Springfield City Council — January 23, 2023

0:06 I'm going to call the work session for the Springfield City Council to order with roll call mayor Ben Gordon here councilors Weber hello Bradley here share here Doyle here stationery here thank you all right we have two items this evening the first one was the camping ordinance update with Mary Bridget Smith hello

1:06 okay good evening uh mayor and Council Mary birthday Smith your City attorney here at work session and we're talking tonight about amending the city's camping ordinance we met at the end of uh November to discuss this and um we're going to have a couple more work sessions about this item this will be the first of several here for this coming term I am mindful of that time tonight I know you have a lot of Ceta items and then the audit so I'm going to try and be time late I have a PowerPoint there just to kind of guide the conversation that was included in the PowerPoint and then the other attachment is a on public land and right-of-way map just to kind of set the table for um the property that we'll be talking

1:52 about We Are Tonight have two items two that I'm looking for Council input on a communication strategy and then just to look at the map I did include on the AIS um a schedule just to give you an idea so February 6th I'll be back before you in another shorter work session to talk about uh the city's um current Sheltering options for folks because that is part of the analysis or uh camping on public places and then also some of the city's efforts with regard to Sheltering specifically you know you've had lots of meetings about there's been some funding from the state and other items related to housing and I thought it might be nice to have a little information about that and then

2:38 also what other jurisdictions are doing as an example for to see if that helps you in your analysis as we move forward so see if I can walk into gum here and okay so just framing up the um conversation tonight as I mentioned I'm here to try and receive guidance about the communication strategy as we work through this um project and then the types of information about publicly owned property that the city has that will help you kind of work your way through this and evaluate the changing of our camping ordinance um and as I mentioned in February which would be February 6th so uh just a couple meetings from now talking about

3:23 other jurisdictions and then City's efforts with Sheltering so first I want to talk about the communication strategy and when I talk about communication strategy is really talking about how we're going to be talking with the public and the constituents about changing this ordinance and as we are working on it and Amber's been really helpful with the city manager's office and there's other stuff as well we want to kind of think about like you know the why and someone's considerations about this as you work with the public because you want to be real intentional so clearly first this has to do with camping on public places and unsheltered homeless individuals and really that this is a front and center issue right this is issue that impacts how we're able to serve the community it impacts the

4:08 people who are living that experience and just really trying to be mindful that this is a serious issue to folks and have a lot of opinions about it the second thing that we're thinking about is that you know we need to in addition to getting input from the public we also need to really inform uh and cut and educate the public you know why are you doing this what is it that we're working toward and you know there are some court cases there's other jurisdictions and what they're doing um there's the statute that is requiring us to change our camping ordinance so the communication strategy isn't you know your typical hey tell us what you think although that's part of it but also trying to lay down some pretty complex um legal Concepts and a big issue with lots of emotion around it but

4:53 trying to have that consistent information so really being mindful of that the third option is this is an ordinance that you've been changing so that means public hearing and that means receiving public inputs what are we asking for how are we asking for do people feel like they can bring that information forward are there good methods for people to do that and then the fourth item to really think about is time constraints you know the ordinance needs to be changed by July warning who's effective by July 1. we have some process for changing our coaches so you know we this is an an area where you could take in lots of broad public input but really it's a narrow area having to do with this topic of homelessness and people who are experiencing homelessness and the abilities for the city to regulate that

5:39 when people are there so just keeping those time constraints online is part of that issue to so then looking at the actual strategy just trying to set out here with these bullets you know how the kind of the how we're going to do this and where those Avenues are so the first bullet really talks about where um we're gonna find this communication and how we're going to use it so thinking of using the website the city's website is sort of a landing page with that information that you can direct people back to how can they contact us some more background information that people can kind of get on their own using social media to amplify those consistent messages so not new content on social media but using that to push

6:24 it out and then also letting people know kind of hey this is what's coming up next we're you know we're going to have a hearing we're looking for your input here and then Council meetings you know Council meetings are a great opportunity to get inputed because it has this built-in process where you have public hearings and business from the audience and working on this for the next few months so trying to use that process and be stream line there is our thinking for the communication strategy and I thought what I would do is go through these bullets and then see if you have input does that work no okay next will be you know how are we going to do this communication so we're trying to get out here with using FAQ Style Communications to inform and update the public is to be you know concise plain spoken what does

7:09 this mean to me using things like FAQs five things to know or whatever the you know number is but trying to get that communication out there that's consistent um and using that method as opposed to you know maybe overly loyalistic legalistic language on channeling public comment through the existing public meeting process you know sometimes I know the council has been through lots of different public processes some of those are you know land use processes that have a whole like separate long involved public input process and those work for those types of processes but really here trying to use the process that you already have that's built in to try and get that input from books so letting people know

7:55 when meetings when things are scheduled on this when we're looking for their input how they can input you know can they just send an email should they send an email to you I mean those kinds of things they're really trying to use what we already have and really that's a function of time um in an intentional stakeholder reach out I think this recognizes that even though we're going to try and use website and social media and getting out to the general public we know that there are people who we would term as sort of stakeholders in this issue you know whether we're talking business owners chamber people with this lived experience service providers um Team Springfield Partners trying to have some hey we're looking at some more interested in what you think or we're trying to work through this process you

8:41 know what does this mean for you and looking for some direction from the Council of that reach out um some of those stakeholders and I wrote them down here to make sure that so as I mentioned chamber downtown business team Springfield in terms of providers you know um filter rights alliance St Vincent de Paul HIV Alliance and the community services Carry It Forward mainstream housing is the provider for the Appellate shelter program that's here in town um so those are some of the people that we're thinking about in organizations that would have um input there so you know that's a lot available there so

9:26 um that's more thank you for communication strategy just want to make sure that works again I know you're looking to write I'm sure where he's gonna have thoughts about this I think all of this is great and I'm also like wrote it down so that I remind myself that we are working within time constraints excuse me for as soon as I start talking um I think with the intentional stakeholder reach out and I think I mentioned this last time and I just want to just be clear and know that I am one voice it's like I really would like us to take advantage of this opportunity to really Elevate the voices of those who are closest to this experience okay so that's and and for me that's people who

10:12 are who are unhoused people who are precariously housed but it's also people who live and we get to the maps those people who who live in and around this and you know the churches and the sort of Street service providers and and kind of get deeper into the bench um because one of my I mean I think this is an opportunity for us to do something well better and I just really don't want to make things worse going into the and knowing that this is always a shifting landscape in terms of you know the economy and yeah Charleston I was looking at numbers today of just how much the numbers have been housed have grown County Wide so I just for that and I'd be happy to do more brainstorming around are there

10:57 already some tables are there some ways and and to get to people and to to for us to go to them as much as we possibly can in a very short amount of time because as opposed to like yes it's great when people come to us in Council meetings but also like how do we get to where people are so that we get just enough informed experience to try to use this to improve things okay um actually that uh Corey just asked a lot of the questions that I was going to um so the I I guess the the thing that was missing for me from the stakeholders was the people are going to be doing the camping and so you know that's what I

11:44 was really looking for was just ways um that we could actually talk to the people who are going to be most impacted by this and um if we're in any kind of uncertainty about how to reach those people or or find those people I'm sure organizations like area and G Street Oasis and uh vegan can can help you right out with that but it sounds like what you're saying is some Olympics folks with lived experience yes right yeah exactly and I I understand that businesses are going to be impacted as well and that the uh the people who are going to be adjacent to these camping sites will be affected but I think that our our first our first priority should be reaching to you know people who actually actually be affected by the

12:30 ordinance itself okay all right so the the I think the context for that becomes really important meaning the sense that like this is going to be messy it's going to be a little bit of a process to get to the finish line so when you think about public input that comes back right like I'm looking for a balanced sort of a balanced view right so if we say we're going to bring back you know we want to talk to people with lived experiences you know maybe adding you know adding the realtors association in town somebody that is going to sort of speak for the neighborhood and the business groups as well right because we've got a sort of This is complicated so we've got to have a lot you know kind of the whole 360 views so we can navigate it navigate it appropriately

13:19 okay any other comments about specific communication right um I think one point on a communication strategy it could be what I'm anticipating as folks may you know bring the input that may not necessarily be tied to essentially just camping in public places but we'll be mindful of that and maybe trying to kind of pull that you know that input to where you know categories that are put it to where it should go to people who wouldn't know about that so I'm anticipating that people may just want to talk about overall issues involving sir what's going on with them or their own private property or whatever so we'll we'll be mindful of that so the work that the city attorney's office does here I am a hundred and ten percent supportive of you continuing to narrow the conversation down right and get people

14:05 back towards how housing policy and just so that you get vote get your arms around this specific thing yes and then you may see that and what we bring back to you may not be this one thing it may be quite narrow but know that that information may have been sent out okay anything else on communication strategy okay all right thank you that's helpful and we will um the reason we wanted to come with this earlier rather than later so we didn't get rolling on this so anyway that's good that's good okay the next thing um that I wanted to address is um the actual public land that we have here in the cities so just setting this up before um we show the map so I had asked Dad to

14:51 give just a real basic map of uh the city with the city limits um and publicly only and knowing that we will drill down more I was really just meant to kind of be like okay this is what we're talking about a couple things to keep in mind is that this um code change our legal our camping ordinance is in chapter five of our Municipal Code that means it is enforced through Springfield Municipal Court and then that means City Limits um so not property necessarily in the ugb that's not in the city limits so something to keep in mind also land that is open to the public so we have a lot of public land that um some public land for example something like Booth Kelly that's owned by the city but it's rented to private

15:36 tenants so it's not open to the public in the same way that this building is or the library or a park or other areas so just kind of keeping that in mind and then this last bullet is for the council to think about you know land that is subject to City regulation and control there are some other publicly owned land within our city limits but we may not own it would be ODOT um right-of-way could be a melamine or a team Springfield Parker so something to keep in mind as we work through this of course um for that land that is subject to City regulation and control are we still liable because that was one of the things I know that we are learning more about is like are we could we still be held liable for something that happened on that land even though it might be

16:21 owned by someone else and here's that lawyer answer maybe that's the way you'll be part of a lot of this right is like what is it that we are actually could be held responsible for or are responsible for and so that's it I thought um and then as we look at the map here just thinking about you know what information would you like to know more about and these bullets are just thinking so I'm sure there's going to be more and you are going to think of other things but you know Are there specific locations in the city that you're like I want to know more about bear you know or is there types of public land you want tomorrow at like you had mentioned counselor about the other are there land opened by owned by other public entities what's our liability there what is

17:06 actually happening there you know what's the current enforcement and Camp cleanup locations here what's going on in the city kind of what are the facts on the ground right-of-way safety just thinking about as we're working on this issue you know there are other jurisdictions in our state and other states that have had issues and um really serious dangerous situations or loss of life we're injury with people camping in the right-of-way so letting speed money with that and then environmentally sensitive locations we're a city that has two rivers and so it's a significant part of our identity in our city you know whether that mean to have folks unsheltered folks camping I'm thinking about that I'm hoping Victoria

17:51 oh man one of my questions also would be um what are some options for private land owners better but public right away like in I believe City of Eugene where they can do revocable permits and then they are able to um create some sort of a part you know benches or Planters or something like that because they they're trying to deal with what's happening on their property and so I'd like to know what what Springfield allows for the private property owners okay and I think another question that that I've got is um so I think you've got sort of right-of-way safety but I think more broadly safety right like so there are

18:37 some when I look at this map some of these infrastructure some of these uh locations are actual like Transformers water wells there's physical infrastructure that we wouldn't necessarily consider them opened um and I think when you know and I think councilor Visionary have brought up that there was a drainage canal and one of them right that we that we wouldn't we wouldn't allow camping the information peer safety perspective but not necessarily just streets correct safety not enough yeah that would go under environmental concerns yeah anything that could pose a risk to them hopefully and secondly to the environmental concerns such as runoff or mutate from a camp going into a water

19:22 weight no matter what the Waterway is whether it's a warm water runoff or creek or river or whatever but that's to me is a very high okay so I'm not just limited to The Rivers that's absolutely correct a lot of canals in the city yes what happens when yeah a lot of that stuff yeah okay oh thank you so here's the map um again this really is just showing on City Limits some of the publicly owned property that we have and then the gray shows um right away that could be right away that's open that's owned by other um entities as well so just to kind of frame up the conversation and see

20:08 something where you're like I want to know more about their let me know are you you know are we going to talk about it more I bet I just thought to me I helped me a lot I was like oh yeah and it's always good to see you could you scroll down a little bit so we could see the key because some of those are schools and Parks yes yeah sorry yellow school district yeah another interesting um thing to think about with our team Springfield Partners is um you know they have publicly owned property but how it's open to the public really kind of depends on who the partner is right you know School District's different than the parks District different than a Utility Board than us so something to be thinking about too and

20:53 um also as we've all been working together for so long there's some properties that sort of jointly owned or maybe we lease it or something so there may be some areas where we'll have to drill down with a little more specificity so anyway anything any particular area jumping out our issue that you're thinking of or I can when we come back and we'll have a larger longer work session in March and then some time to get to really kind of talk with staff and get you more information but if you think of anything in the meantime I'll just bring up the Commandment question we have the same limits things in what happens when they step over that line right probably you can't even get involvement yeah

21:43 Leonard uh in preparation for this work session I looked up the legislation that we're having to respond to this HP 3115 it looks like this you know and this is probably going to be something that was more appropriately be brought up in March but um the the language says that we have to have camping restrictions that are objectively reasonable yeah I I sense that there's going to be like a little early response coming on here what does that mean well it's a good question what does that mean what's really interesting about that legislation is it talks about and this idea of like the objectively reasonable person is throughout lots of areas of the law right what is objectively reasonable to anybody or the community as a whole about X Y and Z so it's sort of an interesting concept to put in there but one thing that's really interesting about this law is it says

22:28 objectively reasonable to someone who is living that experience so it does it's not only just you know me someone a house person looking at having camping on public property but it's also someone who has that experience so trying to see what would you know objectively you know according to maybe more than one person or more than one point of view that's objectively reasonable as opposed to subjectively reasonable which could just be like one person saying I think without without speaking for anybody who's actually in that situation I think if I were in that situation I would think objectively reasonable would be being able to where I am and you know it's going to be hard for the people who have lived experience of it get their

23:14 heads around the fact that there are going to be limits that are considered objectively reasonable and exactly so that we you know so then where's the other side of that what's not a you know the other side could be well it's not objective if you're supposed to Camp wherever you want to camp because traffic goes through there 50 miles an hour it could be unsafe okay this is by a sensitive Waterway where if there's lots of trash and people things go in the river that impacts these things you know I mean those are some of the factors and that's why we really got to do this work I'm really like I guess what I'm uh what I'm trying to convey is just that we might have a little bit of a steam building on this convincing one of the just to sort of follow up on what um healthier said one of the things when I went to the session on this and we were talking about it an objectively

23:59 reasonable might be um say you set some parameters around this park you can camp here from this time to this time and say you say everybody has to be out of that park at 5am public transit doesn't necessarily start running until 6 30. that would be a kind of thing that they might look at and be like well where are people supposed to go at 5am so it would be like how do you line up whatever the regulations are with what your actual sort of community functioning is right yeah so the the part that I when I look at this map what I see is one of them is a big part of that's the school district right and then you know we're not we're not going to regulate that you know how their property is accessible and the other big part of that's the parks District right and I'm looking for us to

24:45 follow the park who's District lead about how their property is regulated right so when I look at this and I sort of look at environment you know environmental issues and I you know where I know there's utility problems and the school district in the Parks District a lot of this is suddenly there's not a lot of land outside of them right away that the roads are in in the city of Spring Hope sort of owns and controls yes and if it works for the council we can start a more intentional reach out to our team Springfield Partners have some conversation but kind of wanting to make sure that you're okay with that and we can make that start to happen I think I think that's really reasonable because they're going to have to get ahead of this yeah and I I was talking with a landline's attorney I know they're

25:31 already have talked about it some so I mean it's the conversations okay all right anything else Joe so when it comes to at some point of course it's kind of boiled down to enforcement yes that's that's where the city's kind of you're going to or miss the Lego world trap when it comes to that and I think a huge part of that is that I think we need to make sure that we integrate the PD and training and where I know you will but I think the only time we're going to get you know a spot is the enforcement part of it and you know in the legal sense we need to make

26:17 sure that the officers are given the proper training so we don't set them up for those those conflicts because I know that there's a reasonable person standard and then there's a reasonably objective advantage and those are all determined in different ways but quite often I've heard that they're used wrongly interchangeably okay and so I think there's going to be a huge a reasonable person standard you know you would usually apply a reasonable person standard same arcade I would reasonably believe that this would be an unsafe place for this person to look at their 10 up because we can get flattened by a trade but then what is the reasonably objective person or person who's sleeping there or trying to sleep with

27:02 them right away [Music] and what's going to deep what's going to give the city the ability to legally defend themselves from any type of action after that you know I think a lot of that again is going to be tough and it's going to be it's really going to hinge upon what is conveyed to the officers because this reasonable objective standard is different than what most officers know as reasonable person standard they go into it when the regional person standard it's going to be different and that's going to set us up Worth right okay

27:48 all right okay any other thoughts or takes um two other things that um where does LTD play in this oh good question [Music] and then the other from uh from a public Outreach perspective I think it's valuable and I don't know what group it would be but in like any group you know either Disability Advocates or you know Mobility Advocates um right to see what yeah okay so there's going to be a lot of conflicting information for us to weigh our way through that's a great point yeah actually are we going to be supplying that property and if so does Ada apply is it for supplying it

28:33 you can see an argument saying well yeah yes okay and I'll just end with my conclusion what I think I'm going to say every time this area of a law is developing separate them these are good questions to add but this is helpful so um I can I hadn't been thinking that disability angle necessarily so I can do that um and we will see you on the sixth okay thank you thank you

29:18 second item is fiscal year 2022 annual comprehensive financial report I am in Wisconsin our independent accounting department uh Greg Miller and Swank because he's going to talk a little bit about what their process was um we audit it was 228 pages so we won't go through all of that and together people find it quite as fascinating as we do um so we're all summary though is there there is a transmittal letter in the in the front which um my page was 11 through 23 which kind

30:04 of tells the story of the city and the economic Economic Development and population that kind of stuff and what kind of projects were done for the year and then um the management discussion and Analysis on pages 39-53 tells the whole story about what changed what would have what went down and how all the pieces came together so um I don't want to be a spoiler alert but we passed the audit um to go ahead and tell you what they experienced and what they ran into what what they do for us

30:49 [Music] I'm actually the audit manager for the City of Springfield usually you guys would see Ryan Pascarella who is actually the partner um he that's this is his job really um I ran into a few he ran into a few snafu's today um so he asked if I could step in and just kind of present um so I know that there's a few new members here so um this might be just more of a higher 10 000 foot level kind of situation than really getting into the nitty-gritty of the numbers and things um because it can be very convoluted um we did send three documents this year to you guys um hopefully everybody received something of that sort so it's um the annual um

31:34 comprehensive financial report otherwise known as the act for we also sent you what we call our governance letter um it has a fancy AUC 260 number which we don't use unless we really want to sound smart um I don't I just call it a Governor's governance letter and we also sent you this single audit this year so that was also attached um in the past we have usually done our single audit outside of the financial statements because we usually have about another 90 days after the financial statements are due which is generally 12 31 but this year we managed to get it done in correlation with the financial statements that mainly was because the staff that we you guys have with the finance department had a bang-up job

32:20 this year to get us the information we repeated this single audit program this year the cdbg program and we knocked it out of the park so that's right you got everything at once for 12 31 so kudos to the finance department um so what is an audit so basically an audit is something that we do to give reasonable Assurance we do not give a hundred percent Assurance we would never leave your building if we tried to do 100 we would basically be involved in every conversation want to see every receipt want to see every item come into your building in order for us to be able to give that um I don't know anybody that would ever want to be able to see us 24 7 because

33:06 sometimes I don't like to see the people I work with 24 times so we just give you um what we call reasonable assurance and we give you our opinion and that's you know I'm not going to regurgitate anything that is already able to read but um as Meg did State we gave that for an opinion so it's considered unmodified um what we do uh when we try to give a clean opinion is we come in and we try to get an understanding of how everything is done at the city we do what we call walkthroughs we're required to do that based on auditing standards so we walk through every single what we determine to be a major system your cash receiving your cash disbursements your payroll your journal entries your

33:51 utility Billings um what else am I forgetting permitting uh you guys have several of them so uh if I forgot one and somebody's in here I apologize um but we try to get an understanding of all of those walkthroughs so we can understand what your internal controls are so we can either make sure that those are happening as they say they are so that your constituents paying taxes paying money whatever are getting what they're supposed to be getting based on what the city has described we do rely on controls in certain areas for for at least a three year period because the standards allow that and then we rotate um I don't recall which ones we relied on this year but either way I didn't have any internal control deficiencies to

34:36 report I didn't have any significance deficiencies to report and I didn't have any material weaknesses to report material weaknesses are going to be the bigger problem that you would have you would have seen that in your in your governance letter um what I would like to point out to you that there is a major change in the governance letter that's been um uh it's pretty much been passed upon us as a independent auditing firm that we need to include these things to let those that are under governance know here's what we've identified as significant risks so on page two of the governance letter um what what I and what my partner Ryan believed to be the most significant risks at the city are listed here

35:22 um this does not mean that we've discovered something this basically means that we feel that these are higher risks that means if I had a bunch of arrows I'm going to shoot a bunch of arrows at that risk and see what happens if I find something that's less risk I might take one arrow and shoot at it and say okay I'm only going to look at this one time and I'm okay with it hopefully that makes sense because I just heard that today in some uh and it seemed to strike with me a bunch of arrows going at one area that's higher risk is a lot more than one Arrow going at something like petty cash not a high risk area so I don't spend a lot of time so those are the areas that we focused on this year that's not to say they're going to change next year and that's not to say that they will fall off or that

36:07 they're going to be there again um it just it's it really depends on my interviews I have with your city staff to see where they're at um the due dates that you guys have for your financial statements are usually six months to the Secretary of State after the close of your fiscal year that's why the 1231 due date is so imperative um not to mention you also you get a gfoa certificate which means that you were receiving a certificate of financial excellence and I believe you guys have gotten that year after year after ever since I've been working this job for 10 plus years that it's 40 40 years 40 years so congratulations again to your great Finance staff

36:53 as I mentioned the results of the audit was an unmodified opinion that's the best you can get there were no Secretary of State findings which means that we didn't have to provide any type of response from the city to say here's how we're going to fix it going forward and again the single audit also I don't have it in front of me however I do know when I looked at it there were no findings in the single audit which basically means the city didn't have to owe back the Federal Government any money in any situation of a finding or a cost um so very clean and I'm here for any other types of questions if it gets into the weeds that's what makes it all right are there any questions

37:39 um the only question that I've got is I know that you identified areas of the most significant risk based on what you you know what you saw all right are we reacting to that are we digging into that a little bit from a staff side the the one risk that they talked about in there had to do with the fire um system which is smoothing out as they've gotten completely into their new software it was it was a little bit riskier because last year they had just implemented it and so this year when we when we went back in through that software we found the the estimate that was used last year wasn't quite as good as it should have been and we made a prior period adjustment that basically corrects last year okay so but it we believe it's

38:24 getting fixed but we're still watching that closely so we're paying extra attention to that in the accounting side correct all right any other questions all right like I this is important not the most exciting thing and you know no findings is what we like to hear what's really important if you if it doesn't go that way so thank you guys so all we need is to just we're just asking for you to accept the audit adverts yeah so we've got it scheduled for the next time we meet thank you before we adjourn I'm going to turn the floor over delivery oh thank you mayor um so um due to a change in my

39:10 employment status unfortunately I'm having it step down and set up city counselor and work for um effective with the end of the meetings tonight I wanted to let everybody know that it's been an honor and a privilege to work with all of you and I just urge everyone in the public who might be listening tonight to stay engaged in the process it's what we've got and um it's got the system is always going to have its faults but it certainly beats the alternative so thank you for your time well I thought we were going to have a little bit more time Leonard but so thank you for what was it seven years uh six six and change six and change that's a significant contribution to this

39:55 community and that you'll be missed well thanks sure we have time um good uh because I just want to say yes you will definitely be missed um as you know and I have appreciated being able to work alongside you and appreciate it before even coming on Council because I think you were someone who was very was coming and very welcoming to me and it's been great being able to work along the fun with you even though we don't always understand where Jones coming from we still seem to be headed when it is a progressive Direction that's right yeah um so I as you know will miss you much and thank you not necessarily thrilled at your leaving but understand what life

40:41 takes a message so thank you for all you've done all right well I guess trucker Lynn will write again yes I've got my work boots out of uh out of fog out of mothballs well good luck for you I know you got a lot going on right now yeah yeah no doubt um we are adjourned until 6 45 until 7 PM Ceta on a different like 7 PM see down the different link right here 39 minutes