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Good afternoon, everyone. I want to welcome you to the Gretchen City Council work session. This is the work session, so we don't take any vote, sir, any public comment. We just make sure that we do have a quorum of the City Council, and we do. There are going to be some folks joining us, also online here, momentarily, as we hopefully are able to get that situated. And it's good to see so many people here this afternoon. I know the topic of stormwater is really interesting.

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So thank you for coming off.

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I was like the other day I was on a plane to Portland and the pilot said, yeah, we should

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be landing in Seattle in just a few minutes and you saw everybody's head turn and look

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at each other like the DC Seattle and then of course the flight attendant corrected at moments

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later.

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But as you all know, we have our fire district study follow up in future fire service delivery

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conversation.

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So with that, we've got a group of folks right here and I'm going to turn it over to our

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our fearless leader, Eric Schmidt, with a laugh, maybe I should have said fearful.

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We are fearless leader, Eric Schmidt, our city manager, and of course, he can introduce

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everybody else that is at the table with him, which we all know.

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So Eric, take the way.

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Thank you, Mayor.

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And good afternoon, Mayor, Council President and City Councilors.

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I'm Eric Schmidt, your city manager.

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And with joining me today for the presentation is to my right is Chief Derek Minard.

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We also have Larry Morgan, Assistant City Manager and John Horvick with DHM Research.

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And I guess first I want to kind of say this is our first day back from Council recess for

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summer.

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But it's also our first day where we have some new technology within the space here.

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So hopefully between our mics and our video and things like that, it's going to be just

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to much more streamlined experience overall for everybody.

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So thank you for your time this afternoon.

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This is, as you mentioned, Mayor.

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This is a follow-up from our July first meeting,

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but we're going to get into a little bit more detail

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around fire department service options.

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And before I do want to stop and recognize everybody

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that has joined us, but specifically our firefighters,

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we have a strong contingent of firefighters.

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I'm not sure I can't see them.

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What color shirts do they have them?

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Okay, but I want to thank them all for being here and thank them for their service each day for the city.

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So for today's meeting, the agenda is going to be as follows. I'm going to provide a brief recap

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from July 1st work session of what was presented that day. I'll also then get into the summary of

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the city manager's meetings that we've had over the month of July and into August. I'll then talk

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a little bit more about options for Council consideration.

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And then Larry and John are going to present the findings from some additional fieldwork

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done with DHM research, and then I'll talk about next steps and then open them up for

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conversations amongst Council and any questions we might be able to answer.

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So as a recap from July 1, these slides are the same slides that you saw on July 1.

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I just wanted to say welcome back from summer recess and let me refresh everybody where we were at

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So council had asked for a fire district analysis to be conducted

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We did that analysis with Marina and company and this is the scope that was included

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It really spoke about the again financial analysis looking at administrative and operational cost

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Property tax rate calculation compression impacts and implementation timeline

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The analysis assumptions, again, as we mentioned on July 1st, this was illustrative only.

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This was a snapshot in time that had a myriad of assumptions that went into it.

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So it was meant to be able to provide a contextual mathematical financial analysis at a certain

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point in time for certain assumptions.

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They also, again, it kind of assumed that we would, the model would be Gresham would form a city

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of Gresham limits fire district and we would continue to provide service contracts to the

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three cities as well as district 10. It also looked at two different staffing scenarios. One was

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what we considered baseline that was really current service level and one was looking at an enhanced

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service model with an additional station, an additional personnel, and equipment that goes with that.

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It also had an assumption that it was looking at rates that would sustain a 10 year projection.

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So it doesn't mean it was permanently sustainable, but it was looking at a window of time to be able to come back and say, well,

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this is probably in the neighborhood of what it would take.

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The two scenarios, again, it was mentioned, scenario one, baseline operations, current staffy levels.

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scenarios 2 was what was labeled enhanced future growth.

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The baseline operations, as you may recall, came back into a scenario where it talked

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about a tax rate needing to support that over a 10-year horizon of a military of $373 per

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thousand dollars of assessed value.

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At the enhanced future growth, with additional station and everything that goes with that, we

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We're looking at approximately $4.69 for a proposed tax rate.

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The other thing that was important that we provided on July 1st was some context and information for

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everybody, really, about how the property taxes work and the formula that goes into it.

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Because there was a lot of focus on a number, a milligrate, X amount per thousand.

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And we wanted to make sure that there was context about what that meant.

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So, if you look at that formula, if you are in a district A, district B scenario comparing

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that, if you're trying to get to a same number, and this is, again, just an example, $35

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million, if you have a higher overall taxable assessed value, you have a lower overall

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milligrate and the converse is true as well. So you have a lower taxable assessed value overall.

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That means it requires a higher milligrate to generate the same amount of revenue.

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So as we, that was July 1st, and Council at that time asked for some additional follow-up from that meeting

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and needed some time to kind of digest everything from the district analysis study.

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In the meantime, what we also started to do is, in earnest, the four city managers and

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the fire chief in our respective other budget finance folks, we started to meet regularly.

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We met four times at all point two here in just a moment.

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And so I want to first stop for a moment and acknowledge and send my appreciation to the

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other three city managers that were involved.

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They are two of them are here today.

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So Greg Derks with the city of Wood Village, Nathan George, the city of Fairview, and Ray

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Young, the city of Troutdale, but he's kind of retired so he came this morning for a

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little bit of a preview, but he's not going to be able to make it today.

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But nonetheless, I really appreciate the time that we all spent together.

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And so one of the things that I want to point out is that throughout all the conversations

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we've had with the cities over the past many, many months, despite any kind of communications, etc.

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What I'm hearing very clear from the three cities is there is absolutely strong support and appreciation for our

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aggression fire department, our firefighters and the quality of service they receive.

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The things that are coming into question are really from a business perspective only,

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where it's talking about just math and numbers and budgets and trying to make it work in a broader perspective,

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but absolutely support our fire department

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and very appreciative of the service they received.

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As I mentioned, the conversations that we had

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over the past month had been very collaborative and productive.

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And I think that while this came out earlier this year,

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it was emphasized and wanted to make sure and communicate

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that from the three cities perspectives,

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and I asked them if it was okay if I made sure

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they were comfortable with what I was presenting.

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That there is absolutely a strong desire to partner with Gresham on pursuing a district service model with recognition and interest to explore a further bridge extension of our existing IGA.

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And that said, the three cities in their own choices, decisions, deliberations with their mayors and councils,

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they still remain committed to their long-term desire to pursue a district model for their respective cities.

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So you might ask the question why I have answers so why are the three cities interested in joining a district from their perspective their needs so three primary objectives in their decision making process.

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One is they're looking to remove the costs for providing fire services from their ongoing general fund budgets to make way for other investments within their respective cities.

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Secondly, from their perspective, they're interested in having more of a voice and decisions

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affecting fire service delivery for their communities.

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And lastly, they're wanting to improve overall response times with, again, potentially an

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additional fire station or just an overall principle and goal of improving overall response

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times within their communities.

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As a summary of the meetings we had, we met on four times, July 2nd, July 24th, August

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August 6th and August 13th. The July 2nd meeting was our initial meeting. We discuss goals

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and outcomes and we develop a list of potential service model options. On July 24th, we met

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with representatives from Fire District 10. August 6th, we met with representatives from

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Clackamas Fire District 1. And on August 13th, we met with representatives from IAFF. After

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After that, the city managers then debriefed overall about the meetings that had happened

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to date and proposed next steps about how we would move forward with our respective

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city councils.

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In no particular order, these are the options that we kind of brainstormed on the table.

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And there may be more, but these are the ones that we came up with, at least that give

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not about the possibilities, not necessarily the ones that would move forward.

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So, first option is the Marina & Company scenario that you saw within the July 1st District

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Analysis whereby we would form our own aggression forms in a new district within its own geographic

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boundaries and continue to contract services with the three cities and fire district 10.

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Second option, aggression fire remains with the city and continues contract services with

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the three cities and fire district 10, basically a status quo model as we have it right now.

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Number three, Gresham Fire remains with the city and continues contract service of the

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fire district 10.

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The three cities would move to their own fire district model on their own.

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Another option is all four cities agree to move towards the district and explore the potential

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of annexing with a full service fire district 10.

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Number five, all four cities agreed to move towards establishing a new district and that new

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district would continue to contract services with Fire District 10.

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Number six, all four cities and Fire District 10 agreed to move towards establishing a new

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Fire District overall.

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Some of this plays into future research that we have done around Fire District 10 and those

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kinds of things, some questions that have come up.

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Number seven, all four cities agreed to move towards a fire district model and explore the potential partnership and future or future annexation with an existing fire entity.

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And at fire entity could be an existing district, it could be some other model that we haven't fully recognized or brainstormed quite yet.

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And number eight is the option that we all agree we needed to note that we also agreed we really hope it wouldn't get to that place.

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But really trying to anticipate the many permutations that could happen if one or more the city's pursue a fire district or even if all four cities pursue a district and only one or or a couple of those cities don't pass the annexation vote or they do so what would happen to those scenarios.

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So those are those are the eight kind of again brainstorm options that we came up with.

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From the meetings we had amongst the city managers, the debrief, and knowing where the three cities are.

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Again, their long-term desire to be able to explore a fire district, et cetera, really those eight options really came down to four.

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And in some respects, it's really two.

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So one option is, Gresham remains with the city, sorry, Gresham fire remains with the city, continuing contract service with District 10.

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the three cities, again, would move to their own fire district model or seek service elsewhere.

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Or really, it's about either the Gresham fire stays with the city, or we look at exploring

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more of a district model.

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If it's a district model, the options are pursuing a district for fire district 10, or a new

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fire district or potential annexation with an existing fire entity.

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So that's a lot of information.

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Let me then just kind of say, I mean, it's kind of the same, but I'm going to flip it

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a little bit and just say, okay, so, for Gresham Council consideration today, same kind

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of thing, but I just put letters inside of numbers.

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So option A. So option A, Gresh, again, city of Gresham retains fire department, our

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Our existing IGA is effective through June 30th, 2026, so all indications are if we wanted

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to keep the fire department, the three cities would, again, probably earnestly pursue other

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options on their own from a financial business perspective.

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Option B is

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City aggression pursues a fire, fire district service model. And again, with that, there's three potential doors. Fire District 10, new fire district, or annexation with an existing fire entity.

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Now, so a little bit of pros and cons, not exhaustive by any means, not full SWAT analysis in terms of each option. My goal today is to present high level, and from here, seek council direction about

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potentially the next steps that they would like us to pursue.

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So retaining the city fire department, option A, pros, remains part of city services provided

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to the community, that sense of pride of ownership.

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There's direct control and oversight through city council, benefits the economy of skills within

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city administration and overall internal services for city operations, not to mention ongoing

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collaboration with other city departments and service delivery to the community.

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Cons, big one, ongoing reoccurring costs are unsustainable long-term given the current

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financial model.

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There's also ongoing budget prioritization challenges between fire, police, parks,

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planning, economic development, code enforcement, and all other programs that are supported by

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the General Fund.

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And with if the cities do choose to go on their own in this scenario, amongst other things,

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It does definitely create some mutual aid challenges, which could negatively impact public safety and overall service to the community.

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So, again, high-level pros cons.

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For a district model, they each get a slide.

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So, pros of a district model, I appreciate Chief Bernard put some of these together and working with some consultants on this.

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So, stable, equitable funding, dedicated property tax provides consistent and fair funding across all communities.

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Local representation of governance, the elected board has a singular focus on fire services with representation from all participating cities.

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Fiscal autonomy and strategic planning, so again independence from city budget, it allows for some long term planning, capital investment and resource stability,

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again with a singular focus of fire department and fire services.

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Operational and administrative efficiency, again, in that vein of a single focus around

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fire helps consolidate staffing and set staffing equipment and admin support to meet the

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current and future service demands specifically to fire.

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Service delivery unified structure could enhance coordination, response times, training, and

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resource deployment.

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And public accountability, again, singular focus on fire services related to reporting requirements,

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open meetings and community involvement to promote trust and transparency.

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General cons for a fire district model, it is potentially your most certainly an increased tax burden.

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So establishing a new district introduces a separate property tax levy for residents.

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It does have a significant start up in administrative costs.

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Transition requires legal, financial, and operational investments in governance systems and personnel.

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Revenue growth limitations, Oregon's laws, restrict property tax growth, requiring careful,

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long term financial planning, reliance on voter approval, formation, and any future levy

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increases depends on successful ballot majors. So again, that can create some potential funding

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uncertainty. There can be political and intergovernmental complexities between districts and cities

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and how they each govern and how they each relate to the community and how they get things solved.

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And again, it goes with the significant startup and some transition process quite a bit involved

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with transferring assets, integrating staff, and aligning operations across jurisdictions.

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It's a little complex and it can be time intensive.

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So I think what I want to be able to do is really highlight this.

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From a fire district model perspective, patients is a virtue.

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Every one, every consultant we have spoken to, including whether it's Marina, whether it's

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AP Triton, and whether it's other folks that have had a district or be involved in a district,

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it takes several years for this to really become real.

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And it can take anywhere from two to five years or more.

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What I'm showing on the screen here is not an exhaustive list of all the steps that would have to take place to actually realize a district, but I'm kind of highlighting at least some chronological, gosh, what would we need to do to get where we needed to go holistically?

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So the first line I apologize, it isn't red, maybe it's a little bit different to see.

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So Council identifies a need for a high level district financial study.

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That's completed. That was presented on July 1st.

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Second, some initial engagement polling with the community that will be presented here today

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in just a few moments.

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From here, a lot of it really is like there needs to be some additional district financial

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and feasibility analysis done, and it really depends on the level of that, but we believe

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that can be done fairly timely to be able to address the four cities needs to make some

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decisions here in the coming months.

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But, again, that's really as directed by Council, Councils, in this case because there's four.

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We also would anticipate an additional work session in conversations with the Councils,

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all of them, additional polling and community outreach that you have to check in on.

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There needs to be policy decisions and direction by multiple councils to be able to officially move forward on this.

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ongoing collaboration needed between the city managers, the city councils, IAFF, and key stakeholders.

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Evaluation from each entity about respective financial offsets, if any, for a district model.

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What I mean by that is at the end of the day, each jurisdiction has to have a separate vote around an annexation.

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And with that, each jurisdiction is going to, in each city council is going to have to answer the question individually about, okay, if I am the city of Gresham, and we want to go out for a vote for an annexation as a community member, what does that mean for me?

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What does that mean for leveraging an additional tax for a fire district?

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And is the city willing to do anything else to help offset that increase?

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So in for a for a Gresham, it would be, well, what does that mean for our existing police fire parks fee?

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What does that mean for our existing levy that the operating levy that we have in motion right now?

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And what does it mean potentially for our permanent rate that we have?

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not that we would lower our permanent rate, but councils can make decisions about assessing less than the permanent rate.

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So, that's just Gresham, every the other three cities would also have to do that same exercise.

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So, again, there's just some complexities that just takes the time.

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Again, ongoing strategic community education information, I'm talking about that here, even more in just a few moments.

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put forward ballot measures for annexation related to a fire district in all cities, and then if all that's approved, then the real work begins, because there's still a lot of work to do in transition, especially for Gresham, because we have the staffing, the purge liabilities, the assets, the stations, the physical part of things, so it's definitely for Gresham, there's a lot to it.

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So with that what I wanted to do is I am actually going to turn it over now to Larry to kind

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of introduce the topic and some additional work that was done and then also to have John

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Horvick present his findings.

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Thanks, Eric.

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Mayor Council, Larry Morgan.

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We conducted what is going to be I think our third either focus group or fuel polling this

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last couple of weeks, including here about a week ago.

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In the survey, we tested a series of questions, ideas, concepts, not just about fire or

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fire service, but more globally on several items.

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We also did testing in the three other jurisdictions as well, to get a barometer of where we were

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at with fire service, delivery of service, and get kind of a baseline globally where we're

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at.

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The polling that you will see doesn't guide or steer, it's really designed to really probe and get kind of a backdrop of where we're at globally.

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And hopefully get inside the minds of voters as it relates to where we're at overall.

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I would note that as John will go through this, we did the same approach during the levy where numbers may have looked a certain way and we had a different outcome.

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Ultimately, the policy outcomes and decisions that we will make are in your hands, but this

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was designed to inform and hopefully get a better idea globally where we're at.

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With that, I'll turn over to John.

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All right.

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Thank you very much, John Harvey.

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Senior Vice President at DHM Research.

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It is a pleasure to be back here and to have had the opportunity once again to ask the members

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of Gresham but also the other three cities about their communities.

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I'm going to walk through the survey results as Larry just said.

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I do want to also emphasize what he said.

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So we go through these, I really, I would encourage all of us to think that not to see these

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results not as predictive or where things will be in the future, but to be clear right

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about where we're starting.

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So if things maybe look disappointing from your perspective or encouraging from your perspective,

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know that there are opportunities in the days and months and years to come to talk to the

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community about these issues and educate them and form them, persuade them if it may be.

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So this is just what we're starting, not necessarily what we're headed.

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So with that, we're going to walk through these survey results.

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So just to reiterate what we're doing, we're trying to assess whether satisfaction is to

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these services.

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We want to put this issue into context of how folks are feeling about fire, and you're going

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to see that numbers are really good.

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But that's going to inform how we think about the rest of the results as well.

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Then we wanted to create a gauge support for the creation below the fire district and the

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city's aggression for our view of Trauddale and Wood Village.

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The small print here, but what we did was serve by 550 voters across the four cities.

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We surveyed 400 in the city of Gresham and 150 in the other cities.

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Now, the number is there as a 4.29 and then kind of some other numbers around.

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The reason that sends that is when we look at the total results, we statistically waited

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the community's proportion to their size.

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So, when we look at the overall results, Gresham or Troutdale isn't under or over represented

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in the results.

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We did try to maximize the number of completes what we could get across the additional three cities.

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And aggression's bigger, and so we're able to get more completes in aggression than we are in the other cities.

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We made a good faith, best effort attempt to hear from as many representative people across the three additional cities as in aggression as well.

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And hopefully that's reflective in the results here.

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Of course, we work real hard to ensure the representative sample, so we take all the steps.

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We set quotas essentially to ensure that we have the right number of people across our

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demographic groups, areas of the community, age, gender, et cetera, to ensure that we have

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a representative sample, the margins of error there, if you have questions about the methodology

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we happen to answer them.

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But let's get into the results.

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Anytime you start a survey like this, it's really important to ask some general questions,

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one, just to get a baseline of the attitudes.

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How are people thinking globally, generally,

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about their communities?

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And then we'll think about how does that inform

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there are millions of the key questions that we're asking?

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Also, it's important to ask a simple question

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at the start of a survey, because if they answer the first one,

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they're likely to complete the survey.

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And the first question's complicated.

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They're likely not to hang on and they're with us.

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So it's been a bad.

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The classic question you've seen this before,

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is we ask where things have been the right direction

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or they off on the wrong track.

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If we look across all the communities, 41% said right direction, 33% said wrong track.

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It is lower in aggression than it is in other parts of the city, or other parts of the community

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that we asked about.

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So the other cities outside of aggression were more positive than aggression itself.

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In the full report and I can go through it today, we did ask follow-up questions about why people

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felt that the city said in the right direction, or why they felt that things were off on the

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wrong track.

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When people who said that things were in the right direction really commented around improvements

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It's the safety improvements around homelessness

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or some key issues that they called out.

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Concerns, again, have also have to do with homelessness

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and crime, but we did, that's been requested

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by this council in the past and we did do that

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in the surveillance and the full report.

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Just for some context, you know, DATMs asking Oregonians,

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of course, the direction of the state all the time,

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this is just some trend lines over the course

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of the last five years.

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The wrong track there is an orange, the right direction

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is in blue, our most recent ceremony,

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we actually got that right direction above

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of the wrong track for the first time in quite a while,

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so there is a little bit of pickup and positivity,

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but just helps us put in the context

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for Gresham and other communities

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how it fits with the rest of the state.

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We do ask, in this movement of asking other surveys,

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for folks to just tell us what's

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the most important problem facing Gresham

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or track dealer would village, et cetera,

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wherever they were.

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This is an open-ended question.

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People can say anything that they want.

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We pay attention, listen, read all of their comments and try to put them into meaningful

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categories.

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Often, what's important is to pay attention to what's mentioned the most.

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In the context of our conversation today, I think this is important to pay attention to

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what's not mentioned, and what's not mentioned is fire.

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Fire is not one of the things that people have said was the most important problem to address.

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Being a senior second, I think it's largely because people are very satisfied about the

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overall results and look at the so the ballot measure questions you know part of

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What we're asking them to consider in the survey is to change something that they're not identifying as a problem. So, fire did not come up as a top issue. The things that did come up are the sorts of things that we've seen in the past. Grand public safety, homelessness, roads, traffic, transportation. All right. So now we're going to get to fire in a version of these services. So we asked about if they were satisfied, very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, or very dissatisfied with some services.

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fire, police, roads and transportation. Of course, in this survey, we're primarily interested

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about fire, but to have some other services helps us put into context. And 81% across the three

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communities said that they were satisfied with their fire service. This is about as high,

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and 50% said they're very satisfied. This is about as high as you can get. In an environment where

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people are distrustful and dissatisfied with about government in general, here, we got aid out of

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So again, this ties back to that open-ended question.

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They didn't mention fire as a problem to address and

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8 out of 10 are satisfied with the service.

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So again, they're going to answer our questions about a

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fire district in the context of they're like in what they're

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getting right now.

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If we look at the comparisons between

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aggression and other cities, here I'm not breaking out the individual

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cities so it's aggression versus the three cities

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combined, you see that satisfaction for fires a little bit higher in

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Gresham. That's the purple bar and then police and roads and

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transportation a little bit lower in Gresham. These differences are not

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statistically significant, so don't overinterpret them, but that they're

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important to share.

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Then we pushed them a little bit and asked about specific

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fire and emergency services and their level of confidence. So it's

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indicate how confident or not that your city that you live in, that fire an emergency response

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would quickly arrive in the following situations. Fire at your home, a medical emergency at your home,

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a wild fire in your community, an emergency involving hazardous materials. You can see, you know,

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strong majorities across all of these said that they're confident that they would be responded

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too quickly. Generally, where we see lower confidence, not because people are expressing

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that they're not confident.

379
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There's a thing they're unsure.

380
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This is something that they didn't feel

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like they had enough information to form an opinion about.

382
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But the backdrop, whether we ask about fire services broadly

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or we ask about specific fire and emergency response services,

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again, we see a lot of satisfaction

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and high levels of confidence.

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Those who have experienced interactions

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feel really good about what they experienced.

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So we did ask if they've had any actions

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with, again, the city that they live in,

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a fire department in the last 12 months,

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about one out of five, 20% so that they had.

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For those who said that they had,

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we asked the follow-up question, just tell us,

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do you know, was that a good or a poor experience?

395
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94% so it was good, right?

396
00:33:09,870 --> 00:33:10,910
These are great numbers.

397
00:33:11,630 --> 00:33:14,190
These are terrific services you're delivering

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for your community.

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And so regardless of how people respond

400
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to the questions about the fire district,

401
00:33:20,250 --> 00:33:22,210
know that you're really performing well

402
00:33:22,210 --> 00:33:23,490
in the eyes of your residents

403
00:33:23,490 --> 00:33:24,790
when it comes to these services.

404
00:33:26,190 --> 00:33:28,630
BS, again, about some tax perceptions.

405
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One was a global question.

406
00:33:32,090 --> 00:33:33,610
You're getting good at poor value for the services

407
00:33:34,050 --> 00:33:35,550
considering the taxes that you're paying.

408
00:33:36,730 --> 00:33:40,230
Again, this is the combined results across all four communities.

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42% said good, 51% said poor.

410
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So the fire district is going to come with a permanent rate

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or would come with permanent rates.

412
00:33:50,410 --> 00:33:54,390
So the context of how this value for the taxes for services is important here.

413
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And more people than not seem that they're getting poor value rather than good.

414
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And only 6% said very good.

415
00:34:04,990 --> 00:34:07,790
So that's about value services.

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We also asked, are you paying in your community, are your property taxes typically higher than other communities in the region?

417
00:34:18,110 --> 00:34:19,510
Are they about the same?

418
00:34:20,230 --> 00:34:22,490
Are they lower or gosh darn it, it's not sure.

419
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Now I know that Gresham in particular has a low permanent tax rate,

420
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but in Gresham 42% of that they're paying higher property taxes

421
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and other communities in the region.

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00:34:35,410 --> 00:34:38,450
The other communities that we surveyed 36% said higher,

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just fewer than one of the tens of that they're lower.

424
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So again, when we ask them about a new permanent rate,

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They're answering that question with the mindset of that they're already paying higher property taxes in other parts of the community, other parts of the region.

426
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And then we asked, I didn't not share in here that there's overall results, but we asked to best keep your knowledge.

427
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This is, again, the city you live and have the resources it needs to provide high quality fire and emergency response services.

428
00:35:09,090 --> 00:35:12,710
So, this is more specific, not just, you know, good and good value or paying higher

429
00:35:12,710 --> 00:35:18,950
little property taxes, does your community have enough resources to provide fire services

430
00:35:19,910 --> 00:35:26,490
and a majority across all the communities we surveyed, Gresham with 59, 51% across the

431
00:35:26,490 --> 00:35:29,990
other three communities said yes, and substantially fewer said no.

432
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Of course, some people said they don't know as well.

433
00:35:33,870 --> 00:35:34,270
All right.

434
00:35:36,260 --> 00:35:38,160
Now, we're getting to the fire district testing.

435
00:35:38,700 --> 00:35:42,520
So we asked us a few times where we gave people more information along the way.

436
00:35:43,060 --> 00:35:48,240
The very first time we asked, this kind of think of it as like the title in the ballot.

437
00:35:48,420 --> 00:35:50,880
You get very little information and not very descriptive.

438
00:35:51,160 --> 00:35:54,320
We're just sort of kind of testing people's gut response, okay?

439
00:35:54,980 --> 00:35:56,500
And that's what this first test is.

440
00:35:56,700 --> 00:36:00,760
So the city's the text here was, the city's aggression, very good job doing the village.

441
00:36:00,780 --> 00:36:03,600
May ask residents to vote for the following measure in the next year.

442
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:10,560
Shelter, Shelter Cities, Abgression, Fairview, Toronto, and Woodville just to establish a local district for fire services through a new permanent property tax.

443
00:36:11,340 --> 00:36:14,240
The option to work today when you support or oppose this measure.

444
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:17,720
We're starting at 32% support, 51% oppose.

445
00:36:19,220 --> 00:36:20,840
Again, remember the context.

446
00:36:21,820 --> 00:36:25,940
They think that they're getting good value, excuse me, they're getting really good fire services today.

447
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:31,780
And they don't think that they think that the paying higher taxes in other communities.

448
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:37,660
And so put those two things together, I think it's just logical that someone say, why would I, why would I pay more for something?

449
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:39,280
I feel like I'm getting really good service for it now.

450
00:36:40,420 --> 00:36:41,600
So that's what we're starting.

451
00:36:41,980 --> 00:36:44,240
But there's very little information there.

452
00:36:44,720 --> 00:36:46,620
For example, we didn't tell them about the benefits of the market.

453
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:48,580
We didn't tell them about the property tax rate.

454
00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:50,560
There's lots of things that aren't included here.

455
00:36:50,740 --> 00:36:53,420
There's just sort of the guts where people are starting from where they've got.

456
00:36:54,180 --> 00:36:56,400
If we look at the various communities,

457
00:36:57,220 --> 00:37:02,780
Gresham specifically was a 30%. The other community is combined with 41. This is support.

458
00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:08,220
Now the margins of error for the individual communities are very large. And so, again,

459
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:16,560
meet them with, you know, some caution, but 38% in fair view, 43% and

460
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,140
Troutdale on 37% in wood knowledge.

461
00:37:21,620 --> 00:37:25,740
So then we gave them some more information. And I'm at the

462
00:37:25,740 --> 00:37:27,840
age where my eyes are not good enough to read that.

463
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:29,900
So I'm going to look at that in my computer

464
00:37:29,900 --> 00:37:30,720
if you give me one second.

465
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:43,220
So that gives people our voters some more information.

466
00:37:43,460 --> 00:37:44,640
So currently, the City of Gresham is

467
00:37:44,640 --> 00:37:45,860
this own fire department, so we're trying

468
00:37:45,860 --> 00:37:47,260
to put things in the context for folks.

469
00:37:47,900 --> 00:37:49,000
The City of Gresham is a fair-of-you-challot

470
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:50,720
deal in the village, contract the City of Gresham

471
00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:52,340
to provide fire services in their communities,

472
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:54,740
local fire services, and each of these communities

473
00:37:54,740 --> 00:37:57,140
are funded by allocations from the City's journal fund.

474
00:37:57,780 --> 00:37:59,620
These communities are considering changes

475
00:37:59,620 --> 00:38:01,440
to how they fund local fire services,

476
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:03,100
one proposals to create a local district,

477
00:38:03,620 --> 00:38:07,380
which would be paid for by a new permanent property tax.

478
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:10,560
The proposal would require support from voters in each of the four communities.

479
00:38:10,780 --> 00:38:13,660
So this is just trying to put into plain English basically what we saw before.

480
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:19,180
Support increased to 3% from 3 to 38.

481
00:38:19,640 --> 00:38:22,520
So, you know, that's not nothing, but still well below 50.

482
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:28,140
Opposition didn't change some of the don't know responses decreased.

483
00:38:29,420 --> 00:38:34,140
Again, if we break it out by Gresham and the other cities, you can see that there was

484
00:38:34,140 --> 00:38:39,960
a slight improvement in Gresham as well as in Fairview and Troutdale in a slight decrease

485
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:40,580
in wood village.

486
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:42,780
Again, margins are very quite large.

487
00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:44,780
Don't read too much into that.

488
00:38:45,260 --> 00:38:47,260
But we have the data, so we wanted to present it to you.

489
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:50,040
And then we asked again,

490
00:38:52,180 --> 00:38:56,780
oops, with a little bit more information.

491
00:38:56,780 --> 00:39:05,220
We said creating the fire district will create a new form of local government with own permanent with student with its own property tax and government by its own elected officials.

492
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:12,020
The property tax rate for the city that they lived and remain at its current rate.

493
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:15,080
The property tax of the fire district will be an additional tax.

494
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:17,680
So this is trying to separate out how this might work.

495
00:39:18,820 --> 00:39:23,320
Fiverr service is not expected to receive any additional funding beyond what they currently receive.

496
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:29,880
However, city residents would have additional revenue that they could use to fund other city services such as police and parks.

497
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:36,080
Given this information, we go back to 34% for support, 55% opposition.

498
00:39:37,200 --> 00:39:45,800
Still, we haven't talked about rates themselves, and so the last thing we did actually here are the results sort of again broken out by the communities.

499
00:39:46,460 --> 00:39:52,240
Again, aggression, 32, and then between 21 and 47% for the other three communities.

500
00:39:54,860 --> 00:39:57,940
Um, here we ask people about specific rates.

501
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:04,380
These were intended to be sort of round numbers but consistent with the sorts of numbers that the city manager was talking about.

502
00:40:04,980 --> 00:40:09,380
So if you look at the, so that we asked would you support or oppose basically at these rates.

503
00:40:09,700 --> 00:40:13,540
If you look at the 350, that's sort of the mid range.

504
00:40:14,180 --> 00:40:20,460
We're at 23% support and what 70% opposed 55% strongly opposed.

505
00:40:20,460 --> 00:40:25,560
And we did, well, that's where we're at.

506
00:40:25,900 --> 00:40:30,040
We look at, it's 4.50, that's the higher, closer to the higher rate the city manager

507
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:35,280
talked about, where it's 16% support and you can see the very large opposition, particularly

508
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:36,080
the strong opposed.

509
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:40,920
We also tested a rate 250, which is below the numbers that the city manager talked about

510
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:46,760
because we wanted to be, we wanted to, like, no, is this, like, is it about cents?

511
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:51,020
like we talk of nickel or five cents to move people or nickel or ten cents

512
00:40:51,020 --> 00:40:54,880
recorded in new people or if you drop it even a dollar does that move folks and

513
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:59,140
there is some price sensitivity you can see at 250 you get to three two

514
00:40:59,140 --> 00:41:05,420
percent support but still well below the 50 percent threshold and then lastly we

515
00:41:05,420 --> 00:41:13,860
asked the regression voters should Gresham keep the current system or creating

516
00:41:13,860 --> 00:41:18,920
a new fire district, 60% of that was quo, 19% because that created a new district.

517
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:22,220
Now again, we did, there's lots of information we didn't provide people.

518
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:26,780
We didn't try to tell them all the wonderful benefits maybe you can come from a fire district

519
00:41:26,780 --> 00:41:29,160
who supports it and all the reasons why.

520
00:41:29,740 --> 00:41:34,540
Those things could be done in a campaign with further research, but also we just wanted

521
00:41:34,540 --> 00:41:38,520
to know like where does everybody can be on the same page and be clear about where folks

522
00:41:38,520 --> 00:41:43,400
starting at, and this information hopefully gives us that story at all.

523
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:48,220
So my takeaways, Gresham has provided high quality fire services to the community service,

524
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:50,300
and that's not something to minimize.

525
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:52,860
That's a huge blessing for all the communities here.

526
00:41:54,140 --> 00:41:58,060
Voters believe that they're paying higher than average property taxes, and the Gresham

527
00:41:58,060 --> 00:42:00,320
already has revenue and needs to meet its fire services.

528
00:42:01,860 --> 00:42:05,420
And then three, given that people are satisfied with their fire services, and don't believe

529
00:42:05,420 --> 00:42:10,420
that more revenues needed, they don't see a reason to make a change, it's like yet, maybe

530
00:42:10,420 --> 00:42:12,520
that will be there in the future.

531
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:17,180
Then sort of my bottom line, creating a fire district with a next year would be extremely

532
00:42:17,180 --> 00:42:17,740
challenging.

533
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:22,760
Aggressions and its partner cities should view these results as a foundation for future efforts.

534
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:29,180
Success requires sustained, long-term communication with residents to explain both the problems

535
00:42:29,180 --> 00:42:32,920
with the current system and the advantages of establishing a fire district.

536
00:42:33,700 --> 00:42:43,840
going forward. City leaders must present a unified front with consistent goals and messaging. Without clarity, voters are likely to be unlikely to change what the Army think is working well.

537
00:42:45,700 --> 00:42:56,660
And the city can't accomplish this alone. They're going to need a broad coalition of first partners who can elevate public awareness of the issue, collaborate effectively and contribute your own resources towards the end.

538
00:42:57,580 --> 00:43:01,820
So, with that, I will pause and also I'll just acknowledge my colleague, David Phan,

539
00:43:01,900 --> 00:43:03,820
who's here, who helped me quite a bit with this report.

540
00:43:08,730 --> 00:43:13,990
Thank you, John, and thank you, Larry, for that, and so I'll continue on now.

541
00:43:14,070 --> 00:43:16,810
We'll certainly have time for Q&A here in just a few minutes, Council.

542
00:43:19,110 --> 00:43:28,330
So I think what you heard from John with the research is that what is clearly needed overall

543
00:43:28,330 --> 00:43:35,630
Well, for Gresham, I can't speak for the three cities, although I think it's true, is a lot more information and education and outreach.

544
00:43:36,650 --> 00:43:47,690
I think we learned that best on the successful public safety levy, the Gresham past last year, where we took lessons learned from the previous time,

545
00:43:48,050 --> 00:43:56,450
flipped the communication strategy in a much different way and invited conversations in a different way than we had done before.

546
00:43:56,450 --> 00:44:04,750
And that I believe was one of the reasons why it ultimately passed because we brought the community in.

547
00:44:05,090 --> 00:44:17,080
I think to John's point right now, probably the vast majority of the community doesn't know that there's a problem because they call 911 and somebody comes.

548
00:44:17,760 --> 00:44:24,540
We know that there's challenges about the financial sustainability, but the average community member probably doesn't.

549
00:44:24,540 --> 00:44:31,920
and probably even, I'm guessing, a lot of them don't even understand the difference between a city-to-fired apartment and a district.

550
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:38,000
So there's a lot of work that can be done and should be done as we potentially go forward based on council direction.

551
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:46,780
So when we think about a fire district model, so what could we, the big W, what could we do in the meantime?

552
00:44:47,300 --> 00:44:52,120
You should have heard implementing a district model will take some time, two to five years if not more.

553
00:44:52,700 --> 00:44:57,600
The latest polling suggests that we do have a strong foundation to build from regarding

554
00:44:57,600 --> 00:44:59,940
interest in popularity slash quality.

555
00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:29,980
So, there is potential, but it will be an uphill climb with an adequate runway of time needed, helped to help build support. And as John mentioned, an effective coalition needed with Unified Keyword, collaborative messaging, visioning, desired outcomes, and goals that were all pointing in the same direction. And again, it's the big W. We. So, assuming our council, city council, because this is what I'm presenting.

556
00:45:29,980 --> 00:45:36,060
74, assuming Gresham City Council ultimately supports advancing a fire, fire district model,

557
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:37,820
what does that look like then?

558
00:45:38,100 --> 00:45:43,640
So knowing it's going to take time, one recommendation is to approach the three cities with the multi-year

559
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:50,880
extension of our IGA as a bridge while all four cities earnestly collaborate together towards

560
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:51,840
a common goal.

561
00:45:52,980 --> 00:45:58,660
This would help provide certainty and predictability to the four cities as well as to our fire department.

562
00:46:00,070 --> 00:46:06,270
If such an extension takes place, we think there are some potential pathways to help address

563
00:46:06,270 --> 00:46:10,710
the three cities needs during that bridge or interim time period.

564
00:46:11,090 --> 00:46:13,990
Again, what are their main concerns right now?

565
00:46:15,190 --> 00:46:20,230
So to that end, just a reminder, these are the three primary objectives that they had in

566
00:46:20,230 --> 00:46:25,710
their decision making process about why wanting to move to more of a fire district model for

567
00:46:25,710 --> 00:46:26,330
the three cities.

568
00:46:27,070 --> 00:46:32,590
So, for the first one, removing the costs, my answer is, well, it's not off the general

569
00:46:32,590 --> 00:46:37,470
fund ledger, a multi-year IGA extension does provide a level of certainty and predictability

570
00:46:37,470 --> 00:46:39,670
for several years for all four cities.

571
00:46:40,750 --> 00:46:43,050
Number two, interested in having more of a voice.

572
00:46:44,210 --> 00:46:48,730
One recommendation, this is not exhaustive, this is just, I'm throwing it out there as a

573
00:46:48,730 --> 00:46:54,250
suggestion, recommend either exploring a new council subcommittee of the finance committee

574
00:46:54,250 --> 00:46:57,830
as something we can talk about, what does that membership of that look like in terms of

575
00:46:58,390 --> 00:47:04,530
all four cities and key stakeholders, or is it with elected officials, or is it also

576
00:47:04,910 --> 00:47:07,710
or could it be a task force with a similar type of model?

577
00:47:08,270 --> 00:47:12,430
So I think that the devil's in the details of how to work through that on the other side

578
00:47:12,430 --> 00:47:16,410
based on council direction, and not only from us, but also the three cities.

579
00:47:17,810 --> 00:47:23,610
And I think for the third about response times, we're currently setting a lot of information

580
00:47:23,610 --> 00:47:29,250
a lot of data, but there could be potentially being able to add or realign service delivery

581
00:47:29,250 --> 00:47:33,290
to help improve response times while also helping to balance call volumes.

582
00:47:33,970 --> 00:47:38,310
So not prepared to say specifically what that looks like, but we are in the early stages of

583
00:47:38,310 --> 00:47:39,870
doing some of that analysis right now.

584
00:47:44,560 --> 00:47:47,220
So next steps based on council direction today,

585
00:47:47,820 --> 00:47:52,640
as a reminder, our current IGA has a goal that by December 31st of this year,

586
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:57,040
All four cities will make respective decisions about how they each will move forward.

587
00:47:58,140 --> 00:48:04,340
The city manager conversations will continue, so my collaboration with the other three

588
00:48:04,340 --> 00:48:08,440
city managers will continue based on feedback and direction received today.

589
00:48:09,220 --> 00:48:14,100
And please keep in mind that the three city managers are also respectively having similar

590
00:48:14,100 --> 00:48:17,520
updates with their councils in the next couple of issue weeks.

591
00:48:18,780 --> 00:48:26,200
And then already, I've already reserved October 7th as a potential time for an additional

592
00:48:26,200 --> 00:48:30,720
work session conversation with Council, again based on Council's direction today.

593
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:35,800
So with that, that concludes my, I'm sorry, the question is questions for Council today.

594
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:40,980
As first one, does Council wish to direct staff to continue exploration of a fire district

595
00:48:40,980 --> 00:48:44,800
model and bring additional information back at a future work session?

596
00:48:45,580 --> 00:48:48,380
If so, does council have anything specific?

597
00:48:48,640 --> 00:48:53,020
They would like to be, they would want me to bring back in terms of information to help

598
00:48:53,020 --> 00:48:56,100
them make an informed decision about the future of fire services.

599
00:48:56,780 --> 00:49:01,300
And if so, does council wish to direct staff on any follow-up with the three cities?

600
00:49:01,620 --> 00:49:04,160
There are city managers and or city councils.

601
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:08,860
And then, of course, always open to any other direction for staff.

602
00:49:09,420 --> 00:49:11,420
So that does conclude my presentation.

603
00:49:12,100 --> 00:49:13,780
And happy to answer any questions we can.

604
00:49:13,780 --> 00:49:14,360
Thank you.

605
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:19,840
Thank you all for that, that's a lot of information.

606
00:49:20,140 --> 00:49:26,200
So appreciate all the work that goes into that chief, you are so vocal during that conversation.

607
00:49:27,240 --> 00:49:27,300
Wow.

608
00:49:29,940 --> 00:49:37,140
So Council, I'm sure we've got lots of questions that we have in front of us, but I probably

609
00:49:37,140 --> 00:49:37,880
do some a little different.

610
00:49:38,200 --> 00:49:39,520
I'm going to ask the council.

611
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:46,240
So one of Eric's first questions, if you want to go back, is does the council wish direct

612
00:49:46,240 --> 00:49:50,040
staff to continue the exploration of a fire district model?

613
00:49:50,660 --> 00:49:55,120
As we ask questions, let's go ahead and as you ask questions, let's go ahead and kind

614
00:49:55,120 --> 00:49:59,700
of reference whether or not, you know, based on the questions that we're asking and let's

615
00:49:59,700 --> 00:50:04,920
give a little bit of direction on where you're at as an individual council member about

616
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:06,460
what your thoughts are about moving forward.

617
00:50:06,460 --> 00:50:10,720
I think as we go through this, I'm sure we can take up the next two hours.

618
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:15,960
We don't have that because we do have a council meeting, excuse me, a business meeting here later.

619
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:25,480
But as we're having the conversation, as we're asking the questions, let's kind of state where we're sitting as individual councillors as we look to give direction to staff as we make the next steps.

620
00:50:26,020 --> 00:50:27,520
Okay, you know what?

621
00:50:27,720 --> 00:50:33,320
I'm probably going to just go down the line because I'm sure everybody probably has questions, so we'll start with council glad filter.

622
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:41,980
Thank you so much for all of the information, all of the work, and I was listening to you on the phone on the way in, but I've heard every bit of it.

623
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:55,320
I have several thoughts. I mean, it's been a long time coming. I'm so happy that we're all having the conversation together because truly to me the most important piece is not about who has the fire department.

624
00:50:55,840 --> 00:51:01,680
It's about our community safety for all of our citizens, right? That's what's most important to me.

625
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:06,620
So, when I think about and I talk about this, this is the scope that I look at it with.

626
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:09,620
It's not about who's going to have the fire department.

627
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:14,400
But truly, I think a key point when I'm seeing and hearing what you talked about today,

628
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:19,440
is people are saying they don't want a district as they think they equate that to more money.

629
00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:24,400
But we need to be clear that whichever way it's going to be, it's going to be more money.

630
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:29,680
Because as we grow and continue to build up our services, it's going to cost more money.

631
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:36,600
So my ask is, as we go on the road of finding, is it truly the best decision to go to a district or not?

632
00:51:37,300 --> 00:51:42,040
And I am in support of going down that road still, but I don't think I'm not there yet.

633
00:51:42,700 --> 00:51:44,640
Because we need to be clear with the community.

634
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:48,940
Yes, we can make that decision of our own of saying we think this is a good idea.

635
00:51:49,340 --> 00:51:55,340
But I wouldn't be able to do that without really being really transparent with the community of what that means.

636
00:51:55,340 --> 00:52:00,880
because sure it might come off the books for the cities, but I still feel responsible

637
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:04,520
to tell them what that does that mean either way, does that make sense?

638
00:52:05,340 --> 00:52:09,820
So I feel like I just want to make sure we're clear on that, that today's service levels

639
00:52:09,820 --> 00:52:14,400
are great and that's because we're here but as we grow and as needs grow, where are we going

640
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:19,180
to have to be at if it stayed at the city so that it's a good comparison of what would

641
00:52:19,180 --> 00:52:22,900
that look like with the levy, or I'm not a levy, sorry, I'm stuck in my brain on that,

642
00:52:22,900 --> 00:52:26,080
with the fire district. Too many times of that one, right?

643
00:52:26,740 --> 00:52:27,180
Sorry.

644
00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:34,100
But anyway, I just appreciate the work. It's a lot and it's mind-boggling to move through

645
00:52:34,100 --> 00:52:38,240
all of those motions that it's going to take to get through it all, but I appreciate

646
00:52:38,240 --> 00:52:41,420
how hard you've been working on it. So those are my tickets. Thank you.

647
00:52:42,260 --> 00:52:44,220
Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Piazza.

648
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:52,420
I would like to first ask, do you have any knowledge or information of any cities and

649
00:52:52,420 --> 00:53:00,600
Oregon or Washington that have done this, that have done multiple cities coming together at the same time to do one district.

650
00:53:03,090 --> 00:53:12,350
Thank you, Councillor, for the question. I am not aware of anything right now, but I'm certainly happy to do some more work to see if there's other examples that have done even in recent look.

651
00:53:12,910 --> 00:53:21,450
It just seems like it's a complicated situation because of the fact that we have multiple jurisdictions in here trying to come together as one.

652
00:53:21,450 --> 00:53:26,370
It does complicate it. Yeah, I'm not familiar with anything that's come together like this in this manner

653
00:53:26,370 --> 00:53:27,490
But when we look at

654
00:53:28,250 --> 00:53:35,530
Sandy and live stone they just went with Clackamas, but that's yeah, I really have it not coming together as we're trying to do here as one team

655
00:53:35,530 --> 00:53:39,430
Yeah, they came in individually after an established district was there, okay

656
00:53:40,350 --> 00:53:45,710
What a quick question on that does anybody know the origin of TVF. No, that's so that was multiple

657
00:53:45,710 --> 00:53:50,230
What about mayor and kind of looking out in the crowd? I mean it sounds like yes

658
00:54:25,910 --> 00:54:35,970
So that's not quite what you're asking to also Valley existed and then they joined so it's complex.

659
00:54:36,650 --> 00:54:46,870
Okay, and then on the scenario one, the baseline, you have a tax rate of 373, which is interesting

660
00:54:46,870 --> 00:54:49,690
since our tax base is 361.

661
00:54:51,090 --> 00:54:57,270
And so if we're saying the current fire operation, this is more of a clarification for everybody.

662
00:54:58,370 --> 00:55:03,690
This is higher than our current total 361.

663
00:55:04,150 --> 00:55:08,750
And then you go in and you say 469 on scenario 2.

664
00:55:09,330 --> 00:55:14,570
So can you just kind of go in and explain this a little bit why it's so much higher when we're

665
00:55:14,570 --> 00:55:17,850
already offering it at what seems to be a 361 rate?

666
00:55:18,710 --> 00:55:20,350
Thank you, Councillor for that question.

667
00:55:21,510 --> 00:55:25,450
I will do my best, but she's on vacation, but I'll do my best.

668
00:55:27,950 --> 00:55:33,490
So as you may recall, on July 1st, we talked about this a little bit, because when the numbers

669
00:55:33,490 --> 00:55:38,190
first came at 373, all of us took a step back and said, whoa, wait a minute.

670
00:55:38,750 --> 00:55:40,970
Our permanent rates 361, what does that mean?

671
00:55:41,610 --> 00:55:47,570
But as you break down, and you actually look at our fire department budget, and if you break

672
00:55:47,570 --> 00:55:52,570
down all the different revenue sources that go to help support the fire department.

673
00:55:52,830 --> 00:55:57,430
There is a portion of the 361 per thousand that goes to the fire department.

674
00:55:57,830 --> 00:56:02,250
There is a portion of the police fire parts fee revenue that goes to the fire department.

675
00:56:02,530 --> 00:56:06,070
There's a portion of the public safety levy that goes to the fire department.

676
00:56:06,570 --> 00:56:11,170
And there's several other kinds of those revenue sources that go to the fire department.

677
00:56:11,650 --> 00:56:17,230
When you aggregate that and then reverse calculate and say like, okay, if I took all of that and

678
00:56:17,230 --> 00:56:19,190
and put it to an equivalent milligrate,

679
00:56:19,550 --> 00:56:24,930
we came up with about 367 ish of a number,

680
00:56:25,350 --> 00:56:30,490
so in terms of what it cost to capture our current

681
00:56:31,250 --> 00:56:33,310
fiscal year fire department budget.

682
00:56:34,330 --> 00:56:36,030
The three, so in some respects, you're like,

683
00:56:36,110 --> 00:56:38,850
okay, so we get the 373 more,

684
00:56:39,750 --> 00:56:43,670
but keep in mind the 373 was also doing a 10 year projection

685
00:56:44,350 --> 00:56:50,430
that it was, in other words, what that would say is on the first several years of a district

686
00:56:50,430 --> 00:56:54,430
at 373, there would in theory be a surplus of revenue.

687
00:56:55,670 --> 00:57:01,710
But on the out years of a district, there would be a point which the curves would cross

688
00:57:01,710 --> 00:57:06,370
each other, and there would be a deficit, a need, a gap.

689
00:57:07,130 --> 00:57:12,750
And so it's basically saying, yes, over that life of a 10 year, you need 373 because there

690
00:57:12,750 --> 00:57:16,370
there will be highs and lows, and that's an average rate that they came up with.

691
00:57:17,090 --> 00:57:22,330
And a similar in terms of the 469 is taking that same methodology, but

692
00:57:22,330 --> 00:57:29,090
now including the cost of an additional station, the additional personnel that go in to support that station overall.

693
00:57:30,210 --> 00:57:30,950
Thank you.

694
00:57:31,490 --> 00:57:38,050
Is there any, I don't know if the word, it would be advantageous.

695
00:57:38,050 --> 00:57:44,490
would it be, in your opinion, would it be less expensive for a district to run the fire

696
00:57:44,490 --> 00:57:46,670
versus a city to run the fire?

697
00:57:47,790 --> 00:57:55,010
I think that's, based on the council direction today, I think that's some additional analysis

698
00:57:55,010 --> 00:57:58,490
that we want to be able to, that we would like to be able to run through.

699
00:57:59,210 --> 00:58:05,670
So for instance, again, to almost a council or a cloud filters question like, well, okay,

700
00:58:05,670 --> 00:58:07,910
So, how would Gresham do this?

701
00:58:08,170 --> 00:58:08,770
Again, the discretion.

702
00:58:09,570 --> 00:58:12,550
What are the levers that our council can push or pull

703
00:58:12,550 --> 00:58:16,810
as it relates to the PFPP, the Levy, et cetera?

704
00:58:17,910 --> 00:58:20,970
Our budget and finance team is currently working

705
00:58:20,970 --> 00:58:24,450
and getting real close to finalizing a pretty sophisticated

706
00:58:24,450 --> 00:58:27,290
spreadsheet to be able to run some different financial

707
00:58:27,290 --> 00:58:28,770
scenarios about what that looks like.

708
00:58:29,270 --> 00:58:31,750
Not quite done yet, but that would be what I would want

709
00:58:31,750 --> 00:58:32,510
to be able to do.

710
00:58:32,690 --> 00:58:35,130
Should council give me direction to continue forward today

711
00:58:35,130 --> 00:58:45,330
and I would bring that information in collaboration with the three cities, bring that information back to council in a work session here that I'm looking for in early October.

712
00:58:46,170 --> 00:59:04,370
Okay. And then have you thought about a process in this of like we would one city go to the voters first or would the three cities go to the voters before question went to the voters because if one does it.

713
00:59:05,510 --> 00:59:14,010
approve it. Is there a point of going on? I don't know how that would work, but have you thought about a process in which you would think that would be the best way to do it?

714
00:59:15,290 --> 00:59:33,310
I think the, yes, short answer is yes. The longer answer is, again, there's a lot of permutations that can happen with this. I think that, ultimately, if our City Council and the four in the three City Councils come together and agree about a potential direction around the fire district,

715
00:59:33,310 --> 00:59:37,650
then I think some work needs to happen about, well, how do we do that together?

716
00:59:38,190 --> 00:59:42,770
And what are the different steps in the different decision making points for each respective council?

717
00:59:43,190 --> 00:59:46,830
And that gets into a little bit of that complexity, it's not just one city council.

718
00:59:47,530 --> 00:59:51,590
And to your point, what does that look like in terms of timing to go to a district?

719
00:59:51,970 --> 00:59:56,250
And that might depend on which type of district you're wanting to pursue.

720
00:59:56,510 --> 00:59:57,690
Again, a brand new district.

721
00:59:57,690 --> 00:59:59,730
Is it something with fire district 10?

722
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:28,800
Or is it a different fire, a different fire entity? So, for instance, District 10 has an established rate. We know what that rate is. There needs to be additional analysis that talks about, well, okay, so it's 285,000 going to work, overall to help support current, current, and or future needs of our fire department, and if not, then what does that look like? We would, again, based on whatever direction today, if it is to move forward, then that would be one of the next conversations is to explore that with District 10.

723
01:00:28,800 --> 01:00:30,980
and appreciate Mike being here, so I think you might,

724
01:00:31,260 --> 01:00:33,480
but be able to really talk about some of that stuff

725
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:34,800
to be able to analyze it.

726
01:00:34,900 --> 01:00:36,360
And again, bring more information back

727
01:00:36,360 --> 01:00:37,600
to all four city councils.

728
01:00:38,140 --> 01:00:40,080
So you can say yes, it is plausible,

729
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:42,680
or it's not plausible with a 285 per thousand.

730
01:00:43,100 --> 01:00:44,280
Is there a gap, is there a surplus?

731
01:00:44,560 --> 01:00:45,840
What does that look like as it relates

732
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:48,500
to our current service budget for fire department?

733
01:00:49,660 --> 01:00:52,520
And everything we look at is again, a snapshot in time.

734
01:00:52,740 --> 01:00:54,840
This is like everything we might come in October

735
01:00:54,840 --> 01:00:58,320
is based on current year, fiscal year, 25, 26.

736
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:03,300
And as we have time and we look, to your point about,

737
01:01:03,400 --> 01:01:05,960
well, is it cheaper to stay with the city or not?

738
01:01:06,420 --> 01:01:08,800
That would be another scenario that I would plan to bring.

739
01:01:09,220 --> 01:01:12,240
As I mentioned, that is an option that the Gresham could decide,

740
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:14,460
yeah, we want to hold on to our apartment.

741
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:15,800
Well, what does that look like?

742
01:01:15,860 --> 01:01:18,380
Because, again, the three cities for their own reasons,

743
01:01:18,380 --> 01:01:20,140
may still choose to move on their own.

744
01:01:21,000 --> 01:01:23,660
But we can talk about the pros and cons of what that looks like

745
01:01:23,660 --> 01:01:31,520
from a service delivery model, from a peer budget financial perspective, then that is

746
01:01:31,520 --> 01:01:35,280
a scenario where I would want to bring back additional information specifically to

747
01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:40,380
that to say, if it is a city fire department, this is what it looks like financially as

748
01:01:40,380 --> 01:01:46,160
we go forward. Here's the gaps and struggles and opportunities or needs relating to that

749
01:01:46,160 --> 01:01:52,660
to create a sustainable model. And then again, for a district similarly, there may be a few

750
01:01:52,660 --> 01:01:56,860
different options around that to bring just more detailed financial information to the council.

751
01:01:57,840 --> 01:02:05,120
Okay so I'll let others go on and ask questions but I would say that I I'm still in support of

752
01:02:05,120 --> 01:02:13,740
continuing to look at the district model. I do believe that part of maybe part of the reason we're

753
01:02:13,740 --> 01:02:19,940
all looking at this today is because of having to negotiate the most recent contract and where things

754
01:02:19,940 --> 01:02:27,940
were with that, and I understand that when you're, when you have a contract with an organization,

755
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:33,100
you don't get, you don't get to decide who, who the head of that organization is being in the

756
01:02:33,100 --> 01:02:38,320
food business. When I had a contract with somebody like Cisco, I don't get to make any choices on who's

757
01:02:38,320 --> 01:02:43,880
on their board. But this is a little bit different, and I could see especially where you talked about

758
01:02:43,880 --> 01:02:51,400
starting another committee and a finance, something to start sooner than later so that we have

759
01:02:51,400 --> 01:02:57,500
voices talking to each other and working together and listening to each other. So I think that

760
01:02:57,500 --> 01:03:03,580
would be good even to get going. I think if we're looking at that district model from everything you've

761
01:03:03,580 --> 01:03:10,820
put in here, it is probably three to five years before it can even go forth. So obviously we'd have to

762
01:03:10,820 --> 01:03:13,460
about sooner than that, but if they said yes, it's going to take that long.

763
01:03:13,960 --> 01:03:20,840
So negotiating a probably a two year, hopefully, contract with the three cities why we're in this process

764
01:03:21,640 --> 01:03:26,340
also would help in cutting back the time that the city is doing.

765
01:03:26,440 --> 01:03:29,760
It's like if you have to negotiate every year, you're constantly working on something.

766
01:03:30,340 --> 01:03:36,400
But if you're trying to move forward having a longer term negotiation on that interim contract,

767
01:03:36,720 --> 01:03:37,980
I believe would be a good idea.

768
01:03:40,500 --> 01:03:42,720
Thank you, Counselor. Councilor Heatley.

769
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:53,660
A couple questions and then I'll share my comments. Number one is I am thrilled with the progression that we've made of all working together.

770
01:03:54,240 --> 01:04:01,320
I've said from the beginning that there are economies of scale and the interesting thing is having been around here for 30 years.

771
01:04:01,680 --> 01:04:04,520
This is not a new issue and we are not going to get out of it quickly.

772
01:04:04,520 --> 01:04:07,920
I also don't believe that it's going to be a one-time vote.

773
01:04:08,200 --> 01:04:10,680
I think it might be several, so we have to prepare for that.

774
01:04:10,820 --> 01:04:15,220
But a couple of questions in the survey, and you are the expert, John.

775
01:04:15,420 --> 01:04:16,660
Thank you for all of that work.

776
01:04:17,120 --> 01:04:25,780
One of the things that was so interesting for me, I happen to be one that took it, is when

777
01:04:25,780 --> 01:04:28,460
the question was, do you like the service the way it is?

778
01:04:29,440 --> 01:04:32,960
Well, the service isn't going to stay the way it is, because it's either going to increase

779
01:04:32,960 --> 01:04:35,180
in cost, or we're going to reduce services.

780
01:04:35,780 --> 01:04:42,240
So the question, I just wonder how that skewed potentially the rest of the results.

781
01:04:42,840 --> 01:04:48,420
It also, in light of everything that's particularly the survey, people have no idea.

782
01:04:49,220 --> 01:04:50,560
And frankly, they don't care.

783
01:04:50,960 --> 01:04:54,300
They don't care what color the engine is that's going to come to their door.

784
01:04:54,820 --> 01:04:59,000
And so that really is incumbent upon us to know as much as we can, and

785
01:04:59,000 --> 01:05:03,900
to find the best service for the lowest possible cost.

786
01:05:04,380 --> 01:05:08,120
And I believe that the economies of scale and all of us working together are critical for

787
01:05:08,120 --> 01:05:08,320
that.

788
01:05:08,880 --> 01:05:15,800
I do want to mention, and this is something about, I am supportive of this, and I will say

789
01:05:15,800 --> 01:05:21,120
a little bit about that in a second also, but in regards to what I want to see moving forward,

790
01:05:21,480 --> 01:05:26,860
I know that the report that we did the financial feasibility was requested two years ago, long

791
01:05:26,860 --> 01:05:30,540
long before we were in this current situation, the current current situation.

792
01:05:30,940 --> 01:05:33,580
We've been in a funding situation for a long time.

793
01:05:35,240 --> 01:05:42,240
When you look at what the projections are, I mean, we're using the number of 474, that

794
01:05:42,240 --> 01:05:47,720
was because it was adding a new station, and to your credit, I'm not disagreeing with

795
01:05:47,720 --> 01:05:54,620
it, that we had an engine, a truck, a rescue, a BC, and then all of the backfill for

796
01:05:54,620 --> 01:05:59,240
have to ease. That's a huge number. The other things that I remember asking the consultant,

797
01:05:59,660 --> 01:06:05,700
how did you come to the numbers about the internal services, HR payroll? It was an industry

798
01:06:05,700 --> 01:06:10,880
standard that they used. Totally fine, but that's not going to do it for us. We need to be

799
01:06:10,880 --> 01:06:16,780
very specific. Do we need a new truck and an engine for a new station? I don't know, but

800
01:06:16,780 --> 01:06:21,480
let's look at it specifically for that growth. If we're going to use the number, I want to

801
01:06:21,480 --> 01:06:28,580
really specific about any numbers that we use. And the only other thing is the education

802
01:06:28,580 --> 01:06:34,900
for the citizens. This is so complicated. I mean, especially with the fact that it's

803
01:06:34,900 --> 01:06:40,060
Gresham and the three cities, who contracts, who owns it, who is it. And I could not agree

804
01:06:40,060 --> 01:06:45,820
with Councillor Gladfeldt or any more. It doesn't matter who owns it. It's the citizens

805
01:06:45,820 --> 01:06:55,680
And I believe they get to say, have a say in this, but it's going to be on us to educate them about what that say is.

806
01:06:56,040 --> 01:07:11,380
The survey for me is a baseline, but it is almost irrelevant because the questions need to be asked when they know what they're being asked and what the impact that all these decisions make on their literal safety.

807
01:07:11,380 --> 01:07:16,820
So, I am absolutely in support of moving forward with the comments that I just made.

808
01:07:17,420 --> 01:07:24,800
And I also would say that the committee, if it's a consensus that we do move forward,

809
01:07:24,940 --> 01:07:28,020
that the committee is essential, that we begin it right away.

810
01:07:28,200 --> 01:07:36,080
And I would ask that the council vote on the committee members, because that will really indicate

811
01:07:36,080 --> 01:07:42,140
our commitment to this, moving forward that we are all one and one for all, at least as we can.

812
01:07:42,520 --> 01:07:47,540
I think to your point, Councillor Piazza about, you know, what do we do if we fail in the

813
01:07:47,540 --> 01:07:55,320
others' past? Well, it's again, it's going to be a multiple-step process, so we will figure

814
01:07:55,320 --> 01:08:01,320
it out, but it might take several iterations before we all get to something. And I also

815
01:08:01,320 --> 01:08:04,740
I also want to say, and this is a public consumption.

816
01:08:05,400 --> 01:08:08,720
There are three cities in the state that still have their own fire department.

817
01:08:09,100 --> 01:08:11,140
Most people work on a fire district model.

818
01:08:11,500 --> 01:08:17,160
It works for the rest of the state, so I don't think there's anything that we're going to find that it doesn't work.

819
01:08:17,220 --> 01:08:20,840
It's just how we educate our citizens and whether or not we get the vote.

820
01:08:23,070 --> 01:08:24,430
Thank you, Councillor Kiivoli.

821
01:08:24,850 --> 01:08:25,410
Councillor President.

822
01:08:27,630 --> 01:08:29,690
Thanks, Councillors for all the questions you've asked so far.

823
01:08:29,830 --> 01:08:31,890
I agree with everything that's been said so far.

824
01:08:31,890 --> 01:08:38,450
And Councillor Keefe, that was one of the questions I had is, in terms of a ratio, how many

825
01:08:38,970 --> 01:08:44,570
fire districts are there versus city run fire departments?

826
01:08:45,830 --> 01:08:46,590
Just three.

827
01:08:52,630 --> 01:08:55,550
So was the question, how many city fire departments are there?

828
01:08:56,070 --> 01:08:57,370
Yeah, versus districts.

829
01:08:57,670 --> 01:09:02,330
I mean, how different is a district versus a city-led fire department?

830
01:09:02,570 --> 01:09:06,250
I don't personally have the number on the districts, but as far as city departments goes

831
01:09:06,250 --> 01:09:08,290
Those are seven that we work closely with.

832
01:09:08,630 --> 01:09:10,230
In the state or in the region, the state.

833
01:09:10,650 --> 01:09:10,890
Okay.

834
01:09:11,170 --> 01:09:12,670
That's a Medford band.

835
01:09:13,090 --> 01:09:13,230
Others?

836
01:09:13,650 --> 01:09:13,850
Okay.

837
01:09:14,110 --> 01:09:15,130
Very good.

838
01:09:15,390 --> 01:09:20,590
As it's been said, the word permutation has been used multiple times, and that is very

839
01:09:20,590 --> 01:09:20,950
accurate.

840
01:09:20,950 --> 01:09:24,810
It's like the permutations of a Rubik's cube, and we're just turning this thing around.

841
01:09:24,930 --> 01:09:28,790
It's going to take us a while to figure that out, because none of us are 12 years old.

842
01:09:28,910 --> 01:09:31,050
We've got a 12-year-old in here that take care of that, of course.

843
01:09:32,630 --> 01:09:38,490
Just an operational question, if we're to do this in terms of going to the district, all

844
01:09:38,490 --> 01:09:40,070
these assets are correction assets.

845
01:09:40,450 --> 01:09:42,030
How are those real lines?

846
01:09:42,290 --> 01:09:44,630
Does this question sell that to the district?

847
01:09:45,030 --> 01:09:46,430
Do we do a contract?

848
01:09:46,870 --> 01:09:47,710
And how does that work?

849
01:09:48,190 --> 01:09:49,850
Yeah, thank you, Council President, for that question.

850
01:09:51,530 --> 01:09:55,690
More to tell you in terms of details that I will continue to educate myself on.

851
01:09:55,750 --> 01:10:00,630
But the best I can tell right now is that, yes, all of the assets, and that's part of

852
01:10:00,630 --> 01:10:03,210
of the evaluation as part of the negotiation

853
01:10:03,210 --> 01:10:04,350
that goes in with the district,

854
01:10:04,530 --> 01:10:08,250
because not only are there, again, assets that we have,

855
01:10:08,650 --> 01:10:10,750
physical assets, vehicles, equipment, et cetera,

856
01:10:11,130 --> 01:10:14,090
they're staffing, but there's also a lot of liabilities,

857
01:10:14,350 --> 01:10:16,470
future liabilities for purers and things like that.

858
01:10:17,090 --> 01:10:20,050
So there is definitely a negotiation that takes place

859
01:10:20,050 --> 01:10:23,250
as it relates to transferring everything over to a district.

860
01:10:24,130 --> 01:10:25,370
Impers are transferable?

861
01:10:25,930 --> 01:10:28,130
Correct, that's part of the overall.

862
01:10:28,130 --> 01:10:30,190
Okay. Great.

863
01:10:34,020 --> 01:10:42,920
I don't have any other questions. I agree with everything that's been said. And I would agree with the question to continue the analysis.

864
01:10:44,020 --> 01:10:44,540
Thanks.

865
01:10:45,100 --> 01:10:46,500
Thank you, Council President. Councils Morales.

866
01:10:47,780 --> 01:10:55,960
Thank you for all the work that went into this. A lot of the things that I was we're going to comment on have been said.

867
01:10:57,300 --> 01:11:01,800
I just have one question, when we did the feasibility study, was it just the City of Gresham,

868
01:11:02,060 --> 01:11:04,340
or did that include the other cities as well?

869
01:11:05,680 --> 01:11:14,480
Councillor Morales, the study that was presented on July 1st was, again, based on just Gresham

870
01:11:14,480 --> 01:11:19,980
City boundaries, and the assumption was it would be the City of Gresham establishing a district

871
01:11:19,980 --> 01:11:24,960
for its own geographic boundaries with the assumption that we would be continuing to provide

872
01:11:24,960 --> 01:11:29,200
by contractual fire services to the three cities and also fire district 10.

873
01:11:29,580 --> 01:11:30,960
So again, it was an assumption.

874
01:11:31,620 --> 01:11:35,640
We didn't want to presume anything from the other three cities or district 10.

875
01:11:36,000 --> 01:11:42,200
So it was really looking to just keep it to knowns and minimize the number of variables that go with that.

876
01:11:42,700 --> 01:11:53,080
Yeah, it seems like for a more accurate picture, we might want to look at that feasibility study to include a new district that includes all four cities paying into it, right?

877
01:11:53,080 --> 01:12:03,240
I think that's part of, again, based on any direction that I'm sensing today, that would be some of the next analysis to bring back additional information that looks at it at a broader financial picture.

878
01:12:03,620 --> 01:12:14,520
Yeah, I think it's to be important to be able to really talk about the numbers and what's needed in addition to some of the things that have already been said in terms of projecting out that 10 year headway.

879
01:12:16,420 --> 01:12:22,800
I agree in moving forward I have since I got on council seven years ago to approach a fire district.

880
01:12:25,120 --> 01:12:33,200
I hope that as we do that, we do work with the other cities to figure out an IGA, that's probably three years.

881
01:12:34,120 --> 01:12:37,560
So that they know that we're committed to working together on this.

882
01:12:38,080 --> 01:12:41,960
I would obviously budget in for cola, reasonable cola and whatnot.

883
01:12:41,960 --> 01:13:11,940
But if we could get something set in stone that I think shows good faith effort that we want to work with other cities to do it, I'd also love to figure out a way to make sure that in addition to the city manager's meeting that there's more communication amongst our councils and the mayor because we are at least I'm not per view to what colleges are happening on the other councils or what the attitudes are, you know, beliefs around the district.

884
01:13:11,940 --> 01:13:15,360
are, and I think more communication amongst us is important.

885
01:13:16,860 --> 01:13:19,060
And then the other thing I would say is,

886
01:13:22,380 --> 01:13:23,880
actually, I think those are all the things.

887
01:13:24,060 --> 01:13:25,260
So yes, very supportive of this.

888
01:13:26,000 --> 01:13:33,480
I would aim for like a three-year IJ, or in terms of the survey that was done, that's

889
01:13:33,480 --> 01:13:34,640
not surprising to me.

890
01:13:34,700 --> 01:13:38,840
I was one of the people who got the survey, and I was happy with our fire district.

891
01:13:39,020 --> 01:13:44,760
But I also know, with our fire department, but I also know how much they sacrifice to

892
01:13:44,760 --> 01:13:48,880
not compromise the quality that the people are getting, even though they're under resource

893
01:13:48,880 --> 01:13:53,500
and have been under resource and so I don't think the average voter or resident in question

894
01:13:53,500 --> 01:14:01,100
understands that, the sacrifices that are made for them to get the service and so we voted

895
01:14:01,100 --> 01:14:08,780
on having a fiscal strategy that was about creating more sustainability and the district was

896
01:14:08,780 --> 01:14:13,960
one of those options as well as the lively that we passed and so and bonds and so I want

897
01:14:13,960 --> 01:14:17,360
I want to make sure that we continue with our plan forward.

898
01:14:20,050 --> 01:14:22,150
Thank you, Councillor Morales, Councillor Browne.

899
01:14:23,600 --> 01:14:26,700
One of the perks of going last and disadvantages, you guys took all my questions.

900
01:14:27,900 --> 01:14:32,700
But thank you for all the work and I just want to say thank you to our firefighters for being

901
01:14:32,700 --> 01:14:34,700
here today to listen in on this conversation.

902
01:14:34,700 --> 01:14:38,220
I think it's really important that you're here and absorbing this with us.

903
01:14:40,500 --> 01:14:46,480
One of my just points that I want to address is if we, I mean it sounds like we're all

904
01:14:46,480 --> 01:14:53,840
agreeance that we need to continue the work on this. But if Gresham ultimately decides not to move

905
01:14:53,840 --> 01:14:59,360
forward with the district, we have to consider what that looks like for the mutual aid agreements with

906
01:14:59,360 --> 01:14:59,920
the other three.

907
01:15:19,240 --> 01:15:29,860
I want to ask about a little bit about the strategy for when we passed the levy and when how

908
01:15:29,860 --> 01:15:36,120
you guys flipped those numbers because I know that that analysis was similar to this when it failed

909
01:15:36,120 --> 01:15:40,620
the first time in high grades took those numbers and really got the community more educated because

910
01:15:40,620 --> 01:15:49,240
that is the writing on the wall, right? Like what city staff for all the four cities have a view of

911
01:15:49,240 --> 01:15:54,860
is very different than the community, so we need to get the community more educated on,

912
01:15:55,880 --> 01:16:02,200
You know, ultimately, why we need to go to a district for, to release the burden of all of our general funds.

913
01:16:02,720 --> 01:16:08,740
So one, I want to know what it cost when you guys did that, like, what kind of money did you raise for that levy?

914
01:16:09,140 --> 01:16:18,720
And if you could guess what that would cost us to do that type of campaign over the next couple of years and what the strategy would be for that.

915
01:16:20,300 --> 01:16:25,180
Thank you, Councillor for the question. I guess one thing I need to clarify is that the city did not raise a campaign.

916
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:30,900
So I don't have those numbers and that would not be led by the city.

917
01:16:32,420 --> 01:16:36,300
I think going back to your question about like, so what was different? What happened?

918
01:16:36,960 --> 01:16:43,740
What was different about the public safety levy in 2024 that was not different in 2023 or even before that?

919
01:16:45,180 --> 01:16:50,400
I'll give a couple of things and I should ask Larry to weigh in as well as he was the

920
01:16:50,400 --> 01:16:55,620
chief architect for this campaign in between him and our partnerships with our unions

921
01:16:56,440 --> 01:16:58,680
and key community stakeholders.

922
01:16:59,400 --> 01:17:02,700
That's part of what was key to I believe our success.

923
01:17:03,520 --> 01:17:10,240
I think the other thing is I've been with the city more than a minute and I would say historically

924
01:17:11,680 --> 01:17:26,900
In my opinion, these are Eric's words, and nobody's also, but in my opinion, I don't believe we city have been as many transparent and open about our, to our community as we maybe could have been about the state of where we are really at.

925
01:17:27,760 --> 01:17:33,540
Again, it's an education campaign, information campaign, it's complex, city budgeting's complex.

926
01:17:34,380 --> 01:17:39,560
And so a lot of folks just, they are none the wiser through no fault of their own, but

927
01:17:39,560 --> 01:17:45,680
they don't understand how the city budgets work and what the problems are and what the potential solutions are.

928
01:17:46,820 --> 01:17:56,480
So I think when I think about like what was different in this campaign, in my description of it, as I've told folks is we pulled the curtains back more.

929
01:17:56,900 --> 01:18:05,500
We invited the community in for conversations whether it was at fire stations for the kids or open houses and things like that.

930
01:18:06,260 --> 01:18:19,360
We are firefighters and our police officers were more of the front presence of communicating with our community about the needs and educating the community about what we go through.

931
01:18:19,360 --> 01:18:26,940
So, one of the things that I think we learned with some of our helps with our communication

932
01:18:26,940 --> 01:18:34,020
strategist was, you know, the notion of problems, the unites, solutions divide.

933
01:18:35,440 --> 01:18:42,080
Well, maybe one could say the 2023 campaign was more about the solution, hey, we need more

934
01:18:42,080 --> 01:18:42,440
money.

935
01:18:43,080 --> 01:18:43,600
That's great.

936
01:18:43,720 --> 01:18:44,300
Just give us that.

937
01:18:44,920 --> 01:18:50,880
Whereas, in 2024, we flipped it upside down and said, look, here's our challenges.

938
01:18:52,240 --> 01:18:55,780
And bring folks in for a conversation that was more thoughtful and engaging.

939
01:18:56,660 --> 01:19:04,940
And I believe that, in my opinion, I think that was a huge change or a pivot point for

940
01:19:04,940 --> 01:19:10,140
how we think about engaging with our community going forward on all the topics.

941
01:19:10,140 --> 01:19:14,560
So let me ask Larry maybe if there's anything else that you would like to expand on that as well.

942
01:19:15,520 --> 01:19:16,440
Yeah, thanks, Eric.

943
01:19:16,700 --> 01:19:17,280
Thanks, soundsler.

944
01:19:18,580 --> 01:19:25,980
In regards to the dollar amount, I think public records would show that the coalition raised roughly $100,000.

945
01:19:27,160 --> 01:19:36,040
John and I were kind of chunking a second ago because I was trying to find the polling from February of 2024 that had a subside down.

946
01:19:36,040 --> 01:20:00,560
and we moved the electorate collectively with IFF and Kevin in partnership and Matt and our GPA folks 15 points in 75 days which if you were to do an electorate and get a poll that showed you down by a considerable amount in, you know, 70 days, you'd almost just mail it in.

947
01:20:00,560 --> 01:20:06,100
So, I, though the polling, I think you can speculate on where it's at and where the voters are at.

948
01:20:06,440 --> 01:20:11,540
I believe very strongly that there's nothing that East County can't accomplish when we do it together.

949
01:20:12,640 --> 01:20:17,580
And we have, I believe, a couple of years to get this figured out, swimming council and other councilman forward.

950
01:20:19,080 --> 01:20:23,780
But 15 points in 75 days is herculean effort.

951
01:20:24,300 --> 01:20:29,280
The other thing that I would note too is we talked about the levy with our partners and

952
01:20:29,280 --> 01:20:33,420
in the unions, around the value and not about the cost.

953
01:20:34,060 --> 01:20:38,460
Of course, it should be a cost to save lives and to keep our community safe.

954
01:20:38,880 --> 01:20:41,780
But the value of saving lives, preserving lives, was essential.

955
01:20:42,120 --> 01:20:46,480
The last thing I would note too is we have a unique opportunity in this setting

956
01:20:46,480 --> 01:20:51,640
to talk to the public, educate them, and inform them about the benefits, potentially the value,

957
01:20:52,200 --> 01:20:56,780
and do that hopefully in some synchronized coordinated effort into the future.

958
01:20:56,780 --> 01:21:06,400
Again, ultimately, this will, each community may have different motivations that they will go to the ballot around whether it be the no fund or whether it be autonomy, et cetera.

959
01:21:06,660 --> 01:21:10,280
But I think we have the ability to talk to the public in one voice about the future.

960
01:21:10,600 --> 01:21:14,920
While I would also note preserving the conversation around what the levy may look like in the future.

961
01:21:15,080 --> 01:21:23,940
Because, again, the levy was always communicated as a bridge to get into the future and have a stable conversation about long-term investments around public safety.

962
01:21:23,940 --> 01:21:29,040
always was that. But we also have half of that, which is still police, and the future around

963
01:21:29,040 --> 01:21:34,560
the funding around there. I would note that the data that John mentioned, the numbers around

964
01:21:34,560 --> 01:21:41,960
public safety, specifically police, and the need and desire to invest in that, has moved 20 plus

965
01:21:41,960 --> 01:21:46,680
points in the last several years. So the public's appetite and interest in funding public safety,

966
01:21:46,980 --> 01:21:52,960
police specifically, is through the roof. Now what that looks like, how that's budgeted is different,

967
01:21:52,960 --> 01:21:55,860
But those are historic numbers before we see things.

968
01:21:56,440 --> 01:21:57,600
John, you got it.

969
01:21:58,840 --> 01:21:59,800
Thank you for that.

970
01:21:59,960 --> 01:22:05,320
Just trying to wrap my brain around how we go about just getting the community more educated

971
01:22:05,320 --> 01:22:09,800
and involved in it, especially when they're so satisfied with surface but they don't know

972
01:22:10,240 --> 01:22:16,460
the ins and outs of the things that we struggle with, budget-wise, and what our fighters are

973
01:22:16,460 --> 01:22:17,280
actually dealing with.

974
01:22:17,640 --> 01:22:21,820
If I could mention this one more thing, Councillor Brown to your question about.

975
01:22:21,820 --> 01:22:23,400
So, how would we move forward?

976
01:22:23,600 --> 01:22:28,300
Again, ultimately, if our council and the three city councils agree that like, okay, we're

977
01:22:28,300 --> 01:22:31,660
going to do this, whatever this is, and we're going to pursue this direction.

978
01:22:32,680 --> 01:22:37,000
Coming together in whatever form with its attached for subcommittee, whatever that looks like.

979
01:22:39,060 --> 01:22:44,000
Everything that I know is that in that time frame, which is going to take some time, we can

980
01:22:44,000 --> 01:22:48,800
have those conversations, and we can jointly talk about investing in public education,

981
01:22:48,800 --> 01:22:52,240
and outreach, et cetera, because that's not tied to a specific ballot.

982
01:22:52,660 --> 01:22:57,120
We're just really, once we file the ballot, that's when we have to back up and just say,

983
01:22:57,520 --> 01:22:58,560
okay, now we're just educating.

984
01:22:59,140 --> 01:23:03,120
But we can, in essence, educate and form, advocate for what we're trying to do.

985
01:23:03,620 --> 01:23:06,740
But to do it, we would do it strategically together and collaborate on it.

986
01:23:07,380 --> 01:23:13,300
I will just wrap up by saying I am also in a grants with that we continue to explore more specifically.

987
01:23:14,320 --> 01:23:18,780
I would love to see the analysis of District 10, because I feel like that's our

988
01:23:18,780 --> 01:23:25,820
most, it's our best bet moving forward in my opinion, so I'd love to see some more

989
01:23:25,820 --> 01:23:30,740
tangible numbers on that with their tax rate and all that good stuff.

990
01:23:31,020 --> 01:23:37,540
And then I am definitely into grants with bringing together some type of board subcommittee

991
01:23:38,160 --> 01:23:39,400
with all four cities.

992
01:23:39,400 --> 01:23:45,080
I would agree with Council Morales, there needs to be more counselors from all four cities

993
01:23:45,760 --> 01:23:51,000
having the same or having a conversation so we're not getting funneled through just our city

994
01:23:51,000 --> 01:23:58,100
managers or just our mayors that bridge needs to be brought together. So all in all, thank you.

995
01:23:59,020 --> 01:24:03,480
Good job. Thank you Councillor. Back to Councillor Morales and we're going to look to wrap up so

996
01:24:03,480 --> 01:24:07,340
that we can get prepared for it. Six o'clock me. I would say that a little more context to how we

997
01:24:07,940 --> 01:24:13,600
move that needle because that was part of the initial pieces in the second. You know a lot of the

998
01:24:13,600 --> 01:24:18,640
learning that the community did, we did it by watching and seeing us learn too.

999
01:24:19,280 --> 01:24:21,460
You know, we went through and talked about different scenarios.

1000
01:24:22,560 --> 01:24:27,420
We moved percentages, and you know, and all of that was done in the public.

1001
01:24:28,000 --> 01:24:31,880
And then the other thing that we did, I think, was we built a really broad coalition.

1002
01:24:32,580 --> 01:24:42,080
And so in addition to the $100,000, our fire department, our GPA, our community groups,

1003
01:24:42,080 --> 01:24:47,780
our chamber, like everyone was out with the same message. And so people who were initially skeptical

1004
01:24:48,540 --> 01:24:53,320
about funding public safety were hearing it from trusted messengers. And so I think that

1005
01:24:53,320 --> 01:24:58,060
that level of coalition will need to happen. We also did a lot of a lot of all of our counselors.

1006
01:24:58,060 --> 01:25:03,440
We went out and did public sessions, hearing sessions, and I think we'll have to do that with the

1007
01:25:03,440 --> 01:25:10,420
other cities as well. But it was a big lift to shift that education and knowledge. But a lot of

1008
01:25:10,420 --> 01:25:14,280
the learning happened, as we were also learning, what it meant to put to Porto Levy, so.

1009
01:25:15,540 --> 01:25:16,660
Thank you, Councillor Morales.

1010
01:25:17,480 --> 01:25:18,440
So I'll cut to the chase.

1011
01:25:18,700 --> 01:25:24,040
I'm, of course, absolutely in wholeheartedly supportive, moving forward, continuing to do

1012
01:25:24,040 --> 01:25:24,460
the work.

1013
01:25:24,720 --> 01:25:28,300
And again, Eric, you already mentioned, you know, next step, what would that next step be?

1014
01:25:28,460 --> 01:25:33,120
Is that that deeper evaluation from a financial perspective of what those actual numbers would

1015
01:25:33,120 --> 01:25:33,300
be?

1016
01:25:33,300 --> 01:25:43,880
I do want to say something in regards to, you know, I am very proud to sit with this council and previous council so I've been able to serve with.

1017
01:25:44,380 --> 01:26:01,840
You know, as we set out to really work shoulders or shoulder with our firefighters, our police department, you know, five, four and a half, five years ago, you know, when I became mayor and many of the folks who were sitting at the dice now, you know, we set forth, you know, things that we wanted to make sure we did.

1018
01:26:01,840 --> 01:26:08,440
The very first thing was that the fire tiller truck, and we were able to work with fire chief at the time to get that pass.

1019
01:26:08,580 --> 01:26:14,000
We were able to work through ensuring that we could get a lot of things done.

1020
01:26:14,120 --> 01:26:24,060
First thing was we got a new rescue unit at that point in time, and of course now we've got a rescue unit that's a pretty significant vehicle over what we've had in the past.

1021
01:26:24,060 --> 01:26:26,400
We've got a three fire trucks on order.

1022
01:26:26,640 --> 01:26:32,520
We've got 72, I passed by there the other day, watching the second floor go on up there.

1023
01:26:33,060 --> 01:26:40,040
We had the complaints and frustrations that were voiced and the previous council said we owned it.

1024
01:26:40,180 --> 01:26:43,480
We absolutely owned it and said, you're right, we're going to go after this.

1025
01:26:43,700 --> 01:26:47,740
And Eric under your leadership, leadership of our facilities team, worked with our firefighters,

1026
01:26:47,740 --> 01:26:51,660
worked with our facilities folks, and made sure that we went in and got things done.

1027
01:26:51,660 --> 01:26:54,480
And we're not nearly where we want to be from a facility's perspective.

1028
01:26:55,040 --> 01:27:01,100
And that's another part of the plan that was laid out roughly about three or four years ago where we said we're going to take all of these steps.

1029
01:27:01,660 --> 01:27:12,060
And then lastly, as many of you know, this was the fourth levy, the privilege of working on to ensure that we could get the right funding for our firefighters and our police department.

1030
01:27:12,520 --> 01:27:17,960
And this one passed maybe four times a charm and we learned something the other three times.

1031
01:27:17,960 --> 01:27:24,380
And that number was a hundred and about a hundred and twenty and twenty five thousand I know because I was the one making all the happy phone calls

1032
01:27:25,240 --> 01:27:30,080
But our community stood up stepped up and and funded this campaign, you know, so

1033
01:27:31,160 --> 01:27:34,560
This I think it's the continued maturation of that plan, you know

1034
01:27:34,560 --> 01:27:40,780
We said that once we got the levy pass. We wanted to move towards this full investigation evaluation of the district

1035
01:27:40,780 --> 01:27:44,060
And that's what we're doing. I you know from the council's

1036
01:27:44,060 --> 01:28:13,940
I believe we're all wholly committed and a whole heartily committed to continue that effort that we promise that we would do, because we keep executing on the things that we've said that we would execute on, left out the dollars that IFF and Kevin's leadership and Larry and his leadership from a legislative perspective, we're able to garner $8 million for station 74, and I can tell you right now, other mayors across the region are completely befuddled about how the city of aggression continues to win.

1037
01:28:13,940 --> 01:28:18,860
at various things, and it's something that we're all very proud of.

1038
01:28:19,120 --> 01:28:23,680
We couldn't do it if we didn't have the support of everybody, not just the folks sitting in this room, but those behind.

1039
01:28:24,260 --> 01:28:28,740
So as you heard, I think everybody's completely committed to continue moving forward.

1040
01:28:29,060 --> 01:28:31,440
And so I think you've got the direction.

1041
01:28:32,040 --> 01:28:38,760
You've picked up all the parts and pieces of what the council would like to see as we continue to go forward and do the full evaluation of this.

1042
01:28:38,820 --> 01:28:41,880
Of course, everybody's fully supportive of the subcommittee.

1043
01:28:42,600 --> 01:28:46,920
For those of you who weren't here prior, we used to have something similar called the Safer Committee.

1044
01:28:47,420 --> 01:28:52,920
And Council of Black Filter was a part of that, and also city councilors of the other cities were also a part of that Safer Committee.

1045
01:28:53,140 --> 01:28:56,220
So I think we're looking at something a little bit different, but

1046
01:28:56,640 --> 01:29:02,640
constituting something that actually has everybody sitting at the table looking at how do we evaluate these things.

1047
01:29:03,300 --> 01:29:08,260
And as many of you know, I don't think it's been said yet, but we have three years left on this levy.

1048
01:29:08,260 --> 01:29:17,020
So let's not forget that there's three years left on this levy and we have to have a funding mechanism going forward.

1049
01:29:17,380 --> 01:29:19,960
So at the end of those three years, we have to have a funding mechanism.

1050
01:29:20,340 --> 01:29:25,600
Whatever the solution is, whether it's district nor other additional levy, we have to have a funding mechanism.

1051
01:29:25,820 --> 01:29:32,040
We do not have the funding structure as we sit here today, if we don't have one of those funding mechanisms in place.

1052
01:29:32,120 --> 01:29:33,680
So we have to have one of those in place.

1053
01:29:33,680 --> 01:29:47,000
We've got to continue working together, similar to how we did to get this last levy pass to ensure that we've got the appropriate funding for our city firefighters, our public safety, our police department, as we continue to go forward with those efforts.

1054
01:29:47,700 --> 01:29:59,560
So with that, I just want to thank you all for sitting through my yacking, but Eric, I think you've got the direction you need and the team here to continue the great work that we're doing before we bring this to a close.

1055
01:30:00,000 --> 01:30:29,380
John, I do have one thing I want to highlight from whenever you present, it's great work, although it tends to drive more questions than answer, sometimes it's a year aware. The thing that bothers me the most is our community members feel like they're not getting the best value for their tax dollar. But yet, their tax dollar, 92% of their tax dollar, goes to police and fire. So 92% of their tax,

1056
01:30:29,380 --> 01:30:35,020
Let me take that back, actually 92% of our general fund goes to police and fire.

1057
01:30:35,620 --> 01:30:40,100
Our actual property tax only is about 50% of that number.

1058
01:30:40,500 --> 01:30:44,880
So 100% of their tax dollar goes to police and fire.

1059
01:30:45,600 --> 01:30:48,540
That feels to me like a significant disconnect.

1060
01:30:49,780 --> 01:30:52,140
It is a significant disconnect, absolutely.

1061
01:30:53,780 --> 01:30:58,120
I don't know if we did a survey, we asked people to give us a percentage of money to city budget,

1062
01:30:58,120 --> 01:31:02,680
that goes to police and fire, it's going to be well lower than 91% or 90% than you just said,

1063
01:31:02,780 --> 01:31:07,940
and if you ask them, you know, just the city waste money on stuff, they'll probably say all

1064
01:31:07,940 --> 01:31:12,080
sorts of things that often won't have anything to do with the city at all. So there's this

1065
01:31:12,080 --> 01:31:17,280
disconnect between both what the city has for revenue. So there's this connect about what the city

1066
01:31:17,280 --> 01:31:21,340
spends the money on. There's also disconnect about what layer of government provides, what service,

1067
01:31:21,580 --> 01:31:27,000
so there's all sorts of disconnects. And that's just the cards that are on the table.

1068
01:31:28,120 --> 01:31:34,100
I mean, there's things that you all in this community and the other communities can do to address that,

1069
01:31:35,900 --> 01:31:41,600
but that's never going to go away. That is, we've made government, not the folks in this room,

1070
01:31:41,600 --> 01:31:45,580
but over the course of Oregon, Cestry, we've made government pretty darn difficult to understand.

1071
01:31:46,800 --> 01:31:51,100
And then some folks, you know, just, they really truly want to hand off the decision making to

1072
01:31:51,100 --> 01:31:55,260
the leaders, and they don't want to be too engaged, and they see the quality of service, for example,

1073
01:31:55,260 --> 01:31:59,440
with fire is, one of the great things about living in aggression, they don't have to worry

1074
01:31:59,440 --> 01:31:59,960
about that.

1075
01:32:00,400 --> 01:32:03,900
But it does then create the challenge about going to ask them for more money for the

1076
01:32:03,900 --> 01:32:05,780
thing that they think that they're getting service as well.

1077
01:32:06,020 --> 01:32:10,680
So I just empathize with you, Mayor, it is true that those this connects to exist and those

1078
01:32:10,680 --> 01:32:12,720
are things that we just have to manage going for a best account.

1079
01:32:13,280 --> 01:32:18,780
Well, we would need, I mean, we would need continued advice and guidance on how do we

1080
01:32:18,780 --> 01:32:19,800
breach that gap?

1081
01:32:20,020 --> 01:32:24,780
Because it's a significant gap, only reference one, but there were multiple gaps in kind of

1082
01:32:24,780 --> 01:32:27,800
how people feel and essentially what's being delivered.

1083
01:32:28,060 --> 01:32:28,740
So I appreciate that.

1084
01:32:28,820 --> 01:32:30,000
I'm going to end by just saying,

1085
01:32:30,140 --> 01:32:33,020
and I'm sure I reflect every single person on this council

1086
01:32:33,020 --> 01:32:33,880
to our firefighters.

1087
01:32:34,480 --> 01:32:37,040
Thank you for everything you do all day, every day.

1088
01:32:37,160 --> 01:32:40,060
We can't even imagine the things that you have to do.

1089
01:32:40,200 --> 01:32:43,480
Every time I tour a fire station,

1090
01:32:44,060 --> 01:32:46,560
and I see the plethora of tools and things

1091
01:32:46,560 --> 01:32:48,720
that you have to know how to use it.

1092
01:32:48,840 --> 01:32:51,960
I'm just an awe of all the things you do on a day-to-day basis.

1093
01:32:51,960 --> 01:32:59,520
And of course, on Friday, many of you are out in the searing heat, battling a tire fire which is a very dangerous situation.

1094
01:33:00,100 --> 01:33:05,980
And I just want to continue, again, the voice this council, our community's support of you.

1095
01:33:06,220 --> 01:33:09,740
You saw the numbers, we're very, very happy with the great work you're doing.

1096
01:33:10,200 --> 01:33:16,040
And I will say that there was a business in our community that they were on LNG trucks.

1097
01:33:16,040 --> 01:33:44,140
and they were overly, overly effusive of praise to our firefighters when you responded to a LNG truck fire where they heard in other communities they've had problems and our firefighters showed up and we knew all the exact things to do in this specific specialty situation and they were incredibly, incredibly impressed with your work and I told them that's our team all day long.

1098
01:33:44,140 --> 01:33:50,620
So with that, I just wanted to continue to say thank you for all you do every single day to keep our community safe.

1099
01:33:51,620 --> 01:34:09,200
So with that, I think we've given the direction, and we're excited about what comes next, and looking forward to taking that next step and understanding specifically how do the dollars and sense look like and what they look like and what order some of the plans of how we would move something like this forward.

1100
01:34:09,200 --> 01:34:20,060
All right, appreciate you and there are no objections, we'll move to adjourn because you have about 20 minutes before you have to be at the Dias meeting adjourned. Thank you all.