and you know i don't want to take that building to the point of failure that roof to the point of failure um so that's at the top of my list you know when you mention uh the price of something today compared to the price of something tomorrow when i look at the city hall space remodel as it relates to the library uh that's a large enough item that i don't think we'll be able to do that

5:23 through the foundation or grants i think we really are going to need the support of arpa and it's no different than any other project in terms of the cost of labor and materials so that also rises up there um another one too that i'm going to you know i think advocate for is what i call the general fund deficit spend you know i think the last five year forecast that i put in front of you was sometime i want to say back in september or october we're constantly refining that the most recent forecast uh has us deficit spend that takes us out to fy27 where we're at four percent uh our reserve is at four percent of our operating expenditures for the general fund as i've mentioned before um you

6:10 know we don't like to see that go below 20 best practice is somewhere between 20 and 25 at the end of fiscal year 21 our ending reserve was at 27 that's actually a little higher than i normally would want it except for given our five year forecast it might make sense to keep that reserve at the highest level that we can keep it at to buy us time as we work on other solutions in addressing that structural imbalance okay um i'll wait i may have more questions but i'll wait thanks um just a couple of things the uh the carter building do we have any date for when the engineers are going to have their uh study done on the feasibility

6:57 of repairing it um i do not um potentially uh anil ladi may have if he wants to step up you bet thanks nathan the engineer working on that project is in contact with our hr department our risk manager tom mcgleston we think we'll have that information soon but not a big date at this point but it's in process i i i the reason i ask is i would prefer to just wait until that studies back before we make a definitive decision on whether to junk the uh the the rehab of the building um the other uh the the other issue would be the uh the gateway um the gateway development um i just wanted

7:42 to get some sort of read on why the staff wants to take that off the table um and so with each of these i want to say that i am not an expert in any of these specific items that i've worked with a lot of individuals to pull this information together on that particular one i worked with tom boyat and i think the general feeling was there's other funding sources that we could go after to get that work done and if we want to maximize the value to the city that would be the direction to go on that thank you you know thank you i'm just going to go ahead and go down the list i like the list i support the roof replacement the justice center

8:28 pay now or pay more later and i you know i think we ought to go ahead and we know it's going to fail we know it's going to need replacement and i think we need to move forward on that so to spend that 450 on that um i support the city hall internal external security camera system to not have one which we basically don't have is is crazy in this time and day and age especially after seeing vandalism down at the jail and the only reason why they got caught was because they had some good external camera views of the uh perpetrators but we don't have much for the city hall at all and i think that that is it's a a big target also the uh i feel the same way with the council chambers and court security i'm all about increasing security i

9:13 think that's something that we've been waiting on for a very long time and um we need to just finally quit kicking a can down the road and get that built i think for 300 000 we get a lot a lot of bang for our buck for that especially into the future and i uh so so far i support the justice center roof replacement the internal external security camera system for city hall council chambers and court security and uh that comes up to 950 000 and i'm looking at the um i'm skipping over the space remodel but just going jumping down into the city hall roof and hvac replacement i think it makes sense for that second option is to uh save some money there and and go that

9:58 route the you know is to leave the current system in place and replace all the units at end of life in a single project which makes a lot of sense um and then i do support also going jumping back up to the city hall space remodel it's we're way behind the times there and i think we can make better use of that space and increase our productivity other than that um that's where i'm at and i think we that puts us right about um 5.95 million in in funds which should leave us some stir quite a bit of surplus for other projects all right steve uh i'm uh i'm from the justice center roof replacement i worked in the campaign to get that thing built i don't want to

10:44 turn into another carter building so and then the general fund definite spend we have to do that uh the uh other one is city city hall space remodel that will allow the expansion of the library we really need that so that's that's a two thing and the rest of them i'll let you guys well i'll let you guys worry about the rest of them thanks so merrily do you have a quick comment and then maybe we can just sort of check them off down the list and kind of get a little bit more organized here and one quick comment and that was i don't want to forget about the web design either including it in this or something but we've been talking about getting something done

11:29 online for our website for what three four five years so it needs to be included in a budget somewhere okay so my sense now that we've kind of had some some conversation about it is maybe we can just sort of stop you know kind of walk down the list and kind of see if people want to talk about them a little bit more um i'm hearing a lot of just a center roof remodel right does anybody want to talk about that one anymore just say go nate fix it fix it okay are we fine with the supplemental budget on that in fiscal year 22 or would you rather see it programmed into fiscal year 23 um i would be fine if you programmed it in the you want to do it 23 joe yeah if we got if we got five years

12:16 you know we have a little less than three years at this point but my bigger concern is around lining up contractors and getting in there right i think by the time you can pull the trigger it's going to be 23 anyway yes but it allows us to pull the trigger in terms of starting the fp we typically don't do rfps for things that are not budgeted yet we try not to get in front of you so what going through the supplemental budget process gives us the legal authority to start this procurement i'm okay with that too sean it just i just want to i don't want to i know we need to get a roof done but i want to be able to get as much life out of what we have before we replace it but not to the point of where it puts it at risk like steve was saying you know i definitely don't want to put anything at risk but i like to be able to i don't want to get things replaced prematurely yeah yeah get as much out of

13:03 it without putting it at risk as possible but let nate start looking for contractors and get it you know absolutely yeah absolutely um projected uh general fund deficit spend for five million um i'm seeing some head nods does anybody wanna top leonard sorry yeah i um but before we uh talked about the general fund i um i wanted to find out have we already devoted anything to the general fund i mean how have we allocated anything out of the overall arc of funding to replenishing the general fund uh directly we have not okay so uh i guess my next question what what are

13:49 we restricted from dedicating the funds to i mean are there any are there any specific prohibitions on the uh on the way that we can spend this money um very few so what we're going to use is revenue replacement in terms of how we access these dollars and through the revenue replacement we'll essentially be able to access all 14 million that way that gives us the least amount of restrictions on how we use the dollars what we can't do is we can't put them in the reserves and we can't use them for debt service so as far as not putting them into reserves this is where it gets a little trickier it's not a matter where we can most of our general fund expenditures aren't actual revenues tied to specific expenditures it's a big bucket of maybe

14:36 20 plus revenues that go towards all of our expenditures that span all of our departments in the general fund but when it comes to grant funding you have to point at something very specifically it has to be a accounts payable an invoice it has to be a time card and so the devil's kind of in the details but there is staffing that we are adding that is new in the general fund and our inclination is to put this funding towards that that's staffing that would have just come out of the reserve by allocating this funding to those positions we can avoid hitting the reserves and keep that reserve at 20 as close to 27 as we can so so we can't just wave our hand and say spend it on road repairs we would

15:21 have to say um repair uh mohawk boulevard so typically we don't repair roads out of the general fund that's done with the street fund so um that's a whole nother use if you want to go down that path okay uh that that was sort of where i was driving at i um i i am definitely for uh replenishing the general fund um i i would love to uh see a lot of the programs that that have absorbed um budget cuts um get uh get refunded and so um that's uh that's my first priority and we're not looking at the entire five million as i've mentioned before that five-year forecast has been a moving target um we have to have this money spent by

16:06 december 31 2024 and that touches in fiscal year 25. so if i look at the deficit spend and our latest projection through 25 we're looking at roughly 3.2 million so that's already considerably less than the 5 million and then what's more is we don't have to do the entire 3.2 we can do a lesser amount so i guess what i'm hearing is if we say that we want to sort of maintain service levels where we are we are in the next five years that's kind of what we're head nodding tonight and then you guys are going to go back and sort of size that knowing that five million is the cap and actually bring us back probably a better number so that you so that we understand what we're actually doing but essentially what we're directing you to do is hey

16:52 maintain you know even out the ups and downs maintain the service levels that we currently have for the next five years and preserve our reserve and i would actually say since i put this together the cap would now be 3.2 million um or less okay cory well nathan touched on it at the end because i just wanted some clarification around that year period and what that looked like so that's why i put my hand down because i feel like you answered it before i even asked it um because my understanding was just that that was an anticipated coverage of that which is what you said so i'm i'm absolutely for prioritizing the this okay so and we're going to pencil it in at 3.2 it sounds like and then

17:37 right is that what nate what you're saying the new number is um that would be the maximum and that's based on a projection um if so if if i was to be conservative i would probably pencil it in probably around two to two and a half million towards this specific um okay so right now we're going to cut it from we're going to cut it from five we'll have a little bit more and we'll get some more information yeah keep talking we're making money here i know all right um damian um so just this clarification these decisions that we're making tonight are they final uh or will they be other things because i i just see once we have our planning

18:23 session i mean there are things that i plan on bringing up that might take away from this and i'm just trying to get some clarification nothing more nothing's ever final until it's in a budget and um it sounds like we're going to be a little bit under what we have tonight so we'll be able to talk about talk about it a little bit more during goal setting okay but like what what what we're telling the staff to do right now is to get direction to start building building budgets associated to it so we can officially adopt it and you know make it happen okay um steve well we've we've saved so much money on the on the deficit thing now i'll

19:08 support the security system camera system and council chambers and certain court security as well as a city i'll remodel that's a pretty good deal that's where i am on that yeah so and that i'm going to kind of go down that list see outside security cameras right is that something everybody's good with yep okay and the council security um and court security is something we've talked about historically are people sort of good with that yep yes could i wait could i weigh in on the security um sure on the council chambers is this going to include this plexiglas window in um in front of us at the uh in the council council chambers

19:57 so no specific decisions have been made uh on what that looks like i i i just got sort of a visceral reaction to the idea of having that uh bank teller window in front of us at this at the city council meetings and um you know i would definitely put it this way i would like to discuss that again before we decide to implement it so we're working with pivot architecture on this project we've tied it in with the larger city hall remodel in terms of estimates so whatever we do will be coming back in front of you with um ideas yeah so we would get to approve the design okay um city hall remodel are people good with that or want to talk about that at all

20:43 okay um h hvac replacement i feel like yeah but i don't know that we're gonna have enough money to dive into that one so this is still probably a big outstanding need that we've got go ahead leonard okay um so here's my sense i think we leave this one on the list it's still a project we have to have and and then let's maybe come back come back to it we're gonna have to like nate i'm doing back to the napkin math like that's the one that we can't that we can't fit if you will well if we do two to two and a half million um on the deficit spend

21:28 that leaves us roughly 4.4 to 4.9 million left right now from everything that you've said yes to so that does squeak us into that lower end number the other thing too is this you know you asked for us to tighten these numbers up but this is one that was difficult to tighten up we would really need to hire um uh an engineer to come in and and kind of estimate this project for us we've already gone out there and got an estimate of what that would cost just give us a project and a cost associated with that project and that's around 45 million i'm 45 45 thousand dollars don't hire that person again i know they're going the wrong way um i'm used to talking to millions tonight 45 000.

22:15 um so why don't we do could could we do this could we maybe punt this conversation and we can pick and we could talk about it during sort of during goal setting and let you guys kind of sharpen it down a little bit a little bit more um right because it's it sounds like you guys need a little bit more more work on this particular project to figure out what exactly we need i think it would be money well spent to just move forward and working um with an engineer to really kind of tease out our needs and what associated costs would be okay we're going to use that in one form of another and another whether we do it slowly over time as we can afford it or whether we do it in one large project it would not it'd be nice to know exactly what we're trying to do okay so so you would bring it back to us in like you

23:00 know and you can do it in a memo if you want or we could talk about you know fi about sort of phase one hire an engineer to figure out what exactly this is okay yes and i'd be inclined to do that through a supplemental budget in fiscal year 22 if you're comfortable with that some of that work has already been done it wouldn't be hard to put this together into a packet to come in front of you okay are are people good with that okay and then then the website enhancement i heard people were like i don't do we know how much that would cost right now i know that there i don't have any estimates on that right now um they're in the process of doing surveys to just understand what our needs are as it relates to the website

23:50 if we don't have funding here there is another uh source of funds that we have that that council discretion that we could potentially use for that okay but i think you're good you're good going forward with that one i'm saying joe go ahead yeah i was just thinking that maybe maybe nathan was thinking the same thing too it seems like their that particular project would be the uh room tax eligible at least part of it um that would be a conversation to have i i couldn't speak to that off the cuff but we have those uh some dollars that we set aside from the top of my head it was from the comcast settlement and i'm going to look to neil adati again on that um

24:35 yeah that's correct nathan we do have those dollars we have not moved and that might be a potential and that was what not new the um some of the source we're looking at for potentially for the uh security systems initially yes yeah but we may be able to use the arpa for that right and have some flexibility with that funding would be great so okay so we're yes to what website enhancement all right so nate do you need more direction than that i've got plenty of direction actually at this point so no excellent so that should leave us by our buy back you know a little bit of money left over is what i would see

25:24 uh with with if depending on how you look at the hvac system but that entire sum essentially is left out there hanging um kind of dependent on what the engineers come back with perfect perfect all right great um thank you very much yes thank you all right so it's our annual comprehensive financial report and i think meg you're up for this one yes good evening mayor councillors um i'm maggie locko your accounting manager and we're here today to present the fiscal year 21 annual comprehensive financial report

26:10 for the city of springfield and since not everyone geeks out on the audit like we do we'll just hit the highlights and the accounting entries statements notes statistical tables those are all prepared by accounting staff here in the city and they're audited by an outside independent cpa firm and the city has engaged grove mueller and swank to audit the financial statements and ryan pasquerella is the partner in charge of our audit and he's here to share his opinion on the financial statements so i'll turn that over to ryan thank you meg and thank you for letting me join you this evening um as meg said my name is ryan pasquerella i work for grove mueller swing we are a cpa firm out of salem

26:57 and we have about 35 staff in our office at this point so our office does approximately oh let's say probably 90 audits throughout the year about 60 of those are municipal audits that have a june 30-year end so we just finished up a very busy season for ourselves we'll put it that way i'm here to talk a little bit about how the audit went for the june 30 fiscal year uh 2021 and just like meg said just give a few highlights and really just talk about a few differences in what is in the reports this year versus what we have seen historically in the report so

27:42 as part of this i am going to just share my screen here and you should have received at some point here really three separate reports we perform the audit of the annual comprehensive financial report which i'll get to in a minute but there is also a audit a federal compliance audit where we look specifically at federal dollars that are spent and make sure they are in compliance with the grant requirements and so i will talk about that document briefing as well if there are any questions as i'm going through this please stop me ask the questions i'm happy to ask question answer questions as we go along and meg if you want to

28:27 chime in and say something that works fine too i do love your background there by the way i don't think that's a wide shot at this point um but that's definitely a good way so the first thing i'm going to show you here is that this is what's called the governance letter so this is the communication between our auditing firm and the city council really just outlining the responsibilities of the audit um and then pointing out any significant things that need to be communicated we do not always get the opportunity to sit in front of the city council and talk about how the audit went so this letter kind of stands in that place when we're

29:12 not able to do the presentation but since i'm able to do the presentation let's kind of go down through the letter and obviously this allows more opportunity for you to ask questions as we go through it the first section i want to point out is kind of really just outlining what an audit really is um and so this second paragraph under the responsibility section here it lays out that um an audit basically professional auditing standards have us obtain reasonable assurance that the financial statements are free from material misstatements so it does not mean that i am giving 100 absolute assurance that there are no

29:57 material errors in the financial statements we can't do that because we don't look at every transaction that happens during the year we use sampling we use a risk assessment process that says basically okay what's new this year what's significantly different from the prior year let's go concentrate on that and let's make sure the city is handling that correctly and clearly we look at large transactions that happen during the year but we don't look at every five dollar transaction that happens we really rely on the city's internal control process to make sure that some of that um to make sure those transactions are accurate so professional auditing standards tell us we are giving reasonable assurance versus absolute assurance i just think that's important

30:43 to point out because when you look at the annual comprehensive financial report you're going to see a whole lot of numbers in there and we are just saying that they are materially accurate but please don't think that every single number in there we have audited to the dollar and it is 100 accurate that is not what an audit is attempting to do so there's that it also says in here that we are going to communicate to you any significant matters related to the audit and that's really why i'm here this evening just to talk about how the auto wins and if there were any significant matters to communicate that with you on page two of this letter there is this large section with a whole bunch of bullet points in here

31:28 this is another reason why we are getting reasonable assurance there are a lot of accounting estimates that are built into these financial reports and here's a whole list of them for you we point out a few that are more significant more sensitive in the next area and so there are estimates in here the big ones really are the net basically the unfunded liability of pers that this city has that's calculated annually it's your proportionate share of it so that is a very large number sitting in your books it's not something that you're paying specifically you know pay period to pay period you're making your um your required contributions essentially against occurs

32:13 this is a calculated number that gets added on at the end the fair market value investments is in there you're self-insured through your health insurance so that's an estimate that's in there quite a few things in there it's not just money and money out within the financial statements the area i always like to point out is so basically the finance department gives us their final numbers for the year and and we're like yeah we can start our audit and we go through and we audit those numbers this section here where it talks about uncorrected and corrected misstatements this is where we would disclose to you if numbers that were provided to the auditing team we ended up saying we don't think that's

32:58 accurate we're going to propose this adjustment to you and then the city can accept it that that proposal or not generally speaking if they get accepted for this audit there were no audit adjustments that were proposed to the city the numbers that were provided to the auditing team we felt were materially accurate and so we did not propose any adjustments this year there were some adjustments that were made because the city was still trying to finalize a few of the areas as we were working through the audit that's just kind of the way really the last two years of audits have gone um you're real close with your numbers but we still need to finish capital assets

33:44 or we still need to finish long-term debt you know the city tells us that so we go ahead and make their adjustments as we're working through it but we did not find anything that we told them we think was inaccurate once they provided us their their final information so that's about as good as you can get from your financial number standpoint it makes the audit build much quicker okay after that it just goes into a little bit of detail about some of the opinions that we really do give throughout the financial statements um and then attached to this is basically a six page letter and this is management representing that they have told us that they have not held anything back related to the audit

34:29 all transactions have been reported in our system there were no conversations they didn't have with us about potential litigation of the city or commitments of the city um so this is the city representing to the auditors everything has been communicated to us this is yet again another reason why we give reasonable assurance over absolute assurance because we really rely on the city um because it's the city that's seeing all the day-to-day transactions we are in there for uh two weeks maybe three weeks throughout the entire year um so we this is a requirement of the audit and we really do rely on the city saying um what happened during the year so that is the governance letter

35:20 the next document here this is your annual comprehensive financial report and i i say that very slowly because for many many many years this was the comprehensive annual financial reports this is the first year where the two first words have been switched and now it is the annual comprehensive financial report accounting standards asked us to switch the name um and so now this is your act for um that we are going to be talking about instead and this is the first year this is in place so like i said i struggle through that name every time i have this dance there is no real significant changes to what you see in this document most of you have seen this in prior years this is a 220 page document

36:08 that has basically starts with some real more narrative information for you some prepared inter information and gets into more and more detail as you go down through 220 pages of this document so i'm going to point out just a few pages in here that i there's a few sections that i think are helpful on page starting on page 11 of the act for you're going to have your transmittal letter and this is a just a good description of kind of what the audit is what you know what the city is and some you know economic issues within the city it's just basically as you scroll down through it it is a narrative

36:54 that is very simple to read including graphs and stuff so very nice read in here once you get past the transmittal letter you are going to have my audit opinion so meg said the finance department puts this document together i have i want to say five pages in this entire document that are mine everything else the city created um so there's two reports in here and that's really all that's in here this report yet again kind of goes down through management's responsibilities my responsibilities as the auditor um but if you read this what you're really gonna see is

37:39 um we give an opinion that says that we feel that these financial statements are fairly represented and are you know we're giving our reasonable assurance on it if you want to sum that up in word we're saying we're giving a clean opinion on this act verb and we don't feel that there are any material misstatements within it the clean opinion is basically the best opinion obviously that you can get we don't think there's any changes that need to be made to it uh the city historically gets a clean opinion on this document and that's continuing again this year so once you get past the other opinion here's the management discussion and analysis yet again more narrative very helpful if you want to know what

38:24 happened last year what happened this year um and really just talked about the changes between years and any significant things that really happen during the year for those people that like like meg and i that you know kind of live and breathe these spreadsheets and doing you know all of this work the narrative sections are a very good option for you at this point so um definitely feel like you know read through that and it'll give you a whole lot of what happens right here once you get past the management discussion and analysis this is tiny right i absolutely know it so this i mean if you want to call this something that this is a balance sheet it's called the statement of that position that's the the how it's being reported for a government entities that's the requirement

39:09 it's really your balance sheet so you're going to see everything's broken out between your governmental activities your business type activities governmental primarily these are the things that are funded through property taxes your street fund is going to be in here things like that when you get into the business type you know that's kind of your sewer fund that's more the businesses that the organization is running versus just what's being paid through property taxes so when you look at this you've got assets of about 377 million okay and you've got liabilities of about 135 million sitting in here one of the things i mentioned earlier was the city's

39:55 portion of the uh you know of the pers net pension liability so basically pers is underfunded and so the city has this proportionate share 71 million dollars is sitting there as the city's net pension liability as it relates i think or and maybe the crp program is in there as well but that's your net pension liability that is sitting there so pretty good amount of the total liabilities here are basically what you're going to occur over many years going forward since there was a comment about the general fund earlier i figured i would just scroll to this page i didn't really wasn't planning on

40:41 it but i will now um so here's your general fund as of june 30 21. about 15 million in assets and you have basically it's called unassigned this is money that basically is can be used at the discretion of the city um there are no restrictions against us or anything so the general fund had a little over 10 million dollars sitting in there that can be used for kind of projects or something i wanted to point this out because that's 10 million a good rule of thumb is that the general fund has about six months of carryover money into the next year so when you're kind

41:26 of looking at okay what are our total expenses in the general fund hopefully about half of them you have a half of that sitting is as an unassigned balance so you've got about 10 million dollars sitting here as at the end of the year i'm going to go down one more page here your expenditures are about 40 million for the year so you've got three months worth of money sitting there that's really considered carryover money and i say rule of thumb there's all kinds of you know different thinking on it but it's always good to just have carryover money in that general fund so not quite what that rule of thumb is but more than i have seen in some other

42:11 organizations at that point um i mentioned i wanted to mention a few changes that happened within the documents here is one of the changes essentially so the city they have their money absolutely you know you know collecting revenues expenditures all of that but the city is also holding money on behalf of other organizations or employees or something so part of this financial statement you you report what is in the city's you know bank accounts in the lgip but really isn't city money um so this um statement of fiduciary in that

42:56 position was actually in here last year this was required last year and it just kind of shows when you look down in here how much is being held for the health reimbursement accounts we've got bail you got regional fiber mwmc is in here and then i think the bulk of this is probably going to be the ambulance money that's collected and turned over to other governments but there's about 90 million that is in city accounts that belong to somebody else the change that would happen this year this is a brand new statement within the document and will be in here going forward and basically they wanted to show how much comes into these accounts and leaves

43:41 these accounts during the year there is a lot of activity um within that the city is handling that isn't really city activity it's mwbmc's or regional fibers or something else so this is a new statement and it basically just reconciles down to here's your 90 million dollars that you're holding on behalf of other people so that is something new the last thing i want to mention in this report and i'll just go kind of the last page okay so i said i have five basically five pages of mine in this document first was that auditor's opinion okay and then this is the state compliance report where uh the secretary

44:27 of state's office asks us to look at some very specific areas to make sure you're complying with oregon or by statute so all these bullet points these are when applicable these are what we are auditing um on top of looking at the numbers themselves so the one thing i want to point out in here is down here near the bottom it says you know we didn't did anything come to our attention nothing came to our attention except for the the city exceeded the lgip maximum balance allowed um at different times during the year essentially so this is being reported as non-compliance to the secretary of state's office

45:13 but there's really nothing that the city needs to do related to this as far as communicating back with the secretary of state a pretty minor thing i think the maximum balance that you can hold in that investment pool was about 52 million dollars during the year and i think last time i checked you were about 68 million or something like that anyway you were over a little bit on that so we reported that no other non-compliance related to the minimum standards workers final document and i'm basically going to go down to the bottom page of this this is the federal grant compliance report so i mentioned that when the city spends

45:58 really when the city spends more than 750 000 of federal money in one fiscal year this audit kicks in so when you go down past my reports um you're going to see here is a list of all the federal money expended during the fiscal year and it's split out by the different funding stream the different brands really so lots of lots of stuff going on total was about 3.3 million spent during the year um and basically there's a way that we determine what programs we're going to audit we looked at the corona virus relief fund this 1.3 million dollars sitting

46:43 here um that so basically we looked at what the money was allowed to be spent for um and we made sure that it was spent on things that were allowable under under that program so here's my really my findings which are none honestly but what it says basically is did we find any material issues with how your internal controls are working no did we find any significant deficiencies that we felt should be communicated basically something that's not a material issue but maybe a little bit less no nothing no material issues in non-compliance that we found we're giving you a clean opinion here's the program we looked at and

47:28 no findings so this is boilerplate if there's no issues this is what you get in here one thing i will point out in here is this says uh does the city qualify as a low-risk oddity this says yes so there are rules that apply as far as when you become a low-risk audit team what that means is i only have to audit 20 of your federal dollars spent instead of 40 if you were high risk we ought at 40 um which never makes clients happy because that's more programs we look at more money obviously one of the criteria to be low risk is you need to have two clean federal compliance audits in a row and

48:16 then that third year you are considered a low risk oddity so the last two years you've had federal compliance audit i mean you did not the year before that so this is the first year we're actually reporting you as a low-risk audit really we only need to do 20 um feds told us coronavirus relief was a very important program to look at um they called it it's a high risk program in their minds so we looked at that which makes perfect sense brand new program everybody has to figure out how to spend the money um and there are findings that we're having with other clients related to this program but nothing with the city of springfield here so that is my presentation all right um i'm doing a little bit of a

49:02 time check we got about seven minutes left um does anybody have questions or comments um before we i'm looking around all right brian it's always good to see you annually um thank you for taking uh taking the time to make sure our books are uh straightened out i know it's a little bit of a technical work but it's it's important work so it is with that we are gonna i'm going to adjourn uh the work session we will return in five minutes on the same uh the same meeting link and then we'll do the public uh the public meeting thank you thank you for your time

49:51 can we just stay on this link yeah leonard thank you sean

54:03 there's cookies at my house if you want to come over they may be gone by the time you get up here it's a little bit of a and there are lots of odds down here are you staying in the downtown area no um this is uh this is on the strip yeah i've been warned away from the downtown area which means that i'm going to have to see it before i leave you're in reno not vegas right correct yeah yeah now that now old thoughts

54:48 vegas is is a real delight if you if you ever wanted to try it to taste a fried twinkie that's the uh that's the place a deep fried twinkie

55:41 i'm going to call the uh springfield city council regular session to order with a roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here counselor mo here council bradley here councillor stare here councillor woodrow here and counselor pissionary i'm here thank you please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of the united states of america into the republic republic for witches which it stands one nation one nation under god under god indivisible with liberty with liberty and justice for all as we begin our meeting tonight i would like to ask members of the audience who

56:27 are joining us online to please keep yourself on mute until you are called to provide public testimony there will be two times this evening designated for public testimony and will be listed as business from the audience in public hearings on the agenda if you are using if you're joining us online with a tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak during that time please use the raised hand feature when the agenda is called when we call your name please state your name and ward or general location for the uh record item please here the first item is the consent calendar [Music] ready i'm ready steve okay i move that we approve the consent calendar

57:14 it's been moved by councillor mo and seconded by counselor pictionary uh can you call the royal neil yes councillor pitts all right councillor mo yes councillor rodley yes councillor stare aye councillor woodrow yes your account suppisionary all right the motion passes six to zero next item please next item is public hearings you have two public hearings this evening public hearing number one the 2023 through 2027 capital improvements program a community reinvestment plan jeff pascal is here for the staff report good evening mayor and council uh back again this time with the uh cip as you saw it well not quite as you saw it in

58:00 the work session it's now being combined all the parts into a book as you can see in your attachment so all the parts that you did read through or had the opportunity to read through and look at two weeks ago are the same there are no major changes nothing's been added it's ready for a public hearing following public hearing in any testimony i'm here to answer any questions any other comments and then asking the council to adopt the 2023-2027 capital improvement program thank you thank you um are there any questions for jeff before we open the public hearing all right then i'm going to go ahead and open the

58:45 public hearing and anybody who's wishing to testify to this topic please raise your hands mayor it looks like we have one hand so far for this topic um your first speaker is dennis weirich dennis you should be able to unmute your microphone on your side okay can you hear me now we can dennis okay thank you very much um i'm uh the chairman of the

59:31 um bpac committee and i'd like to say good evening and thank you kelser for your continued service during the stressful times that copa19 has created my name is dennis wyrick and it's been my privilege to be the chairman of the bpac committee for the past year and as an advisory committee to the city of springfield and city staff and council i would like to present an overview of our year in report which our senior traffic planner emma newman has provided yes um are you gonna give comments to the capital improvement program so i'm sorry i i'm in the wrong place then i should be in public yep

1:00:16 that's okay thank you all right yes we'll bring you back up during the public comment we do have another hand up mayor it's teresa roar theresa you should be able to unmute your microphone on your side hi i am teresa rourke i am also a voting member of the springfield bicycle pedestrian advisory board and i would like to give a public comment on the capital improvement program recommendation um so in considering the projects outlined as potential capital improvement program or sip projects the bpac is recommending

1:01:02 that four projects be prioritized this recommendation was developed based on community advocacy bpac member engagement and a desire to focus bicycle and pedestrian investment in areas of the city that have a higher proportion of people living without individual vehicles the b-pack recommends focusing on laura street west d street e street bikeway and 48th street g street 52 52nd street path i want to highlight the timeliness of the laura street project since lane county has scheduled upgrades including bicycle and pedestrian focused upgrades to other portions of the street for 2024 i also want to recognize the

1:01:49 continued community advocacy that the b-pac has received to take this opportunity to ensure that west d which is a particularly key piece of springfield's bike and pedestrian infrastructure is the welcoming front door to our community that it should be including continued consideration of safety infrastructure such as protected bike lanes the be back recommends continued investment throughout the city and infrastructure such as ada ramps lighting bike lanes and separation between bike lanes and vehicles as well as working to ensure investments are made throughout the city but especially in parts of the city where folks have fewer vehicles and

1:02:34 higher numbers of people living in poverty we believe these investments will increase accessible transportation for all community members thank you mayor we have one more speaker with a hand raised under this capital improvements project item and that is kevin campbell and kevin you should be able to unmute your microphone uh thank you counselor this is kevin campbell i am also a voting member of the bpac subcommittee and i would like to emphasize some of the points that teresa has just made uh regarding the

1:03:19 recommendations that we have made to council in terms of which uh capital improvement projects we see as being the most valuable to the viking pedestrian community i wanted to create a little bit of context about how the committee goes on to choose these particular projects and i wanted to emphasize that we have ourselves a portion of our meetings where we get public input and particularly on the west d recommendation we have had consistent participation from the community and consistent requests from the community to have a long-term solution created there beyond that we'd like to also just

1:04:04 mention that we're very happy with a lot of the attention to improved lighting improve uh lane marking and striping for cyclists and pedestrians and some of the small improvements that have come along with the uh modifications to recent projects such as the mohawk uh we do definitely understand that the the resources in delegating and choosing these private projects are limited uh but we have taken that into consideration and believe that some of the projects listed on our considerations uh meet both the timeliness and the cost effectiveness that the city would want to achieve in promoting both cycling and these road

1:04:51 improvement projects and in all of our considerations we also do really try to emphasize both community input and also a sense of equality equity and practicality and where resources could be effectively used and later utilized for a broad and robust pedestrian cyclist commuter network thanks for your time mayor that appears to be all the hands for this item all right i'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing and let's see if um does anybody have any discussion points um before we

1:05:36 proceed through a motion therefore oh okay i think lender one's better i really just wanted to thank all of the bpac members for their input and we uh we're taking these street improvements very seriously thank you steve okay i make a motion that we approve the 2023-2027 capital improvement program [Music] a reimbursement reinvestment plan yes a second thank you joe all right it's been moved by councillor

1:06:21 mo seconded by council missionary to approve uh the capital reinvestment plan i kneel could you call the role please yes councillor pitts all right counselor mo yes council rodley yes counselor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary all right motion passes six to zero next item please all right thank you next item is the new pub sorry public hearing number two the new fee encroachment type two resolution number one a resolution amending the springfield master fees and charges schedule to adopt a new encroachment permit type 2 fee sam kelly troki and kyle green are here for the staff report

1:07:20 uh good evening man contour i apologize for the technical delay there uh again i'm sam clay petrocki i'm joined this time by kyle green uh for one last master fees and charges update for you all uh so this time we're adding a looking adding a new fee that the engineering staff has worked on this is the type 2 encroachment permit so we're looking for questions comments public hearing and resolution adoption just a quick maybe refreshing this fee there currently is an encroachment permit fee and the public improvement permit and the encryption permits at the lower end of about 350 the public improvement permit is about 9 000 uh and there's no real middle room there for medium-sized projects that are require stamping like a public improvement permit does uh but are not as complicated as some of the massive projects we get

1:08:05 so kyle and his team came forth and proposed this type 2 encroachment permit sticking the price right in the middle this hopefully bring down public improvement permit costs uh without leaving the current encroachments the type ones unfazed and provide more of a middle ground option for some of these somewhat but not incredibly complicated projects um at this time i mean kyle if you want to find more clarification you could otherwise i would turn it back to the mayor and council yes sam you did a great job of providing an overview and uh the intent here is to not take anything away as sam's mentioning it's just to add more options because that is a pretty big difference when you're looking at um doing some work in the right of way and either 350 ish bill or a 9 000 bill um to do that

1:08:52 and so for those projects where you know you might be doing a uh a little bit more involved than what it would be appropriate for an encroachment permit but you don't wanna step all the way up to that nine thousand dollar entry fee for uh pip as we call it um this will provide that additional option so the other questions so i'm not sure how many people here understand what an encroachment is what what are they applying for and what type of project is covered and i'm not reporting that i know that's why i'm asking yeah sure great question uh an encroachment permit is probably the most classic example um

1:09:38 somebody that wants to hook up to a public sewer line and there doesn't there isn't one that exists for their property but they're right adjacent to it or it runs through their backyard or in the street in front of their home um an encroachment permit uh is a permit that the city grants to that person or their contractor to allow them to cut into the street make that tap to the waste water and then you know backfill and repave it and restore it um that's probably the most straightforward simple one there's also encroachment permits that go out for utilities to do utility work like uh comcast or springfield utility board so on so forth uh it involves it could involve traffic control temporary traffic control or other things of that

1:10:25 nature so um i i think there's a great move forward and i and because especially that particular example you're talking about i think we want to encourage people to do sewer hookups for sure um but i'm so i guess uh i i support this but i'm wondering is it it's going to help some folks but are we um i guess i'm trying to look at really help i wanted to help the little guy the guy that's trying to do some stuff at home i i don't really give right then i'm saying this very gently but i don't really give a rip about whether it helps big corporations or agencies or whatever i want to be able to see

1:11:11 private persons private development be able to get some of the stuff done for a lot less money and if we have to put it on the burden of the bigger agencies so i don't want to see the agencies getting reduced costs frankly yeah and the the intent here is to help as you call the the little guy um when we look at uh probably one of the biggest projects we have right now marcola meadows you know that is far above and beyond what would qualify for an encroachment permit type two um that is a you know it's a subdivision or multiple phases of a subdivision that's well in excess of what we're looking at for something like this this would be you know instead of just doing a sewer tap maybe

1:11:57 there's a small sewer extension to to get another 100 feet of sewer so that your property is available to be hooked up that requires a professional engineer to do stamp design plans and inspections and you know a lot more involved than the classic example of a sewer tap so instead of going to the nine thousand dollar deposit which again these are deposits so staff builds time towards it through review and inspection and things and whatever's left over goes back to the developer at the end of the process once everything's approved and accepted and we accept it into our system so there's a good chance on these small to mid-size projects that

1:12:45 instead of getting a hefty deposit refunded you know it'll reduce that refund but the upfront cost is half so that's the balance we're trying to strike here so if i'm understanding you correctly if it's a small project and they only put in so much time the the lower quote-unquote feed the only the only thing we're doing that is just requiring a lower deposit that is the best biggest uh benefit yes so they're not really saving anything well they're they're able to take that money that they would have put the extra 4 500 into the deposit and use it towards their project

1:13:30 okay well so so they're not saving anything it's just a matter of letting the money be available now instead of later okay just trying to see the advantage of having this then thanks eve yeah joe sort of took the took my argument away because i was going to ask kyle if if the example that you gave is a type 1 or type 2 enrichment permit the example of the sewer extension or the example of the sewer tap that's third tap just a short one just the sewer the sewer tap is just the regular type one that we currently have that's approximately 350 okay so thank you any other questions all right then i'm going to go ahead and

1:14:15 open the public hearing looks like we have one hand raised at this time looks like two to talk about the uh encroachment fee permit um the first speaker is chris mcallister and uh oh go ahead good evening council and uh members of the public my name is chris mcallister and i live on 12th and piedmont in ward 3. um i just want to share my concerns about the connecting into our city system especially for folks out in the ugb such as in glenwood um a couple years back we

1:15:02 had a gentleman named jim guthrie who was trying to tie into the sewer but two organizations right in front of him got septic and they after all the permits and the fees and all that stuff was cleared it was a cost closer to a hundred thousand than it was to not and all he wanted to have was access to uh to city water to city plumbing and to our local police to deal with local issues and so i support the work of this community i support the work of our staff i just want to make sure that if there is a way to interface especially when other corporations or situations are uh are making their own personal decisions that our poor people our middle class can tie into services and make these permits go further because 4 000 on top of one permit on top of

1:15:48 another permit on top of another permit when people built in front of you or built around you because they're trying to be part of the new developments that's what concerns me for the people who've lived in springfield all their lives and don't have the money to tie into something because the city moved not them i thank you all for your service mayor it looks like we have no other hands for this particular item i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing and see if there's any other conversations or questions or discussion leonard thank you mayor um i'd like to thank chris mcallister for his testimony does does anyone on staff have any information about what the disposition of mr guthrie's issue was

1:16:37 i i believe i'm aware of what the situation that led up to it is uh as far as what the outcome was i i cannot say but i what i will add is that in the case of so we're talking about the permit to approve the plans to hire a contractor to do the work it does not the permit fee does not include anything about the actual cost for the contractor to do the work so if somebody is going to extend the public sewer system so there's the fee and the plans and and the city's portion of it but the developer then pays the cost to do the physical construction of it and if you're talking several hundred feet then that number uh

1:17:22 grows very large very quickly um which i suspect is the case in the example that was just given so the major expense was not actually the permit itself the the main the main expense to the owner was the pipe that extended to the city sewage yeah the construction cost would have been uh far above any of the permitting okay thank you uh guthrie uh i know him and i haven't followed up on this but i remember when all this came up but jim guthrie's property is is one property behind dairy mart uh dairy mart's not in the city limits so when when he ran into a situation where he was forced to hook to the sewer he's not

1:18:09 he's not in the city he can't annex the city because you have to be continuous to do that and so that was a that was a nightmare for him i i need to check see how it was resolved but it was a situation where down down the road somebody is forced to do that your property becomes has very little value and i don't like that happening so and i think this particular issue is probably outside of really the scope of the permit we're talking about um yeah sorry just i just i just brought it up when we started talking about it oh no i yeah i understand like with the these particular like there's probably been a couple that you know have come up over the years and they're you know they're really nuanced and obviously something we're concerned

1:18:55 about so i don't if people want more information we can ask staff for more information specific to those but it's not in to this permit okay um before we entertain a motion um the the only other thing you know and i think we've heard the uh there's been the thread of that and some of the questions people have asked is yeah this is a cash flow issue but for these smaller permits it would be nice to look for um and we do not have to answer it tonight but it would be nice to look for something that would be a financial gain where we can reduce the permit permit costs and i'm asking that question and you know we like i said take that one

1:19:41 away and just look for different places where maybe we can eliminate a step maybe we don't have to charge these smaller permits the tech fee right but helping out you know some uh you know small-time you know mom-and-pop type businesses or folks is a good thing yeah i've always hoped staff would be understandable and understanding and flexible if they can because that's a real shocker when you get up that high high end of the enrollment permit yeah um steve we're when you're ready all right i'll make a motion i'll make a motion that we adopt resolution number one second

1:20:27 okay it's been moved and seconded to adopt resolution number one neil could you call the vote please yes counselor pitts all right counselor mo yes councillor rodley yes counselor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and counselor pissionary hi the motion passes six to zero next item please mayor the next item is business from the audience and uh whoever would like to speak would just need to raise their hands and we'll get you in the queue mayor our first speaker is dennis weirich followed by chris mcallister dennis you should be able to unmute your microphone

1:21:12 on your side thank you counselors i apologize for cutting in at a at the wrong time earlier um i'd like to thank you all for your continued service to the stress of signs of covert 19 has created my name is dennis weirich and it's been my privilege to be the chairman of the bpac committee and as an advisory committee to the city of springfield and the council i would like to present an overview of our year-end report which our senior traffic planner emma

1:21:57 newman has provided in your packet under resources and committee's work page web page i would like to recognize voting members of our committee as well as our liaisons to eugene and william elaine and our city staff advisors emma newman and michael liebler and to our city council liaison corey rodley of ward 3. some of our key highlights from the 2021 have been bike fixit stations advising city on bicycle parking facility upgrades promoting bicycle and pedestrian service request tools pedestrian network inventory

1:22:45 capital improvement program and update recommendations bylaw updates and presentations of different type various types while i'm not going into a lot of detail uh some has already been covered uh by a couple of our our other for other voting members um and the details are in your report and i would we have one more uh voting member that will be uh addressing another another issue and i'd like to thank you i would like to encourage more public and community input at our bi-monthly

1:23:30 full bpac committee meetings thank you for your uh for this opportunity to share with the city council and the public and i yield remainder of my time dennis before you go i don't think you said what ward you were from oh where i live yeah i live outside the city um um uh out on upper camp creek i'm not sure where uh what that that's that's perfect thank you thank you mayor our next speaker is chris mcallister followed by claire roth chris you should be able to unmute on your end

1:24:15 thank you neil thank you mayor and members of the council members of the public my name is chris mcallister and i'm coming here officially on my capacity as acting executive director for carry it forward i want to say thank you for your deliberations and your discussion regarding the cbdg or cares act funds uh that were allocated and i wanted to clear some information that was received a couple weeks ago when these allocations happen so you'd have a better understanding about where we're coming from first and foremost i'd like to state that we have not only worked with federal dollars but we've been working with federal covet dollars for the last two years and have been able to operate several shelters and programs with those dollars and so when there was a question about whether we had experience with federal dollars i wanted to clear that up i also wanted to clear

1:25:01 up three points one is about our volunteerism we are not having a lot of our services provided by volunteers we're having professionals go without pay providing the services anyway there's a very big difference uh with how that can be perceived and so i just want to say these dollars were one of the first times these dollars were allowed to be used for operations operations is one of the most underfunded items in social service in this community and those are the people who get people connected to the places where they need to be such as the front door assessments such as the keeping the camp safe and such as the clean up and preparations for things i'd also like to speak to the fact that there was a question about the exactness of the dollars because these were operation dollars we had seventeen thousand i believe uh four

1:25:46 hundred eighty dollars tied to um our rv program to be able to help move that project forward whenever it was needed it was meant to be a pool of resource for cahoots springfield police or other community partners to help us engage and get people off the streets before they lose their home because when you lose your home you have nowhere else to start i would also like to speak to the moment the comments about hsc funding for hotels and councillor woodrow you are correct that the hsc does give monies for hotel rooms but there are money for hotel rooms for fire victims and for people with families there are not very many options in this county regardless of funding for singles or couples who are not

1:26:31 in special services and so we do a lot of those fundings through direct service and through our own general fund city of springfield actually worked with us last year to help cover this gap because and it was the first time singles in springfield have been helped we have tireless workers who are serving the underserved they stand with you in springfield we are so proud of the efforts we're doing we have quadrupled the number of front door assessments getting people into qualifying houses because of the outreach works so we stand fast with springfield we stand fast with lane county and we are proud to be part of the times please uh continue to support these types of programs because these are your citizens these are your tax base these are your future take care

1:27:19 thank you mayor your next speaker is claire raw claire will be followed by kevin shaper and claire you should be able to unmute on your side hello and thank you so much for being here tonight my name is claire roth and i work with better eugene springfield transportation first i'd like to acknowledge that it continues to be such a tumultuous time and i just want to thank you all for everything that you do in your roles on council and beyond that because i know some of y'all do great stuff in the community outside of what you do here um so i'm here tonight to talk about how important it is to ensure safe transportation infrastructure on west d street and specifically dedicated space for vulnerable modes of transportation i'd also like to echo the phrasing that was used earlier that a long-term solution on west d street is needed this

1:28:06 connection is the route to downtown springfield to homes to recreation and to offices for many people safer infrastructure in west d street would usher in economic benefits to springfield businesses for example a recent study showed that cyclists spend about 163 dollars per week on average at local businesses compared to 143 among drivers safe and comfortable transportation routes for all modes of travel are the indicator species of a flourishing city thank you so much for your time our next speaker is kevin shaper followed by julia johnson and kevin you should be able to unmute

1:28:52 hi my name is kevin shaper and i live in ward 2 and i don't support a shared street solution for sd without a motor filter to remove the cut through vehicle traffic the volume of bike and car traffic is too high to coexist without causing a stressful experience for everyone involved i think this plan cuts too close this plan puts too much emphasis on the path entry and exit and not enough on reducing conflicts between people who walk bike and drive on west team i was a member of b-pack at the genesis of this plan i remember at the time agreeing with the focus on the path entrance in the time sense my perspective was changed i moved closer to the project area i had a child and now i spend a lot of time walking in the street um at the pace of a small child and watching uh the traffic interactions uh i'm concerned about who the project's

1:29:38 been designed for discussions have focused on people who ride in the street when people ride on the sidewalk side path come up their experience is largely not centered or addressed this was true in 2015 and it's still true today as you can see in the proposed traffic calming design nothing about the experience of riding in the space constrained eight foot side path will change as a pedestrian i'm excited for race crosswalks but i don't support the rest of its plan for example why does west e have 12 foot lanes even after this is done when we only plan to put 11 foot lanes on main street people drive on west d like it's a highway because it has highway sized lanes we sh we should shouldn't design bike facilities for the most confident cyclists we should design them to be safe and comfortable for everyone counselors pardon me for presuming but i think you might be the target demographic that we should be designing

1:30:23 for uh if this traffic calming plan is implemented would you choose to ride a bike in the street or would you still choose the side path so that you have to worry about how fast that car behind you wants to go or how close that truck is going to pass or hey there's bikes on both sides of the street is that driver really going to try to squeeze to the middle uh or maybe you have no interest you know riding a bike maybe you were walking and running and you feel a lot more comfortable if you weren't sharing the narrow side path with bikes and they were in their own lane finally to briefly address the proposal for a raised path along the river i have no objection to adding it to the tsp but i also can't imagine a scenario where we'll find ourselves with seven to ten million dollars that couldn't be better spent improving bike

1:31:08 infrastructure somewhere else in springfield it's a lot of money to spend for a bike path to get past just 13 houses we shouldn't have to spend that much money to do it we should just put a path on the street for a fraction of the price thank you mayor our next speaker is julia johnson followed by lizzie utterback and julia you should be able to unmute your microphone uh hello thank you counselors and public counselors for your service to our city during this time my name is julia johnson from ward 2 and i have the pleasure of representing the b-pack as a voting member and as an advisory committee to the springfield city council some exciting actions that we brought forward this year despite all of the

1:31:53 complications of the pandemic are as follows one the bpac service request tool our sa street subcommittee worked with the city to create more public awareness of this great tool this allows bicyclists and pedestrians to identify something on our streets that needs repair such as broken glass and a bike lane and quickly alert the city with their phone or online city staff created flyers with this information and the bpac members posted them around the city throughout the fall the link to this tool is included in your packet and it's listed on our committee's web page two springfield safe streets audits b-pack is inviting you counselors and the mayor to participate later this year in our safe streets audits this will be an important time for counselors to

1:32:38 collaborate with bpac members and partners such as better eugene springfield transportation american association of retired persons and the springfield safe routes to schools to host these audits in each of the city awards using the aarp walk audit toolkit our goal is to interact with the public in each ward to identify infrastructure and programming improvements that will increase safety for people who are walking rolling and riding throughout springfield so stay tuned for your invitations three the westy street project as you've heard and i too believe this is the most important action item for council to be considering bpac has heard for years from the community about the concerns of this area and current community members are frustrated that this continues to be a

1:33:24 high level of concern but feel that no sufficient action has been taken i also live in this area and access these paths regularly and have my own concerns about congestion and safety one creative lens that i like that was presented to us recently from the public is to redesign west d with a high priority for those who walk roll and ride in mind and this design should make it obvious to those who drive in this space that they are the guests not the dominant modality the community supports our i'm sorry our committee supports moving forward with using immediately available funds on designing and constructing short-term upgrades including traffic calming elements sharrows and north bank past transition realignments along west d

1:34:10 but the committee also strongly recommends further consideration of implementing protected bike lanes on west d and a longer-term study with additional community outreach to evaluate the feasibility of an elevated path along the river from the existing north north bank path to island park finally i'd like to continue to extend the invitation for the public to comment at our bpac meetings as your concerns and ideas that you bring forward are invaluable to the work we do thank you again so much all of you for listening mary the next speaker is lizzie utterback followed by patrick kalida and lizzy you should be able to unmute your microphone hi uh this is lizzie utterback from ward 3.

1:34:57 i really appreciate what others are saying about how they use transportation within our city and i hope their recommendations can be moved on uh my comment tonight regarding news about springfield has been reported in the registered bar during the past month one of the articles i read was about our city's lawsuit compared to our neighbors this article was published december 16 and is titled lawsuits plans against sheriff police and springfield disease have cost 10 million in five years megan writes uh between 2015 and early march 2021 the freaking law enforcement david presently only paid out around 9.98 million dollars in settlements for

1:35:42 getting out of court then there's a bowl of tidblads which has the green police department three hundred and forty two thousand seven hundred eighty three dollars clinton county sheriff's office hundred 476 two dollars springfield police department nine point one six million dollars megan goes on to say that quote springfield which has had at least two multi-million dollar settlements accounts for more than 90 of the total settlements of people i want to note that these lawsuits are not privileged they come from serious misconduct where serious harm has been inflicted so meaningful things will require i know that you won't talk about the lawsuit so i want to focus on the future and ask that you be proactive by

1:36:29 anticipating potential lawsuits and misconduct you should enact policy to specifically mitigate harm i bring this up because the other interesting news i saw was in the guards january 8th article about spd's launch of the new drone program the article explained that the cost for the drones was close to zero but given our city's tax record i'm asking you to consider and anticipate law enforcement related lawsuits and settlements as part of the program's cost the use of drones even by private citizens brings up issues of privacy so it doesn't take much imagination to envision yet another headline about a lawsuit against spd involving illegal surveillance

1:37:14 i was wondering why research has been done to anticipate potential civil rights violations of lawsuits when it comes to the ground program and what steps will be taken by the city to mitigate this risk for example is it possible to add some parameters to drone usage such as only allowing them after our next speaker is patrick khalida followed by carly and patrick you should be able to unmute your microphone all right great thank you um my name is uh patrick collida i live in ward 2. uh i just wanted to

1:38:01 express some disappointment that i have with the current d street improvement proposals i bike that route regularly including today in fact so i'm very familiar with the problems caused by the lack of proper separation between different modes of transportation there i would consider the short term part of the proposed plan like the sharrows and the raised crosswalks to be less than half a step in the right direction i don't believe it goes far enough to make it a safe and inviting corridor for bikers of all skill levels and people using other modes of transportation as far as the long-term part of the proposed plan um evaluate like

1:38:47 evaluating the possibility of uh elevated multi-use path it sounds great but frankly i'm a little pessimistic about the chances of that actually happening and if it doesn't happen it leaves us with the short-term compromise as the permanent solution i understand that earlier in the process a separate protected bike lane was being considered but it was sort of vetoed by input from a few residents of west d street so it seems like those voices were heard disproportionately as compared to the hundreds of people who walk and roll through d street on their way to and from the river path every day i'd love to see more consideration given

1:39:34 to that protected bike lane idea thank you thank you our next speaker is carly followed by holly s and carly you should be able to unmute your microphone hi okay we have you carly yes my name is carly vera and i live in ward 3. as a bike commuter i've been riding on west d for over 10 years now in that time i've noticed two major problems that happen with higher frequency than makes me comfortable

1:40:19 one people drive vehicles too close when they pass me this especially happens when i'm riding up the hill my impression is that because there is a hill drivers seem to be less willing to give extra space when they pass because they can't see if a vehicle will be coming in the other direction and because parked cars are on the westbound side of the road that forces bikes on people on bikes further into the westbound lane than when they are climbing the hill to avoid the potential of getting hit by a car door this seems to annoy some drivers and they go by uh when they go by they are uncomfortably close two making the left turn to get onto the river path while traveling westbound on d can be treacherous i don't know if drivers are unaware that

1:41:05 the river path exists or if they are just tired of having a person on a bike in front of them but quite often drivers make the move to pass me at a moment at a moment when i need to turn and despite the fact that i have my arm out signaling the churn i can't see how sharrows or speed cushions will change these two problems as vehicle as a vehicle passing me too close or passing me at an unsafe moment isn't going to be solved with just some speed slowing measures when i listened at the most recent vpac meeting i was saddened to hear that they had completely written off the cycle track option they said it was because the people who live on west e don't want to lose their street parking but they hadn't asked further in into the greater springfield community shouldn't we give

1:41:51 a safer option more of a fair shake than that they also said that it would be unsafe for cyclists because the drivers turning in and out of driveways won't look both ways but shouldn't those drivers be looking both ways already before they drive across the multi-use sidewalk and since the cyclists will be riding uphill when traveling westbound on the potential cycle track they won't be traveling at a high rate of speed as had been implied at the b pack meeting the elevated path option sounds exciting but if the people who live on west e don't want to lose their street parking do we think that they'll be excited about losing the river access and direct river view plus the price tag is so large that i can't see it happening within the next 10 to 20 years with t is a gap in the cycling

1:42:36 infrastructure a safe connection between island park and the river path is definitely needed and the cycle track option needs greater consideration and shouldn't be put on the back burner for painted arrows and a couple of speed humps thank you i concede my time now mayor our final speaker uh for the evening with her hand up is holly s and holly you should be able to unmute your microphone hear me yes we can great thank you um good evening mayor and council my name is holly schaefer and i live in ward 2. um so westy street is the street that i travel on anytime i need to go anywhere it is the street that i walk along with

1:43:21 my daughter to go to the park and then to the river it's the street my daughter will someday take to go to school so the safety of west d street is deeply personal and meaningful to me however westy street is also incredibly important for the broader community and will become more important as we strive to shift the modalities of travel for more people as one way to help mitigate carbon emissions and work to slow the climate crisis additionally the more people who can safely get to springfield to live work dine out go to the theater or our antique shops the better off we are economically unfortunately westy street is currently a frightening road to travel on outside of a car it is rife with conflicts and aggressive driver behavior i've been passed within

1:44:08 inches while carrying my daughter i have had a driver cross into my lane and drive at me i've barely moved out of the way fast enough for a speeding driver i've been crossing the street with my child and dogs when a speeding car suddenly appears even more disheartening to me is that the current proposed solution doesn't actually remove any of these conflicts bikes and cars will still be expected to share space and this aggressive behavior will continue to exist which will in turn continue to push bikes onto the too narrow sidewalk which introduces frustrating but far less dangerous conflicts given that west e has been the number one priority from bpac for at least the past six years my hope was that the solution offered would be one that actually took it off this list so that we could focus on the other areas that

1:44:54 need help with the current proposal however that's very unlikely to be the case given that none of the options presented are an acceptable solution and if we move forward with the current plan westy will continue to be one of the top priorities since the conflicts that are most problematic would remain maybe the city should be engaging in more community outreach with folks who use this corridor and hiring a design team to come up with creative strategies to adequately address the problems that are present hopefully we can work together to find a solution that actually allows all folks to safely use this street hopefully you'll direct staff to begin a broad community outreach process so that the design can match the needs on the street thank you

1:45:42 mayor those are all of the hands for this evening uh thank you uh any council response leonard yes um i'd uh like to just thank dennis weyrich chris mcallister claire roth and uh let's see uh kevin shaper uh julia johnson lizzie ederbeck uh patrick khalida carly bera and holly shaper for all for your comments they i think that you all raise legitimate concerns and in particular i'm hearing a lot of comments about how to make bike traffic safe and accessible and um i think we're all on the same page

1:46:27 on making it as safe and accessible as possible um there seem to be a little bit uh that there seem to be varying theories on how to make that happen but i welcome the debate and i think that we should uh we should keep working toward a solution because um as uh to uh to kevin shaper in particular i'm i'm not a skilled bicyclist but i am an enthusiastic one so thank you very much thank you uh so i also very much appreciate everyone coming and commenting and i am fortunate enough to get to go to the bpac meetings and the subcommittee meetings and um so i have been

1:47:12 able to listen and be part of the conversations um for some time around this and folks are probably sick of hearing me say this but also pre-comed um i got to canvas in that neighborhood and talk to folks and was standing on people's porches and in their yards and talking about the challenges and i've walked in and um i know that counselor mo and i have both because it's in his ward i've you know been focused on the challenges with this so um i appreciate everyone coming and sharing and have been encouraging of folks to share those strong opinions um and there are people who have strong opinions just as was mentioned about what that looks like from a from other points of view in terms of how do we share the space what happens in the

1:47:57 neighborhood how do we slow which we didn't really talk about is just one of the number one priorities is just a slow traffic down of all the sorts along west d street so i think some of some of the challenges and i've also met with staff to talk about this and to say what are our resources how quickly can we work and so part of part of this challenge i think is that we can't do everything that we want to do right away and so there's been this like pacing of like well what can we do to slow at least slow this down and what can we do to make it safer when you're turning on and off of the bike path and those sorts of things and it's still not what everybody wants so i agree with councillor stair and that we're not where we need to be and yet i think there's a strong focus

1:48:44 on how do we get there and how do we get started so that we can start to make improvements and safety improvements and part of what we wasn't mentioned here which is part of it too is thinking about how do we find the funding to even do the study to figure out what the next best steps are so like all things in government it moves slow and until it doesn't um but that i just really do appreciate people sharing those strong viewpoints and opinions because that's important and we probably haven't heard everything that we need to hear from folks so thank you and i really appreciate the beat pack and the folks who come and work on that because we we need that if we're going to look at the future of springfield and how do we make it safe for folks to bike and ride and drive and all the things they need to do to get around

1:49:32 steve councillor riley and i both agree on on west d street and needing to find a solution and i drive it a couple times a day so i'm sort of used to traffic bicycles but today i met with one of the neighbors and we stood off the sidewalk on west d street i've never seen so much traffic in my life i know there was traffic it was incredible bicycles people cars it's heavily traveled and it's it's very important that we we solve that problem so that's where it comes from all right anybody else um here's my here's my thought is that i think we need more information on west

1:50:18 feet and what the design is i would suggest or propose that we just ask the staff to bring it back to us in a work session at least we can get everybody kind of up to speed and put our kind of hands in the middle about what we're what we want to do and what we can do um because we've talked about this for for uh for a long time and it could range from anything i think we can lower the speed limit on that road um but like that's the that's the pinch point from an infrastructure perspective um coming from from eugene so we just kind of have to take a strategic look at it [Music] all right next item please next item mayor is business from the city council we have one um one item committee appointments springfield representative to

1:51:04 mwmc catherine bishop is here for the staff report good evening mayor and council members this item is specific to the springfield's representative on the metropolitan wastewater management commission which is doug keeler his term will end on january 31st and we're seeking to have a reappointment of doug keeler commissioner keeler to the mwmc to continue representing the springfield interests in mwmc

1:51:49 all right and how long has he been a commissioner on nwmc um well he actually um started uh in 1997. it's a it's a citizen representative and there's no fiscal impact oh yeah like he's he's a really great guy i'm really glad that he he continues to volunteer with us yeah all right any other questions steve okay i make a motion that we point doug keeler to mwmc for the term ending january 31st 2025. second all right uh neil could you call the vote please yes counselor pitts hi

1:52:34 counselor mo yes counselor broadly yes counselor stare hi councillor woodrow yes and council pictionary hi the motion passes and let doug know that he can keep volunteering for like another 25 years thank you very much thank you next item please any other business from the council merely yes i had a couple things um one i wanted to respond to chris um just a little bit in the sense that we all received an email uh for the work that was done for the eagan warming center in springfield highly complimentary email from a person who uh had took a pretty good hard look at how

1:53:19 everything was being done highly complementary the volunteers the system uh the courtesy everybody was um uh dealt with i mean it just it was just a high a program of high compliments and i want to make sure that chris is aware of that and anybody else that's involved um recognize the fact that we actually did receive an email uh praising everything that was done because that was a and that was uh unexpected uh four or five days of really cold snowy weather and it was nice to have the compliments come in on how well that was handled um the other thing i wanted to comment on was uh i just received a letter i'm not sure

1:54:04 if anybody else did from nami lane county just replacing their resource center on 9th street downtown springfield they're the national alliance on mental illness they're going to have open open hours they're going to have resources um i'm i'm excited to have them in downtown springfield i think it's a great a great opportunity for us to have in in our community and close close access having them downtown and um like i said i got they're gonna have literature they're gonna have people just just an amazing amount of resources that are going to be available um that are critically needed um all the time and so i'm looking forward to what they can add to downtown and what how the services they can render so i

1:54:50 just received this letter what was sent out on the 15th so that i'm looking forward to to them being a partner downtown okay i had two quick things um saturday uh nancy and i joined um the springfield utility board as part of their uh i guess it was goal-setting retreat and we we spent the more morning talking about the city's economic development priorities and how sub can align policies um to support that so it was a pretty productive conversation about making sure that we were all aligned and working on the same things so that we

1:55:35 can uh move the community forward um other thing that i wanted to thank you folks about state of the city dropped and i really appreciated the the uh the clips and the additional voices that you guys added at the end of the speech i think it really helped deliver the uh deliver the right message to the community so thank you all right next item please hey our next item is business from the city manager item number one approval to sell city owned real property at 725 south 57th street vahana keen is here for the staff report can everybody hear me okay wonderful uh thank you counselors mayor

1:56:20 for your time tonight i know it's been a little bit of a long night um i am here to request your approval to prepare and list for sale the city owned property located at 725 south 57th street uh councillor woodrow i know you've taken quite a few questions about this property since it's in your ward um i know that many of us do know a lot of the history uh uh on this property but i wanted to give a brief overview of where we've been for those of you who are who are not familiar uh it was purchased in 2010 for 405 thousand dollars with the intent of building a new fire station on the property property was leased from 2015 uh to uh to 2018 to two separate tenants

1:57:08 and those are residential rentals it was determined during that time that it was not uh going to be used for a fire station it was no longer needed to be used for that purpose we had an appraisal done in 2015 we had an additional appraisal done in 2017 and in 2017 it appraised for 385 000 council prioritized making this particular property available for affordable housing in 2018 community development staff explored the interest and opportunities available to use the property for affordable housing that year there was an rfi released in spring of 2018 and an rfp released in the summer of 2018

1:57:53 and no responses were received from from those so it was brought back to the council in fall of 2018 and the council requested additional information from the appraisal to be brought back to them fall of 2019 uh brought back one more time with community development staff to seek direction on the next steps and we're told to follow up in early 2020. so there was a bit of a pause as we all know in early 2020 it's a pandemic cold so in spring of 2021 i met i contacted five agents here in the local area i toured the property with four and three were interesting uh

1:58:38 interested in partnering with us to list the property for sale so all three of them submitted submitted a comparative market analysis and those agents are represented respectively by re max windermere and c.w walker uh miss quinn proposed the highest sale price with the lowest commission rate of the three that were received so that's why we chose to move forward with partnering with her her suggestion is to list in early spring and select the date for offers to be received and opened by the council we can have a review discussion um and a formal direction at that time from the council

1:59:24 and council at that time can also determine the best use of funds it was originally bought out of the general fund so at this time i would like to request your approval to prepare and list for sale the city-owned property located at 725 south 57th street with miss wing are there any questions joe hi uh thanks bahana so i'm glad to see that at least someone is thinking about what we paid for it and not accepting any not anything less than what we paid for it i am i am still burnt up over that i am frustrated over that very angry over that how we were

2:00:10 duped in my mind so never again so i think i would think even it's as such that the increase of property values and that type of property the size of the property itself we should be able to easily fetch that kind of money and and and above so i do you know what kind of marketing approach they're going to go with in us i mean do we have any idea what they are going to list it as yet or do we have a current appraisal do we have any of that stuff suggested list price was 4.95 so we're listening to 4.95 and are they going to are we in a position to where they can open that up for multiple offers i assume we're going to

2:00:57 entertain multiple offers that's the plan okay yeah no i think we should uh and i think we should put we have a bottom line i assume yeah hopefully it's not the 405 hopefully it's like 450 but anyway we should be able to make a few dollars well we should be able to pay at least pay for what we put into it i mean we've lost a lot of money on that property through non non-payment of rents we've lost i mean it's just glad to see it go sell it for five million go ahead bye i'm done thank you any other questions all right uh steve all right i make a motion that we authorized the

2:01:44 city managed to prepare and list for sale city owned real property located at map 18-02-04-11 tax lot zero four six zero zero and addressed as 725 57th street with real estate agent randy i can't pronounce that of remax integrity all right it's been moved by councillor mo seconded by counselor pictionary neil can you call the vote please yes councillor pitts aye councillor mo yes counselor rodley yes counselor stare aye councillor woodrow yes and counselor pictionary hey all right motion passes six to zero

2:02:31 next item next item any other business from the city manager no further business thank you thank you nancy next item any business from the city attorney uh no additional business tonight all right so before we before we adjourn um originally we were going to return to the executive session to uh finish mary bridget's reviews since we had technical difficulties um is it almost aj is it best for us to go back to stay on this link and wait for everybody to leave or go back to the previous link it would be best to go back to the previous link okay all right so we will see you on the 5 30 executive uh session link

2:03:17 um we are adjourned and i will meet you on the other side in the next group thank you guys