Springfield City Council — March 6, 2023

0:07 everyone I'd like to start this day's work session with roll call Peace mayor Ben Gordon counselors Weber here Mo Bradley Harris Doyle here and Visionary sure thank you you ready okay so we have one item on for work session uh tonight and this is to continue our conversation on uh reviewing the city's camping ordinance and we're just going to get set up here with a couple we'll have a PowerPoint and then a map in a bit and um [Music] okay

0:53 so um we've had uh we're continuing uh this conversation we have had a couple uh the council said 283 now previous shorter conversations about this issue tonight we have a little more time to talk about um revising Mississippi's camping ordinance and um just want to make sure that I'm notes here that I'm free with my old eyes here um so um I do want to start by saying that I've appreciated the council's engagement on this issue as we've been talking about it and um call out staff for their assistance in pulling together this information it's a difficult issue to tackle and there's this is a narrow slice of an issue with lots of parts to

1:39 it and um I know that it's kind of been a lot to kind of work through all the legal implications and the rulings in that so um anyway as we get going here please feel free to just like raise your hand if you have questions or interrupt me as we're going um that way I think that'll work a little a little bit better I do want to talk a little bit about the agenda for tonight and what we're working toward so tonight um we're going to share a little bit of data about how enforcement for illegal camping calls looks in the city that's some of the information that was in your packet go over some of the initial guidance that you had given at an earlier work session to see if that now that you have some more information about data does that still uh jibe with

2:26 the kind of um camping ordinance that you're seeing um that you want to see them together then um you are working toward a April 17th first reading of draft code and a public hearing so when the city adopts an ordinance it has two readings typically often on the first reading we will have a public hearing it's not always required sometimes it's required by Statute but it's not an outright requirement of our Charter but often in cases like this the council leadership or the city manager will say you know let's have a public hearing so it gets a public some time to give feedback it will also provide the council an opportunity to give feedback and then we're scheduled May 1st for a

3:12 second reading so if the council sees that draft code in mid-april and says you know I want you to look go back and change this part we can do that you know so there is time here to um make sure that this process is and the code will be where consistent with the council's direction and was public feedback um and then we're still on track for adoption by or Effectiveness by July 1. this evening what I wanted to do was talk a little bit more about um sort of review the legal backdrop or um why it is the city is reconsidering its camping ordinance so that's a little discussion about the Boise case in Grants Pass and HB 3115 just to kind of

3:59 ground you in that before we start talking about data the data is going to be about enforcement of illegal camping calls in Springfield and then we have a map which is kind of a different way to see that data which I just we're thinking that might be just kind of another way to get that information so you can visually see where these cases are occurring in the city it gives you some perspective on okay if I if we want to regulate this here's here are some areas of the city to think about and how you'll regulate it then I like to go back to your initial discussion with that direction and just make sure we're on the same track and then I have some additional information for example we had a conversation about burning so there's some information included in your packet and some other items there so that's sort of the plan for tonight

4:49 so this slide um just really summarizes the legal backdrop of the reasoning behind looking at the camping ordinance so these started with some federal court cases out of the ninth circuit and I think it was 2018 or 2019 was Boise and that was um a case that really looked at a similar camping ordinance to what the City of Springfield has and the court determined that Boise could not criminalize that and came here namely the behavior of lying sitting or sleeping of homeless persons when they don't have another option of a place to go so Boise came down um and then shortly afterwards there's a case out of Grants Pass that came down that reinforced the findings of Boise

5:34 and Boise also is the first time we start to see this idea that it would be okay for governments local governments to regulate illegal camping on their property so that would mean time place and banner restrictions so now we start to see that enter the picture as something that governments can do Ben Grant's Pass comes down reinforces that holding introduces the concept of staying keeping warm and dry um people experiencing home assist being able to stay warm and dry as a part of sort of the unavoidable consequence of being homeless and not having another option to be at um the other thing about Grants Pass that there's a couple things to think about that this case is still under

6:19 review so it went we have a decision from the ninth circuit we're asking the night circuit to go back and reconsider it I've heard that they've talked about that case potentially going to the Supreme Court I don't know so that that is still somewhat unsettled about what will happen there um there are a couple important things though out of Grants Pass that I think particularly for a community like Springfield to keep in mind one would be this idea about rudimentary protections for protecting yourself from the elements whether that's um you know having a fire or some kind of structure what the court said there was they said okay go back to the district court to determine what would be appropriate so we don't have good examples yet of what works what's what the court would determine is reasonable and that's one of the challenges with this to go to a

7:04 policy maker and say hey can you come up with some regulations and I don't have any examples that I don't work so I can appreciate that that is what makes this hard I think the other thing about Grants Pass that is important for Springfield is you know and this has come up with other communities in Oregon is you know is the idea of looking at an available shelter are you limited to looking at an available shelter within your city limits right this is would be a code that would be enforced through our city limits that case suggests that you would be looking like a Springfield look would be at shelter options in Springfield but as you know communities like Springfield and many communities throughout the state especially particularly more rural

7:49 communities May collaborate with other communities to have maybe one shelter right but that may not be located in your town it may be at the next town over but that may be the place where people can go so that's still unsettled whether that would be okay to say that you know in a quote true access to a Bible shelter may not necessarily need to be within your city limits it could be outside your city limits if realistically someone could get to it logistically if that made sense and if you have if that jurisdiction has made policy um you know actions towards supporting that facility so that's still a little bit open does that make sense that we're still sort of kind of trying to determine when the court said do they

8:34 mean in your town the shelter needs to be in your town or does it need to be true and available access to somebody experiencing homelessness that they could really get to may not technically be in your town but is where they could go so um I think those are two issues for cities like Springfield to be thinking about collaborating with other communities and then what are the rudimentary efforts to keep yourself warm and dry that are acceptable or equal reasonable so more to come on Grants Pass but in the meantime the legislature passed HP curriculum 15 which codified these two rulings so even they have you know depending on what happens at Grants Pass we still have some obligations here under the state statute that we need to follow through anyway so we're not in a position where we could just wait out the court and see what they decide to do

9:20 so 3115 comes down and it basically just you know codifies the findings in Martin and Boise but takes kind of a I mean an interesting view in that it says well okay you know cities it's and the way I purposely put the footnote in the council briefing memo just to have that text there but it was you know counties and cities that are going to regulate this they need to be objectively reasonable time place and Mana restrictions according to all stakeholders incurring including persons with lived experience with being homeless so you know objectively reasonable means you got to look at the facts of the ground in your own community and that's why we wanted to bring the data tonight so you kind of had some perspective on what's Happening Here so this is the

10:08 um now the um I just got lost my train of thought the reason that we will come to you with the data so you can say okay what would be reasonable in Springfield what are the issues um that we're experiencing with the legal camping may be quite different from other communities in the state um and that's why we kind of have done this detailed book so that's the legal stuff um us um I don't know if anybody has any questions or anything about that but I'd be happy to answer them or move on go ahead the one thing that you didn't mention which is the Nugget that I hold on to is I think from those rulings we it's we could be held responsible for doing nothing basically

10:53 basically yeah so it's like part part of what we have to be thinking about is any policy decision moving that could potentially put someone in harm because of our lack of involvement or over involvement or all of that could potentially be what we're held responsible for are you referring to like stay creative danger that yeah okay thank you you prompted me all right so two issues that are related to um these rulings so the first one that counselor Radley is talking about is this legal concept called State created danger and there's this idea that if the state us the government puts someone in a dangerous situation knows that it's a

11:38 dangerous situation but has and the phrase is deliberate indifference but basically it doesn't do anything about it then you could be liable for that so that's one where you can think about like an example of that would be if you know regulations or a city decided to have some kind of um area in town where like it was a very small area where people could camp right very small area where homeless folks could camp then you're having families go to that area you're having folks maybe who are experiencing mental illness or addiction issues and then these people now are in the more dangerous situation because now they're at a very small concentrated area all together and we have created that by make you know by saying hey

12:23 everybody go to this one small spot and we know that's a more dangerous situation we don't do anything to get them out of it um is called stay created danger California and it's a concept that really has been in the law for some time but I don't think has come to the Forefront as much I think California is dealing with it more the way they're um homeless you know problems are kind of um being experienced in that state and try you know Skid Row in Los Angeles kind of some of those areas sort of creating these areas that then end up make people worse off than they were they created danger yes so transversely if a entity says you can camp wherever you want knowing

13:10 that the area that we own by allowing something to camp in an area puts them in danger I guess not prohibiting camping there are we not doing an exact same thing I mean depending on the circumstances yeah I could see where that would be so that's true yeah I don't really make a point is I totally see One Direction but you also have to see too is it you know failure to act in the best interest of the homeless folks not only to not put them in a dangerous situation with others in a close proximity of others et cetera whatever but also not to prohibit them from let's say allowing to Camp alongside of a open

13:55 Canal or open River or something like that that we know is inherently dangerous alongside of a roadway high-speed roadway so we have to keep that in mind as well right yeah yeah that is great another um connected issue anything else on State Credit danger that making sense probably not making sense better I mean that's what it is um but another related issue um that our community and many communities across the country are dealing with is um sort of the impact that an established Camp of individuals experiencing homelessness can create on a community and one at one legal aspect of that that has a real practical

14:41 implications are um Camp cleanups so that would be the concept of if there is and you can sometimes you'll hear about this on the news if there is a key on that um a community is going to clean up for whatever reason maybe it's a safety reason maybe you know it could be lots of things there's a 72-hour notice requirement there's a requirement to store people's belongings for 30 days and make that available to them if they want to contact UM the city so Ops has a whole plan now that they do when they do homeless Camp cleanups there are um you know some issues in terms of um I think health and safety and danger issues for staff trying to do those cleanups and then for the people who are

15:27 living in the camp in terms of them then losing their stuff and then having to try and get it the logistics of really making that happen so having you know established camps in your community can be a real hardship to those who are obviously experienced in that life and then the city trying to regulate that and deal with yes and a good point about animals too I think gets back to this issue of Grants Pass talked about what is true in actual access to a shelter if you're an individual with a dog you know it could be the shelter might be like hey we don't take dogs you know and then you are now in this situation you're like

16:12 well I can't really go to the shelter because I have this animal here that I take care of and I'm responsible for um so that's a that's an issue you know are you a family the shelter not big families are you an individual and they only take families you know kind of those issues about is shelter truly open to you so that's a good point about animals definitely I know there's a problem on that line I know that Green Hill has a program for domestic violence victims in that they can they'll take their pets when they need to escape and so I don't know if they are someone that we could work with in that situation that might at least temporarily I don't you know I don't know yeah I don't either Terry Lieberman is the director over there and

16:57 it's been for a while so there's something like that for people because it took a long time for them to finally do that for look at victims of domestic violence there's not I could at least find out for you yeah it's kind of an idea yeah it's a great idea that's I've looked into it that's not an option other than fostering or something yeah okay so that's really good stuff thank you for bringing that up I knew there was one word um so next I wanted to um and I'm going to come back to this part I'm going to talk a little bit about the camping enforcement data that we were able to get from the police department and this is summarized in the

17:43 um let's see it's the second attachment in your packet for more information what I did hear on these slides is just pull out some of the data so we could have a little bit of discussion about it but um stop me if I start going too fast through this because you may have questions about this that I'm just gonna pass over before we dig into the data I do want to talk a little bit about what this is and what this isn't so this data doesn't represent every interaction that SPD has with a person experiencing wellnesses this is limited to Illegal camping calls um so those would be calls that are designated as illegal camping calls which again camping on public property not trespass so that's

18:28 an important distinction here to um be aware of also by way of reminder in our previous uh packet we had some information about the number of individuals in Springfield experiencing homelessness so Lane County's data from either Human Services Division for 2022 had a total number of 11 1200 or 1240 people who are in Springfield and receive Services um and then of that number 332 would be considered what would be called chronically homeless which big books I would think about books that were really Sheltering outside

19:15 okay so now looking here at the actual data we asked the police department to give us a look at their illegal camping calls over 2022 so there's no 2023 that in here still early in 23rd you just want to go it's going to be very good um total number of calls 674. so if you look in your attachment that's a small percentage of sbd's overall calls right so obviously they're responding to all kinds of things is increasing somewhat something to look at there there's a trend there where there is a small increase um so it's about 1.4 of their calls um and then the other thing that's interesting out of here would be illegal campers with the vehicle what that means is that the officer attached a license

20:01 plate to whatever that's about 300 you know about 327 which would be about half of um the calls involving legal camping have a vehicle and our code vehicles are in a different section than camping so I've been trying to keep this narrow to just the idea of like camping with tents structures that you know exact kind of thing but it seeing that this number the council may say hey look you just need to go back and look at that does it mean you may necessarily change it but you may want that additional information to better understand what does that mean what does regulation look like for someone um essentially living out of a car or an RV so something to think about there

20:49 and then next slide talks about a little bit about location and then what happens here at um response so most uh occur west of 28th Street and if you look in the packet it is a lot is most I think it is um almost 75 percent of the cases are west of 28th Street when we get to the map I think you'll see that these kinds of calls are occurring all through the city but the majority of them are in that Western District in terms of the kind of responses so

21:36 majority are being responded to by Patrol officers which would make sense Patrol is a 24-hour um and typically who responds to dispatch calls there is a response with csos um handling and those are our community service officers keep in mind that their hours are different so a lot of that may be a function of the hours that they work because they don't work a 24 hour schedule like Patrol officers do and depending on when these calls come in and then also a very small number with the kahoots response would which would make sense you know not every illegal camping call involves somebody who's experiencing mental illness so that would be a smaller number than um patrol or csos and then looking here at the kind of enforcement action taken so the no

22:23 contact with me and generally like either the people were gone by the time they got there resolved would be and I'm and I understand that saying resolved from a perspective of someone who has to who's trying to Camp somewhere and has to move is is not really the best word but that could be a situation where you know SPD comes there talks to somebody and then they move along or they make some other arrangements and then enforcement action taken means a citation so that's what I'm talking about there it's actually a citation so that would be 12 of those 600 or so uh calls actually had some kind of enforcement action or citation this is a um fine only in Springfield one of the questions for the council to be considering is right now it is our

23:09 standard fine of 720 that can be adjusted with this um changing that you know you could look at that and say you know that's not the right amount here can you look at something lower or something different other jurisdictions have done that so that's um another question that we'll have for you looking at historically knowing our offenders pay on their citations does it really matter how much is on there as far as what percentage actually pay and at what there's a breaking point so you're talking about lowering them but in my mind we're really not into it

23:55 for for Revenue generation in the first place so I'm just wondering if it shooting ourselves my foot taking that route and it says enforcement action to me I don't know if that actually means a citation or if it means a vehicle code both of them would be interesting to know at what point where's the break-off point when it comes to okay are we doing more harm than good and I'm just kind of like putting that low level offender into a jail it's got a bunch of high-level offenders and that person comes out they're going to be a high level offender so it's the same kind of thing if we're just kind of creating a

24:40 I don't know financially difficult situation or more difficult situation with legal consequences for person that's already in a financial difficult situation it's I mean it's it's a vicious circle I wish I'd scream something up and figure out how to make that work because I would probably be very popular in the United States but I personally am working for out of the box thinking on some of this stuff instead of the traditional ones okay all right question yeah they can't pay them their money pay even the minimum they get stacked up inside it inside and cited somebody many many of those on the record and they still

25:35 especially at 750 each year yeah well in addition those I I refer to those as being poverty taxes where you're basically taxing people who are already poor navigating poverty and um it could be an impediment to actually getting into housing or being able to get into services so yeah I'm definitely open to things that's the best we can any other thoughts on that line not a topic are we are you I I can come back to the point so right now basically what we're trying to do is give you guidance as to what we're looking for with that and so

26:20 I thought I read it here where you were talking about there are certain issues that are already covered in other parts of the code so one of the things that I speak for I know a lot of people that the reason why this is for some people is a very difficult thing and it makes it sound like you're being cold and heartless is that you see these groups of camps in there there is nothing but soap Left Behind they see we drive along this the freeway and just see trash in these in these areas and so I believe that whatever we're doing I thought I don't know if there's a an ordinance or something about that but I think that that's a a deep concern for people is that is the mess and I I don't think that people

27:07 who are homeless should have to live in that either I don't think that they should um but if we're going to assume that people are not criminals that they're not necessarily drug addicts that they don't have that they're just homeless then that doesn't explain why there's this level of disregard what feels like disregard to people's City into their property and so I don't know how we address that but I think that it's it should be okay for people to express that and not be considered you know being mean or yeah or not caring about the situation yeah I think people have a right to feel concerned about that stuff sure so I'll work backwards to talk about your comment and then back to the fine if that works oh I'm sorry go ahead

27:59 [Music] be concentrated right there when you drive by that's all you see is that trash out here that's what I want to throw them out of town I was thinking thinking somehow control yourself a big big difference yeah yeah so I think that um looking at that issue in terms of impact of having a homeless camp in the community there are there are costs that certainly and that um I can I know obscubaro behind me in there but they have um been um keeping track of those costs in terms of time cleanup you know impact on property and that's why one of the issues that we that you've talked about is you know environmentally sensitive

28:44 areas where you know where these camps are going to be or if they're in a way um when they're really visible to the community because you know there's a I think that gets the underlying friction you know a a use of a property a public property not being what it was intended for right and so now you have an issue where it does look like there's trash everywhere or people aren't being very respectful to it and then I think the flip side of that is to think about okay if you you know think of all the things that you've done in your in your own house for the last two weeks you know where you've been in your house so nobody really knew you were doing those things and now try doing those things outside and how really challenging that is you know and so I think that it does feel I'm sure for many folks feels cold

29:30 to say gosh you know it really frustrates me when I see this trash out here in this litter because people work so hard here you know to make this to be a nice community and then the other side of that as well when you live outside it is really hard to keep you know to kind of have that and so I think you're expressing one of the really hard challenges about when people are Sheltering outside and how that impacts a city in particular that's responsible for safety cleanliness those issues so um I think that's a really valid thing to express and I mean to me that makes sense so um turning to the Fine issue you know the fine so the 720 is our standard fine it has been the camping fine for a long time you can look at a

30:15 different fine amount you are correct and that if somebody you know first of all I would say the court can assess a different amount of fine they can decide to do something less so really the fine amount I think setting it at an amount can be a way to demonstrate reasonableness understanding that folks who are most likely going to get this fine are people who are you know challenged with having houses and lots of services so it might be a way to look at um being more reasonable about the amount of fun support could always um charge less with the fine fines go to and I don't know this off the top of my head anymore but when you pay a fine at the court it gets distributed amongst the state and us in a certain way so

31:00 um it's not like we could say hey all the all the fines that we would collect for this could go to homeless Camp cleanup or something there's no like quick and easy route to get that back to uh the impacts that the city experiences with camps so that's something to think about um but you are right it does really impact people if it goes to collections and then they're sort of stuck with all these fines and that could be I think that really gets to an issue of enforcement you know and I've had the opportunity and when we've been working on this to talk with the council or I'm sorry with um like police sergeants about how they look at that and you know that's where you really get to enforcement maybe you're not really citing people but they can move along and they can go someplace else or maybe they get better for not every infraction that's been happening but they could get

31:46 cited for one so those kinds of things I think that's where enforcement's really going to come to play and then the Baseline that the council decides the set in the code the other part of that is and I'm not sure where we land but other jurisdictions have had experienced some a positive outcomes when it comes to conversion of fines to labor so when you have a person that typically isn't doing much all day they're homeless and they have a fine and they say okay we owe 500. however let's make this easy for you to work that off and you're going to work cleaning up camps for 10 hours and that gives us back at 50 hour 50 bucks an

32:31 hour or 20 hours or whatever a reasonable amount of time for a payback in fines in the form of Labor I know we can do it statutorily so that's something I don't know if the court has been using that at all and I don't have anybody we haven't worked still or not you know not from jail though so this may be a prime reason to you know it's important instead of not necessarily a bunch of money into this issue it could be that we can put money into a position and that person can administer the work or the labor force that people are working Off Their fines and it could be a shoplifter you know looking at literally reducing people's minds to have successful

33:16 completions of your sentences and still getting these clean cleanups without having involved a bunch of stat and you have one person that's supervising providing safety equipment and say okay there you go okay I think what oh right I'm sorry I'm just saying I was going to say the exact same thing I didn't know if that was even possible I had no idea that the fine was 700 which I think is crazy for someone that is homeless that just that's amazing especially when the fine for handing something to someone is only a hundred um but I like the idea because it yeah I like that idea much better so I think then if we talking about that issue in terms of enforcement what we can do because I don't really know about my head what the status of of that kind of program is here now but you know we

34:02 can move forward with the code and then come back with that information about that instance okay instead of having to reduce fine so to speak per se you can convert that fines into labor which is valued and yes again also you know the garbage sites out there there seems to be no shortage of all right I can look into that I really you know counsel I haven't looked at it there's some models like that all over the place um any other questions about um the just the kind of the numbers from

34:49 the SPD yeah I remember I just wanted to follow up on Healthcare pictionary's comment um about a work crew um kind of structure I'm sorry I I I kind of bilingual City County here so typically that is done within a county structure because they have the the structured Personnel in place and uh people that are typically in a work crew type of situation are incarcerated in jail whereas we have a municipal court and we do have a jail which is unusual for a city so you don't have the same type of length of stay that you would necessarily with a with a county so we don't have that you know that plug-and-play ability that's saying

35:35 Hollywood what is community service why it doesn't necessarily have to be a work crew I mean no I've been using that as well so community service falls into that same category that it would more County based typically yes I mean but because we have a jail we're I mean the city could probably be something different we just it becomes Central resources right and I just want us to and I know that when you look into this you will be looking into this balanced looking into this but I think it's important to just sort of think historically about the role of work groups and and to think about why would we say if you are unhoused you're going to be penalized by being part of a work crew when if you run a red light you are

36:20 not going to be in people you know it's like what are we what are we saying when we do that so I trust you to look into that and just think about what is what is the crime and what is the is it a crime sort of a thing so as we move into this I would just probably at as a counter to that is since when did work be it you know be penalizing to have to work you have to clean up to have to do something for what I guess I just don't understand that it being punishment because you have to give back to the community that you're living in and taking resources from that doesn't seem a reasonable or that it doesn't seem like a I don't know

37:05 a penalty no it might take I've seen both both where you're coming from um but my take is too is that I don't think you get penalized for being homeless but I do think that they are being penalized for for Behavior contrary to law and so there's that you know not because a person's homeless they don't get cited for being homeless they get cited for some other action or inaction in the street so that's that's the behavior that put them there and that's the contrary to law Behavior so I can see the workers and workers can work better you don't have to have a jail they can they can report in in the morning and be at home home in the afternoon or wherever they live so the Reporting Center yeah

37:50 okay we will look into them um okay AJ can we look at the map yes so we're going to leave the PowerPoint for a sec and um we're gonna try something here and look at the map bear with me so shout out to Gis for helping with um coming up with this map but whereas we were thinking about what would be important for the council when you're trying to determine you know regulating would be a good idea to look at a map of your cities you get to look at and um I do want to kind of frame those up a

38:37 little bit as you're sort of taking this in so if you're looking at this map here the red outline is city limits the purple outside of that is the ugb kind of give you some grounding there the um kind of yellow like almost lemon yellow is residential zoning perspective on sort of zoning and then the blobs the purple blobs are locations where there have been illegal camping calls um and probably if you're looking at a blob what JS is telling me that's probably like five calls give some perspective of what that what that is looking at

39:22 so this is a map of the of the whole city if you're looking at 28th street right is that demarcation there so that means 75 percent of calls are west of 28th Street and then but you can see that this is happening city-wide so just to kind of give you some perspective there and then um I can do here is look at particular areas so taking into account that we're looking west of 28 for most of these calls and then what are the areas um we have some bookmarks here or downtown and then Gateway and mohawk so here's a little more zoomed in

40:07 downtown um and I could just be quiet if you guys just watching this one for a sec or if you want if you have questions but just looking here at some of the enforcement the illegal camping enforcement that has occurred here yeah yeah word boundaries no no the like teal green this one oh public property okay yeah so this doesn't like delineate between like what we own and say what is willamaline properties it does and then I think that um that's school property and then this is sub or city property and then the landline is I believe the green yeah

40:54 and then one thing I left out too sorry is um this line here is water uh water areas and it's not you know we didn't like put the water quality math on here other things but what they did these this is called Waters of the animal so these are termitaries that feed into that are regulated by the Clean Water Act just to give you some perspective here of where camping is occurring in relation to water so just trying to kind of set the table there a little bit yeah and then we can shift to looking at Gateway and Q Street unless anyone has particular questions here

41:40 this is Gateway here I think I'm interesting about Gateway less residential zoning and Gateway but definitely activity up there and then these small circles here that's one call so I'm just trying to make that look different you know what I mean like a little bit different than maybe an area that may have sort of multiple calls and also this is over a year so back to there and then Mohawk Q streets was the other area that we thought might be helpful to see you know I think one piece of information that might be curious about is you know residential areas are those where the vehicles are somebody parking in front of someone's house they know and then

42:25 they're like moving along you know it's that kind of thing like I'm not sure Springfield is experiencing you know people intense in residential areas so much as maybe cars so that maybe you know when you say hey go look into cars that may be information that we come back and say okay here's what we find here's what we know a little more about um yeah RVs cars those kinds of those kinds of situations where maybe you know somebody use their kitchen do them for a little bit and then you get called to move that sort of stuff so that would be um this is Q straight and Mohawk to some perspective there so any other and we tried not to we purpose

43:11 I mean this map is really cool like I've spent a lot of time making this map but I we were like we can't like otherwise we would be in all days zooming in and like where's happening here and so yeah we were trying to keep this like not overwhelming where you know so anyway but we thought it might be nice that they um you know GIS has this technology and disability and now that SBD can get us some data it's just kind of interesting to see where this is occurring so what I'm hoping to kind of end on is to go through quickly or quickly every time you have some similar information it would be the same outside the city Lane County responds there they didn't respond

43:56 foreign and again you know that's always brings up that issue that we have a sort of that Urban interface area an area that looks like City yeah so looking back at um some of the direction that you gave we've added some information in the council briefing memos I want to talk a little bit about some of that so because now what the next step will be to actually drop a code so you can see how this would look in terms

44:42 of what would the fine be what are the restrictions where would they be you know that kind of thing so the council had talked about last time you know 24-hour limit having I'm trying to avoid having you know kind of long-term camps um established right-of-way safety issues for people camping and for drivers it still sounds like that's something that's important to the council um flexibility to change areas and the idea of an emergent instance of an emergency or some some other issue we had talked about that that we could have we can incorporate that in um waterways sensitive areas now you know one thing to think about as you're looking at enforcement and like a cancer Doyle you you wouldn't talk about this

45:27 is this idea that you know there are already some um regulations that impact everybody outside you know and one example of that as it relates to camping by the river could be you know there's already a state statute where you can't litter within 100 yards of water so is that sufficient regulation for those areas or the council still like to see some kind of Regulation reasonable regulation here that limits the establishment of camping by sensitive environmental areas that makes sense yep okay regulations yes just talking right now do you want to have these regulations in place

46:13 enforcement I think can be a different situation but you know there are some um there may be some areas where the council says you know what no we want to have we want to sort of demonstrate here a policy choice about certain areas um and environmentally sensitive areas like by the river may be one of those areas where you don't just want to rely on the already existing framework I think it should be a very high priority we um we have this thing called mwmc that falls under regulation and that they do water testing Downstream so that any equivalent discharge and that they're going to not get credit for cleaning it up if you have people Upstream of mwmc pooping in the waterways right so I think we have

46:58 to protect our knee pads permit and our ability to operate mwmc without getting hammered and plus we have I think we have a ethical and moral responsibility to keep our waterways clean and healthy right so I don't think the greenway The Greenway restrictions on the river systems are enough I think we should have some local verification on that okay all right I'll take a look at if we have other Maps or resources that we can look at

47:43 and also the storm water issue is by a bigger concern it's a huge concern um it's been a conversation oh two things I would avoid APA access uh was one issue of Portland's experience in that lawsuit and last I I mean that's just a media report I saw that they were going to go into mediation about that lawsuit but that was the idea that camping is blocking um people's access on sidewalks so the city already has a code section that you're not that people cannot block access to buildings so we do have I think to my mind sufficient in terms of our obligations under Ada so it wouldn't make sense to sort of double A regulate um that but that is covered so that was one good thing

48:31 that is one issue um that we have already regulated um and then I think with right-of-way what I'm really hearing from you all is the idea about safety well excellent I mean in my mind actually really think we really have to be cognizant of is safety that's our job yeah we have a part of our problem and all that stuff as well as safety um last item is burning and warming fires there's a discussion last time about burning and warming fire so we went back to kind of look about you know what is the regulation around that what does that um you know and just keeping in mind we're having this conversation in winter foreign but um our fire code uh well first El Rapa is our air quality regulatory agency here they prohibit open burning like

49:17 this in the area so this would be a situation where allowed burning fires will be in conflict with another agency's rule so that's something to think about and then also just with our own fire code these types of fires would be considered a recreational fire when you have these types of fires you're supposed to have a fire extinguisher nearby or some other method they're supposed to be monitored that's just really hard I think with this population of folks to do I just we had some data about you know Eugene Springfield Fire responding to trash bin fires and sort of similar type of buyers it is a danger I have not done any other jurisdictions that have allowed burning most of them prohibit open fires like this so it would be our recommendation that the council is not engage in trying to have

50:03 open burning was part of this ordinance just because it's really challenging to enforce is going to set up some inconsistencies no the ones I know and we have a warming Center here it was called Eden Warner Center you know okay Rose to death over here and if we're admired looking somebody live break the law as far as I'm concerned that's why I feel but there's one app there's one on one option here I think it will help us that is emergency situations in corporate the ability to the city the amount of virus has been enforcement in the abandoned emergency or weather conditions if we can interpret that liberally and to help okay that's back to that enforcement

50:49 question so you're trying to say like on a particular cold situation required Michelle yes um I do appreciate the challenge of being out in the cold and not having an access you know access to some sort of a warming but we have to I think at the same time we're thinking about that we have to really be careful about how quickly a fire can spread and the resources that it will take to um to come in and deal with that I think you know there's there's more than it's a complicated issue no matter how we spin it right it's it's we don't

51:34 want to sound unsympathetic but at the same time we have a bigger city to to be you know adhering to responsible too thank you yeah well maybe like counselor most talking about there can be the no burning is in the code but maybe enforcement you know obviously it depend on yeah and I'm aware of a couple of vacant houses and see one of them very beautiful agent household industry they would get in there and start a fire and burn the house down yeah and two people with it yeah [Music]

52:25 and you have the Portland I can't remember the numbers I don't know Nancy if you can remember was it 92 20 you're talking about the fern the illegal burning where the runs that they had and that they involved in property damage or personal damage was like 90 style or something very high percentile earlier calls that they had to respond to because of those fires that people are irresponsible for and there's a reason why they're prohibited is because of the irresponsibility and I agree with you but I'm talking about healing lines I agree but you know it's a safety issue and it's everybody around that warm environment and it's not just that it's water day burning right it's not like they have a stack of wood there and this is going to be stuff

53:10 that and that's that's going out into the air and and it could you know could ignite and stuff like that so I I just believe that we should be consciously or purposefully disregarding yeah and I mean selective enforcement maybe we're gonna go downtown The Selective enforcement do we is that a policy I didn't say that I didn't mean don't answer that don't answer us me spouting so again it's a very slippery slope okay um so we gotta okay [Music] uh we have a few minutes here let me see

53:56 if I can recap the discussion and then um [Music] would I leave out here okay so and this may not be in the order of the discussion but it sounds like a discussion looking at the fine amount um being lower uh than the 720 which is our standard in recognition of just sort of the facts and circumstances so folks who may get this um type of citation and then related to that other options here okay different interpreter judge and see what I do yeah I just haven't looked at that in ages so um and then in terms of enforcement um that open burning or allowing burning would be problematic for other um conflicting

54:41 um and we already do have a Prohibition against burning in the code actually in certain areas um so not to have the allow burning in the camping code um I will look and see about County enforcement for illegal camping to see if there's any debt out there um and then yeah um and then I I'll look it up and see about green Helen I mean it could be that they don't have options but that could be something to look at um Vehicles we could um look at the data a little more about where Vehicles where is that occurring what is this you know the enforcement for vehicles is different so it could provide some just some written information so you're kind of grounded

55:26 and then a little button you could say to me yeah go back and look at that more or maybe we're okay with that or we understand what the limitations are there yeah I think looking at the data and realizing that you know at least half of the calls are for folks that are in cars it shifts my thinking in terms of like the 24 hour limit and things like that because I'm not sure I would have to go back and look like what how long can a car be parked in a place and how long can a you know we have we extended to let people have RVs and things like that yeah so I would be interested in saying instead of making somebody move a car you know every 24 hours if they're depending if we say in these neighborhoods or and a lot of those are right up in my Wards so yeah and I you know I think it's 72 but I'm

56:12 not sure and I can get you something just a little more complete so you can get an idea of what enforcement looks like there um and then I think that's it did I forget something are you looking at other bases that have have done this and and that it's working for them I mean I have a neighbor who's from Hawaii um he just he's moved here just recently and they had a significant homeless problem there and he has said that whatever they're doing there has turned that entire situation around and so um and so from maybe we should take a look at that and just see I mean it may not even be relevant because Hawaii's weather is like obviously different than ours so it could be completely un impossible here but it's just something to think about places that have been

56:57 successful in handling these situations um now I'm happy to like we've kind of kept our look organ focused I know we're definitely happy Oregon Washington and California have not done their job and taking care of this and it's gotten worse we need to look at places that have been successful and done something about it not just not allowing it but have figured out a way to work through it so okay the other area we were concerned about too is is now you're mentioning about the 24 hours of vehicles Etc et cetera but then we start going into longer than 24 hours that we may run into some Tennessee tendency issues I don't know if it'd be tenancy issues but it's um the establishment of a passion yes not so much landlord tenant but establishment

57:42 of a um uh what you call a homeless homelessness can right those restrictions um there yes that's right so that triggers multiples of things that really are costing a city and being a strain on our personal staff is then the storage of property what kind of properties stored yeah what kind of what what must restore and what can be voluntarily stored um and what can we refuse and I think that we should look at those issues because I'm I'm not about allowing Springfield to be a storage facility for whoever comes growing and going out and all of a sudden we've got just a ton of stuff and they may even be around

58:28 they may be down in California for the summer so okay winter but where it's it's not unfair but you compare the people that are homeless but fair also to the city right okay yeah and there's statutes on that so we can get information um last thing is uh the communication strategy is part of this project so working on that now that's a web page uh surveys and pushing out information through social media I'm going to get you a memo maybe in your next week's packet just kind of summarizing what we're doing but anyway that's

1:04:04 good evening everyone I'd like to open this regular meeting of the Springfield city council with roll call Mayor Van Gordon councilor Weber here councilor Mo here Council Rodney here counselor Doyle here and Council missionary here thank you let's start with the Pledge of Allegiance the United States of America and to the Republicans one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice throughout like to start off this meeting with some instructions as we begin our meeting tonight I would like to ask members of the audience who are joining us by phone or online to please keep yourselves on

1:04:51 mute until you are called to provide public testimony there is one time designated for public testimony this evening under business from the audience if you're attending in person please complete the request to speak card located at the entrance of the chambers and give them to the city recorder if you're joining us online with a tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak either of those times please use the raised hand feature in Zoom the order of public testimony will be as follows is anybody in the council chambers first and anyone who has raised their hands with their virtual hands next item your first item of the evening is Springfield upbeat item number one is the mayor's recognition this is a women in construction week Proclamation and

1:05:36 councilor missionary this is your item is Cassandra dare here oh nice

1:07:24 next item next item is the consent calendar all those in favor with roll call now yes councilor Weber yes councilor Mo yes counselor rodley yes councilor Doyle aye and councilor Pictionary yes next item next item is business from the audience I currently have three cards from the audience the first one I'm going to call would be a Renee Ellis please state your name and address for the council yes I am Renee Ellis 1940 South 58th

1:08:10 I previously addressed the council about my concerns regarding the wetlands in Melinda Lane property my concerns have not really been put to rest in the application for compensatory mitigation of wetland loss your attachment Aid there are seven sections of delineated Wetlands the conservation easement on the agenda this evening includes only two of those I understand those satisfy the 10 to 1 replacement required for mitigation but I'm left wondering why the remaining five pieces of almost four acres were excluded and how the city plans to ensure they are protected going forward I also want to go on record is noting that the mitigation plan in plan a is woefully lacking and that it only addresses protection of the wetlands as they currently exist and does not

1:08:55 consider the obvious impacts of construction and development right next to it potentially within 30 feet in my communication to Department of State lands Chuck reeden Aquatics coordinator noted quote DSL permit can only require protection of the proposed mitigation for proposed impacts not for speculation of potential future impacts however it is important to note that any future development proposals in surrounding areas would have to go through the same permitting process which requires first analyzing alternatives to avoiding Wetlands including other development sites and then mitigating for any unavoidable loss end quote given that it is the city who would be approving building permits who is going to be the Watchdog for the wetlands and

1:09:41 where will the oversight and enforcements fit your conservation easement is only as effective as the authority provided to do enforcement the city is facing unprecedented pressure from the state to increase housing how does the city plan to ensure that the pressure to do that doesn't steamroll the requirements to preserve these wetlands Google initiate the study to readdress this in parcel with regard to construction impacts as required and noted by Mr reedon at DSL and what about the rest of the wetlands on that site I would like to believe that the wetlands are not being used in a shell game to manipulate the laws that are supposed to protect them in favor of development I hope there will be transparency going forward that ensures that this doesn't happen

1:10:27 and I look to you our elected officials to facilitate transparency in compat combat potential conflicts of interest within the city in this regard thank you thank you next person would be a Howard Kaufman please state your name and address for the record I'm Howard coffin I live at 1431 Wimbledon Place Springfield

1:11:12 can you speak a little closer to the mic sir thank you so much I'm here to talk tonight about chapter five public protection particular nuisance and uh where I'm coming from this is the public protection that I'm concerned about first but my neighbor has two trees planted three feet from the our border uh line there uh these trees are over 60 feet tall each they cover about 750 square feet of my backyard that uh

1:11:59 includes 110 square foot Greenhouse which is now unusable because of those trees the then they drop they're they're messy trees they really drop sticky pollen all year long and although I've made repeated requests to have the trees trimmed ever since they grew big enough to become a problem my neighbor has refused to by saying that it is my problem and that I could personally trim the trees up to the property line but no further meanwhile the trees are still growing

1:12:44 my neighbor appears to be legal legally correct and I've been advised from several people with knowledge of the subject that I am without legal standing to require my neighbor to trim or remove these nuisance trees I've provided a package to you that as a proposal to change that in in our code it's a simple Exchange adjustment to it uh those that I've talked with who are knowledgeable on the subject uh suggests that it would be expensive

1:13:30 and probably futile to try to sue my neighbor without an ordinance declaring overhanging trees as a nuisance as nuisance trees and providing mechanism to resolve disputes that mechanism is already included in the proposal that I've given to you so uh there are a few other things that I want to talk about I'm out of time yes sir well you got two more seconds okay I appreciate the information if I can have our city manager direct some staff to contact you and and maybe figure out

1:14:17 a plan sounds good they're inside here now thank you there you go yeah great I have one more person uh June Foster Guild good evening June father Gill at 317 30th Street in here in Springfield um I've been listening to your work sessions as you know on the camping ordinance changes and I still do not know if I was a homeless person here in town where I would be allowed to sleep

1:15:04 legally still don't have the answer to that question so you folks still need to figure that out I think as my understanding um and also I'm very concerned about the 24-hour limit um or what I know of people who are living with homelessness one of the hardest things is you don't have any stability you don't have a place where you can be and if you have to move where you're sleeping every 24 hours can you imagine doing that can you imagine trying to find a place for all your stuff and yourself a different place every 24 hours I'm sorry that's just I can't even imagine trying to do that

1:15:50 and that's where you're asking people to do so just look at that again please and also if you haven't yet taking the time to talk to a homeless person or to a person with lived experience please please please please do that before you make these changes of any kind there's ways to do it um I've given some ideas to Mary Bridget you can go to Everett United Methodist Church every Wednesday night just show up you get a chance to talk to folks that are experiencing homelessness um you could talk to carrot forward an agency here in town that has people with lived experience be happy to talk to you

1:16:35 can go to the Eagan center and Mary Bridget has permission to go and talk to folks there when they come the center right now is so wonderful in the memorial building there's a great space to just sit and talk to people and you can do that so I really strongly encourage you to take at least some time I know you're really busy no there's a lot involved in being a council person but please take a little bit of time to be sure and run these ideas by person that experiences being homeless thank you very much thank you June is there anybody from our virtual end of things Neil uh looks like we have no hands for this

1:17:21 moving on next item uh next item would be uh resolutions uh resolution number one the resolution of necessity for Laura Street that's p21188 this is resolution number two a resolution exercising in the power of eminent domain and authorizing a resolution pursuant to ors223.005 ors223.105 and rs35.600-625 concerning acquisition of right-of-way necessary for Laura Street p21155 project and Christy Krueger is here for the staff report good evening Council um two weeks ago we came to council um I was supposed to be here but I was sick and I apologize for the coughing

1:18:08 um we came for a resolution of necessity for Mill Street The Mill Street construction project Laura Street construction project and South 28 Construction South 28th construction project and um The Mill Street and South 22nd project those resolutions passed um but I'd like to step back a minute um historically with all of our construction projects um the majority of them we have needed to either get temporary construction easements permanent easements or right-of-way and so because of that um a lot of times you know for temporary construction and easements we need to allow the space for the construction workers to be able to step onto private property do the work that that's necessary sometimes we need to get

1:18:55 right-of-way for Ada ramps or you know whatever that might be for the construction projects so um in order to move forward with any type of negotiations for those the right-of-way or easements we need the resolution of Necessities in order to do that so because the majority of our projects do have those that's why we need to start doing the resolution of necessities for every single project in the past we've only been doing those really for our federal projects the projects that have Federal funding um but with um talking to Legal we've realized we've really needed to do that for every

1:19:41 single project we just haven't really gone through much of a condemnation process because we take working with the public very seriously and making sure that we hear their point of view and their needs and oftentimes we do change our designs to accommodate what those needs are so this is just in case we are not able to get through that whole entire process of negotiations it's the very very last step of course but we do everything in our power to negotiate with them and to go take the take a look at the projects as well as their concerns so tonight we're looking back again at Laura street from what I was told there was a question about the map that was included and why were there locations

1:20:28 included on the map along the Linn County section of the roadway and the reason why is because those particular properties have already been annexed into the city so the city needs to negotiate those properties so all those properties that showed County and our map were actually sitting yes well it's a revelation so the map was correct any questions from Council I'm going to make my usual comment and I have a feeling that some of what you said was directed to me which is fine no okay because I really appreciate her I really appreciate everything that you said and I understand the process I've spoken with the city surveyor I've been looking at chapter 35 of the Oregon

1:21:13 revised statutes and what have you my problem is with the wording in this and so I need to understand what makes this necessity what's the what makes this ordinance that you want me to agree to a necessity because in the very first paragraph it says the city May exercise the power of eminent domain pursuant to this chapter and then you go down to section two The Power of eminent domain is hereby exercise with respect to acquiring the easement interest in property so I know you're telling me this is the last resort but I don't I don't know that I would ever even sign off on imminent domain to begin with so for me to just say yes to this just in case and then you're going to bring it back to me and then I can say no

1:21:58 I don't get so I guess I just need to understand the necessity part sure um so from my understanding I'm very appreciate you can correct me if I'm wrong um it says that if we start the negotiation process and we are not successful and we get to that point where we do need to come back to council and exercise eminent domain we essentially would have to start all the way back to the beginning of the process and so all of that time that we've taken to go through that negotiation process would all be for nothing and we would need to start back from the very beginning except for protecting somebody's property that they don't want to give you okay thank you yeah

1:22:44 yeah do I hear a motion I move approval of resolution number two second it's been moved and seconded all those in favor by roll call that's a Weber yes councilmo yes councilor rodley yes counselor Doyle no and counselor Pictionary yes out the motion carries with four yeses and one no and one absence uh excused absolutely next item next item is any business from the city council Corey thank you just want to take a minute um to share with folks that March is

1:23:29 both developmental disabilities awareness month and women's history month and some of you may know that on Saturday Judas Judy heumann died at the age of 75 and she was an incredible activist um who was a um who organized around the rehabilitation Rehabilitation Act in 1973 particularly Section 504 which states that no government agency or even a private business that accepts federal funds can discriminate against someone on the basis of their disability this led the way to the individuals with Disabilities Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act and she had leadership roles in two presidential administrations and I just wanted to take a moment to just

1:24:15 say she's a perfect example of the merging of those two developmental disabilities awareness month and women's history month and just encourage folks to learn more about both thank you anyone else hey excited next time is business from the city manager item number one is p21065 Jasper trunk sanitary sewer extension phase three approval of approval of deed restriction and conservation easement and Jesse Jones Is Here virtually for the staff report and Jesse you're muted sorry about that um good evening counselors uh my name is

1:25:00 Jesse Jones I'm a civil engineer in the development of Public Works um the City of Springfield I'm the project manager for the Jasper trunk sewer um phase three project tonight we're asking the council to authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute a deed restriction on the Linda Lane property I'll give you a quick background The Jasper trunk sewer project this multi-phase project we'll be working on for the last uh 12 or 13 years now we're on phase three right now and we're extending the sanitary sewer into Southeast Springfield to serve future development and we discussed this uh in the last a couple weeks ago the Jasper trunk this line that we're putting in it impacts Wetlands a small

1:25:46 area of wetlands and so this triggers mitigation requirements from federal and state agencies uh in 2021 the council authorized the city to purchase the Linda Lane property with the intent to permanently protect a portion of the wetlands on the site uh in this case a deed restriction is a mechanism to do that it will function similar to a conservation easement and that will protect the wetlands um from future impact the approval of the deed restriction will satisfy those federal and state agencies the permits that were required it will satisfy those permit requirements and allow us to proceed with construction we have updated the interested parties list for the Linda Lane

1:26:32 group but the interested Neighbors in that area we let them know that this action was coming before Council I have a couple of maps I can share and then I'd be happy to answer questions as well um is it is it possible to get the screen sharing you see it's on its way okay thank you I could do questions now too if you guys have any counselors have any questions okay um just real quickly here's the vicinity map this is the Linda Lane property here in yellow and then yeah Jasper Road over here and Bob Straub down here we're extending the

1:27:18 sewer from about where the cursor is here we're extending the sewer down along just north of the railroad tracks down um down to the junction of Bob Straub and Jasper Road and over towards the old brand s Mill site uh so that's the city map the wetlands this is the Linda Lane parcel with the wetlands delineation on it so all the blue patches are mapped Wetlands what we're doing is protecting this upper portion right here and that protecting that amount of wetlands will satisfy the permit requirements and allow us to proceed with construction and then I have just a quick outline of the actual conservation easement is this boundary like that but that basically encompasses the

1:28:03 proportion here Wetland a um so if there's any questions I'd be happy to answer them I'll entertain emotion I move we authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute a deed restriction on a portion of city-owned property tax lot 18-02-04-00-01511 AKA Linda Lane property located in southeast Springfield for the purpose of wetland mitigation for the Jasper trunk sanitary sewer extension project p21065

1:28:50 I'll second that he has been moved in a second with a vote Neil yes councilor Weber yes counselor Mo yes counselor rodley yes counselor Doyle aye and councilor Pictionary yes thank you it's been moved and seconded and voted unanimous unanimously with one absent excuse uh next item is any other business from the city manager no further business thank you any business from the city attorney no no business seeing that this meeting is adjourned oh I get to do this so the clarification so I didn't actually

1:29:36 adjourn the meeting this is just an extension of the meeting correct this is a special work session all all participants are on importantly you don't have to do a roll call again just making sure hoping this special work session for the Springfield City Council we have staff great good evening counselors my name is Mindy Linder I am the staff liaison for the Springfield Arts commission it's my pleasure to join you all this evening in this special work session to present to you our applicants for the Springfield Arts commission service for your consideration and appointment we add in our latest recruitment a total of nine applicants which was wonderful since we have currently six vacancies

1:30:22 unfortunately before this evening and since this packet was published we did have two withdrawals so there are a total of seven applicants that you will be considering and interviewing this evening uh the Arts commission as a reminder has a desired minimum total of nine seats we presently have three serving active Arts commissioners of those nine seats per the bylaws they um no fewer than seven shall live in own property in and or own a business within Springfield or the urban growth boundary at present of our three current active Arts Commissioners we do have one commissioner who fits one of those two

1:31:07 roles of living outside of the area though she does bring a tremendous amount of enthusiasm experience and skill to her commissioner seat which leaves one seat available for a non-resident and or someone who doesn't work or own property or forgive me who does not own property or own a business within Springfield and of the applicants that are presented to you this evening all of them um are believed to be eligible and qualified to serve one of the candidates you will find does as I said live outside of Springfield though it does um consider themselves having a reasonable amount of service and expertise to contribute are there any questions

1:31:54 uh yes the non-springfield resident is Nissi Ellison and there are these in order of how we're gonna we're gonna interview uh perhaps Ms Ellison has not okay yes Miss Ellison I have not confirmed her Presence at this time uh so potentially with the approval of council we may move forward with David Grimes the plan is that whoever's not here Will Go Bump right to the next person at the very end for all the names and if they don't show then they're scratched if they go then we can interview them so yes please uh if you can bring in Mr Grimes I appreciate it absolutely

1:33:21 counselors I'd like to introduce you to your first applicant Mr David Grimes hey everyone good evening friends how are you doing doing well thank you I have three questions for you and if you could go ahead and answer them and we appreciate it it's a pretty low key here soon so why are you interested in serving on the Arts commission um a couple reasons um one is as an artist myself I don't feel very connected to you so in an artist's way I feel like I just kind of do things on my own and I still a little detached from it and this will be a good opportunity for me to connect with Community see what other artists are doing expand my own

1:34:06 Horizons and connections and also just to find a common you know family community that I identify and the other reason is that very interested supporting the community being an advocate for everyone all of our different groups workers and artists and creatives have the potential to um to be a good facilitator promoting the art and what sprinkled has done so can you give us an example of your experience working within a committee sure I have worked with safer the Springfield requirements for equity and respect for a couple years on the

1:34:52 2019-2020. is most active with them and um I took part in spoken City Council meetings met with them Springfield government staff oh be connected okay how do you think the work of the Arctic commission will improve our community that art and its culture and you know creativity has been part of The Human Experience so just seeing what we've already done here in Springfield just in the past couple of years since amazing mural work and art walks and oh even all sorts of things that I'm not even sure that we're doing and it just seems like a lot it

1:35:39 seems really good and I'd like to help keep it going and seem to be really exploding and just getting bigger and bigger well we appreciate that we're going to be asking everybody we got a ton of people to go through and thank you so much for for coming in and having interest we appreciate the interest yeah thanks for taking the time to have us and interview us and uh got to get to know you and thank you thank you thanks for participating in the process it's awesome to see people get down doing this thank you very much thank you I was urged to come check it out and I decided to take a leap and adminate

1:36:25 someone thank you counselors will be getting Adam Gutierrez I'm counselors it's my pleasure to introduce our next applicant Adam Gutierrez hello

1:37:12 Adam thank you for the welcome thanks for your time thanks for coming in appreciate it excited about the opportunity so I'm going to hit you with three questions okay here we go why are you interested in serving on the Arts commission kind of kind of from the answers that I gave in that my application I just want to serve the community at whatever capacity I can um I I'm going to be hyped into this I think this is a fast track I'm I'm a fairly new transplant to the City of Springfield I've been here 19 months now but um you know this I got into the um Les cohort the leadership Eugene Springfield cohort and that kind of carried me into this opportunity so I'm just kind of rolling with the rolling

1:37:58 with that snowball approach and uh trying to serve my community at the greatest capacity that I can what can you give us an example of your experience working within a Community Committee within a committee um I'll use the example that I answered with on my application but the Norman Music Fest back home in Oklahoma Norman Oklahoma so I traded uh OU or the UFO and we have kid for other schools OSU um that we don't take kindly to um so at in Norman the normal music best one of the one of the largest nations largest we're in the music festivals it took over six eight blocks of downtown Norman it was shut down contained Abel

1:38:45 law liquor laws are different so you have to have it pain with fencing and so I was part of the team with coordinating volunteers that was more um more of getting all of my Naval buddies together with their platoon and their squadrons and just setting up fencing setting up perimeters and running the beer stands doing stage erection um just basically being Runners for the entire for the entire venue for Thursday Friday and Saturday and then tear down um you know when people don't want to be there so they needed reliable volunteers too dismantle the the festival that's um that's about as far as my experience goes as far as specifically involved with um

1:39:36 so how do you think the work of the Arts commission will improve our community I should think the Arts are a must um let's spur creativity let's give more opportunity for um diversity and inclusion I think that's those are big big bushes I think just in general offering offering just growing the community and offering more

1:40:24 well that was quick and easy most crimes uh my name is so thank you very much have yourself ready absolutely thank you for having me thank you thank you counselors I'll do a call for Nellie Huggins who would have been next but if they're not there we will move on to Nicholas coffee a second [Music]

1:41:39 all right counselors it's my pleasure to introduce our next candidate Nicholas Kaufman nice to meet you Mr Kaufman welcome thank you thank you for coming in tonight so I have three questions for you the first question I have is why are you interested in serving on the Arts Commission sure um well I'm interested in the Arts on a community level on a daily level um I enjoy um the galleries that we do have I enjoy what Eugene has to offer as well I'd like to see more of that passion that we have in Eugene to flow over into here as well um have been active in the the music scene um primarily in downtown Springfield for

1:42:24 a while and uh want to kind of encourage what's happening kind of at the hippie Museum kind of the one-off venues that we had when we had stalman guitars here in town um logo was happening there and would just like to see that kind of cross-pollination between you know the graphic arts painting to music poetry um things like the washroom Cafe starting to do a fine writing night on Wednesdays just try and grow that community excuse me you give us an example of your experience working within a committee probably been four or five years since I worked on a committee

1:43:10 um these were mostly like Festival committees um I helped with some of the like the downtown Springfield celebration stuff coordinating with common Bond specifically and Washburn Cafe installing parties a little bit um other experience would be special events probably committee planning with First Baptist Church of Eugene and Camp Harlow when I was working there we would have special events so that would be like production things budget meetings how would we attract Community use Etc so it's been it's been a couple years for sure I've been on an active

1:43:55 committee how do you think the work of the Arts commission will improve our community I think it's carrying ideas and bringing attention to um people that are in the community the community's values the history of the community what's happening there where we come from and then and where we're heading so I think I've seen some of that reflected in the local galleries a lot of the art murals on the walls that we're having and some of the the cross coordination with the high schools that I've seen and read about

1:44:40 um hey those are the three toughest questions you'll have tonight okay appreciate you coming in we have no more questions have you have other interviews to do and uh thank you again thank you thank you and thanks for filling it out and really participating thank you um

1:45:31 all right counselors it's my pleasure to introduce our next applicant Carolyn G Miller hello Carolyn you know you know my questions yes I do I think um because it'd be fun question first question why are you interested in serving on an Arts commission I think that art in a community is really important I think it's the soul of our community it brings kids and old stirs and people who are working and people who aren't working it brings us together it shows us a commonality of our art shows us why we should all hear about each other there's a there's a collective thing that happens with our that I don't think happens any other way can you give us an example for work you've done within the committee yes

1:46:18 um in my old Hometown in Michigan I was always on a commission of one sort of um and a special commission having to do with parking in the community in Michigan where it moved and yeah I don't remember yeah I think I was on another committees and how do you think the art Mission will improve our community oh the our art art is the heart of our community I mean especially in Springfield it just feels like we're just blossoming with art all the time it's really our soul and the way that we speak to our world and show them what we are

1:47:04 is through our art I think it's critically important okay well those are the toughest ones you got tonight that covers all three questions thank you thank you thank you I'll let you find your way back very soon

1:47:57 all right counselors it is my offender to introduce you to our next applicant this evening Suzanne Vinson good evening thanks for coming in spend some time with us this evening and your interest in a committee to appreciate that very much I just have three uh reasonable questions for you that would like to uh all right you with so um why are you interested in serving on the earth commission Commission I want to have a positive impact in humanity there's a lot of changes that are happening and that takes a lot of work um and this is something that I think would be a good way to do a little bit of the work on the back end and see how that works and contribute but also like encourage people to come out and participate and maybe hopefully extend

1:48:43 it in the long run get more people interested in volunteering than maybe being on the council maybe creating other things that are happening and this is a good start give us an example of your experience working within a committee um I was on a Boost Report with my daughter's school and she was in high school for several years I um held a couple of different roles in ustralia it was the president of it athletic boosters thank you sorry and it was my year as president with just as covid was coming in so I have an experience a little bit of experience with turbulence as well and navigating some things that may present issues you've never dealt with

1:49:29 before but still trying to you know you've got to keep going and wrap things up and keeping people interested especially when you have to Pivot from something that was physical or in person and figuring out that you can still engage and present in a different way but that also opens up access to people who wouldn't be able to make it otherwise and so there's new ways to explore how you can get people interested from far away maybe there's people that moved away that want to see what the new developments are in a place that they love or or are traveling through that might encourage somebody who's traveling through here or past here to somewhere else to stop and take a look and see because they were able to experience it in a way that didn't have them here at that time and they didn't miss it

1:50:15 how do you think the work of the Arts commission will improve our community um visually I have to say that murals are really great it's very exciting to see when it seems like it just pops up if you don't travel in an area at some point there's a ton of work that goes into it but to see all of a sudden like something big and beautiful in your face it it's a little more inspirational when you're moving along and that is something that I really appreciate I really do like like the funny little alleys that you're going down and then you see somebody doing something I think that it allows a little bit more interaction with the people that live and work here with the people that might just travel through and you might be more inspired to stop in and hang out a little bit more do something like that I

1:51:01 love the The Sod work that's happening out here on Main Street there's a lot of changes that hadn't happened for a really long time and I like the effort that's being put into restore but also uh keep in mind what it was it's not just like raise it and then rebuild and make it completely different it's really incorporating the history of the community and the way that it's growing and expanding those are the three type of Expressions you have tonight I'm pretty sure thank you so much for coming in we appreciate your your interest very much and you want to scaffold if you know what's going on after that but have a great night we appreciate it

1:52:47 well unfortunately counselors it seems that Nissi Ellison and Nellie Huggins the first and fourth candidates in your packet are not physically present or digitally present to be able to participate in interviews so that concludes my portion unless you have any questions from me to support I have one brief question on yes it could be operator error which wouldn't surprise me tonight on Kaufman's I don't see any application completion in regards to questions or resume is that true

1:53:35 I do have those in my packet and it was printed from your packet so I believe it is it should be included should be right after his application [Music] thank you Neil I was like I don't have page numbers I'm sorry application was typed yeah it's just it didn't show online how weird yeah so yeah go ahead Corey um I'm I'm an adult five things folks I mean I know that doesn't feel like your vacancies but I think everybody a different perspectives and passionate

1:54:20 about art and and winning all of them interested one of them you like them all but one like that's what I agree I think that what someone might lack I think Adam didn't have quite as much experience but I think his enthusiasm and knowing that he wants to learn that that's a that's what we that's why we we do these volunteer positions and so we can learn and grow in them I mean I didn't know anything when I started on one of my first commissions either but it sounds like he'll have a great group of people around him so um I I agree with Council robley I think all of them are fine I have no concerns at all Adam is really working on

1:55:07 becoming a really more connected um number of of Springfield he's really really excited about getting involved so I think this is a great opportunity for me to give him that opportunity that's like multiple of that folks are from other areas and that's really cool that they're moving here and then getting involved I think that's awesome what I'm hearing is everybody's thumbs up almost throw in my little bit of Joey's here Visionary leads is it um Mr Kaufman said I would like to have more meeting over here and phone me out I want us to be our own just me you take care of that though

1:55:52 right I'm just say it I'll keep them in mind you want to be our own anyway okay looks like we have a consensus all the people that were here are about the recommendation I think we do it officially in a council meeting but we can um [Music] right yes and you have almost a whole new board you know when I started as the staff liaison over the summer so I'm very new to the Arts commission myself uh we were still down applicants so I think we're down two applicants so I'll have the most Commissioners I've had so far yes thank you all so much for your time this evening and your consideration in

1:56:37 the interviews really appreciate it thank you for your time too good night my pleasure okay so now this special session we keep going we've got more stuff to do that was all you have so then I can adjourn this special compensation