Springfield City Council — December 2, 2024

0:04 I'm going to call the Springfield City Council work session to order with roll call Mayor Van Gordon here councelor Weber here councelor Mo here councelor rodley here councelor Blackwell here councelor Doyle happily here and councelor pisher here we've got a couple items tonight um the first one is the Springfield Utility Board 2024 update with Nancy Newton and Jeff Nelson so come on down Jeff I think you brought Terry with you so mayor I will um keep this all quickly before Jeff begins to let them get settled they got their orientation on how to use our microphones so they should be good to go um our Charter requires that the Springfield Utility

0:49 Board otherwise known as sub provide an annual update um to the mayor and Council regarding the overall condition of the district and we thought it would be a great opportunity um for sub to talk about some of the things that they do give some general information about their services um to our residents and you know in further ship of in the spirit of the charter building uh that partnership together uh with sub so with that I'll turn it over to Jeff thank you very much mayor and councel I'll turn it over to uh Vice chair Terry Dylan uh she's here tonight on behalf of um David Willis the board chair here but David is unavailable to be here

1:37 tonight good evening um David is asked me to read a statement that he wants everybody to be aware of so I will just get into it mayor and city council thank you for allowing us to come and present tonight when I recently assumed the board chair position I began a review of a number of our policies and specifically the document Springfield Utility Board Charter Authority it was clear to me that we were not compliance with one very important section which is section 46 and here are some of the expert excerpts I can you're welcome um the Utility Board shall make an annual report to the common Council of the City of Springfield which report shall include an annual audit certified to by a certified public accountant to

2:23 establish a close working relationship between the common Council of the City of Springfield and the Utility Board each shall Appo one of its members to act as an ex official member without a vote of the other body and it shall be the own be the duty of the member so appointed to attend the meetings of the other body and to coordinate the activities of the two bodies the mayor and the of the utility and the mayor of the U manager I'm sorry of the Utility Board shall attend the meetings of the common council at the City of Springfield David has apologized that we have not followed through with this during his tenure on the board as I I believe it has caused unnecessary communication issues to rectify this Bruce Weber has agreed to be the sex sub ex official member to the common Council

3:10 the general manager Jeff Nelson has been reminded in a recent board me meeting to attend the meeting stated in section 46 and at my request to Mayor Van Gordon the meeting tonight was set up to review the 2024 audit and financials we should also be on your schedule to present annually every June again I apologize for the lack of follow through on our end to help you as representatives of all the citizens of citizens of Springfield with your responsibilities board chair David Willis thank you thank you Terry um well I'd like to have Cynthia scoble please come up Cynthia scoble is our Director of Finance and information technology and uh she'll be able to answer any

3:57 specific questions you have on our financials for 2023 so what I'll do is uh thank you Allison is starting the presentation um quickly go through a few slides just to give you an overview of sub um so some statistics uh I won't go over them unless you have maybe questions about uh some of the specific details but we have some uh information about uh the number of customers and the services that we provide um and then the recognition we've also received from other organizations and on the next slide uh we have Subs board members uh and all of the current board members have also been

4:42 um who Whoever has had to go through an election those those have been elected for for January so all the members that you see here um are going to be on the board in January as well so uh happy to have that stability uh at on subside so that we can um kind of grow together with some more common understanding and then as uh Terry mentioned Bruce Weber has been appointed by the board to be the ex official uh member or ex official representative of sub to attend the City Council meetings uh the next slide um we have uh in our updated five-year strategic plan uh gone through our mission and vision um and those are on the screen right

5:29 there but real briefly uh the mission of the Springfield Utility Board is to provide safe reliable costeffective Utility Services to the residents and businesses of Springfield and then we also have some updated uh values that are also part of our strategic plan process also on your screen and so the odd process I'm going to back up two more there we go I'm going to stop right there and turn it over to Cynthia scobble uh who will talk about our audit for 2023 the uh Springfield Utility Board audit was uh completed by Moss Adams LLP

6:14 and was presented to our board of directors on July 10th of this year um it was a complete unmodified opinion on the audit which means there were no findings within the audit um but during the audit process we did have one initial finding which was addressed and corrected and that was an error uh in the accounting department of a recording a double recording of of some revenue from a a job order and that was reversed and corrected before the audit documents were issued um and the full audit I believe is provided in your packet so slip ahead yeah this is just a very summarized view of the balance sheet that is in the audit we do um account for the electric utility and the water

7:00 utility as separate entities uh within the company but uh overall uh audit is presented on a combined basis our financial highlights for us in 2023 uh we generated an operating income of $16.8 million and uh we had 23 million doll increase to our net position so our combined utility has invested over over $338 million in plant to the state and also um we increased that plant by 17.2 million in

7:45 2023 let's see during 2023 we paid approximately 2.8 million to the city in for inl of tax payments and we provide billing services for the city for Wastewater and storm water and for that we charge the city approximately $534,000 on collections of $24.4 million our 10-year plan uh does include the construction of a new water treatment facility the Mackenzie Water Treatment Plant which will require significant capital investment for us over the next 5 years that capital investment is outlined here on the slide about $115 million um we do plan to collaborate

8:30 with the financial adviser to identify the most coste efficient uh way for us to um fund that Capital but we will be looking at uh special loans Bank financing or uh possibly revenue bonds in order to do it so mayor and Council we did want to allow for ample time in case you did have questions about any of the financials um and then uh we did provide a map of of our service territory with water and electric was a separate um item in in your materials um that probably could take a bit of time if you

9:16 had a number of questions on service territory but we did want to provide something for your questions Joe you may not have the information but I've been curious for a while and I'm glad you mentioned this in your report in regards to the uh fees that you charge for collection or should say the billing of the sewer and water component and it's a little over half a million dollars that is what it we're being charged for that we're meeting the city what is the actual cost of doing that oh we'll be happy to follow up on that particular item we when we step

10:03 through the update you may recall um we increased the inl tax and we uh at the same time we did that we recalibrated and there was an increase in the sewer billing fee and that was through conversations with uh sub staff and City staff so we can we can follow up on that okay yeah because I I haven't seen those numbers and I'm I'm very curious to see um it's always nice to be able to balance okay should the city be doing that is it costing the city more to have you do it than it would for the city and so I want to try to make sure that that there's a balance there I can see recovery to cost recovery but it shouldn't be a cash cow for you

10:48 okay any other questions Victoria this is probably a dumb question I apologize but on um the subf financial highlights it says that you generated an operating income of 16.8 million and a $23 million increase to net position can you can you explain that to me I don't know what that means the difference there um what the 17 sorry I'm going by memory I don't have the slide the 16.8 million is the operating income and then there's a $23 million increase to net position yeah our night our net position is basically the capital that we have in plant um and it can include a depreciation so the difference between those two um is often that depreciation and other expenses that we have during the year so we increase plant at a

11:33 faster rate than we do uh the um the gains oh thanks well I had the same question too so um could you talk when I when I read the presentation there was a you use the you use a catch all that it's utility plan so could you maybe give us a little bit more of background what that means in the utility in the uity World from a financial instrument perspective sure our utility plant consists of hles wires a conduit Transformers um underground pipe trucks buildings uh computers everything that we own utility plant is

12:19 more specifically the um the uh infrastructure that we used in order to distribute electricity electricity or water thank you that helps so it's basically every every piece of C Capital Equipment you own yes okay goad Joe and I apologize it's on the some same subject I had asked earlier but flew in late there's also an admin fee that you charge every household for an admin fee for having the luxury of having access to the electrical both that sewer and water so there's a admin fee for all those are account fee and so the half million dollars you're collecting from

13:04 the city where does that when you're collecting close to eight8 or9 I can't remember which it is per account per household in the city is that is that not covering that sure um what I think you might be referring to if I am um understanding you is for the water rate schedule and the electric rate schedule there are two main components one is a base charge base charge and one is uh a usage charge so we we charge in combination of those two revenue streams cover our costs for providing those two Services electric and water and so is there a base charge

13:50 also charged against the sewer and waste water I mean the Wastewater and um storm water fees uh sub's fee associated with the uh service that we provide for your billing is uh for the city's billing is is just one charge per uh per transaction build so uh I don't but if you're referring to the uh base charge that the city charges or establishes rates for sewer and or Wastewater and storm water um those are separate yeah they're listed different on the build as far as separate billing I just wanted to Cipher out where those funds are going on those charges and if

14:37 it's collected and kept by sub or if it's pushed through to the city so when we collect funds from customers uh if it's a not in a past due status but it's all current then the city collects all the funds that were filled for the for example the water usage for um Wastewater um so it's in accordance with what the cities told us what the rate schedule is and then we we provide those funds to the city thank you Jeff all right anybody else I had more I had uh one more question so when you talked about how many uh customers that you had I think the number

15:23 was 33,45 electric customers and but only 21,000 water customers it wasn't wouldn't have been the discrepancy I would have expected um could you just help me understand why there's would be less water customers than than electric customers yeah I I think um if it is a function of some demographics and we can follow up with more detail but for example you may have a home that has a shop and a home has its own electric service and the shop or the the garage may have its own electric service so we may have multiple meters for electric but only one service for water that's an example okay great uh I don't think we've got

16:09 any more questions um one of the things that uh that Dave really uh wanted to bring up was just that he thought it was important to start just getting the regular conversation going between the two the the two boards so I really appreciate you guys coming down I've got more questions for tomorrow night but that's a completely different topic around around the ice report but I just you know don't want to get get into them here but there's a couple clarifying questions I have for tomorrow night and I'm looking forward to the conversation so I do want to note that you do have three board members you know that came down um I'm sure this got noticed as a public meeting you brought so many folks down to but I it was great seeing everybody thank you for for taking the time to walk us through it thank you so

16:55 much sure are we going to um reciprocate and have someone from the city council who will be attending sub meetings then well I Victoria just volunteered I could only do it if they change the way the sound is in there because I have been to the meetings and I can't hear anything I'm I'm hearing impaired and they don't use you guys don't use microphones and it's really really difficult for the public at least for someone who's has to wear hearing aids and stuff to be able to hear so I would like to just recommend that maybe we come up with something so that people can hear better that are on the in the audience uh for answer your question for25 um I will be you know giving that out as a committee assignment so if if

17:42 you want to volunteer definitely let me know well she kind of volunteered but all right let's see the next items the 42nd Street Levy project update which the record is my favorite piece of infrastructure good evening mayor and Council Ken vogan your emergency manager and I am happy to be here to represent the mayor's most favorite piece of public infrastructure so thank you for that I appreciate it so good evening um I haven't provided you with an update on just the overall

18:27 42nd Street project since I sent you a communication packet memo back in October of 23 and we've had some uh good progress here of late so I wanted to give take an opportunity to just fill you in on some of the things that have been occurring and where we're headed over the next couple years so let's start with there we go the 42nd Street Levy um so as you look at this particular map it's going to be describing for you several different things but really wanted to focus to begin with on the magenta line um that is the location of the 42nd Street Levy so it runs along 42nd street and the McKenzie river um but that's its

19:13 location so it is a city-owned facility it's not something owned by the Corp of Engineers or the state it's City of Springfield property um and it is considered a flood control Levy as we sit here today um that status could change if we don't make improvements to that Levy so there's reasons for us to be uh here talking about improvements so since I sent you that uh memo back in October of 2023 there's really been three significant things that have occurred around the levy in the past year that I wanted to just highlight for you one of those was the January 24 ice storm another was a study that came out

20:00 uh in June from the Oregon Department of geology and mineral Industries and it plays a role in a couple of ways for the levy and then the current status of where where're uh what our process is with the Army core of engineers in evaluating and studying the levy for the improvements and upgrades that it needs okay so I did mention that the levy is owned by the City of Springfield so the core of Engineers has received Congressional authority to work with us to evaluate the levy and basically be our Consulting engineering firm um and potentially construction engineering firm in the future for these Levy

20:45 improvements okay so just to to hit a couple of highlights for you the January 2024 ice storm the most significant thing that happened there for us was it caused about a six-month delay in my schedule for working with the Army Corps of Engineers because we prioritized working with the uh the response to the ice storm and our FEMA reimbursements and all of that good stuff um we prioritized that over working on the levy so that got delayed U for a little while um but another positive that happened um we discovered during the ice storm and shortly after that although there was a lot of tree damage from the trees on the levy and in the wetlands

21:31 between the levy and the river lots of trees fell but on the levy itself none of the trees fell so there was no structural damage that occurred um just a lot of branches that needed to be cleaned up so that was good news on that regard kind to shift um back to the map for just a moment so I don't know if that work no that's not going to work okay so you notice a couple of different colors and so I want to just highlight what we're looking at here here briefly um this is a map that came out of the emergency action plan that we prepared last year and that's what that memo was really covering from October last year um but it came out of that study where we evaluated the potential for where

22:17 would water go from the McKenzie river if the levy were to fail so the two dots you see the sort of magenta one on the North End and the yellow one on the south end those were the locations that we evaluated the levy failure if something were to happen there's reasons we picked both of those spots there's some deficiencies in the levy structure at those two locations the dashed boundary that you see around it is um or see around all that green area is the extent of the inundation area for the worst case scenario for either a North failure or a South failure so the water could be anywhere within that zone but an important thing for us to

23:03 remember is that within that green shaded area the depth of the water inundation is 2 feet or less okay 2 feet or less so most of the area that could be inundated from a levy failure is a fairly shallow inundation we used for this study the 1964 flood so it's a flood we know that has occurred in the fast um but we used that and then assumed those Levy failures to see where the water would go right we've been talking uh with you recently about flood plane management and I just to be aware if the levy weren't there or if the levy weren't improved for the next time flood maps

23:48 are updated that green area might become part of the 100-year flood plane that we were talking about um a couple weeks ago so just to be aware of that if you're curious about the white crosses that are on there um I put that on just as a as a reference one of the things we did in the study was identified what we call Community Lifeline infrastructure those facilities are all medical facilities of some type whether they be doctor's offices dentists clinics hospitals pharmacies Veterinary facilities so you can see we have a a pretty good concentration of medical facilities also located within the inundation area I have the similar data for whether it's gas stations or grocery

24:33 stores or whatever but just put that one in as a placeholder okay so the next piece that I wanted to talk with you a little bit about is this new study from Department of geology and mineral Industries and if I happen to slip um the common abbreviation for them or acronym is dogami so if I say dogamy now you know what I'm talking about it's the Oregon Department of geology and mineral industry um so they've been working on a study of the McKenzie river and the Middle Fork of the wamit river to evaluate Where the River has been uh the banks have been eroding and where the channel May migrate in the future if no actions are

25:18 taken to try to restrict that migration all right so there's lots of different details that are on here um the a little bit difficult for me to point to you and tell show you where the levy actually is on that map um but hopefully you see a yellow elbow um they're just above Highway 126 that happens to be also the vicinity of the levy so this study prepared by the state looks at the channel bank erosion and where the channel itself has moved since 1964 they use 1964 as the date because that was the uh the last one uh when a dam was built so they used that as their their starting point and evaluated where

26:05 the channel may have been so in the vicinity of the levy you'll see a light blue color surrounded by some green and it's under some hash marks the light blue color is where the river channel was in 1964 the dark blue line that you see wiggling through there is where the river channel is now so it's it's kind of obvious in the vicinity of the levy that it has move the river Channel itself has moved to the West substantially the dark green next to that is the what's considered the high-risk Channel migration Zone where the channel might move or has a high probability of moving into within the

26:52 next 30 years if the average rate of Channel movement that occurred since 19 1964 continues for the next 30 Years where would it go into that dark green band it happens that that dark green band on that map is on the 42nd Street side of the 42nd Street Levy in other words their study indicates that the river Channel could move to and through and under the levy causing the levy to fail in 2020 in a report that uh participated in with the core of engineers where we were evaluating the levy that was one of the most significant structural issues we

27:38 identified for the levy is the channel migration may cause the levy to fail regardless of the structure of the levy itself okay this study happened to verify that for us and give us uh confirmation so that was good the study also benefits Us in the next step that I'm going to talk about and that's the feasibility study with the core of engineers it's helping us to reduce the cost of that study because this was something the core of engineers was going to need to do anyway was evaluate how the river bank is moving and help us identify alternatives for stabilizing that River Bank okay I know I covered a lot um point is the dark Zone area is

28:28 Where the River could likely be within the next 30 years if the average rate of Channel movement continues the lightest green zone out to that magenta boundary that's considered the low risk area because it assumes the highest rate of migration that occurred in any year continuing for the next hundred years with nothing to stop it okay if that were to occur we could the McKenzie river at the driveway to Gateway Mall okay we're not anticipating that to be the case but it's a it's a risk and Hazard analysis so that's what that's about one last piece the hash marks that you see that's called an evulsion Zone

29:16 what is an evulsion zone for a river that's an area that is subject to or likely to change rapidly okay in other words the river could break through an Oxo area um with very little warning we saw that happen a number of years ago out in the thirston area an Oxo was cut off in just a couple weeks okay from the river changing course suddenly those areas in the hash marks are areas that could change suddenly without a lot of warning for us okay into those other channels all right so I'm going to leave that map up there for now and talk a little bit about a

30:01 little bit more about the feasibility study so that's the third layer of what I wanted to cover for you tonight so what's a feasibility study basically it's the pre-engineering and evaluation and assessment of the levy and we have in the agreement the channel migration so we're going to address both of those um but it's to evaluate what is the details what are the details of the deficiency es that we've identified we know that we have some but what are the details and then what are the options and alternatives to address those deficiencies to meet our goals of course one of the goals is to be cost- effective but others are to maintain protection and meet current standards for levies which our Levy does not

30:47 currently meet Federal standards okay so we as I had mentioned we had about a six- Monon delay in working on the the scope of the study for the feasibility study to working on the ice storm and other things but we have that done now and this contract or the feasibility study contract with the core of engineers is on your uh list of contracts for the city manager to approve over recess so it just happened to be a nice tie that that's on your agenda for this evening's regular session but the feasibility study total cost estimate right now is 8 9

31:34 4,110 the city's share of that is 50% or $447,500 Pro proposing to provide what is called work in kind services so things that need to be done that the city will do and will pay for to help reduce our outof pocket cash payment to the core of engineers for the project um that includes doing all of the public engagement and public

32:19 Outreach as part of this U the feasibility study and there's geotechnical engineering so basically going to the levy with a contractor to do borings in the levy and between the levy and the river and taking soil samples so that we actually know what material the levy was constructed from when it was built in 1959 the asilt plans just say fill material so we don't know what it is and whether that material is adequate in the long term or if additional deficiencies might be there we had also identified in our 19 in our 2020 study that some of the rip wrap was either undersized or

33:05 degrading rip wrap is the large Boulders that are along the uh the face of the levy on the Riverside so that when the water comes up it doesn't erode the levy our challenge with the channel migration is that as the river bank is eroding it'll go underneath the levy and underneath the rip wrap so it'll just bypass that protection and just keep on moving so we know we have work we need to do on that piece anyway so that work and kind services that um we're proposing to do is 151,000 so it reduces our cash payment to the court of Engineers to about 296 the feasibility study schedule is about two years so once we have uh final

33:52 review of all of the documents on our side everything signed turned into the core of engineers which should uh be able to occur before the end of the month we're expecting in about 6 weeks after that so into February we'll be getting a request from the core for the cash payment and then start scheduling the meetings so it's coming up thrilled to see that happening that way one last piece for this overall project with the core of engineers they have a total cash commitment or cost commitment of $10 million okay under the program that they are working under to work with us their cap is 10 million so anything over their cost share on the 10 million becomes a

34:37 City cost obligation so as we do this feasibility study we'll be doing as much as we can to try to ensure that we stay within the cost Cap all right as we move forward into the construction end so the feasibility study is a 50/50 cost share and the construction side it's 65 35 65% core of engineers 35% local funds okay we do have funds set aside possibly should be enough to cover everything the city's obligations in the future in the capital fund for fund 617 the the stormw water fund um we have been setting aside reserves in there so we'll be tapping

35:22 some of those reserves in supplemental budget to for this cash payment and then uh in the future tapping those reserves once we know what the projects are I said a lot covered a lot be happy to take any questions CH you know I'd have questions oh yes okay um I guess the biggest one in my head right now is what's preventing us to handing it over to the feds and saying we don't want this this is yours now can we do that and I don't know why we wouldn't that an interesting question counselor I don't know if we could get them to take it what if we got our federal delegation involved our two senators and representative that's works very closely

36:09 with our city and get them on board and move it forward with that and not have to mess with us and not have to pay for it so I I can do a little bit of speculating the levy was not constructed by the court of Engineers it was constructed did um under a partnership with the US Department of Agriculture back in 1959 whether the core of engineers but it was Federal right it it was Federal in Lane County right yeah so whether they would be able to to make all that work and one of my concerns um in trying to do that with where we are right now would be timing sure we could get it fixed faster than we could get it

36:54 transferred I would think um but it is something that we have not explored in trying to transfer the ownership to the core and asking the core to just kind of seems like we're remiss for not exploring that sooner um especially with the associated cost potential costs now what do you think the maximum cost that project is I know you have a 10 we have A10 million cap from the feds but I've heard numbers way more than that and and it just seems to me is that why would we voluntarily accept that and say sure we'll take care of it don't worry about it feds when we we really need to get them on board saying well you help build it number one and County and federal agency help build it and number two is when you're also talking you're looking at these maps and you're telling me or

37:40 you're telling us that it's going to fail anyway because of the M the you know why have it so the levy could fail if we don't take action how how long will it take before that failure could occur well with from the state study it's within that 30 day 30-year window from the average that we've been looking at for monitoring how quickly the bank is eroding it's closer to a 10-year window for the river to make it to the toe of the levy understand it seems like even timing wise 10 years out it it seems like we can maybe force them to be a bigger partner with bigger percentages leaning on the federal side versus the

38:26 city side and talk about ownership and responsibility because it seems like it's kind of foolish for a town even though we got 60,000 people and it's what 7th R's largest city in in Oregon it doesn't mean we can build Federal projects and afford to do that it it just seems kind of crazy okay I'll take your question back and and talk with leadership some more about it politically where we want to go politically we could probably muster more strength and staff-wise at this point but I think we should all consider that yeah so correct me if I'm remembering wrong the $10 million cap is the program that this project is in today that is correct so that doesn't exclude other Capital

39:13 programs that exist in the in the federal government or or at the at the state level for the core of engineers that's that's correct it doesn't preclude it but we would need to start over in applying for and being accepted into and negotiating our way into one of those other programs yeah so and and from the conversations that um that I've been in there's been a very clear understanding among our federal and state delegation that this is going to take this is going to take more money yeah I vaguely remember that number too but we could be making it up at this point so we did have in our united front request um two years ago was at three we had a number of 40

39:59 million that was in there and that included additional work beyond the levy it was 40 million for because we were talking about the 42nd Street improvements and potential RightWay uh or roundabout at the intersection with Marcola Road and everything for the levy um for the levy piece in my working with the core of engineers through this process to this point they believe there's Solutions out there that we can get done within that $10 million cost satisfy the levy and stabilize the River Bank okay so when we quoted the 40 million it was for the entire Corridor and everything like the overlapping amount of projects that yes okay yeah

40:48 Cory um yours was one of my questions so that's sort of answered what I'm kind of hearing you say is it's not necessarily a braidable project in that we've since we're partnering with the Corps of Engineers we can't bring on additional Partners at this point we can bring on the state other Federal Partners would be very difficult to do because they have exclusionary Clauses in their contracts and you it's hard to partner up different federal dollars to do the same thing um the state does have a program for helping local jurisdictions upgrade and improve their levies so we would have an opportunity there it is a low to zero interest Loan program that's

41:33 offered through business Oregon okay great and then my other question was um we get to the end of this two years we have this feasibility study what does that look like in terms of like what do we get and how will we how easy will it be to implement it so what we'll have at the end is an eval an evaluation of the Alternatives uh um so there's different ways for example to stabilize the channel okay we'll have evaluated the Alternatives and picked the the alternative that does that for I I don't want to say the least cost but the least cost to meet the project goals okay so it may not be the absolute cheapest but we will have all of our Alternatives

42:19 resolved we'll be back to you to say yes that's the path we want to go we'll have um I want to I'll call it pre-design um so we'll know what we're going to go build we just don't have the construction plans to go with it and we'll be on the path for getting the permitting in place if not in place um there's an assortment of federal and state permits that are required to do this type of work as well as through Lane County because it's outside the urban growth boundary where we'll be doing some of the work so the count is involved there too all right anybody else go well it's unfortunate that we didn't have this discussion years ago instead of doing it in a year when we're working

43:05 with budget shortfalls for the city as a whole and looking at you know the next four years having some pretty significant um reductions and things um and so my first question is on this uh 617 Capital fund is that set aside specifically for this or is it for Capital Improvement projects that's the first first question the specific fund that we're looking at is the uh the stormwater Capital fund okay so it's projects within our storm water system okay and it's reported by storm water user rates okay and so are we asking or is are we going to be asked to um authorize the city manager to write a check for 447 or 296 because it sounds

43:51 like you were saying there's that difference if we do some of the work ourselves but that this is going to be part of Something That We're asked to allow the or you know to authorize the city manager to sign so the contract that we're asking the city manager or asking for your authorization for the city manager is a contract for the full 896 um because that's the value of the work the city's cost share identified in that contract is the 447 the Corp of Engineers will ask us for a check to get started on the work and that'll be that 296 okay the remaining 151 will be asking for the the council through the

44:37 supplemental budget to put that into the capital project so that I can then go and hire the Consulting engineer and make that happen so it's still that 447 obligation so then do we have the staff to be able to do this work that you're wanting that you're saying that we can do that would reduce that cost and if so what are we what are we spending on our staff City staff where we're already running lean as it is you know they're getting doing just what they can do especially with all the CAC stuff and everything else that they're having to deal with I'm trying to figure out how we're going to have staff available to try to get that cost down by doing this work the boring and all of that ourselves okay so the the work for the geotechnical engineering will hire a

45:23 consultant and at this point it's me um managing that Consulting contract so how are we saving money um the the way we save money is the core of engineers already has contracts in place for these types of services with firms at set costs that are based in Portland under contracts already we believe in looking at their scope of work and the requirements in those contracts that we could bring in a local geotechnical firm or even possibly one of those at a lower cost than the core of engineers contracts because our Contracting requirements are significantly less uh onerous or expensive than what the core

46:09 of engineers has so that's where we'd be saving funds on that piece the public engagement and Outreach piece is primarily focused with our uh development and Public Works communication coordination staff so you're saying that that 150,00 ,000 that we're going to save between the 447 and the 296 approximately 150 of that you're going to pay Consultants or you're saying that part of that 447 is Consultants that you're going to hire correct and that that's going to bring that 447 down from what they're saying that it's going to be correct we're going to we're going to hire the consultant instead of having the core of

46:54 engineers hire the consultant at a at a higher cost okay okay at a larger cost okay did that did that help okay okay all right anybody else Joe ncy thank you mayor I was wondering Canen if possible and and we can revisit this later if this is uh too much um if you could identify maybe a some if we did if if the council did want to make pursue a policy decision around turning this over to the federal government I don't I don't know what's in the real of possible but what what could be some potential uh risks or

47:41 negative consequences that maybe we haven't thought about before I mean we obviously a positive would be them doing it rather than us but there could be some also some unintended consequences as well I I'll give you an example I I would I in my mind as I think about this because I have done a little bit of work with the core of engineers you know they're a vast organization uh pretty bureaucratic and you know how would our fairly small City rank in priority for them to get that done you know would they feel the same sense of urgency as we do the

48:27 people that are living in the community and watching this Levy every day I mean Ken knows this Levy probably better than anyone in this room so you know we also have people that drive it every day and watch it and and we have it also tied into other projects that we intend to improve in that general area on 42nd Street like the signal that we talked that we've talked about all of those are contingent upon making that Levy better so what are the you know we could have some potential unintended consequences of a delay if it weren't a a federal priority and that's something maybe that we might want to revisit at a later worksh session yeah Joe wants to jump in to so while you're thinking yes

49:13 and and I appreciate that information and and consideration too but I think um again we're I look at as we're behind the curve on this a little bit on that topic because there hasn't been I don't think enough exploration into that to look at the unended consequences the ramifications in regards to financial ramifications in the future of that type of decision and um and the cost procons of that cost benefit and I again I know we're kind of behind the curve but I think there's been an assumption that we're just going to take the ball and run with it as opposed to we really need to I mean I'm supposed to watch out for the taxpayers and the citizens interest

49:58 which is part of me too and I would certainly want the city to say hey we need to check things out and if we do and then come back to the taxpayer here and say we really checked this out and if we went this road this would be the consequence here and if we huh maybe we could go this road exhaust that or and and then I'd be okay but then we did our fiary responsibility in in watching out for our taxpayers dollars as opposed to just rolling over and appearance of rolling over and accepting the fact okay we're going to we got a big Bill here that's that's the point I'm making daning I'm looking at the overall time Horizon of this project that has come before Council and and previous

50:43 iterations of this Council and I guess you know knowing that this project has been part of the united front agenda for a number of times and I know Neil has some historical knowledge that I don't because I've only been here for four and a half years but you know we don't make assumptions as staff we execute the policy decisions of the elected body so you know I I I I don't think it's accurate to say that we're operating off an assumption we're operating off the direction of the elected body and I would say we're just we're at fault and I mean as far as an elected body or correct and I think the elected body passed elected body should have

51:28 been asking these questions sooner to be able to get them up on the radar right Steve nobody remembers but when this was built it was not built as a levy it was built as a railroad spur for marola to where's new plant and saw that go through there and saw it build up and we naturally thought it would restrict the River from flowing down through there but now it's turned into a whole different project and if we realize that at the time I we could have build it differently and we wouldn't be in this position today so I I think there's a couple of things one of them is I don't see a reason to sort of slow this thing down I mean I think Joe's got some good questions let's do some Recon and try to get some answers for the body but like

52:14 we shouldn't see them as sort of um you know red light green light that we want to stop what we're doing instead keep this thing going bring it you know next time we we come come with an update you know you know bring some of those some of those basic pieces of information back though I did notice that you talked about the boring piece Ken and you know now if you figure out what the thing's made of I'm going to have to stop telling that joke in public that we don't know what it's made out of so I'm a little bit concerned there um when we did the Emergency Management drill for the levy as we're wrapping up what could you get was the Utility Board involved with that or you could you rattle off a couple more of the Community Partners that were involved with our Emergency Management tabletop

53:00 sure so when we um when we prepared the emergency action plan last year part of our grant for doing that was conducting a tabletop exercise to test the viability of that uh emergency plan so we invited we had trying to remember all the numbers um we had over 50 people that were in invited representing I believe 40 different Community agencies so um Springfield Utility Board the hospitals a number of the uh local social organizations Lane County School District was invited but as I recall they weren't able to

53:45 attend um but we we had very good representation on that exercise and can we bring the map back up for one one more quick question which map would you like to see mayor that one right there okay actually go back up to the uh to the to the okay fell asleep there we go all right so when I heard you correct L if without the levy anything that was in that kind of light

54:30 green area would would be a flp plane potentially yeah and and sometimes when I hear that number I always want to remind um folks that as a as a community like this Levy prevents all those a lot of folks from having to have flood insurance right even though we're working on this this could be the single biggest impact we can do to help families right is to the cost of flood insurance is very expensive and our work on the levy not only protects our community but at least in the short run we are keeping a big part of this city from having to pay for flood insurance every single month Ken yes thanks for keep keeping uh keeping an eye on this project it is really important in this region and it's

55:16 really it's really important to this community so thank you thank you mayor thank you Council and I don't the next item looks like it's the climate friendly and Equitable community these 2015 scenario plan performance measures so Victoria you brought up climate friendly and now we have an update about it good evening city council Mr Mayor uh my name is Andrew Larsson senior Transportation planner for the City of Springfield and tonight we are going to be talking about an aspect of the climate friendly and Equitable communities the scenario planning mandate um so the cfac rules climate friendly and actual communities required the Eugene Springfield area to implement the central Lane scenario plan a

56:01 strategy developed in 2015 to reduce Transportation related greenhouse gas emissions the scenario plan in 2015 evaluated potential land use and transportation changes through scenario planning including a do nothing approach and existing policies within the transportation system plan and its effects on emissions ultimately Regional Partners agreed to a preferred scenario that bolsters existing policies to meet the Region's reduction targets um so as part of the CC effort Springfield along with its Regional Partners must update the scenario plan to introduce performance measures and targets to track reduction progress the recommended performance measures are based on the preferred scenario uh from 2015 and other jurisdictions that are

56:48 also currently going through this work um so the project team tonight is seeking feedback from Springfield cityy Council on these measures to ensure they are appropriate for Springfield and effectively monitor progress towards the Region's greenhouse gas reduction goals um we did take this to the Planning Commission about two weeks ago uh and they noted a couple concerns were one with public Outreach how are we getting this out to the public um and two uh the looming parking considerations or parking demand that is going to be coming from this specifically related to removing uh minimum off street parking requirements um so tonight the main presentation will be given by Ryan farcom of parametrics who will present

57:35 the recommended performance measures in addition Brian Hurley from the Oregon Department of Transportation climate office uh will be with him to help answer questions at the end and with that I will turn it over to Ryan who has a presentation thank you great thanks folks um as Drew said Ryan farcom with parametrics and before I go on I wanted to give Brian a chance to introduce himself as well thank you Ryan hello everyone Brian Hurley with the ODOT um climate office and as mentioned I am the ODOT lead for the project and I'm here to answer any questions about the ODOT aspect of the work take it away Ryan thank you okay thanks and just confirming everyone can hear me all right okay great uh and let me pull up

58:22 my screen okay uh so I'm going to I have a presentation here that I'm going try to keep to about 10 minutes or less so we can leave plenty of time for questions um but we're going to provide an overview of the work to date uh and as Drew alluded to we're going to talk a little bit about the recommended draft recommended performance measures that we've developed for this work and then next steps so um we are working to implement the central Lane scenario plan which was developed and adopted in 2015 uh nearly 10 years ago um and under the climate

59:08 friendly and Equitable communities rulemaking that happened recently in the last couple of years um part of the implementation of that scenario plan is to develop performance measures um for different aspects of the transportation and land use system uh that will move us towards the greenhouse gas reduction goals that are been established in state regulations uh and that goal is a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions um from 2005 which is the base year um for the region so the process that we're engaged in now will result in a refreshed 2015 preferred scenario so again it's been a few years since that was adopted so we're um looking to make sure that the scenario still reflects the current

59:53 plans and priorities of the region we're developing performance measures and targets we'll develop a scenario report um that includes strategies and actions to um Advanced goals in the scenario plan and then we're also establishing local targets for those performance measures uh each jurisdiction will be responsible for those um there are reporting requirements um with the CFC climate friendly and equital communities regulations um in the Years where the region adopts a regional transportation plan or an RTP a major report is due which provides status of the measures progress towards targets and actions

1:00:38 that jurisdictions are taking to support the outcomes in those performance measures so the RTP is updated about every four years so that's when that major report is due and um um Majors maybe a bit of a misnomer uh we have a template uh form for this report it's it's not very extensive um but it is and it's due every four years in the intervening years uh we have a minor report which again is a essentially a short form that the jurisdiction is responsible for that provides a bit of narrative on progress in terms of um who's involved in this process now so um Lane Council governments is providing overall Regional coordination and facilitation as well as data support the project management team includes jurisdictional staff from all of the affected

1:01:24 jurisdictions and then the the Metropolitan policy committee is meeting at key points um to weigh in and then eventually will be uh is the body charged with um approving the performance measures and targets and the updated implementation chapter for the scenario plan and then ODOT is providing financial support for this and as well as dlcd so on to our draft performance measures so again um we are developing performance measures for the uhur itions in the region to report on um there are no specific measures that are required uh per the rules so um but but the per the performance measures are ideally aligned with the kinds of outcomes that the central Lane scenario

1:02:10 plan is looking for um additionally they're not required to have a uh performance measure for each and every strategy that's in the central Lane scenario plan so there's flexibility here to choose a suite of performance measures and targets that make with the jurisdictions in the region so briefly I won't um I won't read all of these to you line by line but I did want to just show on the screen here the strategies from that 2015 adopted preferred scenario so there are strategies in several different investment areas and these strategies look at um are essentially actions that the region um committed to to to advance certain outcomes so for example

1:02:56 under Transit uh encouraging new development along frequent Transit Network corridors or under education and marketing um you know expanding individual marketing programs or those programs that um help uh educate people about different alternatives to getting around than driving their car um here's the second set um of those strategies um so for example underactive Transportation includes uh things like expanding safe routs to school programs so in many cases the the strategies in the Central lanen Area plan and you'll see in the performance measures are really in alignment with things that all of the jurisdictions including Springfield are already

1:03:44 doing so when we develop these performance measures we asked ourselves a number of questions um you know what does a good performance measure look like right in all cases we want things to be measurable and quantifiable and use readily available data so that it doesn't become an onerous process to actually quantify these measures um ideally these align with other data collection efforts going on in the region and that they're relevant to the central Lane scenario plan and and lastly but and but not least importantly is we want to make sure that these are intuitive uh to understand to the maximum extent possible to a lay audience so uh the team started with performance measures that are already uh used and calculated in things like the regional transportation plan or federal performance measures and there's also

1:04:30 some performance measures in the updated rules so these were all a good starting point for our discussion with the jurisdictional PMT about measures so here are the um draft measures as they stand at the moment uh and again I won't read every single uh one to you but um you'll notice there's about uh 91 of them total um and some of them I think are and again there's not there's not a measure for every single strategy that's in the clsp we're looking for measures that um broadly can measure uh progress towards things in the central Lane scenario plan so things like level of Transit service which is a measure of how many Revenue hours of Transit

1:05:16 service are provided per person in the region um and another example is Transit stops intersecting with pedestrian facilities so this is a measure of how complete is The Pedestrian network with respect to the transit Network can people walk to that stop easily and safely um and then uh things like mode share which is a a traditional measure in many plans and projects which uh looks at um the relative share of um how people get around by whether by driving or by taking a bike or by taking the bus the other thing that we're going to be doing as part of this is um applying what we call an equity lens to certain measures to track equable Equitable

1:06:01 outcomes for example not just active Transportation network completeness uh but also active Transportation Network completeness within traditionally underserved communities uh which are defined as several different demographic groups so these measures were reviewed by the uh Metropolitan policy committee this past August and the team has been working since then to develop targets draft targets for these um so targets are set for each reporting year ultimately looking out to 20150 and again the targets are um intended to help us move towards that greenhouse gas reduction goal in the central Lane scenario

1:06:48 plan so right now again as I mentioned we're developing those draft targets we're going to review those with the jurisdictional um project management team here shortly then we're also going to draft strategy updates for the implementation section of the central Lane scenario plan and then there's continued engagement with jurisdictional staff and touch points with the Metropolitan policy Committee in the first uh couple quarters of 2025 um right now we're anticipating that this effort will be complete um this spring spring 2025 so that is the that's my 9 Minutes of uh scenario planning update um and I think I'll turn it back over to you drew and Council for questions all right Cory go ahead thank you thank you very much for this I appreciate it I think one of

1:07:36 the things that I was thinking about as I'm looking at it and then as I'm watching you over it is I'm trying to tease out how much of this the City of Springfield has responsibility for specifically um and how much just I'm just trying to figure that piece out because this is definitely a regional thing and I'm I want to understand better like what are we being held accountable for what is our role as a municipality what how much staff time is going into It ultimately so much of this is around Transportation which of course is impacted by infrastructure and it's just it's it's bigger than a bread box as I often say and I I just sometimes we spent a lot of time coming with assessment assessments and

1:08:22 plans and I want to know specifically like what do we need to do as a city to do our pieces of this to help to move it along and that might not be an answerable question but I just want to I just want to put it out there if um it's a great question um and you know I mentioned this earlier but I think the the great thing here is that in most cases um the scenario plan and the performance measures emphasize things that the City of Springfield and your jurisdictional partners are already doing for example Act of Transportation completeness Act of Transportation Network completeness which is looking at the cycling and walking Network um the measure there is really how how many miles of of bike lane or sidewalk are completed based on the plan and the city's making those Investments every

1:09:07 year right so in that case we're kind of memorializing or or documenting things the cities are already doing um you also mentioned um what is Springfield's share of responsibility on these another thing we are doing with our um modeling tools is looking at the appropriate um responsibility between jurisdictions between Eugene and Springfield and cerg for example um where for example in Eugene there's a lot of micromobility so people on scooters or Bike Share things like that um and in a higher expectation around um reductions in vehicle miles travel for example versus Springfield so those those differences in jurisdiction are accounted for in the

1:09:56 process ran I think my issue is when as you've talked about it you keep coming back to things that we are doing anyway projects that we have in our plans anyway uh Investments that we are making anyway and I think this is the challenge with the whole CC program is we are report essentially we are creating more reporting and putting it on top of um initiatives and policies this community has already adopted and just asking us to report out on a different way when the real help that we need is actually getting things built all right Joe thank you I I apologize ahead of time if I come across as crass but I've been known to do that periodically not meaning to harm anybody's feelings but this looks and

1:10:42 appears as though it's just another big old Quagmire of somebody's cloudy ideas on somebody's Utopia and measurements that are really not that measurable you're talking about as an example you're talking about oh we we can get outcomes by how many miles or how many bicycle facilities we have has nothing to do with if they're used or not but we got them so that's a success I guess that part I don't understand then I look at this other requirement or this uh draft performance measures that says oh we need to reduce the car stalls available to the people it's going to force people that there's some of these shangra laws forcing people to get on bicycles cuz they don't want them to use cars those

1:11:28 people may want to use cars so to me this is huge government stepping in on people's lives going to make them live the lives they think is best and frankly alls I see is cost alls I see is bureaucracy and I don't see making lives for the people of Springfield better that's my position Victoria I'm hoping after 20 years um being a city counselor I'll start out with saying I hope I don't offend you because it's Pro I probably need to do that more often than I do um I I can Echo a lot of what um council picary is saying um I'm a little frustrated

1:12:15 because like one of the things is uh Lane Transit and we talk about and I I spoke to you after the Planning Commission meeting and we have a transit system in Springfield that runs every 10 minutes up and down Main Street we have the MX system that runs all all the way through Riverbend and goes to our main uh Springfield transit station which we have um they are unable to hire drivers like they have literally tried to hire 250 drivers and because of attrition and that they've have a net increase of drivers of 10 in the last five years it's just not happening so they haven't been able to increase ridership because they don't have enough staff to do it um and we approve Transportation plans for projects knowing that they have failed

1:13:01 intersections because we want it to be it feels like it's set up to make it more difficult for people to drive their cars instead of doing something that would alleviate that like hey we should have more than two Bridges between Eugene and Springfield um people I appreciate that people want to reduce the greenhouse gas I appreciate that people want to ride their bike or they want to um take the bus and what have you but I don't appreciate language like we need to further educate people you know that comes across as saying that people are too dumb to understand that they need to get out of their car and that's what I hear in this language I wish people who write these things would understand that that language is just terribly insulting to people who say I

1:13:46 just want to take my car I live in Springfield I want to go to Eugene I don't want to hop on a bus and have to take four different transfers which you end up doing a lot of times to get there so um i s I read that it says no specific performance measures are required and one of the options is do nothing and that's where I would be at so thank you all right anybody else okay I do have a clarifying question about this the scenario plan came around in 2015 if I remember correctly and when you describe updating it does that just mean updating the language does that mean updating the analysis you know tell me more here yeah so um there's a couple

1:14:31 elements to this uh one is um making sure that the strategies in the Central lanen Area plan um still make sense nine years on for example there's a couple of pricing strategies around uh radway pricing where um they were of the time so to speak and they need to be Revisited because they're not part of the the the transportation discussion anymore um the other pieces are uh we are updating the model that helps us understand outcomes from the region uh it's called Vision eval and then the third piece is um refreshing the actions that go along with the strategies um for each

1:15:18 jurisdiction I I know we're in the middle of a in the process here so um when it comes back to the no one of the things I would be really interested seeing is the changes the amount of changes that that you recommend you know from 2015 to 2020 and I know Portland has gone through the same thing where they've done you know gone through a scenario plan multiple times but right like the first draft of any plan is always challenging um the other thing that if you were looking for tangible feedback from this body is really taking a moment to simplify what we're measuring from performance metrics perspective right like if we have measure it because it's in the state law okay that's that's fine but we don't need to create over complexity and additional sort of Staff burden essentially measuring what we

1:16:04 already measure just in a different way um to to go forward all right um I think that may be it thank you guys for coming and walking us through it every time we hear cect you we got to go through a couple of steps of levels of frustration to to to get to a point where we give some meaningful feedback great thank you all for the conversation appreciate it you have everything you need I believe so thank you mayor thank you Council all right and I think Steve and I will have to keep echoing this uh this feedback at the M all right last one we are almost there for with the work session um Council

1:16:49 appointed employee compensation 2024 and while uh they b s are coming up I did want to share with everybody a conversation Nancy and I had today about this um one of her asks was that even though we may want to go through the material and see where her pay is in comparison was to essentially delay this entire conversation until until 2025 because we've got the financial stability task force work going on and it would make more sense to get that work complete before we Revisited her compensation Nancy did I Echo that correctly that's correct mayor thank you so while Cham is going to take us through while Candace is going to take us through um you know the the five minute overview

1:17:36 about where we think we are uh this is probably this is going to turn into no action T tonight uh good evening mayor and Council Candace stefen with the human resources I'm here to speak about the city manager's compensation the employee contract says that consideration shall be given on an annual basis to adjust compensation included with the materials tonight are uh several indexes that we look at and the market study for comparable uh city manager wages uh which we refer to as Market data um we did include three options uh for selection of which uh you can choose one uh or none which is it sounds like we're deferring so that's a none um it it and that's the long and

1:18:23 the short right does anybody have questions all right then we are going to reschedule this for in in 2025 and by in 2025 I mean at at least next fiscal year right so not in January 25 all right that is our last item I'm going to adour the work session we will meet in 10 minutes for regular session thank you I'm want to call the regular session of Springfield City Council to order with roll call Mayor Van Gordon here councelor Weber here councelor Mo here councelor rodley here councelor Blackwell here councelor Doyle here and for one final time councelor Joe pisher

1:19:10 uh yes still here please join me in the pledge we're are two items designated for public testimony this evening under public hearings and business in the audience if you are attending in person please complete the request to speak card located at the front of the council chambers and turn them into the city recorder if you're joining us online

1:19:56 with the tablet smartphone or computer and wish to speak at any of those times please use the raise hand feature in Zoom the order of public testimony is as follows anyone in person in the council chamber and then anyone who has raised their virtual hand uh first item please mayor the first item is the consent calendar like to make a motion to approve the consent calendar second uh Neil could you call a vote please yes councelor Weber yes councelor Mo yes councelor rodley yes councel Blackwell yes councelor Doyle uh I and councilor pisher uh yes motion passes six yeses zero NOS next item please the next item is public hearings you have one public hearing this evening public hearing number one is a public hearing on the update of planning application

1:20:42 fees Mark Rust is here for this item good evening mayor and counselors for the record on Mark Rust uh planning manager with City of Springfield so tonight is um our the actual public hearing on the proposed planning fee update work that we've been working on for quite a while and um I have a presentation of some slides that I can walk through really quick tonight and um then open it up for questions and then any testimony and we'll go from there so just a quick

1:21:32 recap slide it up okay it is off so there we go um just a really quick recap of some past dates that we've been in front of you over the last couple years most recently November 4th so just about a month ago and then um back in September so we've been talking about getting to the point where we are tonight with all the different fees simplifying the planning fees um I recapped in this slide some of the and all this information is in your packet tonight as well so this is just highle um recap of what is in the packet but some of the direction that you've provided along the way that we're really moving towards a 100% cost recovery model and um trying

1:22:17 to really simplify the development fees along with being competitive with comparable jurisdiction around the state um as you'll recall back in um June of last year we had hired Portland State University to help us do that initial analysis of the fees and they presented their findings to you and then we've worked from that point I've hit on this a number of times but since we're back in we're in an official public hearing tonight I want to present some stuff you've already heard about but what is not included in the fee study includes building permit fees are not part of this systems development charges are not included the land and drainage alteration permits uh

1:23:02 those fees are not part of this and any public Improvement project costs or fees are not part of this as well per state law there's two ways we can collect planning fees um there's the average cost of service which is primarily what our model has been historically and then you can alternatively or in in addition to you could choose to collect the actual cost of service we're proposing as you've um we've talked about to transition some of our fees to the actual cost of service and then maintain some of them as act uh average the existing average cost of service a lot of the work we did with Portland State University was to determine what those average cost of

1:23:48 services were based on past work and historical numbers of applications everyone's a little different in terms of some very complex site plan applications versus more simple site plan applications so averaging within those types of applications the cost of processing those the categories of application fees that we're proposing to go to actual cost of service are any that would go to a public hearing either first to the Planning Commission or and then also potentially to the city council or any that directly come to the city council those include um things like annexations you see a lot of those public hearings some of those have as you've experienced are very streamlined

1:24:34 and move through very quickly others get more complex so trying to average those um we thought was a bit more difficult so just requiring a deposit to be paid Upfront for those types of applications and then um we charge and keep track of the amount of time we spend on those and refund any of the deposit that's left over this is just a little snippet of a screenshot of just a small part of the proposed simplified fee schedule this is a drastic um in my opinion a drastic improvement over the structure that is the fee um scheduled today it's a lot more clear the table format I think really lays it out in a more

1:25:19 userfriendly Manner and it's a lot more streamlined than the Fe structure we have today there's a lot of variables I would call them taken out of the fees so a lot of the um per square foot or um some of these variable numbers that are scaled based on um the size of a development have really been taken away and a lot more of them are just a flat fee which we found through the work we did with Portland State University as really the measure of processing an application doesn't really necessarily scale with the size of the application so if you're processing we still do include a per lot fee for say

1:26:04 subdivisions but it's drastically um a smaller fee than what was existing so but there's not a huge difference between processing say a um small Halfacre site plan application compared to say a 10 acre site plan application for new development so that's why those those fees of scaling factors have been proposed to be eliminated in some cases we've talked a bit about the comprehensive planning fee I'm not going to belabor this today basically we're moving away from having the former what we had as a a comprehensive planning fee for annexation applications we um based on and these

1:26:50 are the numbers that we had provided to you previously but we had calculated an average of what we had been collecting from that fee in the past and what we've done based on council's direction is kind of split that fee now into two pieces so we've drastically lowered there's still a flat fee for Annex or excuse me yeah for annexation applications but then we've added a small percentage to the administration fee that will offset that reduction to make up that difference MH just really quick I I'm not quite sure why we're charging the seven and a half the the admin fee on the th000 comp fee that's one that I'm kind of like should we be doing that because the whole point is an admin fee

1:27:35 is administering that and what you're doing is just collecting a planning fee so it just seems like if we're charging them 7 and a half% for the annexation um application and that processing and all of the things that go into that fee I'm not quite sure we should be charging the seven and a half and maybe you could explain that or make it make sense a little more for me yeah and I I don't have a strong explanation one where the other why that's there so I think that would be a easy thing to take out if that was the motion that was made by council tonight that would be one correction that would be easy to make we also did since we're kind of on that point we put a maximum in there so

1:28:20 before there was no maximum per acre that number would just keep going up and get very large in some cases so that maximum I think will help with some of the larger again it's that scaling factor that doesn't necessarily um didn't make a whole lot of sense in our mind to keep and so as we're talking about transitioning getting rid of what has been the pre-existing Tech fee altogether um that's part of the resolution tonight for your consideration but instead proposing a 7 and a half% admin fee on most of the fees not all of them and then that would be used for potential different options including that I've laid out here we talked about partially for comprehensive planning um partially to help cover the front counter

1:29:05 administrative staff that is in really kind of an unfunded thing we have to do to provide planning answers at the front counter for the public still remaining some ability to provide technology improvements from that admin fee and then also the potential to help our code enforcement administrative staff um for that program so really our our recommendation tonight is to conduct the public hearing um ask any questions we can talk through some stuff um but ultimately asking for your uh adoption of the resolution tonight there any questions before I open the public hearing go ahead could you address the property line adjustment fee yeah sorry I meant to touch on that so we did get a question from councilor

1:29:51 Doyle earlier um and she asked that I touch on this the um property line adjustment fee so the property line adjustment fee in the schedule is one that is proposed to be increased significantly um and let me just find that for you really quick so its existing fee is about $811 and it's proposed to go up to $37 $3,800 that's a almost over a 400% increase so part of what drove that increase in that number was the 100% cost recovery and accounting for our survey um staff time in reviewing those property line adjustments I had a discussion with our surveyor office

1:30:36 today as well as jefff and I talked through this today too um state law doesn't require our surveyors to necessarily review property line adjustments it's something just by practice that we've evolved to over time my understanding is we were having lots of property line adjustments that had problems with them so we found it better to us spend the time up front to evaluate them to make sure they were solid before allowing the or letting the applicant go and record them rather than having them come back and try and blame us or complain to us that something was wrong why didn't you catch it for us so that's part of the explanation that I got um I know

1:31:21 councelor Doyle you you compared it and as we had previously with the PSU study looked at comparing it to both Eugene and Corvalis as well as Albany and I think Salem or one other City both those jurisdictions are more in line with our existing fee or a lot closer I did one one a couple things I want to point out is I did look at Coral's fee today their fee is based on only 70% cost recovery so I think their's currently is around $1 or $1,200 at 100% cost recovery it would make it slightly more maybe 14 or500 um and then I didn't wasn't able to really find much more on Eugene OR the basis for Eugene but I know a number

1:32:06 of months ago I had actually talked to Eugene and and they haven't re-evaluated their fees in quite some time um and they've recognized the need that to do that with their fees that they do need to um update their fees probably but haven't gone through kind of the comprehensive exercise that we have done so anyway with all that said a couple of the options that I was going to talk to you about tonight is I think there's a couple different ways to go about it one would be to only charge the planning portion of that fee for the property line adjustments which would be about $1,378 and that'd be more in line with Corvalis is for sure and it's still

1:32:52 slightly more than you genes um and then another piece that's in the works currently with our property line adjustment so the land division section of our development code which includes the property line adjustments is one of the sections of the development code that we did not update with the large development code update that we did two years ago it's currently being worked on to be updated and some of that code language is already drafted part of that up dat for that land division section including the property line is to streamline the property line adjustment review process as well um and take out some of that survey review that lengthens the time

1:33:37 amount of time they spend on it so one other option would be you could direct to only or charge that fee as an actual cost of service as well even though it's not one that goes to a public hearing that was another idea that came up and then the third option would be to potentially just if we still did want to try and capture some of surveys cost or time would be break the fee apart kind of like we've done with the um tenative partition and tenative subdivision fees at the end of the proposed table tonight there's kind of the survey plat review section so we could be really clear about for a property line adjustment

1:34:23 what what portion was just a planning review fee and then what portion was a survey review fee I'm it wouldn't necessarily make the fee any less but it would break it apart um while trying to streamline the survey portion of that review so those were some options I think it does make sense to consider looking at a way to reduce that to make it more in line with some of the comparable jurisdictions okay any other question before I open the public hearing I'm going to open the public hearing I don't have any cards for this item do Neil do we have anybody online mayor no hands for this item okay I'm going to go and close the public hearing and so the question is I think Victoria

1:35:10 you brought up maybe one change two changes you were thinking about the uh the changes that I would consider is the property line adjustment um I think the average or the actual cost would be around said around 1,300 okay I I'm comfortable with I'm more comfortable with that in terms because it's so much more in line it is it is more than some but it's makes sense because a lot of those like you said haven't updated their things and then I would say that the um per lot fees on subdivisions um partitions and the annexation I mean the yeah the annexation comp fee that's just a flat fee per acre that those should not have the 7 and a half% um because you already charged that fee

1:35:57 for the processing of all of that and then we're charging a per lot fee that doesn't seem like that that should have the admin fee on it okay that's the only thing I would say and I'm happy to listen to I'm not it's not a hill I'm willing to die on but it's something that just doesn't seem make sense anybody else have opinions they want to jum Beth so the admin fee then it's kind of they're getting double charged that's what I feel that's I've understood it too and and on the per lot on the partitions and subdivision um finals okay yeah I mean that would be one way to look at it is we're just adding admin fee on top of another Sarge type of fee okay so if

1:36:42 that's the case then I agree with Victoria's Point agree with that you think you're good okay then I'm going to turn it over to you so um the resolution in the agenda just says to adopt the resolution implementing new fees but these are some changes so I could read into the record um I think I'll need some help with you about what those changes would be and then you can vote on that if that does that work that would be my motion okay okay so um the motion uh would be I move to adopt the resolution to implement new fees with the following changes uh the 7.5 administrative fee

1:37:28 will not be applied to the annexation comprehensive planning fee is that correct and then Mark there was another one the um as well as not apply the 7 and a half% admin fee to the per lot subdivision fee as well as the um was there one more partition T per lot fee oh so both this um sorry let me just double check because a lot of places collect that and then that's collected as a actually as a um they hold it and then they get it back after they the the surveyor goes out and checks The Monuments so and it sounds like we keep it so I'd prefer that we not charge the

1:38:13 fee on top of that so there's actually three spots then there's both the per lot fee for the tenative partition the per lot fee for the tenative subdivision and the per lot fee for the final subdivision okay and then was there also a change for the property line adjustment the correct and then so the property line adjustment um base fee would be changed to $1,378 okay so I'm going to read it into the record one more time to make sure that I that we have it correct please do okay I move to the motion would be I move to adopt a resolution to implement new

1:39:00 fees with the following changes the 7.5% administrative fee will not be applied to the annexation comprehensive planning fee or the tentative partition and subdivision per lot fees or the final per lot fee for subdivisions and partitions and the last change is that the property line adjustment fee will be set at $1,378 okay what she says my motion poetic for your last ones you did great you did great there's one more

1:39:46 motion after this call Vote Yes councelor Weber yes councelor MO yes councel rodley yes councelor Blackwell yes councel Doyle I and councelor pisher I motion passes six yeses zero and no next item please uh business from the audience thank you guys so much you did a great job I the way you simplified that I just have to say it's amazing you had to put up with me being a pain in the patootie and so I really appreciate it I really appreciate all the hard work you guys did I second what she said okay we're going on to business from the audience here I have no cards for business from the audience Neil do you have any hands up no hands for this item

1:40:32 all right next item please we're goingon to adjust just um one item the next item will be business from the city manager item number one is lease review and decision on 325 North Brooklyn Street and this is my item good evening mayor and Council I'm Neil adad the assistant city manager um here to talk about this item also in the audience is Patrick Campbell from Campbell commercial if any additional questions come up and I think he's right back there um so we're here to talk about the facility at 325 North Brooklyn um which was built in 1979 and

1:41:20 the city not Ceda but the city acquired that property into 2016 in anticipation of some future development in Glenwood uh the building and I don't know Allison if you could bring up the area map uh the building is pretty important to the history of uh Glenwood it's also known as the bramba building and John bramba moved into that area which is circled in the very late 70s and built um these immense pipe organs right on that site uh there there's probably about 60 to 70 of these pipe organs that are in churches all throughout the United States and around the world um these were massive massive pipe organs with 3,000 pipes in some of them some of them

1:42:07 were multi- stories so it's a beautiful building and important to again the history of Glenwood and the history of Springfield um so we um purchased the building again in 2016 and the facility is has been managed since that time by an individual Michael De Haven he has served as the point of contact for the facility uh through a verbal agreement um Ren has been paid and maintenance has been kept up on the building um since the city's U acquired it um we are asking for a more formal uh lease for that building using the council's booth Kelly um template as our guide um the original informal agreement was5 $100 a

1:42:53 month they have paid that since that time except for a 10 months during the pandemic when they did not pay um Campbell commercial has helped us work up a new agreement that would take that original amount which was 1,500 a month and double it to 3,000 a month for one year that would allow the city to recoup the 10 months of unpaid rent from 2022 um and the $3,000 also allows the current facility to maintain uh its use which is a Woodworking Shop um which currently houses a mixture of businesses uh the lease agreement would be with Mr de Haven the building's caretaker the individual businesses and artists would work with him um on space

1:43:39 for the rent which has been done in the past uh the structure allows for fast resolution if there's issues with the building or issues around rent the proposed lease agreement includes Provisions for the sub leases it's a maximum allow it allows for a maximum for Mr deaven to collect does not allow Mr dehaven to make money off the sub leases um as is written in the agreement um and then just for noting the Glenwood master plan effort is underway so in the next 18 months or so more work will be happening in that area and eventually that building those folks will move out and that building will have some other use any questions Joe after the one-year lease is it

1:44:24 convert back or is it going to be maintained at the 3,000 after the one-year lease we would come back to the council oh so we you haven't discussed that with him yet yeah okay any other questions all right um the one comment I that that I wanted to make is the the building's really important in in the history clone I'm I'm glad that you brought it up and it just it it feeds and tells the story of how we make things here and even though it was a pipe organs you know many years ago that it's now essentially it's carv plus a bunch of other places which is a very high-end and important manufacturer for the

1:45:09 city I'd like to make my last motion for uh to authorize a city manager to enter into a lease agreement with tenant at 325 North Brooklyn Street for a one-year term at $3,000 per month second ccor yes councelor moo yes councelor rodley yes councelor Blackwell yes councelor Doyle I and councilor pisher no I'm just kidding yes you can't do that on me motion passes six yeses zero NOS next item please uh the next item is business from the city council item number one is a council appointed employee compensation for 2024 and Candace stepan and we did

1:45:56 not have any of that you missed the pitch back to me oh we practice this so yep so we'll move this back to you then M perfect Joe yes I hear it's your last meeting last council meeting last council meeting you are coming back to team Springfield uh tomorrow tomorrow okay and mwmc and the police planning task force or ask advisory committee and maybea and maybe others I think Mary's got a got got a checklist well we did spend some time

1:46:42 getting you something and we're going to say some nice stuff about you w I'm going to get it so when did you join Council uh 2004 and I think it was in November 2004 maybe you know I I I started thinking about it and I was like I I'm hoping it's the century and it was Century well I'll open this up to other folks that want to say things but first the first thing I wanted to do was you know acknowledge um Mary's in the room your wife and even though you've done you've been part of this community for a very long time I

1:47:27 think there's an understanding among all of us that it really does take family support at home and you know and we are really thankful to you Mary for letting us have him for so many years on every Monday and putting up with all the phone calls and all the work that is just plowed back into this community so um we once we get here we have flowers for you to say to say but we are really grateful um just for your contributions as well now Joe on the other hand I too I mean it's like she's been amazing support I mean it always it has not always been easy for her I know that for a fact she's made that known for a couple times but I couldn't have done it

1:48:12 without her support for sure well and out out of all the years I I got to tell you I've been so grateful for your friendship and um your wisdom and your advice in a lot of things um I know you've known a lot of counselors you know a lot of Mayors and you've helped all of us be better elected officials and even in the moments that you know where we all disagree because we're you know individual human beings the one thing that is always just inspired me is you've always worked for what you thought was best for Springfield if I ever thought like was where where is Joe at it is him taking a step back and thinking about what is the best thing for this community and and that over the years that I've known you has always driven your volunteerism and your

1:48:57 actions and I can tell you I appreciate it thank you so much and and it's true it's everything I've had my hands on is in this community has been for the community is it's I I don't believe I've ever looked at myself for anything personal or anything like that it's always been for the greater good and there has been so many projects in 20 years this town has changed I mean it's it's I mean I remember when I the the some of the very first Council meetings was approving Sacred Heart at riverb and and I remember that the sticking the shovel in the ground for that project it was a half a billion dollar project and I remember looking in $208 yeah yeah and I remember looking to my right just pass Gino and I said that

1:49:45 road over there doesn't have any guard rails he's like huh I said it needs guard rails I don't want to see any kid wrapped up around those concrete poles that are sticking up in that street that M Parkway and it's like we got to have guard rails and it was that kind of started from there but just little things like that hoping that that saved some life from some kid racing down that street never know um but so many and then wanting to be a city counselor because of of drizzly rainy night coming back from Bowling from with my family and almost getting in the crash because I confused a street light with a traffic signal light that was yellow at the same time and that light turned red and it was a traffic signal at 402 slammed on

1:50:32 my brakes and I said some stuff and my daughter turned right around and says daddy don't if you want to be part of the solution aren't you going to be aren't you be part saying a problem aren't you going to have to be part of the solution who who does that said city council and that's that's kind of what drove it but and I got that done was part of having that done just a few months ago so all the street lights are changed up well you had to complete the last couple of things including the renovation to this room before you were uh before we were done with you that was 2009 when that came out you play a long game all right I'm turning around to your peers to see if before we let you unwrap this and take a picture um if anybody else wants it go

1:51:17 ahead Steve as many know when somebody wants to run for something or some some agenda that they come to me for advice on how to form a political action committee and Joe did clear at the beginning I believe it was and I this is only part of the files I have on this guy right now don't make those public and been glad glad to do it that guy can raise money like nobody for his camp for campaigns so that's been pretty helpful on keeping things going but really love working with this guy and he's he's helped me a lot I hope I've been help to you too thank you Beth Joe pish you're in my phone as pish you'll

1:52:03 always be in my phone as pish um I've appreciated um being able to serve next to you the last year and a half you've been a great mentor and I appreciate the knowledge and the wisdom and the historical point of view that you always bring to council and I've also enjoyed getting to know you as a friend and hope we go fishing again soon and she's a good fisherman she's she can catch some salmon just a city manager I wanted to express my appreciation for you counselor Fisher uh you have been you're so passionate about Springfield and not just not just your War not just but the entire city and you really take the safety of our residents and our employees uh to heart not just in your

1:52:49 support of our Police Department although but but you talked about some of the small things like the lighting of our streets you you have some tangible improvements that you've made to the city as part of your legacy on this Council which has been on your own time as a volunteer in addition to all of the other things that you've had to incorporate your life and I don't think people realize the amount of work that goes into each one of these members of council um here tonight and and how much of their lives they give to this city um and so I really want to recognize that for all of you but especially you know 20 years is a long time to make that commitment and it shows a kind of integrity and dedication That You Don't See often and um you know you and I have

1:53:37 some things in common we both have fathers that served in World War II and instilled those kind of values in us as public service so that means a lot to me and I just want to thank you thank you well Mr pisher we can skip this one I can say mister now U I'm on this Council because of Joe um and his um pushing me and pushing me um my husband is not happy about it but here I am um and I'm not sure if I I told you before that you're going to have to continue to answer your phone because I don't think there's anybody else on this Council that wants to put up with having to try to calm me down and make me think and the number one thing that you've always tried to tell me is to put my emotion out of it like get your emotion over

1:54:22 here and let's look at the facts and um because I too am a very passionate person and you've you've been in this long enough that you've been able to do that and I appreciate that very much that um that you helped me try to um separate those two things as best I can um thank you and and and not getting offended and not taking it personal as well so I really appreciate that and we have a friendship outside of this um Council we got to get to know each other pretty well during the storm spending a month together um and so I know that we're going to continue um but I'd like to see the back of your head in church because I've missed you guys the last in a while that was just yesterday you didn't go to the early ones day before yesterday or

1:55:08 yesterday Joe I uh I could say all of the things that everybody else has already said so I'm just going to say ditto on that and make that simple um but I really have appreciated um all of the things that you ask and say and think out loud um have really helped me learn a lot in the past two years and I will be forever grateful for your knowledge and your wisdom one last thing Joe Jo's been very outspoken on a lot of issues that have sort of rubbed Against the Grain within the city and he stuck with him and it's been tough on him it's actually he's been really hit on pretty bad a few times and uh and he took it

1:55:56 fact he took some he took some stuff on Council here that really hit him in the face a few meanings and he took it and I admire you for that and that that was terrible thing to happen to you and and I'm sorry it happened but you took it and that was part of the public process so thank you for that all right so here's the game plan we're all going to take one last picture together as a council he's going to unwrap that before hand and then we'll we'll have uh Mary up and take a picture with the group and Mary and and your mom so if you have any complaints about Joe and the last 20 years his mom's back there she she's taking notes don't don't listen to her

1:56:42 stories at all well I will share one other quick story so in the middle of the ice storm with everything that's been going on I get up at 5:00 in the morning and my phone's SC and it's our congresswoman and she's like have you heard from the pishon Aries and I'm like what do you mean it's 5:00 in the morning I don't talk to and she's like well you know the storm's been harded in thirston right the last text I got was at at um you know 10:00 last night and nobody's heard from them there and at that point I'm call calling the missionaries to see if they're okay get off the phone with her and we start this Great quest to find out or make sure missionaries are okay 5 minutes later Peter defasio calls me at 5:45 in the morning have you heard from the

1:57:28 pisher and I'm like we're trying to find the ponar right now and this goes back and forth where I'm now talking to uh Neil and you know trying to make sure everybody's okay and but everybody's keeps calling asking that same question have you heard from the pish Aries fast forward how long it was yeah and and then and then I get this picture and there's Victoria with Mary and Joe in the back like we found the missionaries it was a long January all right you're GNA you're going to open that we're going to take pictures so we're moving that way

1:58:30 ironing I thought it's actually is that a board I say is that a boogie board board

1:59:19 you had it like whatever like a $5 thing from fles or something fish yeah a fishing pole I think you need one of those oh nice and actually this is my

2:00:05 only good rod all of my other ones got destroyed in a storm first one y guys yes no now you're ready to go take it out best got the boat out back much clean what the least we could do all right gather around people

2:00:56 oh this time we didn't put you at the end you know because remember we put you at the end so something happen we could Dr you out that's right