Springfield City Council — January 17, 2023

0:07 okay okay I'm going to call the Springfield City Council regular session to order with roll call Mayor Van Gordon here councilor Weber here councilor Mo here councilor rodley here sponsor stare here that's sir Doyle here and councilor Pictionary here thank you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance as we begin our meeting tonight I would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us by phone or online to

0:53 please keep yourself on mute until you're called Dawn to provide public testimony there is one designated uh time for public testimony this evening under business from the audience if you are attending in person please complete the request to speak card located at the entrance of the council chambers and give them to the city recorder if you're joining us online with a tablet smartphone or computer uh in which to speak up at either of those times please use your the raise hand feature in Zoom the order of public testimonies is as follows anyone uh in person in the council chamber and anyone who has raised their virtual hand and Neil how many folks do we have joining us to they're approximately 18 folks in the council chambers and seven participants online thank you first item place first item is

1:39 the consent calendar like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar second all right Neil could you call a vote please yes counselor Weber yes yeah sir Mo yes answer Radley yes counselor stare yes councilor Doyle aye and Council missionary yes thank you motion passes uh six yes is zero knows next item please you have no public hearings tonight so the next item would be business from the audience okay the one card I have in the evening uh in the room is for Sean Hyland so will you come up and let us state your name and location for the record and then have three minutes uh my name's Sean Hyland I reside at 2100 Hayden Bridge Road in Springfield

2:25 and uh so I'm here to talk tonight about annexation fees some of you already know brought you to light of these um I'm gonna do this quickly but a quick trip down memory lane it was 2009 I think the last time I stood up here uh talking about sight reading fees and at that time um everybody heard what we were talking about we went through a bunch and the study was done to determine that the fees were overcharged because they were based on a rate per impervious square footage and just for an example our high Banks industrial park that we now have fully built operational in 2009 when I dropped off my site review packet was quoted 110 000 for site review it picked up my packet and left

3:10 two and a half years later after the study was done you guys all agreed that was overcharged it would cost me ten thousand dollars you know more reasonable so here we are now I am developing a 25 Acre Site at 5230 highbanks Road it was the old uh Eugene sand and gravel Pond that they mined we've been filling it for years since we bought it and are ready to develop it into an RV storage facility possibly Mini Storage as well but it's in there's this outside sea limits in the urban growth boundary so County kicks me to you guys um which I'm going through it all I'm right I want to do this but I'm at the point now where my annexation fee is based on a cost per

3:57 acre it's a flat rate in the city doesn't matter if it's an acre half an acre 30 40 50 acres it's the same cost so it's a little bit lopsided so the fees for annexation the 74 000 million let me just right yeah seventy four thousand dollars for annexation 52 000 for a metro plan Amendment there's like another 15 grand and some other stuff too I don't remember what those all were but those were the two that really stood out and that's kind of got me to stepping back and looking at it a little bit more um one of my planners at tbg that works for me he used to work at the City of Eugene he pulls up the chart for the Eugene's chart their annexation is a flat rate of 5155 metro plan Amendment eight thousand seven seventy seven so there's a pretty big gap there huge

4:43 gap now I know I've met with a few guys already Jeff over there as well Neil and you've agreed you guys think you just ordered a study maybe already which is great and I think you'll find it it's very lopsided for the large sites to the smaller sites so the reason I'm here today is the last thing I was told was by the time everything gets done the fees may get changed in the summer or fall um I'm ready to go I want to get my project rolling and I can't do that until I have I have to do annexation I've got I think I've got nine months worth of stuff to get done before I can do anything so anyways I'm here to just ask that potentially look at freezing rates or pausing them let me give a deposit with a refund to come or

5:29 something so that way progress could still happen while you're reviewing your rates thank you um that that's the only card I have in the room are there any hands or anybody online uh mayor I don't see any hands raised from the online folks right is there any Council response Joe excuse me I remember that first project and I think there was another one before that that was with another local Builder um what you bring up makes sense to me and I I think that I don't know if their staff is planning to work with you or look look at that or to review it I'm

6:15 not sure but I'd like to know um if staff has got a staff has got a response to his questions or if there's something in the in the works for this because it does seem pretty lopsided but I don't have all the facts I'm not going to say it is until I have more info Nancy um counselor Pictionary we staff has discussed this issue with Mr Hyland and um rather than taking counsel meeting time to talk about it um we are in the process of finding an external uh consulting firm to look at our fees and finds um but I think that in this case we're going to need a little bit do more research about Mr Helen's request this evening

7:01 so Victoria I just wanted to make a quick comment that one of the things that I um having a little bit of experience with the City of Eugene and then also coming into this I I noticed that there was a disparity in the in the costs as well and so that I'm brand new so I haven't had the opportunity to bring up that issue but that is definitely been a concern of mine as well so I'm glad that this is coming forward to staff to take a look at all right anybody else I opened the big picture we look at value of that project when it gets built in the tax taxes city tax is going to be paying you know as an asset to the city so that's that's real important

7:48 yeah so Nancy could you just take it away and maybe distribute some more information to us and then give us a chance to take a look at it because I think he's got some ideas in there that might be worth talking about just quickly you gave us an address of 51 something dirty High Banks 5230 said B is that the old ponds that are just north on right so he had the motorhome plant there but the one on you're talking about is the one on the east side of the road and just a little bit south of tofos property right behind the Industrial Park yeah okay gotcha sand and gravel mine yeah

8:38 all right next item please the next item is business from the city council is there any other business from the city council everybody make it to their uh that was a nice swearing in today we had it at the Justice Center for the four new uh student officers plus two other uh people that were advancements forget the name that was and a lot of people showed up that was very popular that was very nice yeah it was uh it was definitely exciting and we're we're happy to see the new folks uh showing up and yeah Joe I'm just gonna say I wish I could have made I was out of town so um and then there are a couple of us went to the MLK March in the student event yesterday and um I I do have to

9:25 say that uh as far as elected bodies we were the by far the largest represented group at the uh at the speech competition yesterday so I thought that was pretty cool all right next item please uh next item under business from the city manager we have item number one is award a contract to HDR engineering Inc for 42nd Street Levy emergency action plan this is project p41044 and Brian conlon is here for a staff report uh thank you very much good evening uh mayor and City councilors I have not met you yet

10:11 um counselor Weber and look forward to got to meet counselor Doyle earlier this evening um I want to start out by saying this agenda item was put together by Ken vogany who has a lot of experience working with uh floodplain management and also with this specific item being the 42nd Street Levy so the I'm going to start with the action request and that is approve or reject a motion to authorize and direct the city manager to execute a contract with HDR engineering and the contract is to not exceed 150 000 to develop an emergency action plan for the 42nd Street Levy and I think what I can do if you want is provide a

10:57 little context of why we're here and so uh about seven or so years ago uh we got information that we had deficiencies with uh McKenzie Levy and um so knowing that the deficiencies uh brought about a concern a risk concern with flooding and excuse me we get all the water Nancy asked me if I was getting a cold earlier today and I'm not but anyway about seven years ago the council and staff started pursuing financial and technical assistance um to modernize the 42nd Street Levy as it is deficient enough that we have a

11:43 risk concern and so um with that uh there are a couple things in play right now one of the more recent things is there's a feasibility study that's uh appropriated by by Congressman DeFazio it took the lead on that and that's going to help us with some of the elements of design and assessment and this emergency uh action plan will help us navigate I believe it's a prudent measure to help us navigate that time before construction would occur and so uh with that uh the HDR will

12:29 provide a framework uh and that framework will identify vulnerability assessment that'll be one of the uh objectives of that vulnerability assessment and let me read through this just real quick lost my place um there'll be public involvement and communication plan developed with this and then also like I mentioned earlier the vulnerability assessment and flood risk characters characterization so this engineering firm will go in they'll work with the other federal agencies to make certain that how the

13:17 output of this will um be aligned with the USAG and Corps of Engineers and FEMA as well so pretty much uh what we're hoping for is um that the plan will it won't secure the fact that we can't stop a flood but what it will do is will help us navigate how we will fight a breach if it won't were to occur so Leonard um Brian thanks for the report um so um were we ever able to determine the composition of the levy

14:03 um I understood that that was going to be a factor in determining whether we could build on top of it or whether we were just gonna have to tear it all the way down I believe the answer to that is no uh can could better answer that but that's part of the character characterization in the assessment in the feasibility study that will follow this okay good we'll get a better idea and that will help determine the scale and magnitude of where to work what to work one of the concerns is there's been re-channelization uh the channel is moving to the West substantially into the north over the period of about the last four years and somewhere in the area of 400 feet so

14:49 that's a big concern especially North at the top the toe of the Levee and so we'll get answers during this assessment and the characterization piece of it will identify where we're most vulnerable sounds good thank you chill it's a little concerning where we're trying we're we're looking at this to plan to fix a breach as opposed to preventing a breach go ahead if you don't mind so the 42nd Street Levy is a super high priority as you as you know and so there's several years before we get to that replacement or repair and so in the meantime um using some of the um

15:36 funds that we got through the federal delegation putting together a plan for how we would react to any breach is something that we don't have and as they put that plan together we'll also give us some information that we can use towards the initial the eventual fix so this is in between peace as we work towards the eventual just replacement of the levy but as it is right now we have no emergency response plan should something happen and this will give us that point yeah I get it but you know feds and feds and a state are only they're not even kicking in a third total compared to the cost right well we're we have approximately of the 150 40 000 in Grant uh funding and then

16:23 the balance of that will be made up with uh our uh storm water our water drain uh yeah Revenue yeah um interesting to see I'm not against it I think you know whatever we can do up front It's just sad that we're trying to play catch-up now but well you may recall that we purchased approximately two hundred thousand dollars worth of box walls which are flood flight flood fight materials and like Neil said in in this sort of interim period until which time the levy might or might not be uh taken down and built up or wherever that work might occur it allows us to establish a plan that helps us do

17:10 exactly what you're talking about it certainly shows what we're doing our due diligence should something happen it's it will uh give us the defense of not doing anything so that's it's a good thing I've done this in the past and I'm not sure why why is Rip rap illegal I don't know that I I can't answer the question whether whether it's illegal or not why isn't that considered on the on the on the stream Bank all the way down to that I've done a lot of that that's what it's for I think part of this as far as the vulnerability assessment I

17:55 think this will be a further furtherance of us being able to determine where and what we're dealing with and a lot of this is uh not very visible uh and so um if we were to build on top of something that would not be substantial enough to some of it I believe the concern is it it's uh open to undermining you know potential you can open the toe up but you do when you do the rip rap and the other one uh from my bridge building days is sheet piling a lot of stuff works good goes in as far as you want it but if it's long enough you weld a piece to it two rolls of sheet piling down through there

18:40 I think can make a big difference and I've said that to people they're not paying attention to me but I wanted did want to say it in the public yeah we have to gain access to the river too and there's a lot of uh positive things in motion and who knows maybe that will be part of the fixed in some some places so my the material looks great and I know that we've got to take you know it's sort of we got to take you know small steps towards getting this thing fixed um I would recommend if you have not read the handout in the packet that he's holding up right now that is probably the best single handout that explains you know sort of where this whole project started it shows the

19:25 channel moving and you know the probably 15 different projects that are from everything from water quality to fixing the 42nd Street street is on that in that handout so when I think about um what do we want to do with the 42nd Street corridor right it all really starts with the levy and then there's water quality and storm water and everything that's really involved in that eweb's concerned about it we've got a lot of just questions that are related to this so I would recommend that you read it and then if you have questions you know you reach out to the reach out to the staff um accordingly Thursday the staff and I are going out and um showing uh Congressman woman uh oil around the uh the location and we're

20:10 going to go down into the mud and take a look at it so that she can see it and then we'll keep the conversation going from there there's a good representation of the channel migration in this as well so it it really it really pops like if you if you take a look at it it really shows up well are there any other questions all right I'd like to make a motion to authorize the city manager to execute a contract with HDR engineering Inc to prepare an emergency action plan for the 42nd Street Levy second Neil could you call the vote please yes counselor Weber yes councilor Moon yes councilor rodley yes announcer stare yes counselor Doyle yes and counselor

20:56 Pictionary yes thank you motion passes six yeses zero knows next item please any other business from the city manager further business thank you any business from the city attorney no no business thank you all right we are adjourned have a good night everybody