Springfield City Council — September 6, 2022

0:05 good evening everybody i'm going to call this springfield city council work session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here that's thermal here counselor bradley here counselor stare here counselor woodrow and counselor pictionary here and counselor woodrow is excused for the evening we have one item in the work session which is our police update with chief shear

0:51 there we go uh good evening i'm andrew scheer the chief of police of the springfield police department thank you mayor and council for the opportunity to speak with you this evening and to provide an update on some items of interest related to the springfield police department next slide please before i begin i want to take a moment to recognize the men and women of spd and the work they've engaged in recently as you all know the world games took over eugene springfield region back in july and for over a year leading up to the games the members of spd were deeply involved in the planning of this event in partnership with the ufo police eugene pd eugene springfield fire as well as many other departments and public private organizations so when the games finally arrived the men and women of spd work not just their

1:37 regularly scheduled shifts protecting the people of springfield but also devoted their days off and long hours outside of their regular duties to ensure that the visitors from around the country and around the world remain safe as they enjoyed watching these world-class events both in eugene and springfield since january of this year our community outreach coordinator has documented our attendance and participation at over 100 different community events presentations or outreach efforts estimating conservatively we've been present with over 7 000 community members during these events and that does not include the tens of thousands of calls for service we respond to or other events like the world games ufo football games springfield drifters games etc where we also interact with our community members

2:23 so my point in sharing this before we get started is twofold one reason is to publicly recognize and thank the members of this agency i want to thank them for their willingness to lean into the changes that have occurred over the past year and for their deliberate enhanced efforts to build trust through non-enforcement related interactions and finally their 24 7 365 day year commitment to the safety of everybody who works visits and lives here in springfield and the second reason is to highlight for this community each of you here tonight and to continually remind myself how fortunate we all are that spd is the agency and springfield is the city where they have chosen to serve and contribute to something greater than themselves uh we only have a limited amount of time

3:09 tonight so my intent is to try to get through this relatively quickly to allow plenty of time for us to have conversations about these topics next slide please so we're going to cover tonight are these four topics so five topics excuse me focus on improvement of our feedback loop to community regarding complaints and how by improving transparency we can build trust i'm going to provide you with a staffing update we're going to talk about some of the recent changes to the level of medical and mental health care we're providing in the springfield municipal jail and the driving factors behind that i'm also going to provide an update on the status of some of the recommendations related to recent assessments of the pd and we're going to talk briefly about our new crime analyst position next slide please

3:54 so our complaint process feedback we've received recently is that community members would like to see improvements and how we communicate out information related to complaints the information flow and a way to close the loop on the final resolution of cases is an area where i know and believe that there's an opportunity for us to improve so our goal in this area is to become more responsive to the community in ways that assures them that their voices are not just heard but that we take action to investigate allegations and that we've identified areas where we can do better and most importantly if we find that we did not get things right that we take meaningful action to engage in situationally appropriate accountability to make sure this agency delivers professional service to all the members

4:39 of this community we look forward to discussing and exploring ways to improve so we can provide additional feedback and share a policy that can clarify our process for everyone so the existing process for how people can levy complaints with the pd is as follows we can intake a complaint a number of different ways via email a fillable mask on our website a phone call in person via mail in writing and also through a written complaint form that's now available in english and spanish at the front desk of the pd so a complaint is taken then the pertinent information is entered into our new accountability software called iapro and from there our professional standards office will triage the complaints and make a determination for the most appropriate party to conduct that investigation so that can be a supervisor or command staff

5:25 it might be the professional standards division itself or in some cases it can be assigned to an independent third party investigator on completion of the investigation it's given a disposition sustained complaints are then evaluated to identify the most appropriate level of accountability dependent on the mitigating or aggravating factors that may exist such as the type of policy violation or a discipline history of an employee and all the records are retained in accordance with oregon public records law by the professional standards division next slide please so this list is an example of a checklist that's been created off the industry best practices that i believe would result in significant improvements in our process our feedback loop and then in turn build

6:10 trust with the community so when it comes to establishing policies and procedures spd has a complaint policy and procedure that's currently under review to reflect changes to our to our existing process uh the receipt and initial processing of the complaint as i described we're transitioning to a triage system that ensures the professional standards division is accountable for the intake of all those complaints the intake and the tracking for timeline for those complaints uh the assigning of the appropriate party for follow-up this again falls up to professional standards to assign that uh the investigation then occurs which is the fact-finding phase and that includes reviewing police reports body-worn camera footage conducting interviews with complainants other witness officers other community

6:55 members and then once that investigation is completed we determine the appropriate disposition based on the investigator's conclusion about the validity of the allegations after evaluating all the evidence and sufficient evidence must be present in order to sustain a complaint and then we implement any necessary corrective action such as discipline or remedial measures so the following areas are ones where i've identified where i think we can definitely improve and this is going to be our focus in the months ahead as we ensure we beef up our policy and our procedures so when it comes to communicating with the complainant and the subject officers i want to explore a more formal mechanism for closing that loop so i'm leaning towards a providing a written letter to the complainant explaining what the findings were and

7:41 acknowledging their effort to bring this matter to our attention with the goal being to improve our level of the service that we provide documenting analyzing and tracking that information the tracking and analyzing of the numbers related to these complaints and the types of complaints over time is going to help us identify trends that again is going to inform us where we can improve our training and our policy and then the final bullet up here is reporting the process outcomes to the public into management i i envision an outward-facing regular summary of our complaints the categories of the complaints the findings all being provided to the public so this could be a via our website a regular presentation to council or through some other means but the goal is

8:26 to a let the public know that we're taking complaints seriously and we're investigating them and b to be transparent with the data and c to improve our level of service as a result next slide please uh staffing update so recruiting and hiring to reach adequate staffing levels is a challenge for law enforcement agencies around the state and around the country and it has been for last couple years and it continues to be in fact we said a presentation did our executive session today about how challenging it is for government entities as a whole to hire anybody today in ways it never has been before our total authorized staffing levels for the pd are currently 124 and we're running about 99 agency-wide and that's inclusive of all the sworn the non-sworn

9:12 professional staff the springfield municipal jail detention staff so of our 55 police officer positions we have 42 filled and eight of those 42 are currently on probation haven't been hired in the last 18 months we have focused heavily heavily over the last year on recruitment of lateral officers hiring a lateral is the quickest way to provide relief to the current officers who've been working those long hours and days off to cover the vacancies and that reason is the lateral officers arrive here already certified as police officers in the state of oregon and the training process to get them up to speed so they can go to work in the solo status is typically just a few weeks rather than up to a year like it would be the case for an officer with no previous law enforcement experience we currently have four lateral officers

9:58 working that we've hired over the last year i want people to rest assured that we continue to hold a very high standard in who we hire and seek only those new members who are committed to protecting the people of springfield in a manner that embraces dignity and respect and just like with new officer candidates there have been lateral applicants that we have chosen not to hire as part of the spd team as we conduct an in-depth hiring process in order to ensure that we do bring on board only those that have a demonstrated ability to live up to the values of this organization this community and again treat everyone with dignity and respect raymond hires many five more officers in the next two months as long as they can successfully plead the background processes that they're currently in as well as the psychological and medical exams

10:43 we're continuing to leverage our ability to use hiring bonuses for those lateral officers as a recruiting tool unfortunately the ability to offer those bonuses is ending this month statewide because our ability to do that is basically the result of the governor's order partly related to the covet 19 pandemic and the governor's order's expiring soon so our ability to provide hiring bonuses to laterals is going to evaporate unless something at the legislature is extended three of our probationary officers were just released to a solo status about a month ago and the addition of them to our patrol ranks and the staffing schedule has already made a positive impact in terms of overtime reduction and more importantly it provides some level of relief to all those other officers that have been filling in the vacancies

11:28 so a challenge that we continue to face with new police officer hires is the delay created by covet 19 at the state police academy for example we hired a new officer in early june of 22 that had no previous law enforcement experience and he wasn't scheduled to enter the academy until october of this year so according to dpsst our next group of new hires won't be able to attend the academy at the earliest until late february 2023 so i remain optimistic the dps team has taken the steps they can to reduce the wait times but until things get caught up it takes months for us to get somebody into the academy right now and during that time we've been taking advantage of it as much as we can by providing training and exposure to different work groups in the pd in fact our last group of officers that

12:13 returned from the academy felt like that additional training helped prepare them for success and they were able to hit the ground running i think a little ahead where some of the other officers were at the academy and i think this speaks to the professionalism of our training cadre and our instructors at the pd the bottom line with our hiring is we're having some successes and we're hiring high quality candidates and laterals but the reality we're facing from retirements resignations i think a profession that's difficult to enter anyway and what seems to be a prospective workforce that's not engaged in terms of the volume of applicants as in years past it keeps our it's going to keep our recruiting hiring efforts very high on our priority list for the near future

13:04 so the springfield municipal jail has historically had a contract with a company called correctional health partners or chp to provide the medical care for the people that are in the custody of the springfield municipal jail and that care consists of 12 hours of care during a 24 hour period in may of this year the springfield municipal jail received notice from chp that they were going to terminate the contract so an exhaustive effort to solicit bids for a different correctional health service company ended up being unsuccessful and we learned that this is attributable to the relatively small size of our facility combined with the reality of the staffing challenges faced by these companies to hire and retain medical professionals so they're making a business decision to only service jails that are much larger than the one we have

13:49 thanks to city manager newton and her working relationship with the lane county administrators as well as the strong partnership we have with the lane county sheriff's office we were able to leverage those relationships to reach an agreement with a company called well path now well path was approached by us originally to request a bid but they chose not to submit one for the reasons that i mentioned earlier once they learn more about the cohesive relationship between the lane county jail and the springfield municipal jail and the negative impact to our region that would occur if the springfield municipal jail was unable to find a provider they agreed to provide a bid to cover smj so wellpath provides all the medical care for the lane county jail as well as several other oregon facilities and they receive multiple positive references and the level of service wellpath will

14:34 provide is significantly more comprehensive than we had previously they provide 24 7 nursing coverage in comparison to the 12-hour coverage that we had the direct costs have increased as a result of this expanded coverage so we are currently in the process of updating the fees that we charge outside agencies per bed as a result we have existing contracts with the city of eugene as well as the us marshal service for bedspace and so the pending review and realignment of these associated fees should help defray some of the cost increases but that process is currently ongoing uh the benefits to this is that we we are going to definitely realize a much more comprehensive 24 7 level of care that's going to reduce risk and liability and it's going to benefit

15:20 those in our custody who may be struggling with mental health or substance dependency issues in a more effective manner with the previous 12-hour day coverage if the medical staff was not present the smj staff would conduct the initial assessments based on training they've been provided but the reality is they are not medical professionals now there's a medical professional present 24 7 in the jail and they also have immediate access to additional resources through well path should they need them it's commonplace for those in custody to be transferred between lane county and the springfield jail and since lcj also uses well pass so the quality of care the consistency of care and information flow related to medical histories and the needs of those in custody is all greatly improved because it's delivered by the same company

16:06 our insurer cis is also a proponent of the 24 7 care over our previous model and in fact if we were to try to provide medical care as a city by hiring our own medical professionals and city employees rather than using a health care professional the insurance rates that the city would pay would increase significantly if we had made that decision next slide please after the protests in july of 2020 the city requested an independent assessment with the objective being to conduct an analysis of department policy training tactics and to make recommendations to align the department with best practices so i want to provide an update about the department's response to the report recommendations so my summary is going to be brief

16:51 because the report relates directly to some ongoing litigation related to the july 2020 protests that said i need you to know that the department has implemented many of these recommendations and other others are either in process or still under review for example we revised our use of force policy we started a peer support program we've invested in software technology to improve accountability and analysis we implemented the body-worn cameras in the in-car camera program and as an agency we strive to fulfill our responsibility to honor and protect the public's rights of speech and assembly as well as our duty to ensure the physical safety of all those involved and the property community when either is put at risk

17:47 show me one more well um the final thing i want to touch on is our crime analyst position so one of my goals since i got here is be to hire an analyst to focus primarily on spd use of force incidents and to be able to better identify trends that can form us where we can improve through training and accountability so the analyst is also going to manage our new iapro program ensuring that it is streamlined and is user friendly for the front end users or the officers and the sergeants who use it every day and to also make sure that we're utilizing it in a way that takes advantage of all it has to offer this analyst is going to be assigned a professional standards division in our effort to further build out its capabilities regarding complaints and internal investigations that also can provide us a trend analysis allowing again for us to improve through training and

18:32 accountability so last month we're finally able to hire someone into that position we had over 40 applicants from inside and outside the city and after two different interview panels we hired someone that we are very excited to have on board in this capacity they have previous previous experience in data analysis software development and writing scientific reports from their career prior to spd they also spent time as a police officer and attended the police academy here in portland and they helped create the 2021 springfield police annual use of force report the first time that we utilized data collected from our new software program so lillywick was selected to fill that position and we couldn't be more impressed with how she's hit the ground running already the downside is that she's been our community outreach coordinator for the

19:17 past year so that position is currently vacant and we're going to be posting to phil that very soon so if anybody uh has somebody in mind for that position please spread the word they would be looking for a community outreach coordinator she's done an outstanding job in that capacity over the previous year as well so i want to recognize her publicly for her work and helping build trust with this community and her service to all the communities of springfield so with that i want to open it up to leave us plenty of time to discuss all right thank you chief i know that there's going to be a lot of questions and a lot of great material counselor rodney thank you thank you very much for this report i appreciate it and i think that we just keep getting increasingly transparent and comfortable talking about these things so i appreciate that okay i have a couple of questions and

20:02 then just a comment um you touched on this a little bit in terms of wanting to improve the sort of the the reporting in the process and the analyzing but i'm wondering if you're there's any themes or trends or patterns that are already showing up from the new complaint process if you're seeing anything that you're going to look closer to or if anything's showing up we focused primarily over the last year on our use of force reporting and using iapro to dive into that since we've just hired on this analyst we're just starting now to kind of compile the data related to the complaints we went live with the with the software in november that was primarily for force and now

20:47 we're really trying to put the policies and procedures in place as i described to kind of start to capture that data to build a good baseline to measure off of just like last year's use of force reporting and when we did the use of force reporting we basically only had two two months in iapro the rest of it had to be gone through by hand to create that report um so we're starting that process now with the complaints answer your question and then my second question and this could have also been tied to the small size and staffing changes of around the um the healthcare contract but just wanted to know if you could speak a little too if we know why they wanted our previous provider wanted to terminate that contract my understanding is because of basically the dollar amount and the size

21:32 these companies are focusing on much larger facilities where it just pencils out for them for a business perspective and what we're being told is these small agencies everywhere are really struggling to find coverage so we're very fortunate to find well path great that's i just wanted to say that out loud soon because i know folks are going to pass that and then finally i just and i didn't hear the full name which makes me feel terrible but um just a congratulations to it's lily is that right lily wick is willie wick congratulations to lily wick i love it when we promote from within and i love to see women in this field so just congratulations and looking forward to seeing who we hire as the new community outreach person thank you leonard um thanks sean um and then thanks for the report chief sharer um so um

22:17 the um i i wanted to ask a little bit about the role of professional standards um does the does professional standards just hand or handle citizen complaints or does it also handle internal investigations in the manner of like an internal affairs department um well all the above uh complaints can be submitted in a variety of ways somebody can walk into the front desk they have to speak to a sergeant or watch commander they get the name the information what happened the allegations so the complaint initially can be taken that way it could be submitted online but all those complaints are going to go to professional standards they make the determination at that point who they're going to assign that out to for investigation

23:02 okay and how is professional standards going to decide when they're going to conduct their own investigation and when are they going to send it to an outside investigator typically we send it to an outside investigator if it's something that would involve a lar you know a lot of people within the pd if it rises to something that's the level where we think it would just be cleaner and more independent to have an outside investigator do it a lot of low level complaints are handled by supervisors i think coming most of the mid or some higher level complaints are handled by the professional standards investigator but there may be an occasion to get an outside investigator would you mean would you be more likely to use an outside investigator in the case of a citizen complaint or an internal affair um i i can't say

23:47 necessarily either one it's just going to depend probably on the number of people involved and kind of the egregiousness of the alleged violation okay um would would it be appropriate to ask about a specific um incident that occurred over the summer i mean is this is this the time for a forum for it um sure i guess yeah okay um i i was um informed um during the month of june about um this night of rage that happened over in eugene and i think sbd responded with backup for the epd and um i i just wanted to ask i i imagine that epd asked for backup and i understand spd can't very well say no thanks i mean

24:34 you know if you're asked for backup you're going to provide it um was there um was there ever any engagement that the that spd undertook during that during uh during the night of rage it was an it was a demonstration about the um uh uh yeah about the dobbs decision in the supreme court yeah absolutely we provided um aid to the eugene police department for some time while that protest was going on responding to their um calls for service throughout the city and then at some point the eugene police the eugene police officers that were managing that event called for our assistance at the event because they weren't able to effectively deal with it the way they wanted to so they asked for our assistance okay i mean did did spd engage with any of the

25:19 protesters yeah okay um was that decision made on the spot on the ground or was it not made from uh from further up well i think they they plan to go assist them if they requested it um that's something that happens all the time if another agency requests assistance and so our agency went there we had a lieutenant on scene sergeants on scene corresponding with the command staff from eugene police department for a coordinated response to that event okay is each officer allowed to just make his own judgment on whether to engage with the protesters it depends on the circumstances okay all i got thanks all right so damian first and then we're gonna go

26:04 joe and then we'll come back to steve [Music] hi uh i guess well my question is so in the past i asked about different types of supplemental whether it be training or sessions that would inherently uh increase the cultural humility of uh the police force and i'm not necessarily talking about some you know passive diversity training but i mean other things that will allow our uh officers to see citizens of various backgrounds as people uh potentially reduce the use of force but also create uh a a more well-rounded person uh have any

26:53 of those been implemented have there's been any talks about that uh and if not what are you thinking about implementing or at least suggesting no that's a great question i think over the course of the last year we have we have not delivered a specific program that addresses i think what you're talking about but what we have i think ramped up and and set as a focus like i said these hundred community events that we go to i really am i wanted to focus on um being in community much more often in different parts of the community and engaging with people on a regular basis as a priority for the department and not just our community outreach coordinator but we on occasion or most of the time bring other officers these different events that happen around town so

27:38 they're like i say engaging in a non-enforcement capacity with folks to try to build those relationships but to answer your question no there has not been a focus i guess curricula assigned over the last year on that damian did you have anything else joe joe you won you're on mute got it i'm sorry about that um i just wanted to circle back around a little bit on a topic that was brought up by counselor steer in regards to when uh and how

28:23 internal investigations are handled and you answer you know as far as big ones are serious et cetera et cetera and you indicated that if it involves uh several different members of the department then you go outside which makes complete sense to me otherwise it's easy to get tainted or it just gets very cumbersome i get that minor complaints or complaints that don't rise to a serious level are often handled internally which is more efficient for our cost and to get move things forward and to correct behavior but i think what is important to also know that didn't didn't come up is that the moment that there's a potential for a criminal charge where garrity kicks in that that automatically separates the department from that

29:09 investigation and it's fully investigated by an outside agency or you want to explain that if there's allegations of criminal conduct i can say that virtually every single time i'm going to reach out to another law enforcement agency just to totally separate ourselves from that and we turn over the information to whether it's eugene state police could be salem could be anybody and they're going to conduct a criminal investigation if those are the allegations that have come forward and so and they will present the results of that criminal investigation to the district attorney's office and decide how to proceed that is a totally separate investigation from an internal investigation right and i think it's important for the public to know and the counselors to know too that that anytime

29:54 it rises to level of not just any probable cause for a crime but just the potential for criminal activity have occurred then it automatically kicks in and it goes outside so it gets thoroughly investigated fairly and impartially and and to me that's very important and and then of course if there is no criminal accusation or instrument filed then it goes it reverts back to the internal investigation because there's no criminal activity and then it gets handled internally is that correct correct there could be a policy violation that occurred right it was not a violation of law so if we had allegations of criminal conduct that's investigated at the criminal level and they decide the district attorney decides no this didn't rise the level of criminal conduct then at that point we would do an internal affairs investigation to see if there was policy

30:39 violations and that's that keeps it extremely clean and i think it's a very good system and also it it helps the city liability wise to prevent a double jeopardy situation right practically awesome thanks steve uh you mentioned the complaint forms are available at the front counter a lot of people are intimidated by that and i understand maybe they're being located somewhere else in the lobby complaint forms if you if you walk in the front door of the pd i mean there's a rack just immediately inside the door where you can get complaint forms okay or if you have access to a computer you can fill out the mask online as well just um trying to clear that up uh my other question is about the the railway uh thing that happened that springfield

31:25 police were over there for um i received some emails that there was some interaction between people and and the police i don't know exactly what that is but have we had any complaints there have been no outside generated complaints about policy violations to the pd i initiated an internal affairs complaint at the pd because of the public interest of that event some of the things i saw posted on facebook i ordered professional standards to start an internal affairs investigation into that and that's currently ongoing but previous to that anytime officers use force it's reviewed by a sergeant and it's reviewed by a lieutenant so what happens is the officer would use force they

32:10 write their police reports if they turn in their body camera footage the sergeant reviews all the video and all the police reports if they determine that it was within policy then they pass it on to the lieutenant who reviews all the same video all the police reports and if they think there's a policy violation and they could trigger an investigation so that's what happens in every use of force there's those multiple layers of review and if any point during those layers of review they determine there's a policy violation here then that will trigger an internal affairs investigation i like that description very much thank you you're welcome all right um i've got a couple uh a couple of questions specifically about the about the complaint process um you know and i i want to at least flag

32:56 for for folks that you can fill that out online i got i have gotten that question before in the last probably i don't know 90 days or so um is there is there a different you can go online you can go into the office um is there a different intake point like could is it located someplace in city hall that you can go to too um no i don't think we have a formal complaint you know kiosk in city hall but i mean someone could write a letter and say this happened to me date time location they could mail it to the pd they could submit that at city hall i mean we someone does not have to be physically present in the pd to file a complaint right so if you go to the city manager's office and you you know you have an issue and i know that this has happened

33:41 um uh before right we've the city manager will take the information and then refer it back back to the pd complaint process okay good um the uh the other thing and i think this is probably solved with the reliance on ia pro but do all the complaint any complaints that we do receive do they have a control number on them so we can essentially make sure that we've closed the loop on everything yes that's that's part of the benefit ipro it will be assigned a number and intake we can track the timelines how long it's been under investigation we can track if the loop has been closed at the end it'll provide us ability to do all that and one of the things i really liked about the presentation is it was pretty transparent about that you know where

34:26 you see gaps in some of the process and that you're just sort of naturally closing them as we continue to uh continue to work on this um so switching over i i guess i had two questions about staffing in general um so when i look at the staffing and i heard you say this in the presentation is our staffing isn't gonna get like it's gonna get better but we won't be quote fully like we're gonna be in some sort of staffing shortage for a while right so how long is a while before we would get is it a five year thing is it a ten year thing like how big of a challenge is staffing in the pd that's a great question so i know there have been you know from our hr presentation today at the executive team we have had an inordinate amount of departures from our department in

35:12 particular over the last couple years for a variety of reasons so we're trying to get out of that hole we are making progress the projected retirements for the years ahead i think are slowing way down i mean there's two that i know of that could go within the next year but they also might stay another two or three or four so there's not the pending you know retirement cliff that we see coming anytime soon so i think that allows us some an optimistic outlook that we're going to start gaining ground over the next year or two yeah yeah and and i think that's the that that's the piece that that i think we've got to all see right is that hey right like you're gonna still see retirement you're still gonna see uh recruiting issues obviously we don't want we're not gonna lower our standards

35:57 right it's going to take the time it's going to take but we have to be in there for the long haul and if i could just add one thing it's um i mean spd has to be the agency that people want to come work at in this day and age i mean it's a it's a seller's market if you're selling your services as a police officer you can go anywhere and there's bonuses and pay and all there's all kinds of benefits all kinds of different places so i'm i'm really focusing on trying to make spd the kind of agency that if you want to be a good police officer and serve your community and have career opportunities and all the things that go along with that sense of satisfaction of truly being a public servant i want this agency to be that so that's critical that we maintain and build on that and um when i when i saw the staffing issues and i keep looking at the some of

36:43 the issues that you've got outlined at the state i think it would be really helpful um and if there's a list of things that you know when we meet as a legislative committee that we can come back to the state and advocate for right i i know the bonus issue comes has come up a couple of different times right i know the the police academy issue and i'm sure if you kick it around um you know uh the police station and executive team was probably half a dozen other issues i think there's probably a good place to identify anything that that we can actually talk to our legislative delegation about that would be tweaks that would make sense to improve but yeah but uh would actually help us get folks you know out on the you know trained out on the street you know on their own um i would i know i would be

37:29 behind that right thank you you said things that i wanted to follow up on and my understanding is people could call and make a complaint too they could get to someone and and i know i've asked this before is there anyone or access to anyone who could take that complaint in chinese or i mean chinese excuse me i learned this week that we have more mandarin speakers that are not also english speakers than we do spanish folks so it's at the front of my mind but is there anyone there who could take that complaint in spanish if someone spoke spanish or is it available in spanish on the website um i i'd have to look i think it's in spanish on the website i know it's in spanish and the paper forms in the lobby as far as the you know wide array of

38:15 other languages we do have a translating service that we would probably use you know so we want to make a complaint that spoke a language and nobody in the building at that time did yeah thank you all right i'm looking around um i know that it sounds like there's a couple of you know follow-up questions i know damian had the question about training if we can maybe log that and get for sure um and get back to it and then the legislative question and then the other art are we start you know i know when we met with s pac earlier this year we talked about reviewing the strategic plan um is that started at all no okay so maybe just a time when that is gonna kick off i know everything's got a cue and we've gotta sort of find resources to to get it done

39:01 all right i'm looking around to see if there's any other questions okay um then i appreciate it i appreciate the update um i know you're you've got time to schedule to come back to us either at the beginning of next year or right at the end of this year but i know we'll see see you again shortly for for an additional update thanks chief thank you all right i am going to adjourn us we will be back on this same meeting link in uh 20 minutes uh for the regular session we are adjourned thank you

39:48 i'm going to call the springfield city council regular session to order with roll call mayor van gorden here councillor pitts here counselor mo here councillor rodley here councillor stare here spencer woodrow and councilor pistianieri here thank you all right councilor woodrow is excused um can you please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice and neil can you let us know how many folks have joined us this evening

40:34 uh yes mayor we have uh 24 participants online and approximately 12 in the audience tonight first item please the first item is the consent calendar i make a month in that we approve the consent calendar second it's been moved and seconded uh that we approve the consent calendar can you please call the vote neil yes councillor pitts aye councillor mo here yes councillor rodley yes councillor stare aye councilor woodrow and council pictionary all right uh motion passes five yeses zero nose one absent next item please next item you have one public hearing this evening

41:19 public hearing number one annexation of territory to the city of springfield annex 0.5 acres of residential property located at 999 south 47th street map 18-02-05-13 tax lot 3002 again this is ordinance number one ordinance annexing certain territory 999 south 47th street to the city of springfield and the online park and recreation district withdrawing the same territory from the mckinsey rural fire protection district adopting a severability clause and providing an effective date this is a first reading and andy limbert is here for the staff report yes good evening we are counselors i'm just going to bring up um a quick powerpoint here

42:05 just for illustrative purposes i'm going to share my screen and show the location of this requested annexation which is in south springfield just off jasper road it's actually at the intersection of jasper road and south 47th street and let's go to the next slide uh the property is i would call it an inverted l shape property it abuts the city limits along the western boundary so essentially the eastern boundary of south 47th street right away represents the current city limits line this property is one half acre and the requested annexation is to facilitate connection to the city sewer service due to failed septic

42:50 and under state law they're required to connect because the sewer is at the front edge essentially um sewer services were also extended for a recent subdivision across the street uh for a six i guess was a seven lot subdivision jenny gardens that happened just within the last five years so there is new construction in this area and the sewer service is available to serve this property one item of note because we're within 90 days of the midterm elections ordinarily the annexation ordinance would take effect 30 days after signature by the mayor or upon adoption and acknowledgement by the state which is usually a little later

43:35 than 30 days however in this case because we're coming up within 90 days of the election on november 8th it would not become effective officially until the day after that election should council adopt this annexation ordinance it's just a quirk of timing with elections and annexation law in the state of oregon i did want to point that out and that was noted in the staff report the public notification for this annexation did not um re result in any public comments or responses the fair housing council of oregon did request a copy of the staff report they did not have any follow-up questions once that report was provided and there was no other comments either telephone

44:23 or email or written letters that were provided for notification of this annexation so the staff recommendation stands and i'd be happy to answer any questions if you have them are there any questions leonard i i just got one um andy you said uh sewer service would be available for this lot um would the installation or the connection of the sewer service be the would it be charged to the person who moved in whoever that is or the persons yes and i believe that's already been taken care of um the applicant to facilitate continued habitation of the house had already made arrangements to pay the sewer assessment and undertake connection through

45:09 obtaining plumbing permits uh from the city for that connection this annexation because of the timing of council meetings um is kind of trailing the facts uh which is it which is council's uh desire to maintain connects into the to the houses wherever possible and how the paperwork uh come at a later time so they were able to get that connection made um and fortunately did not have to extend public sewer along the frontage next month um this is foreshadowing um there will be two annexations brought forward that include extension of public sanitary sewer lines within neighborhoods that do not currently have the service these are city-sponsored

45:54 uh public sewer extensions that are assisting property owners in having that sewer service at their front door to connect so that's a bit of a different situation in this case uh they were able to make the connection essentially right at their doorstep i think we're all looking forward to that thanks yes you're welcome are there any other questions all right um i'm gonna go ahead and open the public hearing and i do not have any cards for this item neil is there anybody online that wishes to speak to this item the mayor appears we have no hands for this item i'm going to close the public hearing and there's no action tonight this is first reading only next item please your next item is business from the

46:40 audience okay so since we're back from the summer we didn't read the uh we didn't read the script um so if you remember business from the audience we're gonna do this in two sets we'll do cards from in the room first and then we'll give anybody online an opportunity that wants to speak and raise their hand so if you're online and want to speak to the council please raise your hand to get into the queue the one card i have is for nicole nelson please join us and state your name and location in the city for the record please good evening my name is nicole nelson and i live at 721 island street in springfield my family and i have been residents of springfield since 2010 and i am here on behalf of the springfield community

47:25 development corporation which has been working on the research and planning of a multi-use facility for the past four years the springfield community development corporation or scdc was established in 2019 to encourage build finance and assist in obtaining an indoor track and field facility situated in springfield the goal of the fifth excuse me the goal of the facility is to advance community revitalization as well as the economic development priorities of our community our board of directors has determined that an indoor track and field facility which also allows for multiple uses including a wide range of sports cultural events civic events trade shows

48:12 concerts festivals would accomplish the goals of the scdc we have been working in good faith with our local partners and have determined that the best use of any increase in hotel room tax is growing winter travel demand recently the lane county commissioners passed an order for the county administrator to draft an ordinance for a 2 increase in both car rental tax and transient room tax the local hospitality tax has not been increased since 2008 and any increase to the room tax should be made with careful consideration increased tax revenues should be invested in a project which will drive economic demand year round particularly

48:59 in the winter spur additional private development in our community and improve the quality of life for our residents i'm here tonight to request that the city of springfield or excuse me springfield city councilors submit testimony to our lane county commission stating that a portion of any increase in the rental car and hospitality tax shall be reserved to support a project in springfield which accomplishes the goals of increasing winter travel demand i want to thank you all for your service and commitment to the city of springfield and i appreciate your support in reserving a portion of these funds for springfield

49:47 thank you i do not have any other cards um in the room neil or there is there anybody online that wishes to speak yes we currently have one hand that is elizabeth utterback and you should be able to unmute your microphone hi this is lizzy utterback from word three i'll try not to take joe's head shake personally um good evening council and interim mayor van gorden thank you for your engagement and good questions at the work session this evening i noticed chief shara began his presentation with happy police pictures but the times i've seen spd officers this summer have looked very different i noticed his pictures didn't include any officers in riot gear or combat formation

50:32 or with their batons in the air which is how my pictures look i'm not sure which recommendations from the expensive brazil report were implemented because i saw many of your most notorious and violent officers this summer at a peaceful protest where they brutalized activists and eugene by beating them with their batons and throwing them to the ground causing injuries for many of them regarding that night i know of at least one person who's already filed a complaint and i'm surprised the public comments at the last spac meeting didn't trigger the complaint process that chief sheriff described because we heard from the nurse that officer braggs battered that night it's also surprising that chief shearer didn't follow up with me personally regarding my experience that

51:18 night and my stated intent to file a complaint as he was copied on an email response to me and by the way the online complaint form is only available in english it's almost like you're only being provided with carefully curated information and not the full story and that worries me i would however like to offer my sincere gratitude that the complaint feedback process was evaluated and revamped over the last few years i've attended spack and city council i've routinely heard from community members about how their complaints were not taken seriously or appropriately followed up so this is really important however chief shearer also explained that there's a complaint form in spanish and english at the front desk if a complaint form is available in

52:06 spanish and english at the front desk or in a rack on the wall why doesn't spd frontline staff know about this you may be aware of a community audit video entitled why are you yelling at me which was posted by bay area transparency on youtube on august 27 2022 that's gone viral with over 188 000 views in the video the community auditor is not only berated and yelled at by sergeant justin meyers in the lobby of the justice center he's stalked by several patrol cars and he's also incorrectly advised by the receptionist that the only way to make a complaint is to leave his name and phone number i'm wondering what steps have been or will be taken to educate city staff and the

52:51 public that there's actually a written police complaint process which includes an anonymous complaint option thank you there's our only uh speaker from the virtual call list okay um do we have uh any council response or leonard yeah um i just wanted to thank nicole nelson and uh lizzie utterback for their comments tonight i i did want to ask i mean did lizzie utterback file a formal complaint with the city and if so what was the disposition on that

53:42 i don't know that lizzie utterback filed a formal complaint with the city but there was like i said i initiated an internal affairs investigation on that incident based on the things we saw on social media and so her complaint probably was lumped in with all those different things that we saw when we initiated that complaint so whether there's one complaint or 30 we're still going to investigate that incident extremely thoroughly okay and you guys are still looking at it correct absolutely it's in the midst of the internal investigation right now because all the other layers are review and the hours and hours and hours of video had to be reviewed as part of that so now it's within now it's with professional standards and internal affairs got it thanks uh the one follow-up item i am interested in sending a letter on behalf of of the city to to the county um really i think the thing we need to say

54:28 and i'm looking for a really a head nod around the table to make sure this happens correctly is right now the county is looking at a two percent trt increase and most of that would go to the fairgrounds as part of the lane events center and really what what we the feedback we need to give right now is just to say hey look they they're evaluating their fairgrounds master plan but we really want to leave some of that money available for some sort of project in springfield got my head on i've seen head nods yes and okay go ahead um yes i think that um i mean i i know that

55:13 we at our um at our retreat we talked about i talked about um where the indoor track fits into the future of springfield and i think yes to a project and i know that the county is looking at they're considering an indoor track they're considering the the multi-use facility they're looking at all of those things um so i just i think my yes and is yes i think we want to say we would definitely like springfield to be considered in there knowing that we are one city in the county and it's going to depend on where things are located in terms of what i see the ultimate benefit being for springfield so that's part of it for me too it's like well where is it going you know if it depending on where things go it could

55:58 all be in eugene or it could be at different places so yes as long as you know it's like yes and like i didn't hear you was the ear marked for a certain purpose no and i and i think that's the and we'll let joe hop in it here in a minute right like i think when i look at where the county is right now they're in the start of this conversation about what's going to happen and i think right now the right way to do it is to simply say hey we see from an economic development perspective that winter demand is still an issue and given the size of this trt increase we really want to you to evaluate more than one project here preferably something in springfield and we can sort out the details later let's let joe hop in

56:44 thanks sean i was basically reiterating what you just said i'm fully for sending a letter over there and even personal phone calls to specific commissioners i've already been in contact with the springfield county commissioner and let him know that i uh strongly support them treating those trt and rental car tax monies to be proportionately provided to springfield because fact is i i believe that we are proportionately entitled to any tax increase that's supposed to be regional wide um and it makes sense to make it for economic development to draw people in from i mean after all it's it's transit room tax for travelers

57:30 so it's not it shouldn't be for any other purpose but that matter of fact i don't think it can be but anyway yeah i support that and i think that they should also look maybe going in partnership i i think i mean i still like the idea of i strongly support the idea of an indoor track in springfield if we can do that and if this is a potential avenue which we can move that along i'm i'm down with that too so yeah i think we gotta send a very strong letter asking for some uh being a good neighbor all right anything else uh neil yes ma'am i just wanted to confirm that the police complaint forms on both the website and the mobile app are translated into up to nine languages including spanish so there's a translate

58:16 button it works for the page and then also the form oh good thank you that i think that was a question that we received so um i'm glad you confirmed that it's in multiple languages and that doesn't surprise me neil thank you very much all right next item please next item is business from the city manager um the first item approval to enter into lease terms of three years with options to renew with an additional three years at the booth kelly complex and bajana keen is here for the snap report

59:08 i don't know if you're waiting on me i couldn't hear a thing you're you're up fahana excellent can you hear me okay yes we can wonderful well i was hoping those boxes wouldn't be the background but we'll do this okay good evening mayor and city councilors it's great to see you again i hope you guys had a great summer recess and got to spend a lot of time doing fun community activities um we have another one on friday i'm sure you know about it um so as you may know i became the property manager for the the city owned properties and c to own properties in january of this year um come to you a couple of times uh with that and april i came with you to you with a resolution uh requesting authorization for the city manager to enter into standard commercial leases that are booth kelly property um which

59:55 would go through july 1st of 2027 that was resolution number 2022-1-4 and it was passed um five four and zero against the one counselor was absent the outcome of that resolution resulted in a standard lease for our booth kelly property that is months to month up to one year in duration uh we now have a new tenant who is very excited and would like to make an investment at our booth kelly complex they are interested in suite 150 which uh previously was city storage it is eleven thousand five hundred square feet so it's a large suite um but due to the substantial monetary investment of this project they're hesitant to make that investment um and

1:00:40 that commitment without a longer lease in place which is understandable um and they want to be able to renew that lease and so i am here today requesting your permission to enter into a three-year lease with two options to renew for additional three-year terms so essentially nine years um would be the the duration of the lease once it is renewed twice um so are there any questions or concerns that i can address for you or so vahana could you are we in a position to disclose who the least uh felicia is we are would you like me to do that yeah the potential lessee is spark lab which is a part of connected lane county um spark lab is a um it is kind of a

1:01:28 it's an extended stem program for um high school students here in the area there's currently um a location of spark in eugene across the street from the holt center and it's been an invaluable resource for our community and eugene's community and currently they bus all of their students from springfield over to the eugene location and what they really want is a place to put where um the springfield students can walk over and they they can have you know their area and eugene can have their area and there would still be some crossover but it would be an investment that would be be making in conjunction with a couple of community partners as well joe thank you mayor um vahana i noticed on a paperwork whatnot there

1:02:14 was no uh terms or numbers on that paperwork but you're asking us to go ahead we have not got a ballpark are we is it competitive how much per square foot you think you're going to be able to get i mean is it part of our investment will be um we will be doing rent abatement and a dollar for the first year so that will be part of our investment as the city and i can i do have that drafted up which i can send over to you it's not been uh finalized well my concern is that it appears as though not that it's you know a bad organization or anything like that don't misunderstand me but it appears as though that is city property that we are um

1:02:59 that's that word i'm looking for of subsidizing an organization and so therefore that property is no longer available for now at least three years for income for our city so we're basically taking it off the books when i don't know if that's wise for the city to take property off the books where it could be income property does that make sense i mean i it does it does it spends storage for maybe 20 years now we've never gotten any money for it so my thought is if we kind of get it started right but how much money do we save in storage over the 20 years we've moved it to a different storage location in both kelly so we actually are not still needing to pay any storage

1:03:44 fees oh yeah i know but what i'm saying is that if had we paid storage fees that's the value of the property because we didn't have to pay so if we looked at how much it would cost us to store our stuff there in a like location where we would have to pay theoretically that should be about what we would expect for rent if it's used similarly was by somebody else's property would it be helpful if i sent over the draft of the the lease the nine years the rent roll the potential rent roll that i've been discussing with heidi yeah i've got was it anything different than what you already put in the packet i didn't include it in the packet oh

1:04:29 yeah can you can you send it please yeah because i don't i don't know if i can support this without without knowing why i mean we're at a decision where it's like i didn't hear about this at least i don't recall hearing about this potential uh deal until all of a sudden we're being asked to authorize it so again you know what i'm saying yeah and so i don't necessarily agree with with the the the business move so to speak whether it's i guess i'll be quiet after that but okay so corey so correct me if i'm wrong um and i it may very well be you said it's a a one-year rent abatement and then would they start

1:05:14 paying rent after that yes or no and they are going to do the sort of capital investments to improve it from being a storage area they're going to be do that investment so while we still retain ownership of the property they are going to do the the improvement investment correct okay and is the abatement forever or is it just no uh it's a dollar for the first year and then i would have to look back at the records it's a it's the rolling increase um and i can send that over to you i haven't um i haven't actually looked at it in a couple of weeks so i couldn't rattle the figures off the top of my head but i can't send that over all right we're going to nancy thank you my recommendation council is that we put this on a future

1:05:59 agenda when we have the full details that you can examine and then make it final determination i have one question i like i would like an anticipated value of the investment how much are they going to put into it how much are you going to do yeah and yeah they're and i think they're jotting down other questions that that that was the business from the audience timer for me so uh go ahead leonard uh the only question i would have is what are the prospects for the stem program without this subsidy yeah i'll just i'll backtrack just a little bit behind i didn't quite catch part about the first year and i understand now that the rent would be on some sort of graduated scale as time goes by

1:06:46 so i would definitely be interested in what kind of scale you're looking at there and when do we when is the breakoff point when do we when's the tipping point we actually are getting some positive return on that property and i concur with um leonard what's the what's the community benefit and evaluation of the benefit is it just for enhancing the the kids that are going there the the people there their abilities or is there actually going to be a um a net return on what they're doing there okay so before we move on to another item does anybody have more questions that we can give that we can give the staff because i know this is going to take two

1:07:31 discussions and if you have more questions now would be that the opportunity to get it out go ahead corey just to build on what counselor pictionary said i think just in terms of the storytelling around this project in addition to the financial pieces um i think it's helpful to know yes these are springfield students this is what it's about and this is what you know where they go after this program i don't know a lot about the program my sort of my gut feeling is that i'm all for anything that's like helping young people to learn things and get a trade and all that stuff but also just what does that look like in terms of the story of springfield damian uh so i mean maybe i'm biased but i've

1:08:16 actually worked this program through my job and and i've seen what it can do uh and so one thing that i brought up before counts is that all decisions that we make are for adults and honestly a lot of us are lost calls and here's an opportunity to really support our youth uh i have students at uofo who were part of it that continue to work for it and i mean this might be a good opportunity to get the testimony of of some of our youth because when you think about longevity they're the ones who are going to be here they're the ones that are going to be taking care of some of us they're the ones who are going to be the end of the innovators and entrepreneurs of springfield and we need to foster that uh because a lot of these opportunities don't exist and so

1:09:02 like i said i admit that that i am biased because i am an educator but here's an opportunity for us really to support those that we want to stay and so when we think about cultural shifts and when we think about retention and recruitment we can't not think about our children so and i don't even have kids so and i'm saying this i don't either but i'm with you yeah all right joe thank you um that triggered another question i have is that the i want to learn to first like provide a little more information of the of the organization that's the lead on this and where i i'm guessing that they're not self-funded i'm guessing they're funded by some other source

1:09:47 and if there is a way in which i mean where is where's the springfield school district in on this or are they are they a partner i would like to see that you know i'd like to see that partnership yeah and so i mean it's the structure wise i know i think it's fascinating i i totally agree with damian in regards to that you know those are our future folks and lord knows i need to be replaced here so yeah the early investment in economic development but i thank you damon you're the you're the storyteller that i'm not i'm like it's wonderful yeah he said all the things i meant i'm glad your microphone is muted damien so anyway all right so thank you it's very intriguing to me and it's not a it's not a shutout for me it's i just i just yeah no i appreciate that all that feedback

1:10:33 that's all good i just was looking at it very one-dimensional and that i have to get permission for a longer lease period end of story so i just wasn't thinking beyond that so let me get all the fluff for you i just won't i won't make decisions unless i i'm happy with the information i have got it all right so i'm going to wrap this up here we're going to reschedule this we're going to bring back additional information and excuse me and and i think we're all just curious right to learn more about learn more about the project what it would entail um we're always excited anybody that's interested in looking at booth kelly and the opportunities um that it would take we just need a little bit more information all right next item please next item is business from the manager

1:11:18 item two new manufacturer dwelling park intergovernmental agreement iga aaron field is here for the staff report good evening mayor and council i'm here tonight with an intergovernmental agreement with oregon housing and community services to accept and disperse three million dollars in state general funds for the purposes of developing a new manufactured dwelling park in springfield in 2019 the city worked with rep lively representative lively and st vincent depaul to advocate for funding for a pilot project to create a new park in springfield this followed our work and

1:12:03 the 2016 governor's oregon solutions project recognizing how what role can the city do to assist manufactured home park residents should they ever be displaced we created a tool kit that sort of had a developed a coordinated response with local agencies but also recognized that perhaps the best way to do that would be to preserve if not preserve the park itself but at least preserve the units and the number of units and so that's where this idea for a new pilot project to create a new park in springfield was generated um the funds for three million dollars have already been dispersed to oregon housing community services currently that is their decision to figure out the project in springfield this iga would in instead of leaving the decision up to ohcs it would give us the

1:12:50 city the lead in evaluating project proposals and dispersing the funds toward an eligible project we haven't figured out that process yet since iga just sort of outlines the expectations for the kind of project that those funds were initially targeted for the city does have experience dispersing federal funds like community development block grant and home funds for new housing development and so this would line up with that um and allow us to evaluate project proposals um and then like i said disperse those funds toward an eligible project um the iga outlines the expectations recognizing there might be some staff time that we could be reimbursed for as part of these funds um there is no

1:13:36 um specific site or project that is tied to this iga but just says we the city would like to take the lead rather than leave it to ohcs in making that decision so before i open this up for questions so in any proposed project we would still get the you know right we would have lots of um points to let our opinion or give a lot of feedback about what a proposed project would be from this point on right like this is just the start of a project development it's even before that it is saying do we the city want to take on that decision making yes so correct this does not this any decision on how the funds or where they'll go or what the project will be or where it's located will come back to you exactly okay great

1:14:23 uh joe thank you sean um a couple questions or you know and i realized it's super early which is really nice to be able to look at this i've got a couple concerns about what i wrote or what i read and you're talking about reimbursement for staff time but it looks by contract or by agreement that the max we're going to get is thirty thousand dollars and and that is very that's a drop in the bucket that i can from what i can tell from my perspective of how much staff time would be required for a sizable project that's only a couple months wages and i'm very concerned about that um and that's something i think that we should not let slip by because if if we are into this and we get into it with staff time and costs of of six figures i

1:15:09 want to know where that money's coming from and what's what are we going to lose by taking it from somewhere else number one number two is that what i would like to see is that typically when you have a project the city you know they're gonna have to have infrastructure to the to the project site and so the payment or the cost of that infrastructure i would like to be able to see come out of this money because otherwise we wouldn't normally do that so that's something where i think would be a good way in which some of that money can be used and the city would not have to again subsidize something when frankly we don't have the money as far as i can

1:15:54 tell to subsidize anything in the city for right now so those are those are just some concerns where we can at least in my mind we can say okay well this is how much a product is going to cost and we have infrastructure to bring to that area and it's going to cost half a million dollars so that should be eligible for reimbursement even though it's not on the site itself but it's the infrastructure brought up to that line and then when you have our proposals or proposers that are looking for the creating these bids then they can go with a hard-line bid of saying okay i'm going to put an infrastructure on this property and i can start at the property line because the city is going to bring it to the property lane which would make that property more juicy so to speak for a developer to look at as opposed to

1:16:40 putting that on the developer's back that make any sense at all uh yes i have a couple thoughts i can also wait okay okay i'm good here yeah if you want to respond now okay great so the staff wages great question i'm concerned um i i would say just to clarify we would not be developing this we would not be we would like staff as their current development center role would play their role and there is a funding mechanism there my role in administering federal funds should an application come in that way would be covered in the way it's currently covered this is sort of just in the additional sort of how are we going to

1:17:25 frame the expectations around these funds like we do with other applications but for the most part the dispersing of funds happens kind of in a in a one-off way and i'm anticipating that a project like this for income qualified affordable housing most likely a mixed income project that i've heard st vincent de paul's interest in developing but nevertheless would probably be eligible for federal funds and so some of that process we're not creating more work all this funding is is saying here's additional subsidy from the state on a project that actually doesn't currently exist for a new manufactured home park so there are so sort of this additional

1:18:11 three million dollars with the idea to say let's see if a new manufactured home park can be developed knowing that you are probably going to line up all of your other funding sources like you normally would you being the developer here's an additional 3 million recognize there might be sort of additional costs related to individual infrastructure sort of based on the site um i'll look into i mean the sort of that same question sort of follows i think that public infrastructure question i don't know what the site is so i don't know like any other development if someone goes out to find a site where is the line is it up to the property or not um and some of that just may become part of the overall development budget that again they have to go out go out and ask for funding from other sources not just us but the state or other

1:18:57 other sources as well so um that piece is unknown i hear you i think what this three million dollars allows is sort of an additional subsidy that the developer would not need to go out and compete against but allows for this kind of project in springfield that otherwise doesn't sort of isn't a possibility right now in the state yeah oh i'm sorry so maybe we could answer the question from uh from a different way and maybe this is more a question for you nancy is is the one percent gonna recover our cost based on this three million dollars you're talking about are you talking about straight staff costs above and beyond yeah to administer this this program

1:19:42 because i think that's ultimately what counselor missionary is asking you know it's kind of hard to speculate without knowing the scope and nature of what the project would be for instance if you select a location and you need to do a lot of infrastructure planning obviously that's going to have a higher staff cost if you have to change codes uh you know there there could be a lot of implications so location is crucial as they say in real estate um the other portion is that you know a lot of times i used to do grant administration and many times the funding body looks at the percentage of the total award that goes to administration and staffing costs so

1:20:28 i can see why you would put a conservative number forward trying to keep in the spirit of making the most money available to the project itself 30 000 does seem low to me but i'm just factoring in you know kind of the the overall cost of of doing anything right and it's just uh astronomically expensive so um i'm hopeful that you know that will be dependent on really finding a good site where hopefully we won't have to necessarily uh do as much i don't want to say hand-holding but facilitation with the project and with the developer all right thank you joe and then

1:21:13 you're starting to get the picture when i'm trying to draw and sean you're on spot with that or spot on with that but i'm just i've got some very large concerns in regards to you talking about a three million dollar grant and allowing us one percent i've never heard of only a one percent admin cost any cost and if you read that contract it it appears to me that we're totally on the hook in regards to okay we get this project going oh by the way it's the user term default if we violate any part of that so we it appears we can't even go for reimbursement so to speak because it would be outside of the original agreement i'm just very skeptical as how this contracts written that

1:21:58 it appears as so the city's gonna be on the hook what's gonna happen if if we say hey this this looks like it's gonna work and oh by the way the city needs to cuff up another hundred thousand for this and ninety four thousand for this and it's a great project because we're gonna but get a bunch of homes so we're gonna start justifying pulling money from elsewhere for a project that in somebody's mind is gonna be fantastic but we can all find fantastic projects but i don't want to be on the hook or look at potentially defaulting on something like this and have to pay for whatever expenses occurred it's a pretty strong contract i don't see much wiggle room go ahead aaron a couple thoughts um i guess one i'm looking if christina or the city

1:22:44 attorney is in the room they definitely went back and forth with me and then with ohcs as well on those terms and they could probably speak to some of those issues about what ifs i guess the way i've been thinking about this and i understand how it's presented is sort of on its own as a project i can't imagine how this project would be developed without home funds and we have a process for home federal home funds and i'm and we have assurance and sort of that not just the process for awarding but the expectations laid out in having the entire financial picture of a project over time be laid out to say do you the developer know what is the cost and what is sort of the income you're receiving

1:23:30 from rents over time that will sort of meet sort of meet this development and so in that sense like i i guess it isn't written in the agreement with ohcs but the way given that it would be up to the city to decide how to disburse those funds i guess my recommendation would be to tie them to another source that we're already doing that would sort of carry those requirements with them and so i think that's where i haven't been concerned on the staffing cost or the the default concerns to say like the level of rigor that we put on a developer's application through other sources is what we would put through here um and sort of matching it there so that's so just a lay i guess that that wasn't exactly explained to your point yes um that's where i'm coming from

1:24:15 staff to say oh this is a great pairing with something else and in that sense we can sort of be more efficient with this and also sort of lean on these other sort of um sort of requirements all right so aaron we're gonna we're gonna switch to mayor bridget here and you know i see christina mary bridget's waved her hand so um just to add to the discussion the um city attorney's obviously go back and forth with the other party in this agreement it doesn't tie us to a particular project christina could probably talk to this in more detail but it's really just to start the process and then like aaron was saying kind of couple that with other opportunities so i you're right it does have standard default provisions um into it but we are not tied to a specific project through this iga

1:25:03 all right um christina did you have anything else before i called on a different counselor yeah um i can just add you know we did there are some basic um parameters outlined like the you know if we make that award um the minimum number of manufactured home units that the project has to provide but there aren't deadlines for bringing those online this was allocated as a legislative priority so i think there's also you know there's a political element to this and support from the legislature so if we got into a situation where we became really concerned we would be unable to fulfill the purposes of this pretty broad purpose statement i think that we have a lot of avenues for flexibility the default provisions in this grant

1:25:49 agreement are the state's standard ones and so we focused strongly on providing enough flexibility under the responsibilities of each party and how we define the project to try to make sure that we wouldn't end up in the situation you're describing counselor pictionary all right counselor rodney okay so this is how i'm understanding it and how i understood it when i read it and i know that i tend to be like the queen of very folksy language so if i'm getting it wrong tell me but this is really giving you permission just to to be the ones authorizing this amount of money from here to here for a project and like you said when i read it to you because i know we've been talking about this in terms of our priorities for how we're spending other

1:26:34 federal dollars that this is a way to leverage this three million dollars towards a project that is going to the developer is going to need to bring money into this the we possibly can use home funds like you said for this but this this particular thing that you're asking us is just to say okay because this money's coming from this source we're giving you permission to be the ones administering this funds in towards this project at a time to this receiver that's correct okay and then we will also have provisions and whatever our agreements are for transferring the funds from the city to the developer or however we use the funds that will similarly protect us in the case of something happening on the developer's side um and those they'll you know if they

1:27:20 bring other funding to the table there'll be other provisions that sort of all tie that together as well right okay okay i feel fine with it okay um and i guess maybe let's see my way to think about it would be from it's really the federal fund process that that really is going to address some of these issues that we we probably are not giving this money out in a way that is different than what we would think is that home allocation process and that home allocation process is really the the piece where we're going to recoup a majority of of our our costs and right address some of the financial pro you know i guess problems is the wrong term questions that people might have about the individual project right so there's that when i listen to the

1:28:06 staff describe this aaron is like you're not like if we approve this tonight we're gonna have three million dollars of extra you know money to develop to develop this project and we're probably going to constrain that based on whatever our you know our federal allocation process for home dollars is correct and that includes sort of like we don't you know even when we have home awards in that case we don't you know if there is an issue with um funding coming up short with the project down the road there is a process to deal with that that isn't sort of these one-off questions of having the city come in and and sort of solve that issue on its own so um yeah there is a process and we would lean on the federal sort of

1:28:51 that federal due diligence in order to follow that here yeah i think i'm good here any other questions we're really good discussion about this um all right steve if you're ready for a motion make a motion to be authorized city manager to sign the iga with housing and community services to disturb 3 million in grant funding for the purpose of developing a manufactured dwelling parking second microphone neil could you call the vote please yes counselor pitts all right that's larmo yes council radley yes councillor stair hi councillor woodrow encounter

1:29:39 pictionary all right uh motion passes five yeses zero knows in one absent uh next item please next time is any other business from the city manager yes thank you um i just want to take a moment to um thank the chief chair for being here tonight and providing us with such comprehensive report i am just really excited about the way that he is really committed to professionalism in law enforcement committed to de-escalation committed to really be in touch with our community and i also want to commend the members of our springfield police department for really embracing chief shearer's leadership and the reforms that he has

1:30:25 brought forward i'm always enormously impressed when i interact with our officers so i wanted to to say that as well i wanted to congratulate lilly wick on her promotion into the data analyst position i'm thrilled i've met lily i've worked with and she's really really bright and i hope that she keeps stays with us and we want to invest in her and we hope that she invests with us and the re i have a little segue here sorry i recently spoke at the city county insurance services conference as part of a panel discussing why it is important to promote women in leadership

1:31:12 positions in government as well in as law enforcement it was a really great conversation really talking about the unique talents and abilities that women tend to bring to the job so it was a wonderful opportunity to me to talk about that as part of the city's overall diversity equity and inclusion program so it was a great opportunity and made some great contacts so that's the end of my report thank you uh any business from the city attorney no no business all right before i adjourn us i forgot one announcement that i was supposed to make under uh under business from the council um i want to thank the school district

1:31:58 there's a library program that uh essentially is called for every student a library card it's something this council supported for a long time um we put dollars into it we've fundraised for it um it gives library cards to springfield schools students that live in the school district but are outside the outside the city limits and the school district recently committed at least ten thousand dollars for the next three years to support that program it's been important in this community and i just wanted to say thank you school board for stepping up for literacy here with that we are adjourned