All right, I show it's 6:00.
Let's go ahead and call to order tonight's meeting of the Corvallis City Council.
City recorder, roll call please.
Mayor Maughan?
Here.
Councilors Napack? Lewis?
Here.
Moorefield?
Here.
Olsen?
Here.
Ellis?
Here.
Bowden? Shaffer?
Here.
Mayors?
Here.
Kadena?
Here.
Eight councilors present, Your Honor.
Thank you.
Next up, looking for approval of tonight's
agenda.
I move to approve the agenda. I'll second.
All right. Any discussion? No? All in favor of the
agenda as written say, "Aye."
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Say no. Sorry, Paul, I'll try to remember to give you a
minute.
The Corvallis City Council asks community members to register in advance, but also
offers limited opportunities to sign up at the meeting.
The comm- community members may indicate their interest in providing comment this
evening by using the sign-up sheet in the back of the room, or using the raise hand
function in Zoom when your desired opportunity for public testimony is reached.
Please remember to state your name and area of residence for the record and be
mindful of the three-minute timer.
We do have two presentations today, so community comments will be after that.
Up first, we have the Corvallis Arts Center annual report for the fiscal year
twenty twenty-four, twenty twenty-five.
Good evening, mayor and city council.
Uh, tonight I have the pleasure of introducing
Erin, Erin, Gavigan, as the executive
director of the Corvallis Arts Center.
As s- many of you know, the Corvallis Arts Center
is owned by the City of Corvallis, the facility itself, the
building itself, and it's operated by the nonprofit,
Corvallis Arts Center Incorporated.
And, part of their annual
ag- agreement with the city council and the city
is the city council provides fifty-four thousand dollars
annually to the arts center, to help operate the
arts center, and then in turn, owes an annual
report as well as financial statements to the city that
on-- starting on electronic page nineteen, you'll see the,
review from the city's finance department of their financial
statements, and a, and an approval for those, those
financial reviews. And up next is
Erin.
I'm excited to get to talk to you all.
Um, I also wanna thank, I have a couple of board members with me.
Thank you for being here.
Um-
Can you make sure your microphone's on?
It just-
Is it on?
Is it-- No. No, it's not on. Is the green light on?
Sorry. How's that?
Perfect. Thank you.
Great. Okay. Um, the arts
center positively impacts the city of Corvallis' economic
vitality, quality of life, and visitor attraction
through the visual arts.
I think you might just have to like scroll, 'cause I think this is just a PDF.
It's like...
Well, we practice.
Oh.
There we go. All right. Okay.
Next slide.
And now it's not on the screen.
Yep.
Oh, now we're not on the screen. Oh, that's okay
too.
Okay. That's all right, the very end.
All right.
Okay. Next slide. There we go. All right.
Um, so the city of Corvallis' strategic plan and twenty forty
vision call for cultivating community identity centered on
arts, culture, recreation, and celebration.
The arts center is a primary driver on this vision
action.
Through, free exhibitions, community arts programming,
artist entrepreneurship, development, youth education, and
str- and the strategic expansion of accessible arts
infrastructure, the arts center directly advances the city's goals of economic
vitality, social connection, and cultural
distinction. Our fiscal year twenty-five work reflects not
only artistic excellence, but intentional alignment with the city's
long-term strategy for a vibrant, creative Corvallis.
In many ways, the arts center serves as the city's primary visual
arts partner. Be helping to translate, to
translate the community's cultural, aspirations into
accessible programs, creative opportunities, and shared public
experiences.
Um, the arts center's curator and a twelve-member, community-based
exhibition committee work together to select each year's main
exhibitions and those mounted in our more emerging and experimental
career, Corinne Woodmen
Gallery.Um, this
is, just images from the six exhibits in our main
space for the fiscal year '25.
Arts education is a main part of the Art Center's work in the
community. Um, for the fiscal year '25, it was a really a time of
growth for us. We're, we're really starting to experiment with expanding our
arts education programs. We do this through community arts
programs that are free monthly events led by the Art
Center's learning staff with the support of volunteers, to
include things like Second Saturday and the Fourth Tuesday Craft Night at the
Corvallis Library. We also have project-based learning classes
for youth, which are fee-based, but we do have scholarships available for
those. Um, and arts, community part,
yeah, arts community, partners such as the City of Corvallis Parks and
Rec, the Corvallis Museum, and the Benton County
Library. In fiscal year '25, the Art Center
participated in fifty-six community events.
Um, we did this through our creative resources and our community outreach.
For the year, we had over fifteen hundred participants in our community
events, including Creation Station, which is the, TAC
Makes, program that we host at the,
C3 Parks and Rec Center.
This is a snapshot of, our financials,
our expenses and revenue for fiscal year '25.
Of course, you have the much more detailed version in your packet, but just a quick
overview of this. Um, you'll see that the bulk of our total
revenue is from grants. Um, the grants is inclusive
of government grants, so the funding that we get from the city of Corvallis is
included in that number. Um, second highest is,
individual contributions, which include direct annual gifts from
individuals, as well as contributions to our
endowments. In our expenses, you will see
that the bulk of our expenses do go towards, producing the programs that we
do, with management and fundraising being the rest of our
expenses.
So looking forward, I wanna share a little bit with you.
Um, we have embarked on a project
called TAC Forward, which is our expansion project.
Uh, since I talked to you last year, we've completed our
feasibility for expansion. The board and staff have gone
through, visioning sessions, and we
have contracted with an architect to help us design our programming for
expansion.
Through our expansion feasibility study, there were
several findings that came out, but the one that is probably the most visible,
which I'll highlight,
showed up in both the key findings and our strategic recommendations,
which was that we have some space constraint issues at the
Art Center. The Art Center has been in the same footprint for over
sixty-three years. Um, and the strategic
recommendation c- that came out of that, obviously, is to identify additional
space for the Art Center, as well as to retrofit the current
space.
I wanna talk a little bit about how this expansion aligns with, Imagine
Corvallis 2040. Um, Imagine Corvallis identifies arts
and culture as an essential community, identity, economic
resilience, and quality of life.
In that vision, the city identified four
areas, where the culture is important, which is culturi-
cultivating a distinct cultural identity, expanding
equitable access to the arts, strengthening the creative
economy, and investing in cultural infrastructure for the
future. This expansion, expanding
the footpi- footprint of the Art Center, of course, transforms it
physically. Um, but what it also does is it transforms TAC into a
comprehensive community art center, directly advancing the city's
vision of an arts-centered community
life.
The Art Center expansion, is two-phase project.
In fiscal year '26 and '27, we will focus on phase
one, which includes the design development,
permitting, and renovation and restoration of 760
Southwest Madison Avenue, which we purchased on January
26th of this year. It is, as you can see from the
aerial 3D, image here, is right next
to the current Art Center space.
Within this space, go to the next slide, this will become our
primary education space. Um, so in addition
to an exterior elevator and, to the building to make it fully
ADA accessible, it will include large 2D
art-making classrooms and art supply retail space, which is something
that's very much needed in the community of Corvallis.
Um, a community library lounge space for creatives to retreat
and reflect. Uh, low-cost short-term artist
studios for project-based work. A community art
gallery for the Art Center students and other community e-
exhibition opportunities. Um, jewelry making, stained
glass, printmaking, a two-bedroom apartment to host
artists in residence, and office space for eight of our staff
members. Phase two will
be the design development, permitting, and renovation restoration of
700 Southwest Madison Avenue, which as you know, is our current
facility. We expect this phase to start, in
fiscal year '27, '28. But very early plans
include an interior elevator and a new rear entrance to the
building to make it fully ADA accessible, an expanded
main gallery space, a renovated art shop, a multi-use
lecture and meeting space, and a digital lab
classroom.TAC
Forward positions Corvallis not only as a city that supports the
arts, but as a city built around them by expanding arts
learning, artist development, and public cultural space.
TAC Forward will help ensure that arts and culture remain a defining
feature of Corvallis' identity well into the future.
As part of our shared commitment to Imagine
Corvallis 2040, the Arts Center is open to,
ongoing discussions with the city regarding the potential transfer of
ownership of 700 Southwest Madison Avenue to the Arts
Center, which kind of brings us full circle actually, because the Arts
Center originally owned the building.
Um, and when it was moved to its current location, it was on city property, and
the city took ownership of it, and that was, again, about 60 years
ago.
Together with the City of Corvallis, the Arts Center has spent more than 60 years
cultivating a vibrant arts ecosystem that strengthens community
identity, economic vitality, and the quality of life through
exhibitions, arts education, and ent- entrepreneurship
programs. The TAC Forward expansion and the TAC Forward
expansion, the Art- Arts Center is building the
cultural infrastructure necessary to meet the aspirations of the
Imagine Corvallis 2040 vision. As our community grows and
evolves, the Arts Center remains committed to ensuring that arts and
creativity cont- continue to be central to what makes Corvallis a
remarkable place to live, learn, work, and play.
The future of Corvallis is creative, and the Arts Center is proud to help
lead that way. Thank you.
Thank you very much. That was a, a lot of information.
Kind of exciting. Counselors, any
questions? Counselor Cadena?
I don't have any questions at all. Um, but I just wanted to,
say, the report and your presentation,
just amazing, awesome. It's really amazing to see the progress
that's, that's happened. Uh, as you know, I was on the Arts Center board quite a
few years ago, so to see the evolution of the organization and the
vision that you're looking forward to for the future, what it'll mean for the
community is just... It's, it's, breathtaking to
see. So thank you.
Thank you. We, we appreciate that.
Councilor Meyers?
Well, ditto what Councilor Cati- Cadena said, and I just had a couple
quick q- questions 'cause I just, don't know.
Um, I just wondered about, how you or
if you collaborate with
the
university, the, the, community college, and
the public schools, and/or the public schools at
all.
Yes.
Yes.
Um, we are, we're currently partnering with the public
schools. Um, we, help the,
the... I'm trying to remember the exact name of the All Corvallis Arts
exhibit, that they, that the public schools do each year.
We help support that, and are collaborating with them in the
future on perha- perhaps having some sites for portions of that
exhibit out off of the school property.
Oh.
Um, so there's more accessibility to that.
Um, with, the community college, yes, we have
actually, had a couple of programs.
They've, they've allo- they've partnered with us and allow us to use their...
They have a fabulous ceramic studio, much larger than our current space,
and so we've partnered with them to present, ceramics
workshops. Um, and I ha- we have a good
relationship with the, the university,
particularly with the, the art
department. They're actually...
Some other faculty is helping us, in designing our new
spaces, particularly printmaking and,
our, let me think, printmaking and also our digital
lab. Um, so they're, we're partnering with them on
that, and we, really wanna help build more of a
community connection between the arts at the university and in the
community. Um, I just had somebody ask me today about our co- our connections
with Prax, and, they're good, but they need to be
stronger.
Councilor Lewis?
Um, I don't have a question. I just wanted to say it was amazing
being... When you first asked me to be a part of this, the
expansion TAC force in the beginning, it was very awesome to see where, where it
was like just from an idea to now where it is right now.
So I'm like very impressed on just how much work has gone
into this, and I appreciate all the work that you've been doing.
Thank you for being a part of that.
Councilor Napet.
I'm gonna sign up.
Nice.
Yes.
For all of it.
Again, just th- thank you for all your work and-
Thank you
... for your great presentation.
Okay. Thank you.
Moving on, we have our Downtown Vitality Strategy Task Force
update. Invite our co-chairs up to tell us what's going
on.
Good evening, Mayor Monn and councilors. Thank you for giving...
I'm Julie Manning, by the way. Thank you for giving Steve Clark and me the
opportunity to provide a brief update on the work of the
Downtown Vitality Strategy Task Force.
This will be the final update before we come back to you in
June with our report, findings, and recommendations.
And just as a, a reminder for, and for the audience, this
mayor-appointed task force consists of 40
members, serving on four different committees.
Steve and I co-chair the executive committee, and there are
also committees working on, safety and,
culture, on infrastructure, and on economic
vitality, really representing a, a broad
perspective of experience, and
interactions with the downtown, a- and also
including all, all members of the, city council.
So we really appreciate the ongoing commitment and
participation, from all of you in this important
endeavor.We have a few slides to share with you
tonight, they'll also be in the minutes for tonight's meeting that
summarize our work to date. Um, beginning with just
a reminder of the charge, of our task
force. Uh, this, task force was formed by the council to
create a downtown vitality strategy to advance
its strategic plan priority to nurture a
thriving downtown as the hub and character of
Corvallis. And certainly in the work that we've done since beginning to meet
last June, we've really seen a tremendous,
ongoing, interest in the work of, of this group and really an
ongoing affirmation of the affection and
the importance that this community, holds,
for the downtown.
Uh, next slide, please. Yeah. Yes, here we are.
So, where are we in the process?
Uh, as you recall, last summer and early fall, the task force
developed a preliminary set of actions and
ideas for how to enhance the vitality and
safety of downtown. Then beginning in
November, we launched a comprehensive outreach and
engagement effort to elicit community input on
this list of actions, and, also how local
residents would prioritize those actions.
In addition, we asked, how individuals engage
with the downtown and how often, and we'll be sharing
some, key details of those results in just, just a
moment. Our next step is to incorporate that feedback
into a refined set of prioritized actions
that will include implementation recommendations,
timelines, and potential funding sources.
And we'll bring this to you in June, along with our
report. Next slide.
So this slide outlines the various methods that
we've used to elicit comments and input,
some of which will continue through the life of the project via the
comments section on our project webpage.
As you can see, there's been outstanding participation from
individuals and organizations indicating how important
it is for them to maintain, a strong and
healthy downtown. Particularly noteworthy is
the level of survey responses, beginning with
last fall's random sample community survey that
included several questions related to the downtown and
received more than five hundred responses.
Plus, the more than four hundred who've responded to the
additional downtown questions on our task force
webpage, and more than sixteen hundred who
participated in ranking our list of preliminary
action items, also was found-- the information found
on our task force webpage. I'll now turn it over to
Steve, who will provide additional details on our community
engagement results.
Thank you, Julie. And again, thank you mayor and members of the city
council, and, and really the community.
We, we think of this as an opportunity not to just update you, but really
provide an update to the community as we've been doing over the last several
months, with the-- with these, meetings with
you. We think, their engagement, their
knowledge is primary, and so we, we appreciate this opportunity
tonight. You know, we have taken
note not only of input received and judging,
the action items that, that Julie
sug-suggested, but we've also taken time to
listen, to engage in conversation, and to be informed
beyond those actions. I think that's really important.
We're just not asking people a set of questions.
We're listening to what they have to say.
And today we're gonna share with you some of that information.
Uh, on the screen, we have before you a slide I believe you've
seen before. It's an overall community assessment of Corvallis'
overall economy, the business community, employment
opportunities, downtown commerce, overall vibrancy of
the, of the Corvallis, economy and the community,
cost of living and other matters. You've seen this before.
We're not here to really discuss that more unless you'd like to in
your questions to us, look at some of those, those
topical matters. Our next slide shows how
community residents engage with downtown.
And I think what's really important is as we provide you
recommendations, we're gonna take the context not only of the community
survey, the surveys we've done, but the input we've received from community
members and knit together a series of recommendations based upon
findings. It's really important that it's a context of
the downtown that will benefit not only the downtown in our recommendations, but
the overall community. As you see here, we have a, a number
of positives about how people engage with their
downtown. Uh, forty-three percent say, they
visited town for any reason
in the past twelve months. But as we study
these bar charts, we see some gaps,
we see some opportunities, we see some
requirements to improve, and that's where our task force work
really is focusing on.
These are not negatives. There's opportunities to improve, but if they're not
dealt with, they become primary negatives as time goes
on.
As we look at, our, our
responsibility, as Julie said, as a charge, is to
recommend to you and to the community how to
improve the vitality of downtown, its safety, and we believe
significantly increase the community's engagement with
downtown.As Julie says, as part of this effort, we
presented the community with twenty-eight possible actions, preliminary actions to
improve downtown
Our next slide shows how community members we have been in contact with
prioritized the top ten of those twenty-eight actions.
Now, these are weighted scores. They take what somebody may have judged
as their number one, their number two, their number three, their number four, their
number five, and they add them together to give you a weighted
score. We also understand how people,
voted on these as their priorities based upon where
they live. Do they live in the community, but not downtown? Do they live downtown?
Do they work downtown?
Do they own property downtown?
Do they own a business downtown? And, and what we see is some real
strong consistency in community evaluation of priority
actions that need to be addressed as a community for
downtown Corvallis. Safety is number one.
Addressing behavioral matters is included in
that. The economy.
Developing and reducing s- providing strategies to reduce
storefront vacancies. There's a strong perception in our community
that storefront vacancies are predominant downtown and are a
significant issue. Voting downtown is a
compelling place. It isn't just about the promotion, but it's
actually having the belief, the perception that
downtown is a compelling place to visit, shop, to dine, to
celebrate.
Safety. Again, in some respects, this is not only a vote, it's a
perception. There's a strong perception in the community that downtown is not
safe enough, and we need to take steps to address safety
issues that the community has.
River connections. The Willamette River is perceived to be a strong asset
to the community, a strong asset to downtown, but it's
a jewel that is not
being utilized. W-we basically can't see the down--
the river downtown. We have few opportunities to
engage with it physically if you're on the river or if you're
along the riverfront and want to do something within the river.
Transportation. Certainly, there's many issues of transportation,
but mobility, pedestrian mobility is the--
a, a number one priority of the community within downtown
and to downtown. And for those who need to drive to
downtown or take transit downtown, they want an
easy way to park or ride transit to the, to the transit
center and then be able to get around town.
City incentives to provide opportunities for the community to,
the economy to grow. And I would offer as a previous
private sector businessperson, it isn't the responsibility only of the city
to provide incentives and opportunities and programs, but the private sector
must contribute to itself through, nonprofit organizations such
as the Chamber, Visit Corvallis, Downtown Corvallis
Organization, and others. Again,
safety, lighting, walking,
alleyways, sidewalks, restrooms,
clean, safe, and open when people need to use them, and in more than
a location on the north and the south.
And housing. People wanna live downtown.
They want our housing downtown to complement housing goals for the rest of the
community.
So where are we right now?
So we've taken eleven months of work that we are engaged-- that we have
engaged in. The, the incredible engagement of the community
that Julie said is, is-- indicates both an, a, an
interest and a sense of momentum for downtown that we should
capture. This past month, month of March,
we've been analyzing the results, both the quantitative results that we've shared
a, a brief amount with you, and the qualitative results from the community
meetings and other input from surveys, and
task forces that the city has conducted in the past, two
years or more. The community engagement task force is an example.
The parking task force is an example.
We are now judging those to, to understand
within those, areas of
activity which are priority actions that the community,
believes in. What are areas that we may have
missed? We're listening to people as well as just
giving them something to think about.
In April, we will begin to organize these goals
and these actions into prioritized recommendations to
bring to you later in June. We're thinking about which of these
should be recommendations to be conducted right now in the next three
years. Which of these should be, issues and actions to
be addressed next, the next four to seven years, and which
should we prioritize for years eight and beyond.
We're also taking stock of who should be responsible.
We are not here to tell the council what to do.
We're here to provide recommendations on what the city might do, what
the private sector might do, what collaborators, public and private, city
and private, or county, university might do
together. How might we fund these?
And to the extent possible, we want to understand
as best as we could and communicate to both you and the community, how do
our recommendations benefit not only downtown, but the greater community as a
whole? Because we want the community to support this, not just for
the benefit of downtown, but for the benefit of the overall Corvallis
community and beyond. In closing, our
closing slide provides you the finish line,
mid-June.We will bringing to you a set of findings
that will support our recommendations, and we will also promise
to take the results of our findings and our recommendations after we've
delivered them to you, to the community, because it's the community that
has provided such em-enormous and, and, I
think, highly responsible input. Thank you.
We're available for any questions you might have.
Thank you very much. Counselors,
questions?
Guess not tonight. I think, I think everybody's just really looking forward to,
the results.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We will now move on to community comments.
And I wanna start off saying we did receive, for those who submitted it, we
received some community comments through our, our website and
through email, and, again, we do read those.
I spent my lunch today reading several.
Um, so I appreciate those who submitted their, their comments early.
Um, and for those who signed up in advance, that's also much appreciated.
We'll start with the people who signed up in advance and go from there.
And up first is, Rob Upson. And I'll remind everybody again, we do
use the three-minute timer that's located right there.
It'll go green, yellow, and then red, meaning stop.
Welcome. I don't think that's on, sorry about.
Mayor and council-
There we go
... good evening. I wanna bring your attention to
materials provided on page forty-four of the meeting packet related to a safer
Walnut Boulevard, the corridor from, all the way from Circle
to MLK Park. Those are the road safety audits and the lane
reconfiguration evaluations, which I spoke about last December.
Full reports are now available. I wanna repeat the message of
urgency,
and I'm asking council tonight to do something already on your strategic
plan, just do it a little bit earlier, and that is to move your discussion
about the funding of the Safe Streets For All projects forward in preparation for
next school year, which is approaching very quickly.
On Thursday, you will receive a presentation from Public Works about the work of
the Safe Streets For All task force and newly identified transportation safety
needs. According to council's strategic
plan, this work is being completed nine months ahead of schedule,
and what that means is that the funding discussion, which is also on the strategic
plan, can also move forward. I know that
school closings were unexpected, and they're not one
of your big rocks.
However, the community needs action urgently, and many of the projects identified
in the Safe Streets For All work would improve safety for school
transportation. Refer to the proposed timeline
on page forty-five of your packet.
If you don't give Public Works
a direction about these safety projects for the twenty-seven to twenty-nine
budget, it is likely that we would have to wait another two years to realize any
movement on any of the newly identified projects, so you must
act early in twenty-twenty-six in order to meet the budgeting
window. The proposed timeline gives council enough time to
deliberate, provide direction to Public Works, and for Public Works to
develop and cost out projects for the twenty-seven, twenty-nine
budgeting.
The low and mid complexity projects could be paid for in the street
fund, which currently has a balance of over thirty-five million
dollars. Pages forty-six to forty-eight give examples
of similar small-scale, non-recurring street fund projects from
prior budgets similar to those projects identified by the Safe Streets For
All consultants.
Mayor and council, please add the discussion about Safe Streets For All road safety
improvements to your agenda quickly.
A majority of council has already publicly stated that they support safer
streets, and I'm asking for a commitment from that majority to support improved
safety before the expiration of your elected terms this year, not just for
Walnut, but also for Ninth, for Circle, and for other roads in the city which are
identified in those reports. So please consider the proposed timeline and
move your discussion about road safety projects onto your twenty-twenty six agenda
with urgency. As always, thank you for your
service.
Thank you very much.
Up next I have Amanda Bressler.
And please, anybody, if I mispronounce your name, just correct me.
Okay, yes. It's Amanda Bressler. I'm a resident of Ward
Eight. Community members who live and work along the Walnut
corridor, some of whom are in attendance tonight, have come together to create
Safer Walnut, a grassroots effort to advocate for increased safety
measures along Walnut Bor- Boulevard.
You can find us online at saferwalnut.org.
Our first action was to circulate a petition calling on the city to plan and fund
changes to Walnut Boulevard that will reduce speeds and increase
safety and usability, improve quality of life in North and Northwest
Corvallis, and help the city meet its strategic
priorities. Over the past several weeks, our petition has
collected two hundred and forty-five signatures and counting, and I've shared a
link to that petition with counselors via your city emails.
In your Thursday work session, you'll see a presentation from, of the
city's Transportation Safety Action Plan, or TSAP.
Safe Streets and Roads For All task force has unanimously
recommended that, quote, "Coun- Council prioritize funding and
construction of the safety enhancements identified in the TSAP such that the
treatments are prioritized to the fullest extent
possible." There is a Walnut-specific road safety
audit in the task force's report, and we at
Safer Walnut we're happy to see many options for changes that would increase
safety for all on Walnut Boulevard.
Some low and medium complexity solutions we expe-especially expect
to see implemented in the short term include buffered bike lanes between Jack
London and Circle to keep cyclists safe.Pedestrian exclusive
phases at intersections to reduce conflict between pedestrians and
cars, curb extensions at the Witham Hill Walnut intersection
to shorten crossing distances and increase crossings throughout the
corridor to align with neighborhood bikeways and bus stops and
discourage dangerous crossings betweens, between the intersections that are very
far apart on Walnut. We feel that near-term change is
necessary and possible by focusing on some of these high-impact, low to
medium complexity interventions.
Here are a few of the high complexity projects that we're especially in support of
and will be keeping an eye on, that we realize will take more time to fund and
implement. Protected bike lanes along the corridor with physical
separation from car traffic lanes in the form of vertical barriers, especially in
areas that represent a high risk to cyclists or are necessary for safe
road, safe routes to school. Addition of pedestrian
refuges or islands at Jack London, Twenty-fifth Street and between
Twenty-ninth and Aspen, and protected intersections or roundabouts at
Highland and Walnut and at Kings and Walnut.
Safer Walnut is asking for a commitment from the city to implement some low
to medium complexity, but high impact changes on Walnut as soon as
possible, while planning for the larger, long-term, more transformative
changes, and to add those to the city's capital improvement plan
and the twenty twenty-seven to twenty-nine biennial budget.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Up next, we have Daniel
Chambers.
Good evening, mayor and council. My name is Daniel Chambers from Ward
Seven. I wanted to speak to you tonight about a
topic on the agenda, which is the ICE resolution, of which I am one of
the authors. Of course, it had many contributors
for whom I'm very grateful. I wanted to
encourage you tonight
to use your powers as legislators to pass this
resolution by whatever means you need
to. Whether you need, you feel the need to strike something
because it feels inappropriate
or add something that is clearly missing, I invite you to do
so, to use your powers. This resolution will
protect the most vulnerable members of our community
who don't have the opportunity to be here tonight to advocate for
themselves, who are scared.
I've done my homework on the resolution to the best of my ability.
I've sought a lot of input, for which I'm very grateful, especially from the city
manager and city attorney, from Councilor Cadena.
And of course, I'm extremely grateful to Mayor Monn and Councilor Olsen
for their support in this
resolution.
I wanted to mention
that many of you know this, but I'm originally from Oklahoma.
I moved here a couple of years ago now, and I'm a very proud Corvallis
resident, and I'm even more proud hearing what other people in our
commun- our community are doing.
It's one of the things that makes this place special.
But I'm originally from Oklahoma, and in Oklahoma, we get a lot of
tornadoes. Right now,
council, we are in the eye of a
tornado. It touched down around us without us
really noticing, and it'd be really easy to miss.
But right now, all around us,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in full force in Portland,
down in Eugene, Newport,
in Hillsboro. We've been lucky to avoid the brunt of the winds so
far, despite a few scares.
Now, back in Oklahoma, we have a bad habit of instead
of going inside and seeking shelter, we'll grab our lawn chairs instead, and
we'll sit out on our front lawns to watch the tornado as it
passes.
I'm here to tell you that we do not have...
We fortunately
don't have lawn chairs or tornadoes.
We do not have tornadoes to bring out our lawn chairs for, but we can't afford
to sit around as people are kidnapped, as forty
billion dollars in Nav-Navy contracts are available
for ICE to build facilities anywhere they choose without anyone knowing or
having the ability to comment.
So, council, I urge you, please edit and or pass this
resolution tonight, and thank you very much for your time and your
service.
Thank you. Good timing.
Next, I have, Tyler
Wilson.
All right. I'm Tyler Wilson. I am a resident in
Ward Five, and I work at Bessie Coleman Elementary.
I'm a fifth-grade teacher there. I'm an avid, bike commuter, and I'm
here to advocate for safer infrastructure on Walnut
Boulevard. So
one of the things I've been thinking about when I'm thinking about commuting is
that generally people can be kinda lazy.
And what I was thinking about when I mean lazy is people often choose the easiest
way to travel to a location. So if you are
traveling to OSU, for example, you
might be more inclined to walk or bike or take public transit
because it's hard to drive there. It's hard to park.
But with the rest of town, the it's easier to, to drive
to a lot of those locations, including Bessie Coleman Elementary.
Um, a lot of the families, though, who go to school at
Bessie Coleman live close enough where they could easily walk or bike to
school, and that's one of the things that I love about working there.
However, there are still many families that don't walk or bike
to school because they, they, there, there's this, there,
there's a fear of safety, safety concerns related to Walnut
Boulevard and other streets in the area.
And I can, I can see that firsthand too.
I, I bike commute to school every day.
I ride, I ride my bike on Walnut. I have to turn left
acrossFour lanes of traffic, and
so I, I understand the concerns. Um, one of the things
that I did recently at Bessie Coleman was started a walk and roll to school
day. And the idea of that is that we me-meet at the park
and we travel together as a group, students,
parents, any teachers, staff members that want to join,
and we travel together to school, safety in numbers.
And one of the parks that we met at was at, MLK Park,
and then the route from there is straight down Walnut.
And when I was creating that route, I wanted to create a route for people who live
in that part of the, of the school area, so they could get to
school. But I was a little bit torn about the route creation
because
do you go in the bike lane where you're closer to traffic?
Do you go on the sidewalk? It's kind of a confusing area because there's a bike
path that comes up Fifty-Third and it just ends.
And so the way we made it work is we had lots of parent volunteers
at intersections to make sure that it was safe.
Um, and one of my goals going forward though is that I, I would like that to
be something that, that kids and families feel like they can do even
without an event. But at this point, that's gonna require
some more infrastructure changes to Walnut Boulevard, things that some of,
some of the earlier commenters talked about, protected bike
lanes, a turning lane close to the school, something to slow
traffic down. Um, and I think
the issues will become even more next year when there's more than a hundred more
students at the school. Right now, it's-- there's already a lot of traffic at the
end of the school day, so that's something that I'm concerned about going forward.
So, yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
Mayor, I have a question.
Oh, go ahead.
Um, Tyler, generally we-- you, you, you wait for questions, so you would
know one's had one yet. Um, how many parents are
dropping their kids off rather than having them walk or ride to school?
Because I know at CHS, parent drop-off is a
nightmare.
The, I don't have an exact number, but it, it's a lot.
So our parking lot every day, I, I mean, I'm there for, for drop-off with my
students, and it fills up every day with the current number of students that we
have, especially on days when it's rainy or cold.
Um, in the fall and the spring, a lot more people will walk and bike
and, but the bike racks are ver-rarely full.
Only when we have our bike education week, that, that, those two weeks I saw
the bike racks full. Um, but,
yeah, it's, traffic is an issue right now because
it's, because of those, reasons that I listed.
Thank you.
Sam
Hoskinson.
I'm supposed to press the green button. Is that the word?
It'll, it'll, it'll turn on for you. You're good.
Oh, okay.
Whenever you're ready.
Well, my name's Sam Hoskinson. I live in Ward
Four. Um, I'm here to talk
about the MUPTA approval. I think that's on
the agenda tonight. Um,
the... I can see at least, think
of at least two ways you might be able to deny this
horrible, development that's being
proposed. Um, the first one would be fairly
simple. The order of the MUPTA
approval and the regular LDC code approvals has been
swapped from the last, episode where
you approved the one over on the riverfront.
And in this case, no land
use, public hearings or anything like that has taken place,
and nothing has been granted as far as height
adjustments or anything like that.
But the proposal that you're going to get is
for an hundred and forty-four foot building.
The current approval for a
mixed use is like a hundred and five foot.
They give you a bonus eighteen, so they really only have
permission for a hundred and twenty-three feet.
So the packet that you get is going to be
asking for a higher building than they
actually have, and I really feel that if you guys go ahead and approve
that ahead of time, it's going to prejudice
any land use of as far as being able
to not grant that twenty-one foot.
Uh, the second one, you guys are one
of the
line items, I think it's eight nineteen O two
O J. You are a city council
tasked with deciding that the
benefits of the proposed building
outweigh the costs of the,
you giving them thirteen million dollars to build this thing.
Okay? So the revenue, thirteen million dollars paid to the
developer out of our tax funds to create this
building. Um, the positive
benefits, they get to give ten percent of our
money, to donate to affordable housing since
they have absolutely no interest in building affordable housing
themselves. Okay, they'll also give an
extra hundred thousand dollars for the
railroad, crossing improvement or something like that.
So that's, I guess that's positive benefits.
They're giving back some of the money that we're giving them to build this
monstrosity. Okay, but I'd like you to
think about benefits as going two directions.
There can be positive benefits and there can be
negative benefits, okay? The-That was three
minutes?
That was three minutes. It, it goes fast when you're sitting there.
I remember.
Okay. You guys have any questions?
I provided quite a bit of information in the cartoons and stuff that I
sent you.
Yeah. We did receive all that. Doesn't seem like there is.
Thank you very much for your time, and for submitting information in
advance.
Yeah. Thank you for not reading-
Appreciate it. I read it.
Up next, Mary Francis,
Campana.
Hello.
Um,
I'm here with the group that's concerned about Walnut
Boulevard.
I live on Walnut myself,
and
the, the concerns for safety that others have mentioned,
the,
schoolchildren, which there'll be more, as you know, because of the
closure of schools, will be coming in.
And,
but I wanted to mention a couple of other things that perhaps
had not, we've not thought of. One is the
ongoing residential construction around and above
and below Walnut, but especially above Walnut.
All of those houses that are going in are going
to have to come down and onto Walnut to
get wherever they're going. And,
I think that it's gonna just add more and
more,
you know, congestion, and also increase
the possibility of danger,
when we have these expanded housing
and other things like that. Um,
people have talked about the bikes and the joggers
and the walkers. They haven't mentioned the wild and domestic animals
that are always running around, but they're there too, and they can
cause... They can be injured or else cause
problems. Um, and we have to begin to take into
account
all of those things.
My husband, Michael Campana, was killed as he
exited the, Timber Hill Townhomes, which is where I
live, as he le- exit-
exited that driveway onto Walnut, in
late August of '24. Um, no one saw the
collision, but it was a large vehicle that hit his little
sports car
as he was making a left-hand turn onto Walnut.
And,
we don't really know what happened 'cause as I say, no one saw it.
They heard it. But Michael was mortally injured, and he died on
August 24th of two-
2024. And I cannot help
but feel that speed and other things were
involved in that accident.
Walnut and its surrounding area is no longer
sort of a semi-rural edge to Corvallis.
It's a major artery. People use it to
come from all over
to Corvallis, and certainly to the, the west and the,
and the east. Um,
and I think
that it would be important for all of us
to think about traffic control, speed, noise,
congestion, and to start addressing the way to
do this. So I encourage you to participate.
Thank you.
Councilor Ellis?
I'm very sorry to hear about your husband.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming tonight.
Next is Bjorn... I'm gonna mess up the last name, I
know.
Bolteys.
Boltis?
Thank you.
Good evening. My name is Bjorn Bolteys, and I'm a homeowner in the Avery Helm
Historic District, Ward Four, directly across the street from the
proposed Pineview Development on 4th Street.
This building will rise 13 stories directly outside my front door.
It will permanently change the experience of living in this neighborhood,
blocking the morning sunlight to our home and creating an overbearing visual
presence. Because of that impact, I believe it's especially
important that the public benefits tied to this project clear-
clearly improve the neighborhood around it.
This project is asking for the public to significantly sub, a
significant subsidy, over 13 million in property tax exemptions
over 10 years. When the city provides that level of support, it
is reasonable to ask what tangible benefits will the surrounding neighborhood
receive in return? The application lists several
public benefits, including $100,000 infrastructure
contribution and a $50,000 for pedestrian
connectivity and improvements. I'd like to suggest a very
practical way those funds could benefit both the new residents and
the existing neighborhood. Many people in our neighborhood regularly cross
4th Street at Washington and Adams to reach Safeway.
This section of 4th is three lanes of traffic and often
busy. There's also a bus stop that brings transit riders across the
street from the grocery store. Today, crossing can feel like a
treacherous little game, real-life game of Frogger.
I nervously wait for my kids to return anytime they go to the store for
something.
The Pineview Project will bring roughly 600 additional residents
into the corridor. This will dramatically increase the number of pedestrians
moving between housing and essential services downtown.
A signalized mid-block pedestrian crossing between Washington and
Adams would address a real safety issue that already
exists and will only grow with this development.It would
support the city's own goals around walkability, transit
use, reducing vehicle trips, and it would directly serve both
the new building and the surrounding neighborhood.
So my request is simple. If the city approves the m- this MOPD app-
application, please prioritize directing the project's
infrastructure and connectivity contributions towards designing and
constructing a safe pedestrian crossing on 4th Street between
Washington and Adams. If we are adding hundreds of new residents to this
block, we should also add the infrastructure that allows them,
and the neighbors who already live here, a safe, uh...
to safely cross the street to reach basic services.
Let's make a safe way to the safe
way.
Thank you. Up next is
Jean
Raymond.
Good
evening.
This is an oral statement in support of the Corvallis ICE
resolution. I'm in strong support of the ICE
resolution. In this time of political chaos and
illegal violent action by ICE, I thank our Corva-
Corvallis community, which of course includes the mayor,
council, manager, and staff, for putting the wellbeing and the safety of our
community first. I acknowledge with gratitude the
many co- contributions of immigrants throughout our
history. In contrast, ICE has targeted
with bigotry those of darker color, those who look
different, speak with an accent, and even those who protest
peacefully. ICE has targeted students, health workers,
farmers, service people, and those immigrants and natives who have
benefited our community. It has illegally
targeted those with student and work visas, asylum
seekers, citizens, and naturalized citizens.
Now it proposes to build a mass- massive detention cent-
detention centers across the United
States. These actions by ICE have caused
fear and dismay.
In response, the community has worked together to protest
safely, to write letters to our representatives, to
collect funds, food, and clothing, to make banners, and
provide transportation. We have seen Oregon leaders
re- respond with bills about s- and there are 13
new bills that have passed the Senate and the House that you
can ask me about.
So we have seen Oregon leaders respond with
bills about sanctuary for state, about how police react, how
schools and universities must plan and carry out those plans,
how we can peacefully resist illegal violence from ICE.
We see how state leaders have worked together with other state leaders to
push back against unlawful, overreaching
actions. I'm glad this resolution has actions that the
city may take to provide safety. I expect the
city manager to follow through and provide guidance to the
mayor, council, and staff, and I have written s-
several actions which could be provided by the city.
I've written this also in your, packet.
So requirement that no u- use of harmful chemicals, tear gas, et
cetera, harassment by ICE, or use of weapons against peaceful
protesters or residents be allowed.
That no city facilities, utilities, buildings, parks, parking
lots, airport facilities be allowed by
ICE. That no mass detention center be
allowed. That all ICE officers have identification that can be
clearly visible. That the sanctity and safety of
sanctuary be followed, including schools, places of worship,
hospitals, and courthouses. Please ask
me about these bills.
Thank you.
We have your email, so if anybody wants to reach out to you, they're able to.
Okay. I haven't included these though, so this is new to me too.
Yeah. I mean, they can reach out to you to ask you about this.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Up next is Aubrey.
I didn't know you had a second,
a first part of a last name. I just imagined it as Aubrey Cloud.
Oh, that's wa-
Mm-hmm
Okay. If you could pronounce that for me, I'd appreciate it.
Sure.
Thank you. Mayor and councilors, good
evening. My name is Aubrey Sadiki-Cloud, a resident of Ward
7, and I'm here to urge you in the strongest possible
terms to adopt the Addressing Escalating Federal Immigration
Enforcement resolution before you this evening.
For over a year now, we've all been watching ICE and CBP drive a
bulldozer through constitutional and legal protections.
They're kidnapping people off the streets, from their homes and places of work
with no due process. They're setting cruel and inhuman
quotas that prove false any pretext of pursuing violent
criminals. They're using immigration court appointments as traps
to capture people trying to go through the proper channels.
They're neglecting and abusing those in their custody to the point that deaths are
occurring. They're racially profiling, which has resulted in the
kidnapping of American citizens simply because they aren't
white. They're building a sprawling network of
concentration camps to process and deport tens or even hundreds of
thousands of human beings at any given time, and
now they are executing people in the streets.
This isn't a time to keep our heads down, to try and avoid
attracting attention. That's how authoritarians cement
their grip on power.They make us feel isolated and vulnerable
against the overwhelming power of the state.
But we are not alone. This nation is boiling with fury at what's
happening. By taking a stand, we're not sticking our heads up, we're joining
hands with our neighbors and standing shoulder to shoulder with
them. We have to do something, and this resolution is a
fantastic start. I also want to
emphasize the critical importance of Clause B in the
resolution. The risk of violence, harassment, and criminality
from vigilantes impersonating federal immigration officers is not
a hypothetical. This is a real phenomenon, and it has occurred
multiple times since the start of this madness, including here in
Corvallis. One concern I've heard about this clause is that
local police aren't allowed to interfere with ICE and CBP operations.
That's fine. Asking these officers to verify their identity is not
interference, it is duty. We have a duty to protect our community, and
this is a simple action we could take to do that.
Impersonating a federal officer is a felony.
Racially motivated harassment or worse are crimes.
If we can't enforce our own laws because the perpetrators put on the
costume of a federal agent, then we've just told every criminal out there
how to get away with crime in Corvallis.
Council, I implore you, please adopt this resolution
and make our city a stronger sanctuary. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Last on the presenters, we have Laura
Duncan.
Thank you to councilors and staff for your service to the city,
and thanks to everyone in the room tonight who
cares about Corvallis, my hometown.
I'm Laura Duncan, and I live in the Jack Taylor house at Fifth
and C. My house was built in 1907.
It's on the National Register of Historic Places.
I w- reading through tonight's packet, I was deeply offended by the
developer's justification for the tax break,
citing connectivity improvements.
This took me back a few years and the lies we were told by the
developers of the Sierra Apartments on Washington
Boulevard. Prior to their construction,
neighbors were invited to talk with the developer.
We were promised enhanced bike and pedestrian crossing of the
railroad at Seventh, as well as repairs to the railroad
crossing on Washington. Also, the
street-facing side of their parking garage was promised to have
community commercial spaces, such as a coffee shop.
Instead, what we have are concrete barricades and
chain link fencing on Seventh Street at Western.
No improvements on Washington, and the storage of
construction materials where we were promised a coffee
shop. I don't have any faith that the Pine
View will actually achieve any improvements to the rail
crossings either. This is not something where the promise
of money to the city does anything.
It is up to the railroad if and when improvements are
made.
Additionally, I need to cross Western at Fifth
several times a day for work and activities.
I go as a pedestrian, cyclist, and a
driver. Often, I have long waits looking for a
break in the traffic. Any increase in traffic on
Western will exacerbate the risks for me and
others in my neighborhood, including many young
children.
Tell me how cutting off the connectivity for my historic
neighborhood is an improvement. Please hit
the pause button for this proposed development.
Let's have community input and talk about what the citizens of
Corvallis want, and not gift money to out-of-state
developers who are destroying the livability in
town. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
All right, we'll now move on to our drop-in commenters.
Um, and I was just informed we have one person online, so we can start
there.
Bob Mandel, you should have the ability to unmute yourself and be heard by
council.
Yes. Thank you. I'm
calling in to speak on the resolution
about ICE. I simply want to
agree with the previous speaker, Henri
Cloud. This is of the highest
priority. The fact that
it has receded from the headlines
is testimony to the effectiveness
of what the people in Minneapolis did,
and Corvallis
should join that. This resolution,
doing everything that the city can legally
do in refusing to cooperate
and in putting every possible
legal obstacle in ICE's
way is imperative. We
were brought up to believe that this is a
democracy.We were brought up to
believe that the police were there to serve
and protect. It is clear that
ICE is here neither to serve nor to
protect but to intimidate,
to spread terror, to drive people from
their homes. And a- as the murder of
two people already proves,
the tactics that they're using will
spread into the cities for
other purposes. Those tactics will
be used to repress any
dissent that the US government finds
objectionable. I worked in the civil rights
movement in Mississippi and witnessed the
failure of the feds to protect civil
rights workers from the Ku Klux Klan.
Now we have ICE acting just
like the Klan, masked,
ruthless, riding by day and riding
by night.
I congratulate you on raising this
resolution. I urge its
adoption. As an ESL
teacher, my students live in fear
daily
of being arrested, no matter what their
citizenship status,
and being deported, no matter
legally or legal- illegally.
Everyone has a right to live safely in
this country. Thank you. Please support the
resolution.
Thank you very much.
Up next I have Mike Blair.
I think that's on.
Do I push this?
Yeah. You're good.
Hello. I'm Mike Blair from Ward
Four. Um, and
I live in the, downtown historic
district,
next door to Bjorn,
right in the middle of the block on, Fifth Street, a half a
block from the proposed
Pineview, site. And,
our adjacent properties
are, significant contributing
historic houses. In order to make
any... For example, to make any changes to the
exteriors of our buildings, including
for, say, energy, energy efficient
window replacement, it requires a major and a bureaucratic
process to gain approval. I've done it a couple times
and, I love the historic houses,
so it's worthwhile for a lot of reasons.
But,
this, the Pineview is a monstrosity of
a building structure for downtown Corvallis, and it wi-
will fit in like a sore thumb. The proposed height
will drown out the east sun and the sun completely
until around noon for our properties
for the neighboring blocks. I believe this proposed building will
negatively impact the values of the historic homes in our
downtown neighborhood. Uh, parking
issues. Um, my understanding is there's
not adequate parking for the proposed structure
at this point.
We live on Fifth Street. There's currently no on-street parking on Fifth
Street. It was turned into bike lanes years ago,
which is great, but if we have company
to our house, they, they must park on on-street
parking on the adjacent Washington Avenue.
There's two blocks
where there's on-street parking.
Um, the proposed building will not
provide, adequate parking for the residents, and so the
on-street parking spaces will become rare, at
best, find. Thank you.
Thank you.
Up next I have Patricia
Vann.
Vann.
I c- I can read the Patricia, I'm just not sure about the last name, sorry.
That's okay. That's much better.
Okay, all. Thanks so very much. Thanks for the community to come out
to speak on these various topics that are very, very important.
I used to call Corvallis our cozy cove.
I moved here from Manhattan in '91 because I love
the community, the walkability, the safety, the
schools.
As we have to move forward, we can't live in the
past,
I urge the city council
to think about
what we are doing in terms of the safety.
We've heard all about the... We have the whole programs for bike to school
safety, bike and walk to school. Then we look at the schools
that they are closing, and those they are
keeping open. Um, Mountain View is by the
railroad tracks,
and there is no way to walk to Mountain View and to
bike to Mountain View safely. We've already had a
teacher killed in an accident on that railroad
traffic-And nothing has been done at that
area. Yet they're going to expand that
school despite the chemicals in the water, which were
known seventeen years again- ago, and are now erupting
again. That school is now going to be a K
through six and then K through eight.
No bike lanes, no walkable
paths, no safe railroad
crossings. What are we doing? We can do
better.
The second one is
Letitia Carson, Title I school.
Affordable neighborhood right around there with tons and
tons of good families walking their kids to
school.
And they're going to close it and put those children on
buses. One family has three
children, and they are going to be bused to three different
schools. The enhancement of traffic is
going to be unbelievable. We've got to have
infrastructure.
Uh, the Sheldon Middle School, which is perfect location for K through
eight,
is going to be closed. And those students will be
bused, many of them into Linus Pauling,
which is already super congested
all through the morning and the evenings without walkable, safe paths
and bike lanes. Seven hundred
junior high kids.
The traffic is gonna be unbelievable.
We have to think and work together
and establish safe routes for this, for the
school, for the kids, for the pedestrians, and the people who live in the
neighborhoods. And I'd like to see the city
and the district work together and really put forth a
plan. Thank you.
Thank you.
Up next is Tammy Scabina.
Scabina.
I really do try.
That's okay. Yes, my name is Tammy Scabina, and
I'm a member of Ward Eight. Um,
I'm sharing my support of the resolution addressing escalating federal immigration
enforcement. Um, it's my view that the
city of Corvallis and the council and the mayor need to publicly put
on record that everyone in Corvallis deserves to feel
safe, and that especially immigrants
and people of color need to feel safe.
I have a friend that I met twenty years ago.
She was a high school student here in Corvallis.
I worked with her on projects where she was helping other students
and making a difference. Twenty years later, she and her
family are
s-super fearful every single day.
They own a business. Their kids are in our
schools. I want them to know that the city supports
them. And so please pass this resolution.
There should be no question that this city should support this
resolution of addressing escalating federal immigration enforcement.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Andrew R?
Hello, everybody. I'm from Fairyland,
clearly. I, just, I'm from Ward Two.
Um, I, I, I know this, I wanna speak in support of just about
everybody who's spoken here before.
Everything everybody said has been, exactly dead on.
Uh, Third Street is a big problem. Fourth Street is also a major
issue. Everybody drives down those two streets like they're driving down the
highway, and it is always
scary to cross those. I cross them regularly.
Um, I've been visiting the, local drop-in center here.
I try to get people to encourage people to
go and, and visit there o-on a, you know, somewhat of a regular
basis and talk to people there and listen to their stories.
I've been hearing
a lot of stories for months now.
Um, my friend here, Jo-Joshua Browning, recently,
was thrown out on the streets by Unity Shelters.
Um, I've been hearing, stories, for months
about Unity Shelters,
throwing victims of property crimes by other shelter members
out on the streets. Uh, some of them did not survive
this. All of them had their lives disrupted.
Um,
it's strange. And then I started hearing them on the men's side recently,
and
I started hearing different things about all three of the shelters' abuses to
shelter, residents and, you
know, that sort of thing just does our community so much harm.
I, I, I sh- hear about criminal
activities there. I hear about criminal activities on the part of
our, unfortunately, our local police force, using
confidential informants and using, individuals that they catch with
drugs to drop packages in places. And, confidential
informants, as you know, cannot be held accountable or go to jail because
there's a, a mythology that they will be murdered
if they ever wind up there. Um, so they're pretty much free
of all accountability to any laws in, in most of the cities that,
that they, they use them for, purposes, law enforcement.
And, I've heard a, a story from a man who came here to get
his wife out of a trafficking situation, was told by an officer--
asked by an officer where he lived.
He said, "California." And, and the officer told him, "You should just go back
there." Um, and he said, "Well, I'm not leaving until I get my wife out of this
trafficking situation." Um...Yeah, the stories I
hear just over and over again, I, I...
Y- you can't, I can't just tell you these stories.
They're, they're facts, but you have to hear them for
yourself. Um, maybe journalistic efforts can.
Um, I'm, I'm working on an investigative journalism effort, Voice of the
Voiceless for the City, to try and do some, uh...
My whole family's journalists. Um, do some investigative journalism, get some
changes to, to the city. In Oregon, I hear that we're 49th in
outcomes for mentally ill people. Who, who is allowing that?
Who is, who is not funding those people? So on and so forth.
That's all.
Thank you.
Do you have any questions?
Everybody good?
No questions. Thank you.
Brendan
Kohlberg.
Hello there, mayor and council. I'm coming in my individual capacity as
vice chair of the planning commission, though I'm also a ward, a resident of Ward
6. Um, the planning commission has ma- or we
decided at our last meeting, which was held in person, our annual work plan,
to make two somewhat significant changes to our workflow that I figure you
should be informed of. Um, as of the cycle of members this
summer, some are rotating off at the end of June, and then more should be
appointed at the beginning of July.
We're going back to fully in-person meetings or hybrid in-person
first meetings. I believe we're the last major commission to do so.
And then secondly, because members of the commission weren't too
confident in how to prioritize different changes to the
LDC, given that there's a list that's about six years long and the amount of
time we have, we're interested in, in the process of trying to figure
out how we can learn what changes are most
important. In particular, establishing communication lines with the
people who interface with them most, from the user side, which is a
practice standard in most, like, tech and high performance companies.
Um, so we're looking at what we can do, as far
as our positioning, to hear from developers
and, and people who would like to develop but can't about rules that they feel that
are in the way, but not... And then contrasting those with, you
know, the point of regulations is to solve collection action problems and keep
people's private incentives from overruling the common good.
But where a rule provides, barriers
to, the city's goals of
affordability and economic development, but they're, it's not actually actively
preser- preventing something that the city does not want, and we're gonna try to
identify those and see where we can improve some of those.
So just a brief update there. Um, if you guys, you're, you're
obviously more connected to the community than anyone on the commission is,
if you have any leads on things that you think we should look at, there's a lot
of uncertainty on that, and I figured you should be informed even,
yeah, even that says. That's all.
Thank you.
That concludes our community comments.
Moving on to the consent agenda.
I will move to adopt the consent agenda.
Second.
Worried there. It was kind of a pause.
Any discussion? Seeing no hands, all
in favor of adopting the consent agenda, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
All opposed, say no. That passed
unanimously. Now on to unfinished business.
We have item A, revised noise ordinance.
Um, city manager's here to...
Yes. Um, our police department staff brought this forward at your
February 19th work session. Uh, just to check in
with you, council seemed, amenable to these changes, so
they are in front of you, in the ordinance here.
You have a
redline strikeout starting on page 133 of the electronic
packet, and then a clean copy on, starting on page
137.
Thank you. And, and the chief is here if we have questions that
city manager can't answer, but you're okay.
Any questions, or should we have the ordinance read?
All right. City recorder, if you would, please.
This is an ordinance relating to noise amending Corvallis Municipal Code
Section 5.03.030,
noise.
Very much. Again, last chance for any questions, or we can just take a
vote.
I have an observation.
Please, Councilor Ellis.
This was actually a topic of conversation at my house this weekend, because some
people may know that it was not actually St.
Patrick's Day, but the fraternities were celebrating St.
Patrick's Day. Um, and we were actually talking about hopefully with the
clarity of having the decibel level, there will be
less conflict between the police and the
people celebrating, shall we say.
So we are feeling pretty positive about this.
Yeah, I have to agree. I re- I really think that the, you know, hard facts instead
of just trying to determine whether or not there's a violation is gonna
be useful for everybody.
Appreciate it. All right. Let's, I guess, go ahead and take a vote.
Oh. Some more things. Go ahead.
Um, just, just a quick comment. I appreciate the work that went into this so
quickly after a problem was identified, so thank you to the police
department for your work.
Yes, absolutely.
Do you have a question or comment?
Mm-mm.
Oh, okay. Thought I saw a hand.
Nope.
All right. Let's go ahead and, take a vote.
All in favor of the ordinance, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
All opposed, say no. That passed unanimously.
Thank you all, and again, thank you to all staff and that were involved in
this. Much appreciated.
Next up, and we're moving on to new business now.
Item A, Pineview Multi-Unit, Multi-Unit Property Tax Exemption, also known as
MEPTA application.
Thank you, Mayor, members of the council.
Um, normally I wouldn't be up here.
This is a economic development activity, so we would...
It's generally about the dollars and cents.
But I know you had a lot of testimony from, community members, and
looking through that, I think eighty or ninety percent of it was about land
use, piece. So I'm here for, that aspect if you have
questions down that line. But, also the developer is,
available remotely, so there'll be a moment for them as
well.
That's what I was checking.
Yes, and the city attorney is online as well.
Okay. So, with that kind of intro, I'll turn it back over to the regularly
scheduled show.
Good evening, everyone. Uh, great to be with you.
I'm excited to present this,
MUPTE application, the second that the city's received.
Um, it is a, a exemption
request for ten years, totaling thirteen million four
hundred and twelve thousand s- three hundred and seventy-nine dollars.
Um,
this is a, a thirteen-story building with two hundred and sixty-three
units and, commercial on the ground floor.
Um, total project cost is estimated to be a hundred and thirty-two million
dollars. Um, a little context, the two hundred and
sixty-three units, just about double the number
of units currently in downtown for residential
units. When we look at the MUPTE
application and the staff review, it really, comes down to three
tests. The but-for test, so is this project financially
feasible but for the exemption? And we,
have a requirement that we have a third-party financial consultant do
that analysis. Um, that financial consultant is also
online, can answer any technical questions about,
the report produced by ECO Northwest.
Um, at the end of the day, it was concluded through that,
analysis that, the project, passes the but-for
test. The next is the affordable housing test, so fifteen
percent of the project's units must be affordable for households
earning eighty percent or less of the AMI in Corvallis, or,
the applicant can provide ten percent of the total property tax
exemption to fund the development of future affordable housing.
Um, this applicant chose to provide, ten
percent of the total property tax exemption.
And we'll get to what all the total financials are here at the
end. Um, but the third, test,
so to speak, is the public benefits test.
So there's a list of public benefits in the ordinance from which a developer can
choose to try,
and, and accomplish to, qualify for the
MUPTE. Um, there are,
four identified in the application: public infrastructure,
high quality urban design and special architectural features, economic
catalytic effect, and connectivity improvements.
As for pub- public infrastructure, very
straightforward, the applicant has agreed to deposit one hundred thousand dollars
with the city to be used for construction of public infrastructure in the
CIP, and that'll be the discretion of,
public works and staff to determine what
exactly is, what those dollars are, are earmarked
for. Um,
next is high quality urban design, special architectural features.
So the development provides high quality landscaping and
architecture and/or other elements beyond what the city of Corvallis,
currently provides. Um, there's sufficient detail in the
application to demonstrate high quality architectural design and a commitment to
exceeding City of Corvallis code standards in the choice of
extraordinary materials. Um, it's not
located on lots that are identified as having historic significance, so it's
not subject to the Historic Resources
Commission. Um,
that, public benefit is, in our
view, sufficient to claim.
Next is economic catalytic effect, and so the applicant provided
sufficient detailed analysis of a proposed economic catalytic
effect, and the influx of residents, roughly six hundred or so
in downtown, and multiplier effect of that investment stands to significantly and
permanently improve the outlook for other businesses in terms of
increased employment and/or revenues.
The fourth, again, there are three required, s- developer chose
to, to provide four. Um, the developers proposed to work with
the city and railroad to fund future pedestrian crossing
improvements at Sixth, not to exceed a contribution of fifty thousand
dollars. So, understandably, that's not
gonna cover the entire cost, but it is a, a public benefit offered, in the
application. And we consider all four as being
sufficiently met in terms of the standards for
qualification. There's evidence that the
applicant may have actually qualified for an additional public benefit not
claimed. Um, that is regarding abandoned, vacant, or
underdeveloped properties. So I think there's a strong argument, we won't spend too
much time on it, but, for having met that
requirement, for,
resolving or improving a
blighted area.
Um, this proposal, this project, it's
really well aligned with a lot of city policies.
Um, Corvallis 2040, mixed-use development, diverse and
affordable housing,
climate change, climate action plan.
It's been a long time coming,
the code changes that have, have led to a project of this scale being,
proposed
and, the tools that have been put in place to attract this
kind of development.And so I think this is a culmination of a lot of efforts
that have been underway for many years.
Um, it is, it is a change, to
downtown. Um,
but I think as evidenced by the, the public benefits here,
a po- a positive change.
Um, as far as the financial impact or the
impact on schools, because of the state education formula,
there's no, there's no negative
impact, from the tax exemption.
Um, we will be increasing,
taxes both during the exemption period and following the exemption
period. Um, so the local contribution will go up to our
schools. However, it'll, it'll most likely just be offset, state
education funding. Um, as far as the budget
impact, the current property taxes the city collects are eight thousand two hundred
and twenty-six dollars on the four lots.
Um,
it's a total of twenty-five thousand.
Um, and the exemption period,
the, the taxes that the city will collect are twenty,
twenty-two thousand four hundred and nine dollars.
So city stands to roughly just about double or, or
so, the number, the amount of tax revenue generated from
years one to ten. Uh, post-exemption period, the city stands
to claim four hundred and forty-three thousand one hundred and fifty-four
dollars a year, so year eleven
plus. Uh, the direct net financial benefits to the city are
as follows. Um, fourteen thousand one hundred and eighty-three dollars
increase during the exemption period, years one through
ten. A hundred and thirty-four thousand one hundred and twenty-four dollar
contribution annually to the Affordable Housing Fund during the exemption
period. A hundred thousand dollar, contribution to the
Capital Improvements Plan. Fifty thousand dollar contribution to fund
pedestrian crossing improvements.
Uh, one million one hundred and sixty-two thousand one hundred and twenty-five
dollar,
expected contribution to the Affordable Housing Construction
Excise Tax, and a twenty-seven thousand
one-time Affordable Housing Construction Excise Tax for
the, commercial. The total financial impact
during the ten-year exemption period is roughly one million six hundred and
thirty-three thousand one hundred and twenty-one dollars.
And the total financial impact following the exemption, four hundred forty-three
one five four. Uh, those are the, the analysis that
we do in the application. This is what we're tasked with in the
ordinance. And, any other questions,
may be better suited, if they're about the pro forma,
to the financial consultant, or if they're about the development project and
specifics, the developer. But I'm happy to answer any other questions about the
staff report.
Councillor Gediman?
Uh, I don't have questions. I do-- I did send a co- question
to Director Bilotta earlier that I thought might be informative
to help us focus our conversation.
Uh, first let me say in, in reference to one of the public comments, we're
not, we're foregoing property taxes.
That is a difference. That is different than giving the
developer funds, just a clarification.
Um, I also want to, to
make a few points that Director Bilotta confirmed with me in my email to
him,
that what we're talking about today is the
MUPTE, request. If the
developer, for whatever reason, was not requesting MUPTE, they
could, they could proceed with this project as
is. They could get a building permit for a
hundred and twenty-three foot building.
They could request an extra twenty percent in height, which
is, part of the new process from the state
granting automatic variances, where the staff has no
discretion in granting that. Um, so
I, I think we should keep our focus on
what we are
deciding today. We're deciding whether to extend the,
multi-unit property tax exemption ordinance.
We're not
revisiting the state's, choices around climate
friendly, equitable communities parking requirements.
We're not, discussing land use
changes. This is not a land use case.
So I, I just think that's important, and I, I appreciate
the concern that community members
have, but I think it's important to understand this is not a land
use case. This is not a... If, if they were not asking for a MUPTE, this building
could go forward with zero,
public hearing, zero land use
discussion, et cetera. So just, and I'm, I'm gonna
ask you to confirm everything I just said.
Uh, yeah, that, that is correct. Um, in addition, the one other thing that,
might be helpful to know on land use is, there was a lot of discussion and
commentary about the historic district.
Uh, historic districts, a property owner or a neighborhood, et cetera,
can choose to, put themselves into a
historic district and forego any upside and those sorts of things
from that. What historic districts don't do is
extend and remove property rights from adjacent
properties. And so part of what we were hearing a little bit was kind of
implying that, because they're a historic district, that that
controls the adjacent properties, and that's not how historic districts
work.
If I saw hands correctly, I saw Councilor Ellis, Napack, and then
Olson.
I didn't actually. I was just putting my hand up, but I'm
willing to-
That's what I saw.
I, I'm willing to... I think Councilor Olson was before me, but I'm willing to go.
Um, and get it over with. Um,
I understand this is not a land use, and that we cannot
discuss, the appropriateness of that
building on that space. And the state has taken away
considerable of our authority to do that.
Whether or not we agree with that is out of our control, and we need to take it up
with the state. However, I am gonna argue that
they're, that this is not, they do not meet the qualifications
for the MUPTE based on what I see. Um, I
think any building that is putting a private pool on its roof
is failing the but-for test, because I think you just don't put the pu- you
know? You're going for luxury housing here.
If you're, if you were building housing for ordinary people, no,
no pool on the roof. Um, you might meet it.
But for me, that just was no.
Um, I also am concerned that this is not housing for ordinary
people. I did a little math. I'm not a mathematician.
My partner looked it over and corrected a little bit of it.
But a studio is, if you're paying a third of your
rent, you have to be a mid-career teacher for this to
be affordable. So I would argue that even though they're not
affordable, this is just not affordable rent.
And then I saw they're comparing their rent to the Sierras
and saying it was about the same, but it actually had raised it a couple of
hundred dollars. So it is no, we're, we're actually raising
rent. We're not trickling down for more affordable
housing. I would also argue that,
$100,000 contribution for public infrastructure is
minimal. It, you, there's very little that we can actually do with that amount of
money. Um, I've heard enough from bi- bicycle and pedestrian
infrastructure to know that that is, there's not very much.
High quality urban design is clearly subjective.
I look at the pictures and I think, "I don't think so." But other people look at it
and think that's beautiful. But that's a subjective, not an
objective quality, and I don't think we can make a decision based
on that. I am concerned about the ec- economic catalytic
effect of 600 people with
300, 400, 500 cars parking in
downtown. I think that's gonna make things worse, 'cause we're constantly hearing
about the concerns in downtown. Um, and
50,000 for connectivity, again, does not strike me as
being very much at all. So I think that they fail based
upon their qualifications, and I intend to vote no
on the MUPTE.
Councilor Nyback?
Yeah, I have a, a question, which is if Pineview
folds or defaults or
doesn't complete the project, what happens to
us?
You mean if, if the MUPTE goes forward and then they fail, they
construct it and they fail, and you're fine or something?
If they stop halfway or something terrible happens, yeah.
Sure, sure. So, there's a few things. If they...
Obviously, the building is still there, so you continue to have a
building that gets taxed and all those other things.
But if they fail to pay us the affordable
housing annual payment, then they have
under 20 days, I believe, we, we have to submit to them, we contact
the developer, we contact the developer's lender, and we contact the city
council and say, "They're in default." At that point, they get hauled in
front of the council, and they get to plead their case
to preserve their tax exemption, assuming that
we didn't make it up and we had a valid reason to bring them before the council,
and the council then could, remove their tax exemption.
So then at that point, instead of being exempt and all those, you know,
hundreds of thousands of dollars, every year, they would immediately have
to start paying taxes, right
away.
I have more questions, but I'll wait.
Okay. And before I move on to Councilor Olsen, I wonder if it
might be wise, 'cause currently there's nothing even on the table to, to
deliberate, so maybe we should go ahead and have, the city reporter read the
ordinance. We'll see if we have a motion and a second
on the plan, yeah? City reporter, if you would, please.
This is the resolution approving a multiple unit property tax exemption,
MUPTE, for residential property located at 516 to
544 Southwest Fourth Street, Corvallis, Oregon
97333. Applicant, Pineview
Development.
At this point we can, you, you can continue asking questions, or someone can make a
motion to get this at least on the table.
So moved.
Do we have a second?
I'll second.
Thank you. Okay, so now we are in deliberation
officially. Um, but questions are still welcome as well.
So, go to Councilor Olsen, and then it gets back to Councilor Nyback
after that. There's...
Yeah, I actually have a couple questions which are different than the questions I
emailed you, Paul, so sorry about this.
Um, one of the main questions I've had a lot from the community is how they're
allowed to submit an application for a building that we don't know if it meets the
land use criteria. Can you explain that?
Yeah. Uh, there's, there's, there's a little bit of a chicken and
egg situation. You can either come in and try to get your exemption first, or you
can come in and, and get your approvals first.
Um, it, there is no right or wrong way for how it
has to happen. Now, in this instance, so, so when Obie came
forward before, they had a discretionary Willamette River
Greenway, process that's a public hearing and the whole big land use
deal. So they chose to get that resolved up front so that they could set
their pro forma to know what was, gonna be there before asking
for the tax exemption. On this situation,
the developer chose not to do that, and the developer's here if we wanna know
why. But, one thing that's very different about the land use
situation with this project than the Obie project
is-Uh, like it's been referenced, this is this new state
automatic variance process. So although they have not yet gone
through it, the way the process works is we send
out notices to the people within a radius so they know it's happening.
They then submit letters to us telling us whether they support it or don't support
it. None of that really matters because the state says we have to approve it
anyway, and the only one who can appeal that decision would be the
applicant. And so the only thing that could really be appealed would be if we said
no. So although they haven't been through all the land use
processes, the only land use process they haven't been through is one
that's, you know, kind of performative.
Yeah. And then, um... Yeah, so I've
been looking over this application a lot,
and based on my
own, views, and
based on... Yeah, based on my own views, I don't
believe that it fulfills the MUPD criteria.
I believe that the p- public benefits, of
public infrastructure and connectivity improvements
are not, fulfilled. Uh, for the connectivity
improvements, they say that they want to fund future
pedestrian con- crossing improvements or just any sort of connectivity
improvements not to exceed a contribution of fifty thousand
dollars. Uh, yeah, fifty thousand dollars.
In the Corvallis Transportation System Plan, which was adopted
in twenty nineteen, they lifted...
they listed eleven unfunded projects for a total of,
fifty-five... five five zero zero zero
zero, dollars, which calculates out to
fifty thousand a project. And these are,
at least a couple of these are railroad crossing improvements or other crosswalk
improvements that are not currently funded.
And st- this was at twenty nineteen prices, which
according to a, inflation calculator
calculates to over sixty-three hundred...
sixty-three thousand, in
this day and age. So this money would not fund even a singular
project in the neighborhood. And while I know that is only
some of the funding, I don't believe if you can't even fund one project with
the money you're offering, that that's a sufficient connectivity
development. Additionally, I don't believe that
the, public, public infrastructure is
met. Uh, our requirements say an investment of at
least, a hundred thousand dollars.
They have agreed to deposit exactly a hundred thousand dollars, and with
their estimate of how many people are going to live in there,
six... sixty, give or take, that calculates to a
hundred and fifty dollars per person in infrastructure developments, which
is not a lot. Like, I could... I mean, I don't have a
lot of money, but if I went up to the city and was like, "Hey, I'll give you a
hundred and fifty dollars if you'll put a crosswalk in my neighborhood," they'd be
like, "Great, that doesn't cover the paint,"
or, "That doesn't cover the street sign." Because believe me, I've thought about
just, like, putting up street signs in my neighborhood.
And s- because of that, because of those two
facts, while I do...
Yeah, I do not believe that this project
fulfills the requirements for
the, MUPD, and so I will
be voting no on
it.
Councilor Morfield.
Councilor Napack had, had her hand up
first.
All right. Okay. Councilor Napack.
I have a... So in, in
the text, the narrative that staff put together, thank you very much,
a lot of the things
that they talk about, especially infrastructure, are
proposed. They're not concrete, shall we
say. They're saying, "We will do this, we will do that." They say they're proposing
X, Y, Z. And I know, for instance, through the railroad, they
want... they never wanna cooperate,
and they won't maintain the crossing. They...
w- w- w- will refuse to maintain the crossing even if we improve it.
Um,
the,
SD... Well, infrastructure downtown, you know, we've been on the task
force for, revitalization downtown, and I
understand, you know, we have utilities that are
needing a lot of upgrades, especially
electric and so on and so forth. And this would seem
that they might run into a problem if they, if
they... I don't know if they will or not, but I know their,
water main burst
right there on the corner of,
Fourth and Safeway.
So I don't... You know, how we can...
How can we, can we afford
this?
Okay. Um, yeah, a couple things. Uh, one is, you know, some of
these, some of these things about what the developer should or should not offer, we
should probably get the developer on to, to talk about that. I...
You know, we're not here to, to deal with that part of it.
Um, but as far as the public utilities piece of things
and the electrical, what we've seen, you know, our
electrical grid
in the downtown is a problem for pretty much any scale of
development. Um, we've had problems, on
some of the renovations on Madison even.
Um, it's a very old technology. It's...
it has not been well-maintained by Pacific Power.
So when we do have projects, like the l- museum was
one, like, OB recently, there's
extensive multi-million dollar upgrades to the entire
grid downtown that occurs for that.
So it would not sur- You know, I don't know the details about this particular part
of downtown, but it would not surprise me at all if there's not the same
thing. And it doesn't necessarily mean that the grid just is on that block.
They often have to run back.
As far as water lines and sewer lines,
those are things that get resolved every- when the development comes
in, and if they are not adequate, then the development has to bring them up to
speed. It's actually kind of beneficial if you have older,
infrastructure that needs to be upgraded
then along with the development, but again, I don't know if that would be the case
here or not. Oh, maybe Mark knows something.
Yeah, I can just share generally if you think about water and, and sewer
lines as our public works director has, has talked about
and, and presentations on master plans recently on both our water and,
and wastewater. Generally it's, for water, it's
fire flows that drive water line sizes, and for
sewer line sizes, it's that infiltration and inflow.
It's not number of residents,
as Director Bilade pointed out.
If, if there is a, a local deficiency
identified, generally that, the developer has to deal with that as
part of their development, and they do that through a, a permit process
through public works.
Okay, thanks.
Councillor Marfield?
Um,
I have a couple of questions. Um,
I'll ask them both if someone else doesn't wanna take a turn.
But, the first one is a fairly narrow technical
one. It was a question I posed to staff late in the day, so there wasn't
really time to come up with an answer, but it had to do with the
financial projections and, and,
what, at least on the
surface, looked to me like an error, but I'm not familiar
with this kind of commercial development either.
But the, that coverage ratio in the first three years seemed to be calculated
incorrectly. And since there's, the purpose of it is to
establish the need for the property tax exemption, I need
that to be clarified.
Yeah. I, I think here we'll ask Eric Bagwell, from Echo
Northwest to clarify that.
Huh.
Sure. Good evening, everyone. Um, sure, happy to answer that question.
Um, w- the, the debt service cover ratio is
calculated properly. What's happening is there's a three percent,
increase assumption on r- on the rental income
annually. And so what happens is that's ticking up every year.
And also, I think in year four, there, the developer is expecting a refinancing
event, and so you're seeing that actually change to serve, the debt service
actually change in that year. Um, does that answer your
question?
It- I'm sorry, I couldn't quite hear you.
The sound is just because of my hearing and quality of the
speaker wasn't real great. Maybe I can get an interpreter.
Um, so no, I, I didn't, I couldn't hear the answer
exactly.
Sure. So my understanding of the, the pro forma is that in year four,
the developer is expecting a refinancing event to basically take out a
portion of the equity-
Right
... that is being put into... So wha- what you're seeing is the debt service start
to change in that year. Also-
Yeah, I, I understand what happens in year four.
It's years one through three that seem to be...
If I, if I,
you know, divide,
net operating income by debt service for year one through three, it doesn't come up
with a one point one five, one ei- one eighteen, one twenty two
debt coverage ratio.
Oh, that's because in year, the first three years, there's just an interest-only
annual payment.
But it's still debt service.
Yes, but the debt service is different because when that refinancing event happens,
it changes to a thirty-year am- amortization as opposed to
the interest-only payment that's happening in the first three years.
That's why it's changing.
Okay, well,
I, I'm talking about, I think, a simple math question.
Sure.
In a pro forma, if I look at net operating income of, I mean,
I'll use the first year, of eight one, eight point one
million,
and divide it by the, the, debt service of five point
nine, it does not come out to one point one five.
So I'm just going by the numbers that are shown on the sheet.
And I would say the same error, I, I mean,
at least it appears to be that, shows up in years two and three, and then
after that it's fine. It, it ma- it
makes sense in the way that I understand it.
Yeah. My, the calculation I have on, in the application that I received
has the net operating income divided by the interest
of five point fi- or the, the
one year, debt service of five
point five million dollars. So it is getting to, it, it's an accurate
calculation in my, in my pro forma.
Maybe we're looking at two different-
Okay
... versions of it.
Can, can I, can I jump in as the developer and maybe clarify?
Sure. Thanks, Dan.
You don't mind? Sorry about that. So yeah, I can explain that.
Um, for purposes of lenders reviewing pro
formas,
regardless of whether it's interest-only payment, debt cover ratio is
based on the thirty-year amortized payment.
So as if you are paying, even though you're not for the first three
years alone, it's calculated as if you are paying part of
the principal amount down. That is why.
So in fact, if you look at, you don't divide it by the
interest-only payment amount,
you divide it by the larger amount of the thirty-year fully amortized amount,
and that's how you get to that
number.
I, I'm not gonna sit here in the middle of the meeting and do math.
I, I turned my- ... stuff so it wouldn't-
Yeah, it's, uh-
I'm just reporting on m- me coming up with different
DCRs when I was doing it at home.
Yeah, no, DCR is-
So-
I'm sorry. The DCR is, is co- is for the purpose of getting
the-The debt cover ratio, it's calculated regardless
of whether you're only paying interest payments for those three years.
It's, the debt cover ratio is actually calculated based
on a larger payment on a monthly
basis amount. For the bank purposes, that's always the way it's
done. So y-you can't get a loan
based on the interest-only payment.
It, the lender will always base it on the amortized amount
over thir- which is a higher payment on an annual basis.
That's why it's, it sounds confusing.
I, I... And I totally get why you'd be confused.
I, I was a little concerned that you, you kind of
need to be in our world of finance to...
As a s- kind of a stray calculation, it doesn't make sense, but that's, that's how
it's calculated. And Eric, you can, I guess, confirm
that. Maybe just-
Yes, that is typically how it is calculated,
correct.
Okay. Um,
second question. Um,
the, I don't have the, ORS or the, or the actually the city
ordinance language sitting right in front of me, so I'm working from memory a
little bit. But the, ORS that
authorizes localities to have a MUPTI program mentions design
criteria as being an element that can be considered.
Um, in the city's ordinance, there's some,
what I consider, fairly general language about, design
criteria in there. And so the, a question
that I think is appropriate to ask tonight is that because the language is
general
and, and not real specific about what we
mean by that,
it raises the question to me, number one, how are we supposed to interpret
it? One way to have some guidance around that issue
is what did the council intend back in '23 or
whenever it was when the, when the ordinance was adopted.
Um,
can you... Because I, I think of a design can, is a very
global kind of topic. And, and
some, some of the concerns that have been raised
aren't just about how the exterior of the building is
treated, but its relationship to
surrounding areas. Certainly, architects
take into account context when they design things.
Sure.
Uh, I, that's not specified in our ordinance, though.
So I'm trying to get some guidance on what the intent was of having
design, in the ordinance.
Yeah. Design is usually, you know, it was intended to be, fairly general
to give council some latitude. Uh, we don't
have,
we don't have a very specific design,
standard across the city. You know, we, we tend to allow a lot of different
things. Um, typically, design is going to
be, not change of
scale per se, but elements of the
design. So, you know, a, taking
the 13-story building down to a three-story building would not be
just an architectural
opinion. You know, that's, that's something that's different.
Moving, you know, having the lobby open over here
or having a step back or having, you know,
balconies go this way instead of that way. You know, those sorts of things.
Those, those are design, pieces to it.
Um, you know, if we... Not in, not in this
case because they, of course, get to use the standards as it is
now. Uh, in the future, if the council wanted to be more clear
about, you know, these are the five things that we really care about
and we don't care about anything else, that's fine, but, that's not
how, this was set up. It was set up to...
'Cause, you know, no one really knew what was gonna come in, so it was set up to
give the council some, some, freedom.
As a former developer, I, I certainly have been supportive of the city
moving away from vague design requirements that were always
seen in the eye of the beholder and created opportunities for nothing more
than conflict and appeals. Uh, so having more
objective criteria in what we, what kind of
design elements should apply-
Mm-hmm
... in developments, that makes perfect sense.
Yeah.
But that's not the question in my mind before us.
This is about whether we provide a, a property tax
exemption-
Right
... and how, and it raises the, it, a matter of
design as one of those matters of public benefit-
Right
... especially when it's exceeded.
And so
it, it, it appears to inject
element that otherwise is not in our land development code.
Yeah.
But it injects that element design into a decision
on, on subsidy.
The, the language in the, in the MUPTI, and I don't have it right in front of me,
but it's, it's ref- referencing,
design and materials that are in excess of, of kind of
standard. So what we look, when we look at it from the staff level, we're not
looking at whether something's, you know, a particular time period or anything
like that. We're looking at what would be, building code
minimums and what's above and beyond that.
So, this project in particular, just right
out of the gate, the fact that it uses steel construction
is above and beyond a standard, you know, six-story kind
of, wood st- wooden or concrete base and st- and stick
construction like you'd see normally.
Um, so that right there, you know, you've got, I think they showed in
the, in the, documentation that it was about $24 a square foot.
So that's an element above. Uh, the developer also
highlighted the amount of glazing that they have on the project, whether
that's adequate or not. The main one I think from the staffing
perspective would be, you know, going to a steel construction is a very
different, kind of concept. And that's exactly the concept the council was
looking at when we went... You know, Councilor Ellis will remember when we had
those discussions with the task force-You can go up to about six
storeys with stick built construction, and then there's a dead
zone, and you've gotta get up to about 10 or more above.
And so that's how we ended up with the 123 feet, when the council made that
decision. So the intent was to get steel construction and to
push in there. We could have stopped at six storey and, and
just stayed with, you know, business as usual.
So this i- that I think is the big architectural
element when you're looking at dollars and, and cents.
Uh, staff's not real comfortable getting into questions about, wow, what's
the color of the doors, and does that match the, the colors of the
windows, and things like that. So, that's not the kinda level that we're
looking at.
We're looking primarily does it exceed the current
standards. And, for the reasons
Director Bilotta outlined, it was found that it, it does meet that criteria
according to the ordinance. With all of these, the
criteria for having been met, there's a standard,
right? Um, whether it's at least $100,000,
or whether, the project will include
additional non-required connectivity improvements.
Um, that's how we looked at
it.
Uh,
so I have Councilor Olsen and then, Councilor Ellis, but I wanted to add my
opinion. Although I don't normally get a vote, I just still have an opinion,
so
When, when I was first encouraged to run for city council by a good friend
of mine, former City Councilor George Groesch, he told me, "Trust your staff.
They're the experts." You know, 'cause we can't be experts on everything.
Um,
and but he said that it's perfectly okay to question them.
So I'm not, I'm not saying that those here who disagree with that are
wrong 'cause you're questioning it, and that's fine.
But I do have a lot of faith in staff.
I, I, I believe we have some of the best staff you could possibly ask for.
So when I looked at the criteria, there are things I questioned, and I had to
reread some things, but I f- I feel like staff knows whether criteria is being
met. Um, it's what we pay them for.
Um, some of the i- i- items that I wanna really point out is
the overall benefit
and, and I'm not getting into the details of improvements of pedestrian crosses
or railroad 'cause that there's always complications there.
But it, well, the one thing that was pointed out by staff
that wasn't actually part of the criteria used was around the, the improvement of
the area. That, you know, that area has looked very run down for many
years. You know, we, we've heard from our, our task force, and we hear from
community members all the time about the concern of downtown looking
aging. It's not a lot of people all the time, although lately I feel like it's been
doing better.
But, but
this is something we've talked about as a council and as a community that we want.
We want more people living downtown.
We want new improvements to downtown.
Um, the financial benefit is something we, we talk, we've had conversations
around, budget gap and needs to increase revenue.
Well, this was going to increase revenue.
It was gonna increase, you know, the look of our
downtown. The height of it, I, I have mixed
feelings about that. My wife has a different opinion than me.
But it's, that's not what's in question here today.
That's not something we're talking about.
So we all might have our own opinions on that.
I'm sure they vary quite a bit, and maybe after this is not
no longer a council thing, we can have conversations around those opinions.
Um,
but I'm very hopeful that the council will, will see this as a benefit and see that
it meets the criteria and hopefully will vote yes,
for something that,
you know, we talk about all the time, density, housing,
business, finance. You know, it, it checks a
lot of boxes as far as I'm concerned.
So
appreciate that. Um, I've Councilor Olsen next, and then I saw
Councilor Ellis raise her hand, and then I'll go from there.
And at some point, someone's gonna wanna
call the question, but Councilor Olsen.
Uh, yeah. I also wanna say Councilor Lewis has had a question, so if you can add
them to the list.
Will do.
Yeah. Um, I have a question and then a comment.
My first question is for Director Bilotta, and it's
how, like, what are the next...
Whether or if this gets approved by the council, what are the next steps
for the development? Specifically, is this going to go to a
planning commission process? Or, like, how would
people get involved with the land development side of it?
Sure. From the land development side, because this involves housing-
Mm-hmm
... state law generally doesn't allow much interaction at all.
So what will happen will be, the developer would apply to
get that twenty percent height bonus, which is what's called a HLUA,
H-L-U-A. That's the new state process.
Uh, we are then require... That's required to be a staff level
approval, and we would then... We do have a requirement for
notification. I can't quite remember the radius off the top of my head, but
somebody will get, will get notices and, they're
very unsatisfying notices to send out, because they
say, "Here you go. Please write in and let
us know what you think. And by the way, state law really won't let us do anything
about what you think anyway." Uh, but we do, and we send those
out, and then, those are set up.
The state law is you will approve, so then we do approve,
and then, people that submit testimony get sent,
notices that we approved, and, and then it moves forward to building
permit.
Yeah. And then my second thing is that while I still
plan to vote against this for the reasons I stated
previously, I am going to make a motion to amend
this. Um, specifically electronic packet page
two oh five under connectivity
improvements, talks about paying fifty
thousand directly to the city of Corvallis during the first year of tax
exemption following the completion of construction to be used by the city to fund
connectivity developments af-At the end of that, I would like to add
within one quarter mile of the development's property line to
ensure that this money is going to be connectivity
improvements that directly relate to the development and the surrounding
neighborhood, and not, like, not that this fund will
go, they'll, like, give us money and it'll go somewhere. So.
One, one clarification. The reason why their contribution's to
connectivity and public infrastructure is because we wanna provide
for flexibility for public works to determine what the
priorities are for that money to be used, right?
So it's, it's not as though, it's not as
though it's up to the developer how those contributions are used.
It's really up to the city to determine
its best use of that. And so I, I appreciate the motion, I just wanted to
clarify that that's why their contribution is.
Yes. And I understand that, but at the same time,
this money could be used anywhere in the city.
And while I have nothing against at North Corvallis, for
example, if you're building 600 units of housing in
downtown and they're like, "We're gonna use this on the Walnut
Boulevard," which great use of any money, that's
not going to impact 600 people living in downtown.
That's going to impact a different group of people who's not related to this
development, so.
Yeah. I- I could just add that, you know, one, one of the things to
know, you know, because this is coming in through economic development, those
funds will most likely be squirreled away in economic
development budget, so they're gonna stand out like a sore thumb, and they
won't get absorbed into a $15 million
public works budget or anything like that.
And then in the ca- capital improvement pro- planning process, that's really where
attaching it to the right thing. And what I'd hate to do with picking out an, you
know... It's, I think it's okay to say that you hope that this proper-
this gets used in the general vicinity of this or in the downtown or that
kinda thing. I worry that if we say a quarter of a mile, that we
might be 16 feet away from the really bad problem, 'cause I
don't know what distance everything is right now.
City manager?
Yeah, I think that sort of conversation about where these funds would be
used is best directed to staff and not part of this,
this agreement, and allow staff to come back and
say, "Hey, here's some options within that quarter
mile or within the vicinity," and, and talk about pros and
cons. So again, that, that's more appropriate to have a conversation
with staff about how to use that funds, not
in a MUPTE agreement.
And I, I do understand that, I
just, I don't, especially with the budget gap that we're
facing at the moment, I don't trust that if this isn't in a
resolution somewhere... Like, I trust staff fully, but I don't trust that
this won't be, "Oh, we're going to add it.
We just need a little bit of money to push this project through, and then we just
need a little bit of money to push this project for, through," and it
won't happen. I would be down to increase the
radius. I was just thinking of a quarter mile because that incorporates,
like, honestly
pretty much, the 30,
the, the fr- the, the river. The Mary's River all the way up
to, when I was looking at at least,
Madison, which is a lot of intersections and a lot of
crossings and a lot of bike lanes that could be built, so.
At this point, Councilor Olsen does not have a second.
Right.
So I'm going to second because we didn't have that option before everybody
jumped in.
And I, and I'll, my, my concern's with the motion.
I, I appreciate
your thought on this, but my concern is what if, there's an opportunity to
improve our transit system
that would benefit people living there potentially but it would be outside of that
quarter mile?
Then one bus.
But, but there's a tran- there's, there could be, money that goes to additional
funding or additional routes that go where people need to go.
So I'm saying there's potential other needs and uses that would
benefit people, not directly
necessarily. So we have a motion and a second,
and, is it... Go ahead.
I have a clarifying question on the motion, and I think it's a legal
question, which is the, the resolution
describes the basis upon which the applicant would
be granted a, a multi-unit property tax
exemption.
What, which... And if you read the language of that resolution, it
talks a lot about what the applicant is going to
do. If we approve this motion,
how does that work legally? Because this is
supposed to be an agreement of the basis upon which you're
getting this MUPTE, and now we're saying the basis upon which you're getting this
exemption
is the city doing a certain amount, doing a, a
specific project. So I think that's, I
don't know that that is clean from a legal point of view, and I have a question
about that.
Well, fortunately, we actually have the city attorney online, I believe.
So that sounds like a question for him.
D**n, Josh.
Yes. So as I understand, the question is related to the, the
amendment. Um,
and I, I guess, as I understand it, the, that,
amendment would restrict how the city can use the
funding. So it would, because this
is a resolution that's being adopted by the city, the
city would be bound to that restriction on how it can use the funding.
That wouldn't be a condition on the developers
receiving the tax exemption, if that makes
sense.
Okay.
So the, the developer gets a tax exemption, the city is self-imposing a restriction
on how it uses the funding.
And, and so if, if the city chose not to do a $50,000
project within, do, do we owe the developer the 50K back?
If, if you were to, if the city were to,
con- to use that
funding for some other project, then the
city would be in violation of this resolution and could potentially face a
cause of action from somebody. Um, if you were just
to not build the project for a period
of time, because there's no timeline on building the project, as long as that
fifty thousand dollars is either not used or is used
within that, radius, then it would
qualify.
Any other discussion on the motion to amend? Counselor Ellis?
I actually think that we could argue that this is policy when we're talking
about, um... And I, I actually appreciated the city attorney's
distinction of the resolution versus the MUFD. That was helpful.
I would think that this could be something that council could use very
effectively to lessen the impact of some of these
developments on neighborhoods. So,
it's not a very large amount of money.
Um, it's kind of a symbolic gesture, but I think that, I think
we could argue that it is policy and is appropriate and is clearly
legal to put in the resolution.
Counselor Cadena?
Yes, it very well might be legal. Um, I th- I think this,
I think it's messy and I think that it's
more, important for,
for these types of projects as they move forward
for the council to clarify how these funds
are used and not make decisions on the fly in a
particular MUFD application. I have no problem bringing these policy
issues to a policy discussion. I, I think this is just messy
and I also know on the amendment.
Any other discussion on the motion to amend? All right.
Let's go ahead.
Mayor, Counselor Shaffer-
Yeah.
Has his hand raised.
Go ahead, Counselor Shaffer.
Yeah, thank you. Excuse me. Um,
I, I'm sympathetic to the concept of the
amendment, but I'm concerned that it
entangles us and complicates the, the actual
mo- decisions and motions going forward.
And so, while I appreciate the the-
the notion, I will vote against the
amendment.
Thank you, Counselor Shaffer. We ready for a
vote?
City recorder, you have the language correctly?
Uh, yes, I do, Mayor.
Okay. Sure you have it. All right, all those in favor of the motion to amend,
say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye. I'm sorry.
Whoops.
I meant no.
It's always difficult online. Um, all those opposed say no.
No.
No.
No.
In the opinion of me as chair, it sounded like the noes had
it. But I appreciate, again, I appreciate your, your
attempt. That's what we do here. So we're back to the
resolution as written, and I have originally had Counselor Ellis, Lewis, and
Cadena, and now Napak.
I had a couple of, questions for Director Pilata.
At one point, we required like some sort of setback if you had a
high density going up against a lower density.
Mm-hmm.
Did that go away with the state?
That wa- that was part of... No, that was actually part of the mixed use project,
took away some of that.
Okay. And solar access?
Um, solar access comes into play, um...
There's two things called solar access.
There's the ability to, if you have
solar panels and you want to control
the, property next to you so that they don't shade on your
solar panels, there is a process that you can go through to get that.
They are... Your neighbor has to agree to that.
So it's, it's one of those things. But you know, if you have a...
If you and your neighbor are on good terms and you just wanna make sure that when
the neighbor sells it in ten years that it doesn't get you, you know, a lot of
times they'll do that sort of thing.
There's another kind of thing that's called solar access in the code, which is in a
subdivision level, is talking about orienting buildings in particular
ways so they can maximize the solar gain.
So, neither one of those is probably gonna be, relevant in this
location.
Mm-hmm. Um, I also wanna say that,
I don't believe, and this is no offense to, to our, our staff-
Mm-hmm
... that, steel is going above and beyond if it is kind
of the structural norm for a building of that
height. So, I, I remember- that's
s- up to six feet or six stories, they don't need to have it.
You said ab- above and beyond that, it's kind of the structural norm.
Um, so...
Counselor Lewis.
So a lot of counselors, especially Counselor Olsen Ellis, has
been more, eloquent in it, in their opinions.
Um, so I'm just like dithering a little bit, but I wanna push back a little,
about the fact that we do talk a lot about infrastructure and
beautifying Corvallis and making downtown look wonderful and
housing, but the main thing that we focus on the most is affordable
housing. And looking at these prices, I'm a renter myself, I literally
had to move because my one bedroom, for my last
apartment was going to be nineteen hundred dollars.
I make eighteen dollars an hour. I can't afford that.
I am in a two-income household. We cannot afford that.
Um, so seeing the, this just like the potential
pricing of these units, especially the studio and the
one bedroom, I'm just like, "Who is this for?" Because we...
And the, especially for, Ward Two, the n- number
one thing I hear all about is like, "It is too expensive to live in Corvallis."
They would love to live here and as they work here, they would love to not have to
commute. It is too expensive
and-As beautiful as and
wonderful as it will be to have more people to live in Corvallis, we have to make
sure they can afford it and at, and just looking
at this proposal, this is not something that I can
wholeheartedly be behind. So I will be voting no.
Councilor Katina.
Yeah, a few comments. One is I, I would encourage
us to not, make decisions based
upon personal preferences about how people
choose to live or not live. Um,
and I think the, I think the challenge for us is, and I think we're
facing this with the changes that have-- both the changes we've made here
locally as well as the changes that have come from the state.
Um, this will add a significant am-number of rental units.
I think that, we've heard, discussion
previously about our vacancy, rate in
rental housing. Our vacancy rate's low enough that we
have, stickiness, and
upward pressure on rents. Um, putting this number of units on
the market, even if it appeals
to, higher-end renters,
will have an impact on the,
available rental inventory, in the
city. Um, I, if I just walked pa-- I mean, in my ward
I, I, I know there are students that live in single-family homes that
probably would prefer to not live in single-family homes.
Um, I think that, c-creating more housing,
this is what we, this is what we said we wanted to do.
I, and I, I feel like we're in a situation
where,
where we want more housing, we want density, but then if it's too high,
we don't like that. If it's too-- If it's, if it's sprawl, we
don't like that. Um, I, I think that
hou-- you know, we need housing
and it's only gonna be through the addition of a significant amount of housing
that things are gonna become more affordable.
Um, I think that Corvallis, I mean, I've been-- I moved
to Corvallis in ninety-five. Definitely the
lack of
keeping up with our housing requirements has led us to the situation that we're in.
We, we created commercial mixed-use zones.
Um, I, I think if
you-- That will change
the nature of what gets built, and it's not
overnight, but it will change. So yeah, we
can, we can deny this,
and we can deny the next one and the next one.
Um, but I think that the
getting to affordable housing by only building affordable
housing, i.e. tax-subsidized,
a-affordable housing is not the answer.
Um, that is one element, an important element, but looking
at each in-individual proposal as the
solution to affordable housing is, is myopic.
And so I think we really do need to look at what will it take
to... This is a significant increase i-in housing.
I don't, I, I canna-- I cannot predict, I can't predict
students. I'm too far from that age to know why people have dogs and
go to college and why people have cars and go to college.
But I, I think this would, this provides the opportunity
for people to easily get around without a car.
Perhaps it will appeal to those folks. I don't really know.
Uh, but I think that
there is immediate tax benefit, albeit small,
but it is higher and much higher than it is currently.
It is a development in commercial mixed use.
It is adding a significant amount of housing.
And yes, I cannot say that,
that we know the, the full
consequences of where we're going with commercial mixed use, but
that is the path that we are on, is to build significantly more housing.
So I think we need to get on with it, and I will be in favor of
this.
City manager.
Yeah, I understand some of the, the challenge, and maybe
the angst that the council is feeling, certainly the community is feeling on
this.
And we've talked a lot about how the state has come in and, and
changed, how we can or can't
regulate development.
I also wanna remind the council that the council
itself has made multiple policy
decisions, and this project, while it's the first one,
it does
match,
layers of policy decisions the council has made
thoughtfully. And, the
MUPTI program, the way it was set up, you know, the issue of
you can either
include affordable housing or pay a fee in lieu.
And so these things were thought out in a, in
a, in a vacuum of a specific project, and I think
that's good because each project is gonna have its own,
challenges, those who oppose, those who
support. Um,
and I think it will become challenging certainly for staff to understand what
is the council's direction when we have all this policy direction
that you have given us over the years, and it certainly will be confusing
for
future developers. So again, staff's evaluation is
this is in alignment with those policy decisions and the specifics
of, our MUPTI program. So a denial
really would be confusing for, for staff and for,
developers.
But Councilor Napert, Napack and then Council Mayer's, and I believe at that point
everybody would have spoken. So unless it's something new, I'd like to get
towards a vote because it is getting late.
Councilor Napack.
I just want assurances or some,
hand-waving, if you will. Um, this is a
high-end development, and I'm just, uh...
Is there any chance that,
it would change the basis or rationale, of su-
of successfully obtaining a
downtown tax increment financing
district?
It would be, hypothetically part of the
capture for a tax increment financing district if the district were
established before construction finished
up. So
there's... A tax increment financing district has a lot
to, lot to stand to gain from the project in year
eleven.
Councilor Mayer, Moorefield, and then Schaffer.
Okay. Um,
first off,
the project objectively meets the criteria as set out,
and
whether it,
whether it meets them by a little or a lot is
irrelevant. Um,
it also meets an additional one, regarding blight, which I
totally agree with and was a little surprised that wasn't on the first part of the
list because that's a very rundown block.
So,
a question of it meeting the sub- the objective
criteria is, in my mind, not really a
question. Um, there were a lot of additional benefits that were
listed that I won't go into, one of, but, one of which that impressed
me was, a, plan to use a certain
percentage of local labor and materials, which I think is good,
is a good thing. Um, there were, some
energy, benefits that they listed above and
beyond. So, if we're looking for
benefits, I think we, we need to be,
broad-minded. And I am, I'm gonna say a
couple other things. Uh, I think it's a little
confusing, the concept
that a,
that a s- a, an apartment building just because it's higher end
that supplies housing to six hundred people is somehow
not going to free up other units for people who are
looking on the lower ends. Um, that doesn't
make logical sense to me. And so,
I think it will help with our housing situation, which is
dire. Um,
I also think single-family homes, as Councilor Kadina said,
which people are holding onto their homes because there's no inventory, it would
help free up some of that. And finally, I, I reme-
recall our discussion with the Downtown Vitality,
Strategy Task Force, infrastructure discussion, and we've been
going through all of the information that was collected from community
members on the priorities, for
downtown. And s- through our discussion last
Tuesday, several-- It came up that
several
of the things that we wanna get done downtown will actually be
accomplished by having more people living
downtown. Safety, right? More
people on the streets. Vacant buildings getting filled
because there are more shoppers. So I,
I am very much in favor of this. I think it's exactly what council had in
mind when it put this into place. And if we're gonna talk about
economic development and deny this, then
I don't know what to say. So I'll be voting
yes.
Councilor Moorefield.
Um, I'm gonna vote in favor of it. Um,
you know, there, there are aspects of this that have kinda driven me a little
crazy, and it is kinda shocking, the idea that such a tall building
will be in our downtown. Uh, but it was gonna happen
someday because we, we
do, Corvallis in particular, and the state of
Oregon, western Oregon in particular, we need to increase our housing
supply. That's one, one of the reasons why so many decisions have been taken
out of our hands locally, because the state
took the bull by the horns and said, "We're gonna work on building more
housing," or, supporting the construction of more
housing. We also have climate change and a long
time, vision that we h- are still
struggling with as a, as a nation and a community about
what we're gonna look like in the future.
All I know is that we're gonna look very different than we do today.
And, and, and I think there's consensus that we need to build
up, not out. This is up. It may be shockingly high, but
it's, but it's where we're headed.
And, and, you know, so I'm looking out a long
ways and, and seeing that this is part of our future.
This is one of the ways that we have to change, and someone had to be
first. And, so someone is taking
that chance and investing a lot of money in our, our community.
Um, affordable housing is addressed, this,
by this project indirectly by its contribution to our affordable housing
funds. Um, the, um...Downtown will
benefit by having a lot more people living downtown.
Do we have the resources to support local businesses?
Um, and, if I'm frustrated with, with,
you know, how we got here, it's because I do think the
MUPTI ordinance requires some work.
Uh, I'm not
satisfied with, the but for
analysis. I, I think the, the,
require-requirements have been met, mind you.
I'm just saying that, you know, I would like something a little bit more robust in
the future, and we can talk about that another time.
And, and I, you know, I'm not satisfied with this element of
design that we can, you know, we can
see it any way we want, as either a yes or a no or a maybe
or, or something. So I, I think it needs work. And my...
If I'm frustrated at all, it's because, because we have an ordinance
that's new,
and this is our first or second experiment
with, with it, if you will. And, and I look
forward to, tightening it up in the
future.
Councilor Schaefer, and then let's take a vote.
Thank you. Uh, I have to believe the developer in
this case recognizes that there's a need just- not just for
affordable housing, but for all housing, market rate,
everything in the downtown area. We, we simply don't have housing
downtown. And I think there are people of means
who would like to live in or closer to downtown, and this
will afford an opportunity for them.
Um, I'm, I'm concerned about the, the layout
and the plan for some of these units, that it seems targeted at
student-type
groups rather than perhaps, families
or,
you know, s-smaller units for
singles, young c- young couples, working families,
retirees, anybody. But I think that's, that's their
call, what they build. And, and so-- And I think
the fact that there is some money going to affordable housing for
this as, as required in what the council set out
at the beginning of this, they meet that, they meet that
requirement. Um, I'm tr- I am troubled about
the
parking issues.
Um, I think we're in for a messy transition from
a very car-centric transportation model to
something that's closer to,
walking, ped, whatever. But again, that's not
something we can manage and dictate in this.
The state has taken that away from me, s- from us.
So I think we just have to go with, with what's there.
Um, I have concerns, but I will be voting for the, for the,
resolution.
Thank you. Let's go ahead and move on to a, a vote.
Um, city recorder, can you do a roll call vote, please?
Yes, Mayor. Councilors Cadena?
Yes.
Mayors?
Yes.
Moorefield?
Yes.
Lewis?
No.
Napack?
Yes.
Bowden? Schaefer?
Yes.
Ellis?
No.
Olsen?
No.
The resolution passes five to three.
Thank you all very much.
And I really do appreciate the discussion and the questions and the varying
opinions, 'cause that's why there's so many of us.
And Mayor, a break?
I was just about to suggest that. I apologize to any of those who are
waiting around for the, discussion on the resolut-- on the, the,
ICE resolution. But let's go ahead and take a short break,
bio break as they call it. Ten minutes will
do. So let's return. Uh, I guess
it's... Yeah, we'll round it
up.
It is eight fifty,
so let's reconvene this meeting of the Corvallis City Council.
Next item up on the agenda is the resolution addressing
escalating federal immigration enforcement, and I want to start off by
making an apology. Um,
I should have... This was act- is actually being put on the agenda by me.
Um, I know. Paul's appears
unmuted.
I think I'm quiet.
Councilor Schaefer, if you wouldn't mind
muting.
Thought I was. Sorry.
Oh.
Did that
fix it?
Can you hear me now when we talk?
We will briefly pause to figure this
out.
David, I don't know if you can hear me.
We're still getting quite a significant
echo.
You have an interesting
definition
of better.
Okay. I think we should proceed.
Okay.
I think it's been resolved.
I think so.
Thank you.
Thank you. Apologies for technical
errors. Technology's fine. Anyway, so the...
I wanted to, apologize because the resolution, was brought
forth onto the agenda by me, and not realizing I should've removed
Councilor Olsen's name from it, 'cause that's usually there for whoever
moves the resolution forward if it gets adopted, things like that.
And I should've pres- I should've provided a cover page, explaining why the-
why this resolution's in the agenda.
So that, that is my fault, and I apologize for any confusion that
created. Um, but the reason why
it was added, and it was kind of sort of last minute,
is 'cause it was brought forward to this council.
It was shared with everybody, and I feel like the timing is kinda
critical on this. Um, as, spoken earlier t- this
evening, we are being surrounded by a lot of ICE
activity. It's a matter of time, and I think it's important
to make our residents of our, of our community feel that we support
them. Um, interesting timing on,
Saturday was the Celebrate Corvallis,
and the, person who won First Citizen
was not a citizen.
And e- he, he made it... explained how he's, he's not a legal
or, or political, citizen, but he's a citizen
nonetheless. He, he, he contributes to our community.
He's an, a amazing person, and for obvious reasons, won, First
Citizen. So what does that say about our community?
And if we don't, take some sort of action to support
members of our community who perhaps speak a different language or
have a different color skin than I do, then we're not supporting our
community. So I added this to the agenda.
Obviously, I can't vote on it. I also can't even make the motion that's
required to move it forward. But I do have the authority,
thankfully, to at least put things on the agenda, so that's what I did.
Um, so I'll leave it in the hands of all of
you.
I mean, I'll make a motion to cons- I don't know what the official words are for
this. Motion to consider it, motion to...
But what's the words, Alex?
Uh, normally we would have the title of the resolution read.
Correct. So get a title read, and then if you'd like to move the resolution
forward, that would be fine. I just wanna see if we wanna get as far as reading the
title. So city recorder, would you please read the re- resolution?
This is a resolution addressing escalating federal immigration enforcement.
I move to approve the resolution. Adopt?
Approve? Adopt.
Both, both are correct.
Okay.
Go either way. Sometimes just so moved even works, but
I like when someone says what the resolution...
All right, we have a motion to approve, and it was seconded. Uh, discussion?
Councilor Navick.
Uh, thank you. I wanted to first say how much
I appreciate our community,
resolve, in, in, in this situation
and, the work that was put forth to put this resolution
forth. Um,
there unfortunately are a
few, well, more than a few,
unworkable situations or,
asks, if you will, that the city
cannot provide. Uh, the city
actually, is,
um... A- after talking with, community development,
the city is,
due to the Supremacy Clause, the city is helpless.
If the s- if, the federal
government wanted to come in and,
claim emi- eminent domain and, and
build a detention facility, and we have, we are powerless to do anything about
that. It's called the, the,
Supremacy Clause. And, people have tried with
moratoriums, especially in the State of Washington, but,
they're all in, in court now. The,
other thing is that our bandwidth, you know, we are doing a lot
now, in terms of,
downtown vitaliz-
revitalization and, task forces, civic
center, and so on and so forth. It's...
But nevertheless, the, the,
intent is clear from, from the
community. And on that
basis,
Councilor
Ellis and I put together a
substitute,
proposition, that
explains the, the, the sentiment, I
think, as, as well as
it can be. It, it shows... It has,
uh... It cites the, four or five
previous resolutions that we have in our, our
city,
strategic plan and our, our city vision,
to affirm that we
are a, undivided, shall we
say, and in one, one body,
we support our immigrant community.
Um, we don't support
the activities that are being
propagated by the,
federal government at this time. And so
if, if I
may, what I would like to propose now
is to table the first
resolution-Until after we
discussed the proposition that,
was mailed to our council this morning and
published, at least it's somewhere published.
Um,
and the, the copy of that proposition should be in your
mailbox, in your email. Do we have
copies thereof? And we have copies to pass out.
So that would be, um... Anyway, I motion to
table the first resolution until
after we discuss the, the,
proposition from Councilor Ellis
that, goes into,
the rationale and the reasoning
for,
for
a, um-
I have it
... substitute.
I'll second that.
Okay, we have a motion to table, technically time uncertain, although I
think, we could probably get this on a agenda very fast, assuming
everybody feels that way. Um,
discussion, I don't even think there's an ability to discuss on tabling a
motion really.
Well-
Except for the time
part.
Yeah, there's certain motions we don't get too often, and then I forget how we're
supposed to do those, so.
Skipping it.
Change.
Mayor.
Yes, yes.
So that was a motion to postpone consideration of an item-
Yep
... to a certain time. Um-
That's me.
It i- ... A r- A second is required, the motion is
debatable, and the motion is amendable, and it
requires a majority
vote.
I'm looking on the cheat sheet here under, subsidiary motions number
four, postpone temporarily, table to a time uncertain.
Um, says motion debatable, no. For some reason it's
wrong.
Um, I-
Oh, wait, I'm looking at the wrong one.
I was looking at item number seven just because there was a, a time
certain, stated by councilor in APAC that-
What it said just until we can review.
I don't know if that would be considered time certain.
But I, I may have misheard. I was passing out the materials.
But, I thought that she said consider it, after
the consideration of this resolution reaffirming Corvallis as a
sanctuary city.
Right, and we don't know when that'll be.
Oh, I- ... I thought it was right after this discussion during this meeting.
But feel free to correct me.
I mean, if that's, if that, I, if that was what the intent of the motion was,
Councilor Nate.
Was it, was it to consider this tonight?
Yeah.
The, 'cause the community has not seen this yet.
Uh, to consider the substitute resolution
tonight.
Okay, so you're just wanting to table this other resolution till after we...
Today, okay.
Yeah.
So that's, that's debatable then. All right.
We can do that?
It sounded like it was a time uncertain, so that's why.
So we can debate, it now.
And we are debating the tabling, not the resolution itself.
Right, right. Just the motion to table the current discussion of the
resolution to have a discussion about this resolution. That's clear.
Okay.
So. Councilor Olsen?
Um, I am not in favor of tabling this resolution
until afterwards because I believe that the resolution we have in
place is,
um... Well, one, I don't believe we've had enough
time to review the
sanctuary city resolution, considering I noticed it at
2:00 PM today, while I've had the other resolution for a
while. Um, sorry, that came out with way more snark than it meant to.
It was not meant to be snarky.
Um, yes. But also I think that the resolution we have in front
of us is important, and it provides actionable items as
opposed to just, "Hey, we're going to say that w- like, we already have
things in place. We don't need to say again that we're have the
things in place that we all know we have in place.
So I, because of those reasons, I believe
that,
yeah, I don't think we should table this resolution.
I think we should deal with it first, and then
if we want, we can add this item to the agenda.
Councilor Cadena, then APAC.
Yeah, speaking to the motion to table, I
think that we have to, we have another, we have an
alternative that is worth discussing and
a, a different approach that is suggested.
I think that would be the purpose for tabling, is to get to that
discussion. So I'm in favor of the tabling.
Councilor Napack?
I think the information that's in the sanctuary city resolution
is important enough
that it would, replace quite a bit of what was said in the first
resolution. So I would like to,
um... I will vote for
tabling.
Anyone else or should we take a vote?
Seeing the hands.
Okay, let's go ahead and move to a vote.
All those in favor of the motion to table the current resolution
to
potentially entertain this other resolution, I guess, say,
"Aye."
Aye.
All opposed, say, "No."
No.
No.
Sound like the ayes have it, so therefore the resolution in the packet is
tabled until after we review this one.
Mayor, can I just have the no votes clarify?
I believe I heard Councilor Olsen and Councilor Lewis. Thank you.
That's what I heard
as... Councilor Lewis.
I do hear the concern that people didn't get the motion until later on
today, or t- the, the new resolution till later on today.
So if that, um-
I, I understand that. And I, if I, if I hadn't been, involved in
it, I would probably be a little, squiffy about it as well, and I do not
think that Councilor Ol-Olson was intending to be snarky.
Um, when I looked at the
resolution, and I looked at the actions,
I had con- Even... And I'm totally
concerned also about ICE coming to Corvallis, but I looked at
the actions, that were suggested, and I
thought, to quote Director Blaine,
he likes to underpromise and overdeliver, and this
felt to me like the opposite. We are promising to do things that we probably
could not do. Um, we actually asked Director
Bilotta if we could ban, a facility, and
he said, "No, I've never heard that question before, and no."
Um, private property, as places all over the country are finding
out to their great dismay. Um, so there are
things in there that we can't do. And then,
I actually really like working with Councilor Napack on
resolutions. Um, she, she, she's got a really good eye
for them, so I reached out to Councilor Napack and asked to work with
her. And, she discovered
the, the House bills and the Senate bills that were sitting on the
governor's desk, and actually I believe talked to Sen- Representative
Finger McDonald about them at the legislative breakfast, and
they hit considerable of the other things that were
there. And so I... And I think it's much better for the state to do
this so it's everywhere and it's clear than for us to do it.
So that combination of promising to do things that we legally
couldn't do, and then the state taking action made
me think that this might be a better situation.
I do think that there are a couple of things in here that we
could direct
the city or the city manager or somebody to do.
Um, if we pass the, the, the,
the resolution that we wrote with the Senate and the s-
s- or with the House bills and the Senate bills in it, I think there's a couple
of things in there that we could dir- then direct the city manager
to do, such as using the city communication platforms to
communita- communicate to the community.
That seems to me to be a pretty straightforward thing.
And perhaps, asking Jedi to solicit community
empowerment grants in the next cycle, 'cause unfortunately the request
has already gone out this year and we can't change it.
Um, those things seem, like, doable, but some of the other things just felt
like something we couldn't do, and I didn't wanna promise something that we just
couldn't
do.
Councilor Greena and then Olson.
Uh, I wanna thank, both, Councilor Ellis and Councilor
Napack for what I think is, nicely done
work. Um, I think the reference to
the, the bills in the Oregon
legislature, is a very strong addition and
recognition that we're not in this alone.
Um, absolutely. I also... Uh, I'm not gonna reiterate everything that
Councilor Ellis said because I think I agree with it.
Um, but I also wanna say f- beyond
that, I think the, the
resolves, speak much more strongly
to what we wanna say to our community, and
that is our support for every, every member of our
community, and a re-affirmation of our
values. I think that comes across much more strongly in this resolution, and
I, I really like that. I think that,
um... I think it's
important, um... I think
this ke- I think this keeps the, the direction we're pursuing
very clear without trying to overspecify.
And I think when we overspecify, we tend to get into that potentially
promising something we couldn't deliver on
or,
making requests that are a ch- a challenge for staff to
figure out. Um, so I, I like the tone.
I like the level of detail on this. I think that, um...
And I feel particularly, good about the,
the message that it sends to the
community.
Councilor Olson. And I will point out at this point there is no
resolution on the table.
Mm.
So if, if there's, if there's interest in having the city recorder read it and
move forward today, that would...
something we would need to do before anything happens.
But Councilor Olson.
Should I give Councilor Ellis a chance to do that first?
She seemed like she wanted to-
Well, I'll look for head nods. Do we want, do we wanna,
potentially, not definitely, 'cause that takes a vote, adopt this resolution?
Should the city recorder read it to get it?
I am gonna move that the city recorder read the resolution.
I don't think that really needs a motion to have it, have it read.
The motion comes after that, which is the more important part.
So we'll go ahead and, we'll go ahead and, um... Hmm?
Talk to
me.
City recorder, will you please read the resolution?
Yes, Mayor. The title of the resolution is A Resolution Reaffirming
Corvallis as a Sanctuary City.
Now this would be the point when someone would make a motion to move it forward.
So moved.
Second.
Councilor Olson?
Yeah. Um, so first off, I'm going to vote in favor
of this resolution because I agree with everything it says and
think it's a good one. Um, I am going to
say, and I am going to say this
with the backing of this is not-
These are a lot of emotions that I have felt, and they are not exclusively directed
at this council. But this is my favorite type of resolution, the
kind that lists a whole bunch of values and does nothing to
protect them, which says the City of Corvallis
likes what the state's doing, but we don't think that we're important enough,
or, and we don't care about our community enough to put in our own
protections on top of what the state's doing.
It's a list of, "Hey, here's some cool stuff people have done." Things,
a list that you could have pulled off online, or if you had read
literally any article on
what happened this legislative session, which I've read many, these would have
been highlighted. Um,
yeah. It's, it's saying that w-we love, we love
immigrants, we love the people in our community, but we aren't going to take any
actions as a city to protect them. We aren't going to
take any actions as a city to even
consider... Not like... M- All of the...
At least in the old resolution, which is not on the table, none of those were we
are going to do this, or are we are going to look into doing
this. And
this has none of that. It is, it's,
it's like the No Kings protest. It's a whole bunch of people yelling and
making no movements and no community involvement.
And I am very, very
frustrated. And also, if anyone tries to be like, "Well, why didn't you say
this when we talked about the trans sanctuary resolution?" I would have loved if
that resolution had any actionable steps by the city, but when we were bringing it
forward, we considered it too diverse of a, too di-divisive as
is, so we didn't want to even push that.
But anyways, to... Yeah. So my
opinion on this is that, sure, it's great, it's wonderful,
it's the same thing we see. It's, it's
just,
it's pointless. It's pointless when these are already things that we as a
community believe, already things we have signed in a resolution,
already things the state has done, and we're just writing our own list
to make us feel good. Thank you.
Please don't. Do not applaud, please.
Um, I will say, Councilor Olsen, I appreciate your opinion, and I share
it.
But here we are, so .
Any other discussion on the current re-re-resolution? Councilor Neidbach.
I, I appreciate, Councilor Olsen's passion.
Uh, I, I, I do need to point out, though,
that if we
did with what it says in the first resolution, we would be duplicating what the
state legislature has just done. They have
written extreme, you know, quite a bit of, uh...
If you read the rules, the public schools have to,
develop, programs,
a-adopt
policies to notify families, students, and staff.
We, we couldn't tell the school district to do
that. But they did do it. Okay.
They, uh... We can't tell employers to,
um... They, they can't
this, that, or the other thing. We, we could, but the state is already
saying it, so why should we duplicate that?
I'm also seeing, you know, the,
law enforcement operations. If they come to Corvallis,
and Corvallis is the only
city that has a, a rec- a, a law that
says you can't wear, face coverings,
as opposed to the entire state saying you can't do that, and the power of the
state legislature behind that rule,
as opposed to tiny Corvallis. It, it, it makes a
difference that the state has adopted these
and other resolutions to protect all of
Oregon, and we're gonna put... If we piggyback on
those, we still end up with the same rules and
regulations in Corvallis that we would otherwise had we invented them
ourselves or carried them, carried through with them ourselves.
Thank you.
I'd like to interject, Mayor. We keep referring back to the other resolution
that's been tabled and not really talking much about the resolution that's
currently on the table. So if we can keep comments to the current
resolution, 'cause if it, it... No matter what, after we address this, the other
one goes back, comes back. So we can discuss concerns or
whatever about the other-
Uh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
But keeping things moving here.
But it, but, but this, this proposition, the sanctuary city proposition, actually
has more
in it, that... The talking about
landlord-tenant confidentiality.
Um, it talks about, the federal
government having to register their law enforcement activities to the
local jurisdiction. Um,
regulates access to public hospitals by federal agents.
It, orders public bodies may not give certain data to data
brokers based on immigration data.
Um, so it is very... You know, the state did a good
job. And the governor
is... Both houses, the Senate and the House, passed these.
They're enrolled. Uh, these will become
ordinances. These will become laws.
They will be, have to be followed by everyone in Oregon,
including our fair
city.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
If there was something in the resolves to encourage
the city manager that somebody wishes, wished to add into the
resolution, that is easily
done.
Technically.
I'm not, I'm not addressing either the, the values of either resolution.
I'm just saying that if there was something that we felt like needed to be
added in, that would be, that would be a pretty straightforward
motion, or it could be a standalone motion at,
after we've-
We finish with this
Call again. City manager.
As, as Councilor Napack was speaking, it just made me think,
just this is purely from a practical standpoint,
should
these laws and directives be challenged, it will be the state that
defends those,
and not the city, which I think there's, from a financial and
just a, a resource standpoint,
is helpful for the city. And s-certainly, I
think the resources of the state, having them bring that to
bear rather than us trying to bring, our resources to
bear, are likely to be
more effective, if anything is to be
effective.
Anything else on this resolution or should we move to a
vote?
Council Mayers.
I have a parliamentary sort of a question.
Mm-hmm. Go ahead.
Well, it just seems to me that this is kind
of like a, substitution, or could be
a substitution.
Kind of, except for it completely eliminates the direction of the other
one. So the other one-
Well-
The other one's not gone away. I think it was tabled.
So it's-
Right. It should have-
It's, it's just been taken on, put on another table instead of the table we're
dealing with.
Okay.
And then that resolution is now on this table.
So once we vote on this, regardless of its
outcome, we're back to the other resolution.
Okay. That seems-
So it's, it's because of it being... No, no, it's not a substitution.
Okay.
It's a, a first this.
Okay.
Councilor Napack.
You, do you think we should div-divide the
question?
No. I mean, it is already divided. We're asking, we're asking one question right
now. Do we want-
But if we, if we pass one resolution, then the other one's moot.
Nope.
Nope?
Not at all.
We can pass them both?
Technically.
Oh, okay.
They are two separate resolutions. We didn't vote down the other one.
It was just tabled. So let's go ahead and take a
vote, and then just for clarity, I wanna do a roll call vote on this if...
Sure. Jack. City recorder, if you would,
please.
Yes. This is a vote regarding the resolution reaffirming Corvallis's
sanctuary city. Councilors
Lewis.
Yes.
Shaffer.
Yes.
Mayors.
Yeah. Yes.
Morefield.
Yes.
Napack.
Yes.
Cadena.
Yes.
Bowden. Olson.
Yes.
Ellis.
Yes.
The resolution passes eight to zero.
Thank you very much. Now, we're back to the
resolution that was tabled, was motioned and
seconded. Um, and I'm gonna speak to it a minute 'cause there's been some things
said that I, I kind of scratched my head a bit thinking about it,
stating there are things in there that we cannot do or that would be
illegal. However, nowhere on here does it say to do those things
exactly. It says that the city c- the council of the city of
Corvallis resolves to encourage the city manager to continue to take
actions demonstrating this commitment, including a ) to evaluate
legal avenues to prevent, delay, or disadvantage the development of facilities to
be used for federal immigration enforcement purposes.
It does not say block development.
It doesn't say to not allow development.
It says to pursue legal avenues, 'cause maybe there's something out there.
Maybe there'll be, our district attorney, you know, or, or, or,
Oregon district attorney might come up with some legal battle that he, that gets
won, that shows, that sets precedence that we can block.
Currently, doesn't seem like we could. But we can evaluate it.
To evaluate legal avenues for peace officers of the city to request to identif-
identify, identity of apparent immigration enforcement agents when
legally permissible.
Doesn't say you're definitely gonna, it says you're gonna evaluate if it's legally
permissible. I think that's, it's, it's, it's work- we're, we're,
this is high level direction as far as I'm concerned.
Again, to utilize existing city communication platforms to connect the community
with clear and reputable information. I think we should already be doing that.
We have a city website, and I think we should be able to provide clear guidance to
the community of where they can find other information.
Um, that, that's the law. We, we kind of already do that with our
municipal code. It's on there. That's the law.
Um,
d ) to ident- to identify and evaluate additional opportunities
consistent with the city's legal authority, again make sure we're doing it within
legal authority, to collaborate with community-based organizations, service
providers, regional partners to support community trust, access to information, and
public safety for all residents. We sort of already do that.
E ) To consider adoption of the Attorney General's model policies regarding
immigration where appropriate. We should already be doing that.
And then f ) To ensure all non-public spaces in city buildings are clearly
identified and labeled with signage indicating restricted access.
We have some of that in City Hall. I haven't been to every city facility to find
out if it's done everywhere, but that's good.
That's something that I encourage every
business, school, anywhere that has areas that are for
employees only should have those labels up, because
then police, regardless of what, entity it is,
cannot enter without a warrant. So
that's... I mean, we're not saying we're gonna
overhaul buildings. It's signage, and it'll, it might take a while depending on how
much is needed. But it just, it's to, it's
to encourage the city manager to continue taking these actions.
I think that's pretty clear. And regarding the comment about the Jedi board
soliciting community empowerment grant applications, it doesn't say when.
So I agree, they're already kind of in it.
It couldn't be done, but maybe the next time, which I think is a good
idea, obviously. And then sending copies of this
resolution. We probably would do that anyway, so at least I would like to think we
would. So I, I personally do not see the major
concern-Um, this is action. This is saying we're gonna
do these things, but it doesn't say exactly when or whether we can
legally accomplish it. We're just gonna try.
We're gonna try to find out what we can do legally.
Um,
and as, Director Bilotta apparently said, like, maybe there's no way we can
block a facility, and that would be unfortunate 'cause I really don't want
one, or anywhere, honestly. So
my, my hope is that this gets a- adopted, but
you're all the councilors.
Councilor Olson.
Yeah. Um, I second everything you ever...
you just said about all of these being, we're going to evaluate, we're
going to con- look at this. An evaluation means we can look at it
and decide that's not legal, and then we would...
we don't do it, and that's the end of that.
Um, so to sum up what you said, additionally,
all... this language was all reviewed by our city attorney multiple times and
was edited and then sent back, and then edited again.
So our city attorney has, examined this, determined all of the leg- language
in here to be legal and things we can do.
Um, this resolution does not include everything that was in the
previous resolution because it was written with the knowledge that the state was
working on these, and so we didn't need to replicate efforts.
And in fact, things such as, you know, evaluating
legal avenues for the city to request the identity of apparent
immigration agents, that will be so much easier now that they cannot wear masks
due to state limitations, and they have to have visible ID.
So we are asking... And if anything, it will make the community safer,
considering
OSU has already had people on campus pretending to be fake
immigration agents. And that, for
me personally, that
specific, you know, letter B is really important because
I don't want my community to be able to be terrorized by three bored
frat guys who decide to... that they wanna be immigration agents.
And so by coming at it as we're requesting their identification to make sure that
they're legal immigration agents and not just some guy,
um... Yeah. And then, oh my gosh, I had one more thing I
was gonna say on this. Yeah. Broad- I am
just in support of taking actual
actions on this, and I am very proud of all of
the work that the community has put into this.
And
yeah, I am proud to have my name on it, and also Mayor Mon's name,
whoever's names ends up being on there.
And additio- oh, that was the other thing.
And for people who worry that we might be getting our
hands dirty by putting additional restrictions on things
or by drawing attention to us by the federal government,
we're already involved in legal activities
relating to the federal government, so it's not like they don't know who we
are. They know about the city of Corvallis. That's not...
We're not not on their list. We're already on their
list. So it, it can't
hurt, and I am fully in support of this
resolution.
Councilor Moorfield?
Um-
Oh, go ahead.
I, I'm substantially supportive.
Um, most of these things are
commonsensical, and they align well with the resolution we already passed
and, and aren't necessarily in conflict.
Um, the,
the only question I had,
even though it uses the word evaluate legal av- avenues,
it's specific... I'm talking about A now.
It's specific to the development of facilities.
Um, you said that the city attorney reviewed
this and didn't have a problem with the language.
Um, the question I wanna make s- I wanna see if it was asked or
if city, city attorney's not with us now, I assume.
Yeah. Um, I'm gonna ask the question.
Um, when we say ahead of time
that we're going to oppose or delay, prevent,
disadvantage the development of facilities, which
requires a l- which may involve a land use action,
we are actually disadvantag-
disadvantaging
ourselves in making a case,
or being able to make a case to say no, if that makes
sense. In other words, if we're presented with
something that requires some sort of discretionary review,
and I don't know what... You know, there's times most development these days does
not have much discretion attached to it, but it does
sometimes. And I don't know enough about where things like
jails are even allowed in our, our town from a land use point of
view to understand what issues may or may not be
involved. But,
you know, when we've had certain kinds of land use related
decisions, we have to declare whether we have a bias or not.
And if we do, we have to recuse ourselves.
Mm-hmm.
So if we're gonna pass a resolution saying, "Oh, we oppose this on
principle," and then we're gonna b- also, not
have to recuse ourselves if we're presented with a decision that is a
discretionary one that gets to the level of the council, I, I don't know why
the, the attorney wouldn't have addressed that. Um...
Can I respond to this? Okay. Um,
yeah. Uh, main... So when we were...
Well, I say we. I'm reading from a document that really wasn't
put together by myself, but from
both the city attorney and the city manager, it was
read, item A was read as a request for a
staff/city attorney, to determine what
legal means the city might have to prevent an ICE facility.
I think that there will be few options for the city to regulate use on private
property outside of current zoning limitations.
That said, it is something that council could af- ask time to
spend, ask staff to spend time researching.
Additionally, like you, like-
Excuse me, Councilor Olson, real quick.
Yeah.
City manager's had his hand raised.
I wanna see what-
I, I, I just wanna clarify. From my knowledge, the city
attorney reviewed an earlier version that was presented,
and I did appreciate, the request for that review.
But, to my knowledge, the city attorney did not review
the version that's actually in here.
The version, that's in the council
packet, was revised based on some comments, but
not reviewed again by the city
attorney.
Yeah. Were you just reading an email?
Uh, I was reading comments on the document itself that I was provided, so.
Yeah, 'cause that, that, that could be considered
confidential client information from the city attorney.
It, it was g- it was given to a community member, not me.
Oh.
So I'm assuming it's not confidential since the community's not clients.
To clarify, those were comments I wrote based on
information I got from the, the city attorney, and again, those
comments were on a previous
version.
Yeah.
But this language was on the previous version you reviewed,
right? That clause specifically?
Not as written, no.
Okay.
I mean, to say what I had said earlier
also, we're evaluating avenues. We send it to the attorney, they
say, "Yeah, this will get you in trouble with the land use." And we go,
"Great. Good to know." And then that's the end of the
story.
And-
Let me make a suggestion, though, that saying it...
Asking the question is fine, but putting it in the form of
a resolution, we're stating a position, an end to
which... that we're trying to achieve.
And, from a land
use, perspective, we're,
we're pre-judging a land use request that might come
our way and, and that, that is grounds for
applicants to say, "You have to recuse yourself."
Technically true.
Yeah.
And, and, and, and, you know, at the end, we also...
When there's, when there's public hearings on land use, we also ask, you know, "Is
this the appropriate body for this decision?" And one might be going,
"No." And then the decision is no longer ours to make.
So, y- yeah.
So I mean, I, I, I, I get your point, and I don't think you're wrong
necessarily, so.
Councilor Cadena.
Yeah, a couple comments. There was a comment made earlier about, the feds
complying with our land development code.
I believe that when the feds do any kind of
facility, they don't have to comply with local land development code.
Is that correct, city manager?
That's correct. Whether it's a post office or
any other facility, they, they may take into
consideration local land use, but there's a supremacy clause that they
do not have to follow, state or local land use
regulations.
Okay. So my... the... I just wanted to clarify that one point.
Um, the rest of my comments are
I don't want anybody to mistake that I think what's going on in
s- immigration enforcement is abhorrent,
and the lack of due process, poor training,
the targeting of folks, with
likely no probable cause, et cetera, et cetera. It's...
Uh, there's... Words can't describe it.
Um, I have a, a... I think that
I'm also sensitive to
when we say that we're gonna encourage the city manager to evaluate certain things
that I, I don't, I don't like putting something...
asking the staff to do things that,
basically will result in nothing. I, and...
Or, or that we set staff up for an
expectation that something will come out of it, and the, and
the viewpoint is, "I don't know what we can
do." But beyond that, aside from the staff
impact,
I think that, Councilor Olsen made the comment
that, you know, we want something that does something.
Uh, we want a resolution that does something.
I, I think one could make an argument this resolution won't do...
accomplish anything
from the perspective of
containing ICE. I think that
what I,
what I think is
from my personal experience, my personal perspective, and perhaps it's because
I grew up in a different era
and because I'm old, but I think
that
because I b- because I grew up in San Jose, California,
and yeah, there's a lot of Latinos in, in San Jose now, and but
we were definitely a minority.
And
I've, I've gotten... I've grown quite weary
of politicians doing things
but they're not actually accomplishing anything.
And by doing things, I mean by making statements.
My favorite being, of course, "Of course I'm in favor of common sense
immigration reform," and yet that's
never been delivered. I think I
want... I think the mess we have at the
federal level, I want it to be resolved. And I, I wish that our...
I don't wanna go off on a rant, but I wish that our legislature would actually pass
some laws that would address the very specific issues
that the country by and large supports.
I think you have to control the border, you have to have a good immigration
policy, and you have to provide a f- path towards citizenship.
Like I don't see that this does anything but create a false
expectation. This resolution creates a false expectation that
there's going to be some-Change that occurs
because of the city manager or city staff taking
action. And
I mean, it might make us feel good, but I
think what the best thing we can do is to support our
community to know that they
have... That we have their backs.
Um, and I think we need to have the backs of our vulnerable
members in ways that maybe
are consistent with their concerns.
And I'll, I'll give an example without being too
explicit. There's a lot of talk about making
things very visible. My wife's a physician.
There are physicians that are concerned about
vulnerable populations that will not go to appointments, et
cetera. There's already a significant effort to try to
address that concern,
by choice from participants and
practitioners.
There's a desire to
make sure that
confidentiality and, and in
fact, anonymity is
preserved. I don't want more visibility of
things
that appear to be accomplishing something, but they're actually not.
So I, I'm not in favor of this resolution because I don't
think it sp- it speaks to what we can do.
I think it promises things that
realistically I don't know how to evaluate city staff when we ask them to
do something that can't be done.
Is there something urgent, pressings? I really wanted to move towards a vote.
It's after nine thirty at night, but if you have something,
sure.
Thank
you.
Um,
yes. Um, it's been said that, we need to
evaluate legal avenues and so forth with land use.
It's already been stated very clearly by our city manager and
by Paul Balota that those legal avenues are not
available. And so I don't see the point
of, A, to
evaluate legal avenues for peace officers of the city to request the
identity of apparent immigration enforcement agents when legally
permissible. It's pretty much legally
permissible after stuff has happened.
If law enforcement stops something to
ask for their ID while it's happening, that's a big
no-no. I did a lot of research on this before
this meeting because
I was concerned about putting our
officers in a legally questionable position,
and
I guess what I'm saying is there's really no way to do A or B.
And so
to, to explore legal avenues to do them
looks like a very much a dead end. As far as
the rest of it, you know, our staff is totally maxed
out. I mean, I would love to do all of it.
I don't know
how much of it we can do. I mean, this is just
reality. And so, anyway,
and it kills me because it's a horrible
situation. Um,
anyhow, we've said enough, I guess.
We move to a vote.
Can we have a roll call vote, please, city recorder?
Yes, Mayor. This is a vote on the resolution addressing escalating federal
immigration enforcement.
Councilors Moorfield?
No.
Ellis?
No.
Olsen?
Yes.
Kadena?
No.
Bowden? Napack?
No.
Schafer?
No.
Lewis?
Yes.
Mayors?
No.
The resolution fails two to six.
Thank you all for the conversation.
Okay.
We'll move now on to the-
Mayor?
Yes. Council Ellis.
I did say that we could, independently move,
some of the things in the,
suggestions after we decided on whether or not to avoid, to,
to approve the resolution. So I am going to move
to utilize ci- existing city communication platforms
to connect the community with clear and reputable information available in both
English and Spanish regarding, I'm just gonna read the whole
thing. A, rights afforded to immigrants under federal and state law.
B, community-based legal and social service resources available to immigrants and
their families. And C, other relevant info, information
intended to support community awareness and access to services for
informational purposes only.
Second.
Thank you. We have a motion and a second.
Any discussion needed on this item? Question Napack?
A friendly amendment perhaps is that it's not just Spanish, but Farsi
and everything else.
Sorry.
I would think, I would think to the ability that a website-
Never mind
... may be, I would, I would try to-
I retract.
Okay. I, I, I like the idea that, you know, Arabic and everything else, and it's
like I'm sure the city staff can figure out-
Everything else is a pretty broad category.
Yeah.
Yeah. Oh-
To whatever extent-
As, as appropriate, how about that?
Yeah.
Thank you.
All right. Let's go ahead and take a vote on this.
All those in favor of the motion, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
All opposed, say no. That passed unanimously.
Thank you, Councilor Ellis. Go ahead.
Um, I'm also going to move, because I think that we could do this over time,
section F: To ensure all non-public spaces and city buildings are
clearly identified and labeled with signage indicating restricted
access.
Second.
Yeah, I, I actually believe, that's already been done based
on other issues a couple years ago.
But we can, we can confirm that.
Yep. Um-
I suspected as much.
Yeah. So
yeah, if this passes, we will just confirm that that work has been done.
Appreciate that. Discussion? No.
All in favor of the motion, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
All opposed, say no.
Did that get a second?
Yes, it did.
Okay.
Councilor Ellis? That, that passed unanimously, by the way.
Thank you. Um, could you report back to us in, like, a
month?
Yes, I can.
Thank you. Um, the last one is, I am going to just say
resolve that the council encourages the Jedi Board to solicit community
empower grant applications to assist those affected by escalating
immigration enforcement in the next round of
grants.
Second.
Motion and second. Council Morefield?
Uh, when I saw this draft, I looked up what the current grant criteria
are. I thought it already allowed it.
I did not look it up. I just assumed that it wasn't there because it was
here.
Maybe, maybe it makes it more of like a-
I mean it-
-to focus a bit more there since it's already allowed.
The green grants were giving an extra point for a certain thing-
Mm-hmm
-in the last couple of years, so maybe that was the thought.
I think it's still good to just solidify that
maybe. Okay, all those in favor of the
motion, say aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
All opposed say no.
Aye. Sorry.
That's all right. Sorry. Council Schaefer.
That's a yes.
Okay. I didn't hear any of those though. All right.
It passed unanimously. Is that it?
I think.
Okay.
I think that cut all the things we can actually do. Thank you.
Thank you. Well, hopefully I'm not too tired to get through my presentation.
Uh, moving on to mayor and council reports.
In my mayor's report, I'm finally getting-- got around to doing the presentation
regarding the Mayor's Innovation Project conference that I went-- that you all sent
me to in DC. I apologize for it taking so long, but,
as you know, I came, I got sick while I was there, and was sick afterwards, and
it put my whole life delayed. So,
but let me get this brought up. I'll try to go very
quickly through these slides. It's late, but I just wanted to keep my promise to
you all. This was the, agenda. I'm gonna
switch gears here so I could see it, 'cause I can't read it there.
Um, the topics, well, it's gonna...
All my slides will have the topics, so it doesn't matter.
Um, we can go ahead and next slide.
We've got to get better slides.
Well, I made this, so it's probably my fault.
Um, as you can see, it was cold there.
Like, on average, it was like between seven and seventeen
degrees, so I was freezing. Um, the, the
actual conference was held at the Laborers' International Union of
America, and fortunately, I was able to afford to bring my wife along.
So
that was kind of like a weird vacation of learning stuff for our
city. The first topic was Leading Under
Pressure: Protecting Elected Officials, which I found very interesting considering
some of the legislation that's been passed here in Oregon recently.
Um, next slide. This might be a little hard to
read, but one of the... So on all these, there was multiple speakers,
usually between three and four speakers per th- per thing.
They all had their own presentation. This was a two-day conference.
Uh, I'm trying to point out just the things that really caught my attention that I
thought were really interesting.
So the two colored graphs you see there, the blue is male
mayors, the yellow is female mayors.
Uh, the top one is mayors who experience harassment more than three times per month
in office,
and that was twenty-five percent of, of female mayors.
And the bottom is mayors who experience harassment at least once per month in
office. So I found it very interesting of the,
the, the, the variance there between male and female mayors.
Um, and then you see some of the quotes there, from other mayors around the s-
around the country, stalker, vandalizing homes, et
cetera. Next slide.
Um, these were some of the proposed solutions, and I, and I actually really thought
these were interesting. And the first one is normalize the position as a job.
Um,
we put a lot of hours into this kind of work, and, and this is still mostly focused
on mayors, but it really applies to all of us.
Uh, I, I'm not sure how often you get harassed or
threatened, but it's happened to me.
Um, so some of the solutions norm- no-normalize support professional development,
normalize support for personal protection, staff dedicated to the mayor, I
kinda like that one, and raising wages, which is something I plan on
bringing back, later this year after we get through some of our conversation
around our budget gap.
So I found, I found all these really inter-interesting,
as solutions. So that's the end of that one. Next slide.
And this one was very relevant to our city, Leading Through
Uncertainty: A Fiscal Playbook for a Thriving Community.
Next slide. Did you get it? The, this was done by the person who
actually created the Mayor's Innovation Project.
He talked about the broken social condract-- contract.
What's hard to see there is all those lines together is,
basically income versus productivity, and it used to stay pretty straight
and, and equal. The purple line shooting way up
is the top one percent earners country.
Where everything else, the red is the bottom twenty percent, the blue is
middle sixty percent, and the green is upper middle.
Um, so as you can see, wages have not increased as much as productivity
and as much as the top one percent earners in the country make, which I
think is all information we're very aware of.
Next slide. This graph, which you can't read
either, it's too much... Oh, you can kind of read it.
It's showing, how much our, our country has changed.
We are more diverse now than ever before, which is kind of also relevant coming
today-
Hmm
...to the resolution we were just discussing.
Um, and less than fifty percent of our country are white
anymore, now. So we have a very diverse country, and I think it's just
gonna continue to change, um-The blue, I think you can read
that, blue is Hispanic. Uh, the dark blue, kinda gray
is Black. Green is Asian. Next
slide. And then it transitioned to around infrastructure to support these
communities that are always changing and always growing.
And I think, our city manager might find this one int-interesting.
It's the average age and life expectancy of US infrastructure.
So the first one's roads, next one's bridges, rail, water
pipes, dams, levies, and water treatment
plants. So the average age is the dark color.
The life expectancy, this is, is the lighter color.
So it's showing that our issues here were not unique.
Next slide.
And then that conversation around infrastructure got-- it was quite interesting
'cause it started talking about it's not just this infrastructure that we rely on
daily, but also how, things impact that infrastructure.
So in this case, growing risks around, nature events due
to climate change. So you see here, C-Hurricane Katrina on the bottom left, two
thousand and five, Superstorm Sandy, two thousand and twelve, the fires in
twenty twenty-three, Hurricane, Helen in twenty twenty-four, the Los
Angeles fires of twenty twenty-five.
And then the small writing, which I actually can read, in, in two thousand a
billion-dollar disaster occurred every seventy-two days.
Now they occur every eighteen days.
By twenty thirty, they will be weekly occurrences.
So on top of just trying to pr-provide regular service to our community with what
they ask, we're dealing with some serious stuff now.
And our firefighters will be dealing with it, and, and
police, and public works. And I like that thing
there. For every major headline, there are innumerable smaller events impacting
where we live, work, and play every day. City manager.
Yeah, one of those impacts that we'll see, even if we don't have a
disaster, insurance rates-
Mm
...continue to climb. And so we do get impacted,
by that, even indirectly, if we don't have that
disaster.
Appreciate that. Next slide. No, there it is.
And this one I just thought was an interesting view of, of what local government
is, right? So one-third of our an- of annual local GOP spent on disaster and
weather costs, but this impacts every other entity that we interact
with from real estate insurance, which city manager just pointed out,
utilities, health. Uh, we all work together to be what
is a community, and it all-- it's all majorly impacted.
Next slide.
And this was kind of a weird but interesting graph I just threw in here.
And it talked about how federal support for cities is declining.
Although the infl-in-Inflation Reduction Act is still, investments still
happen, less and less money are coming to communities to deal with these
issues. So it's kind of a bleak
outcome. Um, and a lot of these conversations when they hold
these things is to really get mayors to talk, 'cause we don't just sit through
these presentations. We all gather around and talk about solutions and
ideas. Um, and this one, not a lot of solutions or
ideas, unfortunately, but it's something we're dealing with right now.
The next slide is onto the one I, I-- when I was-- I was really not looking forward
to this conversation because I was, "What does this have to do with the city of
Corvallis or our role?" Um, so again, building a supportive
childcare ecosystem for families and workers, I'm like, "That's not our role." Um,
turns out, yes, it is. Um, so I want this, this slide-- This
presentation was from Mayor Kelly Girtz, from Athens, Georgia.
And in here, they, they-- there's similarities I thought were interesting besides
their government's different, but at the same time, they have, they have a
council manager form of local government.
They're a much larger community, as you can see, but they have a ten-member
commission, as their legi-legislative unit, so it's kinda like our
council, and it's similar size. So I just thought
interesting. Just they're much bigger.
Next slide.
Yes. Um,
so I like this 'cause it's really straightforward.
Uh, keep-- Hiring talent is tough.
We know that's an issue locally for, for childcare providers.
Labor costs are a challenge 'cause you have to pay people enough to live, which is
a challenge. Uh, facility costs are high, so the-- what families are
charged for health- for childcare is just extreme, and
I, I know that is true. Next slide.
And then, which-- When I was going back to the slides, I remembered this one.
I was like, "Oh, yeah, this is what got my attention.
Why do-- Why would a city care? What, what does this have to do with us?" Um,
but we care about our economy. So again, a strong employment base
and long-term community health, safety, and prosperity.
Couldn't disagree with that. Next slide.
So here's where it came down to what a city could do, and I'm not saying we
will do this, but it's something we should think about.
Um, they, they ta- they would talk about the projects that they successfully did
there. But the one at the end was, buying down the capital cost of
facilities lowers family price tag.
And so creating opportunities for space for childcare providers,
licensed childcare providers, that we could re-reduce their costs by potentially
maybe having space in some of our city facilities for them to operate.
That could potentially benefit our employees.
It could also benefit the community.
So as we're thinking about, a civic campus project, like maybe
there's room to think about doing that.
And we have other facilities, two minutes in the room, we have the
C-3. It's just something we could potentially look at of a way
to help alleviate, rising costs for childcare.
So that's when it hit me. I'm like, "Oh, that is something we technically could
do."
And then the last one, which is very interesting as well,
aging in place. So again, we're talking about seniors,
and I used the slides from AARP 'cause I think they were the best
ones. Um, we're in a lasting demogra-demographic
shift. And at first, I was like, "What does that mean, demographic shift?" So if
you go to the next slide, this one hit me.
The aging of America is here. So on the left there is what,
twenty fifteen and like the light color, that is Oregon, would've
been, twelve point five to one point uh
fifteen percent of the population.
But if you look at the map on the right, that jumps us up to twenty to twenty-two
point five percent of the population, and it's continuing to
grow.So we're gonna have a sig- you know, in the future, the whole...
all the countries got a significantly different looking population than it does
today. Next slide.
And it talked about most communities in the country have not been built to
even address that, you know, with, with better sidewalks, better transportation
options, things like that. And this next slide actually helped me with my
family issues right now, which about how d- aging in place is
difficult because of type of housing you have.
Um, we, we know we talked a few years back when we talked about the,
the senior facilities. I can't think of the name all of a
sudden. The Bonaventure. When we were talking about Bonaventure, we talked about
those people who are living in homes that are, you know, they're, they're not being
used to their full potential. A single person living who maybe would be happier
living somewhere else and opening that home up to family.
So there's housing mobility, which t- I just mentioned.
Um, even our public spaces, how we think of the design of our parks.
Um, and the last one is the, the biggest one, isolation.
The health risks of, of prolonged isolation is equivalent to eating...
smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So o- people
65 and over, it severely impacts their health if they're not engaged and
kept active and, you know, out of isolation.
And what I don't... I, I think what was good about this one is I feel like we were
in a really good place. Like, we already are addressing a lot of this.
You know, we have our, our community center that has programs, our library has
programs. We have good,
fairly good transportation system here and, and a, a network
of s- of social service providers.
So I think compared to what I was hearing from other mayors, I think we're doing
all right. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't think about this as we think of
long-term development in our community.
And I like the saying, create a great community for an older adult, you build a
community great for everyone. I think, again, keep that in
mind. And this next slide's just kind of fun.
Again, as I said, it's not like, we just sit there and are talked at like some
conferences I go to. There's a lot of engagement with other mayors.
This is me with the mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, Satya
Rhodes-Conway. Um, Wisconsin...
Uh, Madison, Wisconsin, is where the Mayors Innovation project started, with
a professor there.
And so I was able to catch up with her.
I met her when I went to the, new mayors',
whatever that was called, cohort.
I met, I met her there, and she saw me, and we were able to reconnect.
And along with, other mayors from Oregon and a mayor from
Georgia and a few other places. It was, it was really
good. And again, you sit down and you talk about what the presentation you were
just given and say, "Well, what, what are you, what are you doing to address this?"
So I was able to brag about Corvallis and some of the steps we've taken to address
housing needs and infrastructure needs.
Some people were impressed. So that is pretty much the end of my
presentation. I, I know ... No, that's good.
Um, I didn't wanna make it too long 'cause I was looking at the agenda and I'm
like, "Yeah, I'm not gonna talk all night about this." 'Cause if, if you want, I
could spend the next two days and just go over the whole thing, but I don't think
that's a good idea. And I apologize again for the delay.
That was not my intent.
Um,
hopefully this was enjoyable a little bit.
Um, they did make me an offer to... if, if we wanted to become a member city of the
Mayors Innovation Project. It's, for our size city, it's normally
$2,500. They're willing to deduct the amount that I paid to attend
that conference off the annual price.
So that's something I'm gonna get some information about where, where our budget
is, 'cause I'm not sure where our council budget is, and with maybe a request to
join them. And in the future, if we join, then there's no cost to attend these
conferences. And they provide a bunch of other stuff, but I'll get all that to you
guys at a future meeting.
This office. What,
what...
Yeah. That'll be put... I'll, I'll bring that back at a council meeting for, for
consideration. Um, my other comments, and I, you know, I, I haven't
given many comments lately, so this is where I make up for that.
Um, Saturday I attended the legislative breakfast, and just quick takeaways from
that. Legislative breakfast, for those don't know, is, the county holds it, and
they invite our legislators. So we heard from three of our legislators, even though
we only actually have two, but there's also the one for Philomath, on how
the se- short session went. The one things I took away from, the, the
flexibility on our, on lodging tax funds passed.
Um, but unfortunately there's gonna be a reduction in safe route to schools
funding. That's not good. Um, but there is an increase to the earned income tax
credit, which I know helps people with lower incomes significantly.
'Cause I remember when I was extremely poor and got that for my kids,
it really made a difference. Sometimes it just went to buying ne- needed
supplies like shoes for school. Um,
I wanted to, wanted to say something.
Uh, earlier when we were reviewing the MUPTE request, I know we
received an email, and one of the emails talked about, the loss of the
food trucks that used to be on that, on that block.
So I just wanna quickly say we did not lose those food trucks.
Uh, one of them is now in the plaza on Madison.
That's Tacos El Machine, and apparently they're doing better business there than
they ever did in their food truck. So they're thriving. And the space is great.
You should all check it out if you're up in the plaza.
And the other one moved over to Common Fields, the sushi one.
So if you enjoyed those businesses, you can continue to support them.
Um, now I got some events I wanna let everybody know about, 'cause
I never do that. Um, League of Women Voters event called Sheltering Our
Unhoused: Are We Making Progress?
is Wednesday, March 18th at 6:30 at the library.
I plan on being there, so all of you can join if you
want. Um, I will be attending a groundbreaking ceremony for Third Street
Commons on the 19th, which is this coming Thursday at 11:30
AM. Everyone's welcome. I gotta go...
I was concerned 'cause they said I would need to be able to operate a shovel.
I'm like, "Am I qualified for that?" Operate sounds like a bigger thing,
but I think I can manage. Uh, on Saturday the 28th, there's a
downtown cleanup happening at 10:00 AM. They're...
people are gathering at the museum.
I intend to participate this time 'cause I'm in town and I'm not...
don't have the flu. So,
so I encourage people to join thatUm, and
last but not least, same day, on January,
Saturday the 28th at noon is the No S- No Kings March and
Rally. Um, the march starts on the OSU campus, McNeary
Field, goes to Central Park and then to the courthouse.
You can join them along the way or just be at the courthouse.
Um, and I appreciate all those doing that.
Although when, when I talk to the organizers, I say the same thing, it's like,
"Well, this is great, this gets people excited. What is next?
When does the work happen? Where do people get involved to actually make a
difference?" And I appreciate everybody who shows up for rallies.
I've attended so many over the last 10 years, I don't remember most of them.
But I also do things. I encourage you all to do the
same.
And that is the end of my comments, I believe, unless I'm forgetting
something. But I don't think I am. So
anybody remember where we went last time? I think I started over here.
So Councilor El... Actually, I'll start with Councilor Shaffer, even though he's
virtually, but he'd be over there.
I will be extremely quick. It's already 1:00 AM in where I am.
Ooh, oodle.
I'm tired. I'm gonna pass this
week.
Okay.
Uh, Councilor Olsen.
Um, yeah. I don't have too much to say right now.
Some updates on things in the community is
that OSU just approved tuition increases for both their in
and out-of-state students. So just, just to, like, let everyone know
what's going on with OSU. Um-
Yeah.
Yeah, it's up, almost 6% for
residents and 6.25% for
non-residents. So if you're curious, that's almost
$300 a credit, which is
insane. Um, yeah. So that's my main
thing. Also, I have been, attending some
boar- unofficial board meetings held by some people in my board, so that's been
really fun. We talked about the MUPTI
mostly on our meeting on Saturday, so that was really exciting.
I liked getting to meet with people.
Um, and yeah. The last thing I have to say
is just
I, I know I said at the time that I
don't like resolutions that don't seem to do much.
And so what I'm gonna say right now is ask all of you guys who didn't vote
on the resolution what you personally are doing to
help, to prevent ICE in our
community. Not what you as a community member are doing, what, not what
you, not what the state's done, but what you personally are doing.
Who are you helping? Who are you connecting to?
How are you impeding the ever-encroaching force of
fascism in this country? Because while community
efforts are the best, individual efforts are better than
nothing. So...
Councilor Meyers.
Well, I unfortunately have a whole bunch of stuff. I'll go as fast as I can.
Um, we had the all d- all task
force meeting, Downtown Vitality Strategy
Task Force on the 3rd, and I'm
pretty excited about how things are progressing and how the
discussions are going and, and working through,
well, getting to some
recommendations.
Um, I'll skip that one. Uh,
March 9th, we had Budget Commission meeting, catching up the commission on
all of the things council's been working on, and facilities funding and
all the financial, challenges we're
facing. And there was a really good discussion about getting some more
information about the Bu- Budget Commission and what we're doing out to
the community, so I was grateful to, Councilor
Ellis for bringing that up, and I think we landed on a couple of good
ideas. Um, on the 10th, we had... I'll
let you talk about the Charter PAC. Are you gonna talk about it?
Okay. Um, on the 11th, we had the,
Downtown Vitality Task Force, again,
Infrastructure Committee, and that was a great discussion about, as I said
before, how housing s- more housing downtown
solves a lot of the problems we're trying to solve.
Um, I also was at the legislative breakfast.
Oh, and Thursday, we had a makeup Leadership Corvallis
class because we had that ice storm last year, and it was
Education Day. And it was... I never had
kids. I haven't thought about schools much except we have OSU here, and
we have all the things happening with the public schools, and it
was amazing. We spent quite a long time at College
Hill. I, I, I won't go into
any details, but there is a lot of dedication
to the students succeeding in this city at all
levels, and it was just very inspiring
and, um... Anyway, I'm inspired.
Also went to the legislative breakfast.
Went to the Celebrate Corvallis, which was a real
blast.
And
the Downtown Corvallis Organization is having a quarterly meeting
this Wednesday from 5:30 to 6:30 at one of the meza-
mezzanines,
in the plaza. And that's it.
Phew.
Yeah.
Yes. Uh, I have a number of things I was going to talk about, which I will defer
some of those to the next council meeting, but I do wanna provide a couple of
updates. Uh, we have the charter
amendment, charter, Charter Measures PAC up and running.
It kinda feels like we're going downhill, and so far we haven't.
Uh, our feet are still in front of our heads, so that's good.
Um, it's a good group of folks. I think we're gonna make progress.
We're meeting, every Wednesday, and through
the, election timeframe, but I think
we'll-Um, I think we'll get there.
Uh, I'll give you a n- better update next time.
Uh, and then just one other thing I wanted to cover,
which is we have received for the city manager
evaluation process, we have received,
six req- RFPs were
completed. Uh, we did review those.
Uh, there was a group of five that's supposed to review this.
Only four of us, actually did
review that, so we're gonna move forward, with
the group of four. That would be the city manager, the HR director, the mayor
and myself. Um, just wanted to let folks know
that cost of the evaluations are likely to be somewhere in the range of
about $25,000. Um, happy to
continue with this, unless I hear that the council would like
to reconsider that expense. Are we...
And the question would be, are we
going to get $25,000 worth of benefit out of doing this
differently? Um,
so I guess I'll pause and see if there's any comment as
to, any discussion as to whether we might want to alter that.
Otherwise, we'll, we will proceed.
Um, we intend to... Based on the
timeline, we intend to announce the, to, give notice of the intent to
award contracts by April 8th. So we have a very short
time window on this. Any comment
from anybody?
Just, I...
It's after 10 and I don't, I think I would rather h- think about
it rather than make a comment on whether or not to go
forward. My gut sense is yes, but I really don't
want to engage in the discussion. I don't think o- any of us would make a good
decision at this hour.
Maybe we can make some room on Thursday.
That'd be fine.
Councilor Lewis.
Oh, fantastic. Okay. Um, police review advisory board, if
you haven't signed up, you can sign up for Corvallis Police 101.
It's from April 1st to June 10th, every Wednesday from 6 PM to 9 PM.
It is just literally learning the ins and outs of the police force.
I will see them next year 'cause I do not have the capacity to do it this year.
Um, but you can apply by March, 20th.
Also, they, our wonderful police chief went to the COA
Spring Conference between March 11th and, and 15th in Tucson,
Arizona. I don't know what happened there. I'll ask him later.
Um, the Empowerment and Green Grants info session is, tomorrow
at three-- at 5:15 on Zoom. As always, the Winter's Farmers Market
is Saturdays 9 AM to 1 PM at the Benton County Fairgrounds.
Um,
there's a few things that have already are said.
And because it is still Women's History Month, that has not changed, I'm going
to talk very briefly about Rita Moreno, who is still alive at ninety-four years
old. She was born December 11th, 1931.
You probably know her as Rosa Dolores Alvera or
Anita from West Side Story. That was actually the role that actually got her
the, to be the first Latina to win an Oscar for Best Supporting
Actress, in 1962. And she actually became an EGOT
status, which only twenty-one people have gotten, in
1977. And I am going to go, be going home after this.
You all have a wonderful night.
We have one item still.
Which I should have started with Jim for that one. Councilman Packham.
Yeah, I wrote my report, but I wanted to highlight a couple of things.
First and foremost, I want to extend thanks to Danielle
Chambers, Gene Raymond, our former counselor for Ward
Seven, I believe, Ava
Olsen, and the mayor for bringing forth the resolution,
for advancing the resolution to the council.
Um, very important that, that this occurred and,
thank you all. And others that I don't know who you are, but thank
you. Um, quickly, I support
the changes to Walnut Boulevard, the safety,
improvements. Uh, I think the last time I rode my bike on Walnut,
somebody passed me at fifty miles an hour.
Um, it needs to do something. We need to do something
about that. Uh, the Bikeway project for North Benton
County, that's the bike path you see partially
completed from here along Highway 20.
Uh, there's going to be an open house, at
both the Corvallis and the Albany Farmers Market, May
16th from ten to noon. They wanna figure out
how the path crosses over the highway, and you're all
invited 'cause nobody can figure it out.
Um, and last thing, LBCC
has a ribbon cutting sometime this coming April
to unveil their new mobility hub, and I
don't-- I remember standing in a huddle waiting
for the bus at LB,
you know, the, the shuttle. Um, it was raining and,
and people are lined up, but now it's really nice.
This is going to connect with, OSU
Mobility Hub, which is going to be at 14th and Jefferson across from
Callahan Hall. And, OSU is,
OSU is scoping right now their Campus
Way Promenade, if you will. Uh,
the plans, I don't know, I don't have the plans, but,
it is, something
that it's, you know, pedestrian and, and multimodal
mall right through the middle of campus.
I don't think there's cars allowed. Be fun.
Thank you.
Councilor Morefield, my apologies.
I should have started with you. Oh,
tired? Not at all. Oh. About past my bedtime.
I wanted to make a, just a quick comment about the, the evaluation,
responses. It's a lot of money, but I don't know what they're proposing to
do. So
I would... Before I'd really have an opinion, I'd wanna know what they were
proposing to do. Um, so that would be helpful.
Um, so I brought, forward a, an action item,
that was in your packet, letter to the BLM.
Uh, I didn't provide an introductory memo, 'cause I didn't even think to do this
until, like, 24 hours before I was gonna have to get something to
Alex, to get into the packet. So you got...
You know, I just focused on what the letter itself would say, but the,
I think it's self-explanatory. Um,
I... For people that haven't lived in Oregon or been on the
planet for long enough, historically, the,
the quote from the BLM, Resource Management Plan
update says they seek to increase
an, an increase in sustained yield timber harve- harvest that aligns with
the historically higher levels of production on BLM
administrated, administered public lands.
That's a significant change from current practice.
And if you've lived here long enough, you know what it looked like.
Um, and so the, the thing that's
infuriating about it
is that they're saying
the choice is between no change... This is right in the notice.
The choice is between no change in current practice,
or going back to historic
levels. So it's, so it's a very stark choice,
and, responses are due by the
23rd. So I'm asking for the council's support
in s- submitting the letter.
I'd like to make a motion that we, adopt the, and
send the letter that, Councilor Moorfield
drafted.
I'll second.
Do we need to discuss it?
Can I make one comment on it? If possible, I would prefer to have all
of our names and the mayor's signature on it, and not just the mayor on our behalf.
That's what it says, is mayor and council signatures, or mayor signs on our behalf.
Yes.
I-
I am professing in a, my, my
favorite-
Moorfield.
Yeah.
I, I-
I wanna, I want my signature on it .
Yeah, no, I, I, I put it out there 'cause it was just a logistical thing
in getting signatures, and Alex said she would have suggestions,
or the city manager about it.
Yeah, I think we can, we can seek those
signatures. Uh, due to the time, we may not get
every councilor to sign, but we'll seek those
out.
By when? To sign it by?
Because Councilor Schaefer is out of the state,
and because of other councilor obligations, we would
probably do a e-signature.
Ca- can you DocuSign for me?
You can DocuSign it, yes.
Yeah.
That would be great.
I think... And that might be the best way to move forward, just so we can capture
everybody.
Sounds good.
So we have a motion. Vote on it? Okay, all in
favor of the motion to sign on to this letter to the
BL- Bureau of Land Management?
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
Aye.
All those opposed, no? All right.
That sounds like it passed unanimously.
Did you have anything else for us, Councilor Moorfield?
I do not.
All right. Councilor Ellis?
I am glad that he did not make his letter a lie.
We said already that we had voted unanimously in the letter.
It's like we did. Um, I had a couple of things.
Um, on Tuesday the 31st, there's going to be a
discussion of prioritization of neighborhood bikeways, which
is kind of an actually fascinating topic, and it will be here at
5:30. Um, I believe there, there'll be a present- I don't
know how they're gonna organize it, but they're very excited about it, and the
information is getting out. Um, so I think people who
are interested should engage in that.
Um,
I do wanna say, that when I was in college, it was $35
a credit.
Wow.
Um, and I remember 'cause I was paying it.
Um, and then I had a couple of, more serious things.
I actually appreciate the fact that we had some flexible things on the agenda.
At first I thought, "How'd that resolution get on there without the form?" But I
actually think that people bringing a resolution or a letter forward
in councilor comments is the way things should work.
So I appreciate that. Um,
and then I also... We're gonna be seeing a lot
of, as Director Bellotta referred to it,
urban form in terms of multi-family
housing coming forward into established
neighborhoods, and we need to recognize that is an
incredibly stressful experience for are, the people who are
living there. Um, I, I, I, I hear
you. I started, before I was a city councilor, involved
in some of the land use decisions, when we actually could say
things. And to find out that, an
urban form is landing on your neighborhood is very
difficult. I know some people will adjust and some people will move,
but we need to keep the fact that this is very stressful for people
in very stressful times in mind as we go
forward. Um, and I think that's what I
had.
Thank you. City manager.
Yeah, I have two things. Uh, some happy news and some less than happy news.
I'll start with the less than happy news.
Just wanna
keep council informed of impacts, staff seen
in their jobs. Uh, two incidences
recently. Um, as you know, we do
allow, sleeping outside of our facilities
downtown, and, last week,
unfortunately-Uh, one morning we had some
individuals outside the Madison Avenue building, which is
not uncommon, but, one of the indi- individuals
became very loud and shouting
obscenities, was asked to, to stop, did
not stop. Ultimately, we had to call the police and have that person
trespassed from, the facility.
Again, not, not what we like to do, but for, the
safety, of our staff and disruption to people
trying to enter our facilities, public, we had to deal with
that. And then we also had, one of our security attendants
at the library, i- asking someone
to leave the library for behavioral issues.
They were struck, their glasses were knocked off,
significant scratch across their face.
So I'm just keeping you informed of what's happening with,
with our staff. So there's the unhappy
news. The, the happy news, as Councilor Lewis
pointed out, Chief Harvey, our
two captains and some other police staff and myself were,
down for the final step in CALEA
re-accreditation. Ended up being a, a working weekend for
us,
but I'm happy to report that, we have been re-accredited
a thirtieth year. There is not anyone
working for Corvallis Police who was there before we were accredited,
so it is part of our DNA, which I, I
think is fantastic. And during the last...
So Saturday morning is when we had our panel interview with the evaluators, and one
of the issues that came up through the evaluation was challenges with
our facilities. And so I was asked, "What are you gonna be doing
about those facilities?" So just a reinforcement that there
are, there are impacts to these
facilities, and it's being seen now even by our
accreditation, evaluators. So,
it's important we continue to move forward with, dealing with that.
But very happy to announce, the re-accreditation
and, we'll be getting, you know, the official plaque and some pictures and
all that. But, great work by our staff, Lori Jackson,
our accreditation manager, and all the police staff who follow
through and actually do what we say as far as those
policies and procedures. And, and staying accredited is
very rigorous. They're-- They, they're not only asking you for
your policies, but proof that you are following those.
And they talk to, officers,
different staff, even community members at times to make
sure that we're doing what we, we say we do.
So, we are very blessed to have the police
department that we have and the staff that are there.
So congratulations to them.
I forgot it was a group of you. I should have asked you.
It's late. And if there's nothing else then, everybody's
tired. Have a good night, everybody.
We are adjourned