[0:04] This work session of the Westland City Council. It is Tuesday, October 21, 2025, 603 P.M., got a nice full agenda tonight with several council priorities and projects of importance to the community and the city on our agenda. So we'll get right into it. First item is just to approve the agenda. So I would entertain a motion.

[0:29] Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve the agenda for the Tuesday October 21st, 2025 Westland City Council

[0:38] Work session.

[0:39] Second.

[0:40] Okay, it's been moved in second to approve the agenda for the October 21st, 2025 City Council

[0:45] Work session.

[0:47] Any discussion from the council?

[0:51] Okay, seeing none.

[0:52] Call the roll, please.

[0:52] Kathy, thank you.

[0:54] Yes.

[0:56] Yes.

[0:57] Yes.

[0:57] On the right.

[0:59] Yes.

[1:01] So the agenda passes.

[1:03] And that's the last time we'll have to call the roll tonight, Kathy.

[1:06] Why it night in a work session?

[1:10] So that takes us to public comments for items not on the agenda or some folks may wish

[1:15] to go early.

[1:18] Rebecca Hounder?

[1:22] Welcome, Rebecca.

[1:25] And I think I see a plaque there, and I have to give you an early congratulations.

[1:31] Just to...

[1:33] I haven't spoiled my thunder last week.

[1:36] So, I work back to Holland back at the Executive Director of Historical Amment Mainstreet.

[1:42] And I am here tonight to thank the City full-heartedly from our organization

[1:47] for their partnership over the many years.

[1:50] And specifically the work that we did together on the Street Skate Project.

[1:55] I put in and award and we were chosen out of others throughout the state with an excellence on Maine award.

[2:04] So this is it.

[2:05] I will bring it and share it with you guys up there.

[2:09] And so that was a pretty big deal.

[2:11] And we have a couple of staff members that came, Luke and Eric, Kevin came and we had quite a few of our board members came down.

[2:20] for the award. So it was a big deal. They were joking that we had half of the people in the audience.

[2:25] It was not true, but that was kind of the running joke. So anyway, so that was great.

[2:31] And I just want to thank you. And I told John last week maybe we can like trade it off every month or something.

[2:37] I'll have it at each location. But I'll pass it up so you guys can actually take a look at it.

[2:42] I know Kevin showed you a picture of it last week. So.

[2:46] Outside of that, I also want to just let everybody know that we do have our Halloween event coming up on Halloween from three to six and as always, we ask City Council if you're available to come down and hand out candy to the kids in front of her office.

[3:04] So we have a lot going on down there.

[3:06] I know that's a really big day because it's also

[3:09] a rivalry day.

[3:11] And so there's a lot happening that day.

[3:14] And then I also just wanted to say that I'm very excited

[3:18] to say that we have finally joined OEDO, which

[3:21] is the work in economic development association.

[3:24] And I am actually going to be attending their conference

[3:27] for the first time this weekend.

[3:29] So I hope to bring back a lot of good information

[3:31] that we can use throughout the city from that.

[3:37] Thank you so much for being here and thank you for all your work and

[3:41] a main street.

[3:43] Should we take a picture?

[3:44] Would you like to take a picture with the city council in the

[3:46] plaque?

[3:47] Yes.

[3:47] We can let's do that.

[3:48] Let's get another picture.

[3:55] And any board members with historical

[3:57] Can you come up?

[5:27] Okay.

[5:42] Thank you, Ken. We

[5:47] can move on to the next speaker. The rest of them are here for the

[5:56] She can't take me from the audience and wanted to speak during this topic because she can't stay for the whole meeting

[6:02] You would you like to speak now?

[6:04] Okay, for everyone who speaks tonight, just come on up.

[6:09] Yes.

[6:09] She's a green light is on and you're going to want your mouth really close to the microphones that folks in the room can hear you.

[6:16] Welcome.

[6:17] Just state your name and city residents and you have three minutes if you need to go a little bit over you're welcome to.

[6:21] Okay, thank you.

[6:22] Nicole Jackson, resident of Westland.

[6:25] I am here, good evening counselors.

[6:27] I am here to speak on behalf of Friends of the Lament Wetlands tonight in relation to

[6:32] the Waterfront Vision Plan unfortunately I can't stay for that agenda topic and I wasn't

[6:38] able to attend the last work session by wanted to share some concerns that I'm still

[6:41] seeing on the draft of agenda.

[6:44] So back in January of last year, Friends of the Lament Wetlands submitted some comments

[6:49] concerns about the vision plan, they weren't unfortunately shared in totality with the working group

[6:55] and so this is kind of continue to go on for longer than I would hope. I would hope that, you know,

[7:00] we could get this kind of address and resolve to move forward. I wish I didn't need to reiterate these

[7:05] concerns, but it appears that the draft to changes on the agenda tonight tonight do not fully

[7:11] reflect the concerns that myself and other community members have shared both at the last work

[7:18] session and at the Planning Commission hearing in September, I want to also acknowledge

[7:24] Russ Axelrod's testimony and Terence Schumacher's testimony that was submitted for tonight.

[7:29] They cannot be in attendance in person.

[7:32] The resounding community feedback was to preserve the wetlands that cited in the community

[7:38] engagement summary and appendix A for the Pond District.

[7:42] It's also been amplified by our petition with over 3,850 signatures from community members who really want to see that area preserved.

[7:52] And this is, as has been mentioned, multiple times a community vision plan.

[7:57] So while I did see and we saw that medium density residential was removed from the map.

[8:02] There still is a potential development area that is highlighted in yellow, south of Fifth Avenue next to the wetlands.

[8:10] And I feel like it's not what we were hoping for.

[8:15] There's a lot of constraints with that property in that area.

[8:18] And if it's a community plan,

[8:21] it should reflect what the community envisions for that area.

[8:24] And so keeping that potential development areas sort of feels like an endorsement of development

[8:30] when there's so many constraints that exist with that property, including floodplain, earth quakes,

[8:36] Steve Slopes, the required Wetland Buffer, the Title 3 and Title 13 Habitat Area.

[8:44] It's been pretty clear that we don't want to see development in this area and that doesn't prevent the property owner.

[8:51] I understand property owner rights.

[8:54] Removing it from the vision plant doesn't prevent him from attempting to or pursuing potential development,

[8:59] but it just shows that you are listening to the overwhelming community feedback

[9:03] When we say we don't want to see development, highlighting development in that area, kind of feels like ignoring the resounding feedback.

[9:12] So, sorry for rambling there a little bit. I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any, or clarify any concerns.

[9:19] But I really appreciate you listening to my concerns and other community members concerns on this issue.

[9:27] Thank you for your comments.

[9:28] Thank you.

[9:30] Thank you.

[9:30] We will discuss the map and issues with the waterfront plan a little bit later in the

[9:36] agenda, but we plan to talk about that if you watch later.

[9:40] Thank you.

[9:41] Thanks for your continued engagement.

[9:48] Well, that takes us to Mayor and Council reports reports from community advisory groups or city

[9:56] business in general.

[10:01] Councillor Bonneton can kick us off today. I and Cowell both attended the fall fest at Marius Young on Saturday, and that was really quite well attended, traffic all the way out of the park at one point, and it was a really lovely time, so thank you to parts for putting that on yet again.

[10:26] Thank you, Councillor.

[10:28] So you confessing you are a cowl of the owl at the absolutely not number.

[10:34] Thanks.

[10:35] Thanks for attending that.

[10:36] It looked like a great community event.

[10:37] Of course, thanks to the Parks Department for all their work in putting that on.

[10:41] I know Director Big John's back there.

[10:43] Pass along our regards for that wonderful event to the staff.

[10:48] Councillor Groner?

[10:50] Yes.

[10:51] So the Sustainability Advisory Board rep on October 16th, they summarized the parametric

[10:58] report and kind of some feedback from their appearance before the council here.

[11:04] They're working on their annual report.

[11:08] There's some discussion about maybe charging stations, and I kind of volunteer to try to talk

[11:14] to ROSC.

[11:15] I don't know if I'm stepping on anybody else's toes here, but apparently they own the Walmart

[11:21] Center as well as the Safeway Center and they're the people to talk to if it's going to get

[11:26] electrified. So far I have not gotten the response from them.

[11:32] That's about it.

[11:34] I sounds good and I'm happy to help with that too.

[11:37] You should try to reach out to RRO I see in the past two minutes.

[11:40] I couldn't get a meeting scheduled in the past.

[11:43] Yeah, we'll work on that.

[11:45] Oh, Chris Myers, planner Myers, you're unmuted, there's on there.

[11:51] Welcome, Chris.

[11:52] You're all good.

[11:55] Hi, Chris.

[11:57] Was taught well, hear from you a little bit later on Vision 43.

[12:00] We look forward to that.

[12:02] Councillor President Vonger, do you have anything to report tonight?

[12:06] Thank you, Mayor.

[12:06] Yes.

[12:08] I attended both the William Appalza Landings Heritage Area Coalition Board meeting yesterday morning.

[12:14] and the Lime Opulse Trust board meeting in the afternoon.

[12:20] And the exciting things are happening, especially with the potential of fundraising for the trust.

[12:31] And the Lime Opulse Trust staff will be moving into the historic city hall building and join

[12:40] and the locs authority offices, and of course the Heritage Area Coalition already is their staff is in the building, so all three groups will be there working together.

[12:52] And I believe the Heritage Advocates will also be, so it's going to be a great meeting of the minds. So I'm excited for that. And of course we just came from our Metro Mixer, which is an opportunity to meet and talk to Metro staff.

[13:08] and convince them how what a good project we are to fund in various ways and also just

[13:18] meet with our local area elected, so that was a great opportunity.

[13:24] That's it.

[13:26] Thank you, Councillor President, Councillor Brack.

[13:30] Thank you, Mayor.

[13:30] I attended the Planning Commission meeting last Wednesday.

[13:34] the Planning Commission reviewed and approved the Metro Town Center boundaries.

[13:40] There have been some slight adjustments on those, and I believe we'll be coming to Council.

[13:46] Thank you. I also attended the Metro Mixer and on Sunday got to host a group of

[13:51] Western students from the Youngman's service lake here at City Hall and gave them a tour

[13:56] and have a talk so they could get there.

[13:59] They were having a certification and government as part of their group that there was.

[14:05] So that was very fun.

[14:06] How about 30 people here and some parents as well, so enjoy that on Sunday.

[14:14] Anything else to report?

[14:17] Okay.

[14:17] We can then move on to the Council rules discussion and the work session formats are not approving

[14:25] them tonight.

[14:26] but I know there's, see, there's a couple of changes in there to discuss to bring back

[14:30] for potential adoption of the Council of Greece.

[14:35] So, turn it over to City Manager, City Attorney, and thank you, Mayor.

[14:39] City Attorney and I will do these together.

[14:41] There are only two changes, proposed or two kinds of changes, proposed.

[14:46] These are based on previous Council discussion in the case of the scheduling.

[14:52] So for those who are not familiar, the Council rules are is a document created by the City Council.

[15:00] That governs your operations, your proceedings, your interactions with staff, basically just operating procedures for you, that are able to be amended by the council as you see fit.

[15:13] Since you've recently decided to move your meetings till Tuesday, the council rules need to be amended to reflect that on a permanent basis.

[15:21] So on page 6 you will find three small changes where we have proposed you replace the word one day with the way word is Tuesday.

[15:33] For example, nothing else needs to be done but it's it's good to have this clear the laid out so that it's correct.

[15:40] And I'd like to introduce city attorney to talk about the other change which you'll find on page 25 of the council rules.

[15:49] Everybody's favorite topic, litigation.

[15:52] Thank you, Mayor.

[15:53] So the other change we're proposing has to do with the frequency of executive sessions

[15:58] that are held when the city receives a statutory notice of a claim or any other type of legal action against the city.

[16:05] As the rules are currently written, we're required to hold an executive session within 30 days of any receipt of such notices.

[16:15] from conversations with our outside council, very

[16:17] Elzner, who advise us many other cities.

[16:20] They haven't seen this type of provision in council rules

[16:23] before.

[16:24] It may be somewhat excessive depending on the nature of the

[16:28] notice that comes in.

[16:29] And I believe, since I've come in as in-house city attorney,

[16:33] you have much more access to our litigation,

[16:35] I give frequent updates, and talking with the city manager,

[16:39] we thought that it would make sense to amend this,

[16:42] that we are required, either John or myself,

[16:45] to give you notice within seven days of receiving

[16:48] any of those tort claims or other litigation notices,

[16:51] and then it will be up to you to decide whether

[16:54] or to call an executive session on that matter.

[16:57] I think it just makes more prudent use of our time,

[16:59] but still preserves the right and the option for you

[17:02] to have an executive session if you want

[17:04] a more full or briefing on the particular matter.

[17:09] Thank you for that.

[17:10] And as the city manager noted, it's on page 25 of the packet just changing from requiring

[17:17] an executive session within 30 days to within seven days we will receive the notice as

[17:25] a city council and then be able to request an executive session if needed once we receive the

[17:32] information to kind of break down of the tour claim.

[17:36] So, any comments or concerns or questions about that?

[17:43] It makes sense.

[17:45] Sounds like there's a informal consensus to move that forward, so we can, and I know we're already

[17:53] meeting on Tuesday, so there's already agreement on the first proposed change.

[17:57] Great, so we'll schedule that for your next business meeting for adoption.

[18:00] Perfect.

[18:01] Thank you for the time.

[18:01] Thank you, and thank you both, thank you, Kaylee, for flagging that provision for us to change.

[18:10] So council rules is concluded, so now we will transition to another item that the city attorney has worked a lot on, along with director Megan Big John.

[18:22] The Mary S. Young Park lease agreement with Oregon State Parks, and folks may not know this,

[18:29] but the city doesn't own that property. Probably our biggest park in the city, it's

[18:36] leased through the State of Oregon. All of a sudden, the lease agreement came up for renewal,

[18:40] and so a lot of work behind the scenes has gone into this. I've even participated in a meeting

[18:45] or two on this. So I probably stole some of your thunder. Educate the community on that,

[18:50] I'll turn it over to John and thank you, Mayor.

[18:54] Yes, I think this is a little known fact.

[18:56] There are some signs in the park that note that is owned by the State of Oregon.

[19:00] It's a long standing partnership.

[19:02] Obviously, a beloved community asset.

[19:05] But as we noted in the staff report,

[19:08] this relationship comes with some potential risks to the city

[19:14] that are financial and operational in the sense.

[19:18] And so, when the lease came up, Mayan and Hayley really died, they didn't work on this,

[19:24] we would say to Oregon that we could buy money.

[19:27] And our attention today is to give you an overview of what's in this document,

[19:31] and some of the risks that a long-term relationship carries,

[19:35] just so that we're all aware of it and going in with our eyes wide open.

[19:41] So, I think Mayan's going to start us off,

[19:43] in the past these very ways in time to time to time.

[19:47] Thank you, Councillor Mayer, for having me today.

[19:49] This has been a long process.

[19:51] It was kind of started when I got here and it's taken quite a bit of work together,

[19:55] collaboratively with State Park.

[19:57] So I just want to give you a little bit of history of what we're doing, obviously.

[20:00] The purpose here is to have you see in your packet was the red line or the agreement where we've gotten so far, and wanted to be able to ask, you know, would you want to be able to move forward with a 25 year lease agreement again the state parks? And so that's what we're doing here today, so thank you for having me. I don't really have to tell everybody here how much of a gem this park is to us, but I thought it was good to have a little bit of historical context to it as to how we would as a special and for those who don't know.

[20:29] So it is 133 acres and that's about 20% of our Parkland that we have.

[20:35] It's on the willlamot as you know.

[20:37] It became a Park in 1973 and it was donated to Oregon Parks and Recreation Department by Marius Garbo Young and her husband Thomas E.

[20:46] I'm warning a lot to this process too. I had a lot of fun research and information.

[20:50] But it's a real gem and since we've got it, we've added athletic fields in there.

[20:53] We've got, you know, the pollinator part, or pollinator card in, the dog park I found was an existence when we got it, did not realize that additional restrooms.

[21:01] So we've added some additional recreation amenities for the park users, it's quite exciting.

[21:09] This is another fun one to show.

[21:10] We have been working with a company called City Data and this is the use of within Marius Zhang over the 2024 we had about 55,000 visitors and with this data we're able to see that on average.

[21:23] the average person spends about 35 minutes in the park, and 93% of the people who visit

[21:29] are from Oregon. There are 27 other states, so that are represented. And about 75% of them

[21:35] are from Clark and Miss County. So, it was wanting to see how much of a regional park it is,

[21:40] and it still is our local jam within the Clark and Miss County area, but it's really interesting

[21:43] data to see. I don't know if you can see on that bottom blue line that yellow line that spikes up,

[21:49] that would be fall fest last year. We can now see that we had about 2,000 participants.

[21:52] kind of need information.

[21:57] So for programming, this is what you know, but for the community who

[21:59] doesn't, we obviously host a lot of summer camps, city events there. I'm shelter reservations.

[22:05] We have schools that come on a regular basis, we're trying to figure out coordinating with that,

[22:08] but they use it as a resource as well. We have down to Earth, you know, for school that's operating

[22:13] now they're during this school year as well. And then Saturday, front run club. I mean, wow,

[22:18] that was pretty neat. We had that going on as with the fall fest on Saturday. It was pretty neat to see.

[22:22] And then our amazing volunteers, they're weekly.

[22:25] I always love monthly work parties, but it's really well used and loved as we saw as

[22:30] Councilor Bonita mentioned with the parking going to the office.

[22:35] Just some stats to realize, though, that we have our volunteers give just under

[22:38] 2000 annual hours annually to the park.

[22:42] I'm sure there's more that we don't capture.

[22:45] We do, as far as we have to look at Costa Covery and I wanted to find out what our

[22:49] revenue is not necessarily revenue.

[22:51] it's what we charge for fees to be able to compensate for that use and we were able to generate

[22:55] about $60,000 over the year of 2024. But when you're looking at our expenses, we were able to

[23:02] look at just some of the raw data that we had for staff to maintain the park. That barely covers

[23:08] that, which is okay, that's just not what you're trying to always be, you know, one plus one equals

[23:13] two, but it is something to look at. And just for one maintenance price, we spent about $20,000

[23:18] year on maintaining those fields. So the part is that park is loved. It's a gem. We are trying to

[23:23] look how we can streamline and continue to care for it. Oh, cowl? Cowl was there. I'm so sorry,

[23:31] I missed cowl in that picture. Louin, just like a, like an owl.

[23:37] This was, I'm pretty proud to look

[23:39] at this list. This was just information I was able to find since 2007. This isn't like all the

[23:45] all the projects that have happened at the park, but that is pretty impressive. What we've

[23:50] done over how much we've put into it and how much we have improved that space for recreational

[23:54] opportunities. Of course you see our storm cleanups too, but there's a lot of added amenities.

[24:01] It's really awesome. So what kind of came down to our main discussions with state parks is we were

[24:06] looking at trying to identify and I'll get into that conversation with state parks next, but just

[24:11] looking at holistically all of our parks in general, you've heard from me that I'm trying to figure out

[24:15] for a maintenance plan. So you saw all the things that we added to the park. There were some

[24:19] features that were in existence when we got there. And it's the parking lot, the road,

[24:24] the bridge that we're working on, the restroom, asphalt pathway, which we're fixing right now,

[24:28] and shelter. And so I'm looking at those things long-term of how we look those into our replacement plan.

[24:35] Another item that is probably the deepest concern to me is the invasive past that are coming our way.

[24:39] But a training oak bar and animal ash for those are, you know, just infestations that are just on the break of coming

[24:45] and so I really want to make sure we're prepared and have a plan with state parks to move forward on that.

[24:50] And then natural disasters, ice storm, winds, they don't even want to say the word fire.

[24:55] The things that we want to be prepared for and that's where this police agreement was trying to figure out how we can partner better.

[25:00] I have a better contiguous effort on this property.

[25:05] So I'd like to, I'm going to include our city attorney,

[25:08] Kaylee Klein in this conversation, but we had many conversations with state parks, and I have to tell you,

[25:14] they're in a tough situation too. There was a lot of things, and we actually see the document of where we had

[25:19] changed a lot of basic updates to the contract language, updates to how we procure a contractor to be able to come

[25:29] easy to work through. They really want to empower us to be able to take the lead there and

[25:33] make it easy for us to operate. I'm really grateful for that.

[25:37] The one thing that you've heard for me as I wanted to really figure out the conversation could

[25:41] we do cost sharing with some of these larger impactful situations that may be coming to us.

[25:49] As you probably have seen, state parks have had to in our local area try on

[25:54] The guy of her state park, they have now had it had in fees for day use.

[25:59] They had canceled their cultural passes that they had.

[26:02] They are really in a position to not be able to help us just to be able to, on set of these

[26:08] agreements to say, we can cost share these with you.

[26:11] But what they did do, which I was really grateful for, is you see the three things, and it's

[26:15] way more than three.

[26:16] This is very minimalizing what we all did, and I'm going to pass it to Kaylee if she wants

[26:19] to add.

[26:20] They did offer up the state forest or to come in spend eight hours with us looking at how we can make some planning for the future.

[26:27] By going with the 25-year lease, we're able to apply for grants that are through state parks.

[26:34] If we were underneath that, we would possibly not be able to apply and be qualified.

[26:40] They were wanting to be, they were offered to be able to have a better collaboration with their regional leaders

[26:44] and there are regional park rangers to be able to collaborate more, especially with those

[26:49] invasive insects coming through, or who are you using to buy the bridge that you guys would

[26:54] where do you guys buy bridges, you know, just having that, you know, brain trust amongst us,

[26:58] which is really huge. And then they did not take off the table, wanted to be able to put in language

[27:03] in there that says, we can talk about future cost sharing if we've come up with this situation.

[27:09] The one thing I did emphasize is a lot of the planning for these natural disasters you have to

[27:13] work on pre-planning events so that when they occur, you know what to do.

[27:17] They don't have the money to help with that for now, but they are engaged in that, and

[27:21] we'll be working cohesively together on it.

[27:24] Kaylee, does you have anything else you wanted to add?

[27:27] I'm sure you did a great job making the introducing that topic.

[27:30] We worked really closely with the state, and we had many asks, we came forward with, and

[27:37] although we did not achieve them all, I definitely feel confident that we improved this particular

[27:42] agreement in terms of the reducing the city's risks and potential financial obligations.

[27:47] When this came to my desk and I saw that I was a 25 year lease that obviously peaks your

[27:54] interest in terms of making sure we review this with a fine tooth comb, especially given that

[27:59] when I worked with Megan, you know, she noted there's a lot of major expenses with caring

[28:04] for a 133 acre park and we're not compensated for that.

[28:08] basically like a steward carrying this out on behalf of the state. And so I wanted to know

[28:13] what some of those potential expenses were. One of them is that she mentioned is the total,

[28:19] I was going to say repair, but actually the total replacement of a major flip bridge that's going

[28:25] to be in the avenue of, you had an estimate of 50. I'm hoping that's not that much. I'm trying to apply

[28:30] for $50,000, which was a bridge installed by the state, not by the city. And so, you know, my

[28:36] question is why is the city settled with these costs when we're basically the caretaker

[28:40] on behalf of the state, and then the other major flag for me was this, I was going to say

[28:46] impending, but somewhat arrived threat of the Mediterranean Opor, and the Emerald Ashfore,

[28:53] and given that we have over 1,000 Ops and Marius Young, the cost of treating and or removing

[28:59] trees should they be infected, it is a huge expense for the city, so we went back and forth

[29:05] basically what it came down to is the state is really strapped for funds as well and I had originally

[29:11] proposed cost sharing mechanisms like they pay half the cost or some of the or maybe 25

[29:17] percent of the cost and really it got down to like all they can give is support from employees in

[29:24] terms of expertise in terms of loading particular individuals the whole the brain trust that

[29:30] and talked about, which in fact, we did find is more helpful and it felt like we furthered

[29:35] our partnership. And as I'm looking at this, it occurred to me that we attached the clean

[29:40] version of the proposal, which is what we normally do so you can review, but you're unable to

[29:45] see all the changes we made. So after this meeting, I can circulate the red line if you want to

[29:50] really be able to hone in on where we worked. But one of the issues, for example, what we really

[29:55] did was try and put the responsibilities of a landowner back with a landowner.

[30:00] And the responsibilities of a lesser, you know, with the city. So, for example, in their agreement, they had us being responsible for legal encroachments to the park.

[30:15] That was in 5.5 and that was really concerning to make it to myself given the amount of acreage.

[30:21] And so we made sure to add language where we would collaborate to help resolve, but the final resolution of encroachments, including

[30:29] but not limited to legal action is the responsibility of ORPDs, so we will release the city

[30:36] attorney time to, you know, handle encroachments of that area.

[30:42] One place that we also worked on was law enforcement activity that was something important

[30:50] to PD that they had wanted to make sure it was abundantly clear that they are able to enforce

[30:57] city code within the park and show up as law enforcement officers within the state jurisdiction

[31:03] within the state boundaries. And they said that was fine and we clarified that there.

[31:10] I also made sure given these upcoming potential expenses with the with the insects that we had

[31:18] an ability to terminate if we needed to sooner than 25 years without any penalties. So we worked

[31:24] on that language, originally in section 25,

[31:29] it was pretty difficult for the city to subcontract out work.

[31:33] We had to have written approval from OPRD

[31:38] and with the amount of work that Parks and Rec candles there,

[31:42] it just really was administratively burdensome.

[31:45] So they loosened up a lot on that,

[31:47] gave us much greater authority to subcontract out work.

[31:51] And then we spend a lot of time in the exhibit B, sometimes we skip the exhibits but this is probably the most important part of the agreement because it talks about the statement of work in terms of what we as the city have to provide.

[32:05] So we really struck a lot of the language that had to do with replacing or even upgrading things and focused on where responsible for general maintenance.

[32:17] And that if replacement costs were basically replacement costs are cabin by our own financial constraints in the budget that we have.

[32:27] You know, we're not expected to restore everything that was in the park that had been originally provided by the state.

[32:34] And then you'll see in section four, we queue out.

[32:39] You have the issue that is probably the most concerning as the cost of handling these insects and we agreed

[32:45] We kind of kicked the can down the road, but we agreed that those costs would be determined in an amendment to this agreement

[32:52] And so we're carving that area out to address winter if it arises in terms of payment

[32:59] It is a tough relationship because we really like

[33:03] We appreciate the benefits of the park and life being stewards, but when you have costs,

[33:09] Megan, could you get a little bit to the cost?

[33:11] Wilson Miller, maybe some other cities have dealt with with regard to those insects.

[33:16] Yeah, just an example for Wilsonville.

[33:18] One of their trees was about 35,000 to yield her move, but they had to have a crane to bring in,

[33:24] especially think of property lines on the interior of a park, where they could access it,

[33:28] And then the way you dispose of those, that is ever changing, but at the time, they had

[33:34] direct barrier somewhere, so that I find a property owner to take the oak to bury it

[33:39] and then had to do treatments at the location.

[33:42] And so that education and that education, that template model is ever evolving right now

[33:49] with a working department of agriculture in state for, or in part in forestry as well.

[33:55] But even just like the one oak that we have that's dead there now that is not infested with my train oak

[33:59] Poor we have to drop it and ship it is get it down to one inch slices as best as we can

[34:05] How much was it again for one tree?

[34:08] $35,000. How many trees do we have in Mary's young did you say?

[34:12] That's thousand and that's just an estimate from our consulting arborist and so what you're looking at again

[34:17] That's not just a sustainable cost. I it my worry with this is that was something we're like this to happen

[34:22] We don't own that property, but what happens to all the other acres that we have, where do I focus my energy and time with our resources on and that was kind of where this has started a fuel to kind of, how do we get them as a better partner to be able to take some of that ownership or

[34:38] where we should our tax dollars go to and where is our highest risk as a city.

[34:43] So, yeah, so that, again, that was when Wilsonville was taking their trees down a year,

[34:48] two years ago, luckily they're evolving, finding that you cannot dispose of those trees that way.

[34:53] You would not be able to, and Emerald Ashfore is honestly a bigger risk and concern,

[34:57] because it comes through in the amount of ash we have.

[35:00] And our wetland areas, string corridors is greater as much faster, but our oaks you can't replace that size of a large tree in any short amount of time, so they're both of a risk.

[35:12] So cities around are trying to figure this method out, we don't want to go in without having some sort of plan of who's responsible for what, when and if and should that occur.

[35:22] I'm glad you tracked that.

[35:23] And so before we had those conversations and made these amendments, it made it, it could be read that the city would be responsible for those types of remediation and treatment costs.

[35:35] And so again, I would direct your attention to section four of exhibit B where it talks about how we will handle these types of insect or disease.

[35:43] and it says,

[35:47] we further agree that both parties have the right to terminate the agreement

[35:51] if a mutually agreeable amendment cannot be reached.

[35:54] So basically that's the carve out for the city if we're unable to strike some type of

[35:58] cost sharing deal or agreement on how that level of costs would be handled then we would

[36:04] be able to terminate the agreement.

[36:08] One of the things I wanted to add is if you look at the dollars and cents spent on this

[36:12] beautiful acres, but it really ultimately comes down to safety, right?

[36:15] wanting to make sure that we can preserve this park, not only for what it is to keep those amenities

[36:20] safe for the public to be able to enjoy and experience, and so that's kind of where my heart

[36:24] is with it. I've just how can we continue? We're planning to, but we want to make sure that we

[36:29] have that great strong partnership with, you know, with OPRD.

[36:39] Oh, my last slide.

[36:43] So, I wanted to ask

[36:44] for questions, but we're at right now as next steps is, you know,

[36:47] do you plan on what feedback we get from you today?

[36:49] And for the discussion we have is finalizing the legal

[36:51] language with state parks to figure out where we want to go.

[36:56] Do you plan on where right now we're set to come back to you

[36:58] if they're ready to move forward on November 12th?

[37:02] But that depends on what questions you have.

[37:04] And so when it open the 40th, the questions you might have.

[37:08] Well, thank you for the detail and the presentation.

[37:11] and good agenda report also with the documents in there.

[37:16] Council President has a question to kick us off.

[37:19] Thank you, Mayor.

[37:20] Yes, thank you so much.

[37:22] Both of you, all of the hours that you have spent on this very important matter.

[37:27] Just to be clear, this language, as it is right now, is in agreement with the state.

[37:36] Yes, so this is the language you have the clean copy was now resting with the state after we did all the back and forth redlining and it has been referred to their

[37:46] Organ department of justice. This is in a training general for review

[37:49] Basically their client has agreed to all the terms that we'll have one last look by or in the OJ and they're trying aiming to get back to us before the business meeting

[38:00] So that we could keep it on that meeting if there were any changes proposed, it would be in that staff agenda report.

[38:06] And if they are unable to turn around the legal review, then we'll push it to the following business meeting.

[38:13] Okay. So there is a potential that this will be approved. There won't be changes.

[38:21] Potentially.

[38:22] Okay. Thank you.

[38:26] Councillor Groner. Yeah, two questions. You mentioned the number 20,000 as revenue and I'm not sure is that what you are

[38:35] Excuse me as expenses. Is that what you're currently spending exclusive of

[38:41] Continuencies? No, I wasn't sure what that number referred to. Thank you for asking and sorry for that being confusing

[38:46] No, it was just an example of one cost we have there. Is that's for maintaining athletic fields over a year and a half time frame from

[38:54] fertilizing to air rating, just the work that that takes to care of those fields.

[39:00] So I don't have the full annual cost of it.

[39:02] We do track our hours by park, but we were struggling to get the exact number,

[39:08] missing the seasonals as well.

[39:10] And so that's where it came around 50,000 for just the labor to be able to maintain that.

[39:14] But I know that's not encompassing everything that we do there.

[39:17] Yeah.

[39:17] In general, it's far in exceed 50,000 revenue.

[39:21] Yeah.

[39:21] the 60,000 revenue that we have there to help offset our costs.

[39:26] My other question is, you mentioned a bridge that made it replace.

[39:28] This is not the bridge that was destroyed during the ice storm.

[39:32] No, that one had to be let go, but this is the other beautiful footbridge,

[39:36] it's like a 30-foot span, over.

[39:39] So you hold a railroad bridge?

[39:40] Yes, it is.

[39:42] So we are looking to get that replaced.

[39:44] One amendment to that came from this contract or agreement was that we had to have any deferred

[39:49] maintenance repaired in 30 days.

[39:51] And so that is now a little longer in that language is that we're going to repair that as soon as we can.

[39:56] Like I hope to get that repaired by next summer as my goal.

[39:59] But we're still looking...

[40:00] We're looking at our funding options for it, and hopefully I'm going to be applying for a grant to get some help for it.

[40:05] Thank you.

[40:05] You're welcome.

[40:08] Any other questions?

[40:11] It's a complicated legal document, taking a look at it.

[40:15] But I just feel like looking at it and hearing from the presentation that you gave.

[40:19] You've done all that you can on behalf of Westland to get the best possible lease and the best possible terms.

[40:26] And I participated in one of the meetings.

[40:27] And it was clear that the state was coming out from a very difficult financial position because there could make in cuts and having budgetary issues.

[40:35] So I feel like it's, we're not going to be able to get much better than this if we want to have a lease.

[40:40] And if we don't have a lease and we lose one of our precious assets or we get thrown into uncertainty.

[40:46] So I think the community would expect us to get this approved, but we do have to be realistic about the financial planning and realities for things like oak borer.

[40:57] and the replacement costs for facility.

[41:00] So just to be clear, they're not contributing

[41:02] to that footbridge, for example,

[41:04] that's kind of on our, okay, interesting.

[41:08] Regarding that footbridge, Megan,

[41:10] is hoping to apply for a grant for that,

[41:12] and what that is, one of the terms,

[41:13] we negotiated that they said they have a number four,

[41:16] but we have them agreeing to work with us.

[41:18] I'm grant funding,

[41:19] providing letters of support, social sending regular updates

[41:22] to Megan when they have grant opportunities arise

[41:25] with their aware of.

[41:26] So that was just one way to try and pull in a little bit of their expertise and guidance

[41:30] and helping us get grant applications in.

[41:33] See, that's awesome work.

[41:35] Thank you for that.

[41:36] The city, thanks you.

[41:38] Council President and then Councillor Bonnetian has a comment.

[41:41] Thank you.

[41:41] Thank you, Mayor.

[41:43] Yes.

[41:44] So it comes to mind just because I last week.

[41:47] I think got an email from the friends of Tran Creek that they are now charging $10 a day.

[41:52] for cars to park in, I mean, I'm assuming it won't be $10 if you walk in, there's places

[42:01] to park outside of, I only bring this up because the unpopular suggestion question of should

[42:09] we look into any kind of a fee for using the park, in any way, whether it's teams that

[42:19] fields or I'm just throwing this out there very unpopular idea I'm sure but I'm in the reality

[42:26] is we money doesn't grow on trees and especially if there's oak boards in them so I also wonder

[42:35] so isn't triunct creek a state so I was kind of curious about any any comparables and learning

[42:44] from each other. So, well that is still owned and managed ultimately by state parks. They have

[42:51] a friend's group, the friends of Trion, who manages the programming out of that location, and

[42:56] so that fee is going to state parks to my understanding. So, my givers and other similar one that

[43:01] but doesn't have a friends of that state parks is putting that. So, all of their state parks

[43:05] and I believe have a day use fee. So, the city of Lake Oswego doesn't have to pay for Trion Creek.

[43:13] city of like us we go does not manage that state parks at us city of like us we go but they

[43:18] okay they denied that several years back while I was there due to the funding ability.

[43:24] I'll interesting. Oh well thank you very much and council president I would just begin

[43:29] note to that comment which is very on point if you look to section six of compensation and payment

[43:35] terms on page three there is an express provision about that it says the city shall have the option

[43:42] And it's so discretion to charge park visitors for parking fees or other special use fees to help generate revenue for operations and maintenance of the property.

[43:52] So long as such activities are consistent with the LWCF Act, that is the landed water conservation fund act, which overlays the property.

[44:03] And so that is an option that we haven't really explored, but it is something that the lease allows us to do and keep those funds.

[44:11] And one thing to elaborate to make sure it may not have been clear, but we do charge for

[44:15] our shelter use, right?

[44:17] We do charge for tournaments.

[44:18] We do not currently charge for day like just a weekly camps or not at that camps.

[44:25] Practices for sports lakes there, they pay for tournaments, we do have camps there, and then

[44:30] there's also special event permits that we provide.

[44:33] So we do have some of that fee cost recovery with that, and the one thing with parking is

[44:38] to figure out how you're going to manage. You get the fee, but you have to have somebody

[44:41] be able to monitor to make sure it's being applied correctly. So it's a little bit of a,

[44:46] you know, there has been, I guess, talking the past of our, you know, boat launches. Is that,

[44:50] is that a good possibility for that, but you have to have me in power to be able to monitor it to be

[44:54] effective?

[44:57] Good point. Councillor Bonnetin, go ahead.

[45:02] That's pretty relevant to what I'm thinking. It would be fantastic to be able to explore charging for parking, even if it's just at certain events, certain times.

[45:14] The thing that stood out to me on Saturday, while that traffic line was happening, was that it would be great if people could park elsewhere and walk, but that's not even practical, because there's not a crosswalk for quite a way.

[45:29] in either direction. There was an access issue there. So if we're going to be doing something

[45:35] like that, we're going to need some help from the state to be able to create a crosswalk

[45:40] because that's also their highway. I know different state departments are pretty far apart,

[45:47] but it seems like it would be nice if we could get some cooperation on that as well, adding

[45:54] crosswalks at all. I believe one of them is almost a mile away to the south and then the other ones

[45:59] not particularly close to either.

[46:04] So, yeah, would we have any difficulty?

[46:07] I know adding parking is no one's favorite idea,

[46:10] but if we needed to make reconfigurations

[46:14] or changes to other elements of the park,

[46:16] is that going to be very difficult with this lease?

[46:21] I might turn to you,

[46:23] because I think you have a little experience with the changes

[46:25] to get the ball field and things like that.

[46:27] Yeah, so any changes,

[46:29] because I'm not going to have the exact information, but what we had to do in the past, we have

[46:35] there is a stewardship requirement for the, for the park in the deed to remain for parks and

[46:42] recreational uses. So obviously there was a park added. There was the ballfills that were added

[46:47] and you had to go through that process to be able to seek that permission and verification for

[46:53] from state parks. I don't know if John has any history on that either. But it's just, it's going

[46:58] essentially applying to state parks to say what you're wanting to do with the intent is to

[47:01] and then to verify that it meets the deed restrictions on there. The interesting part

[47:06] you can go there and there's a new parking at all and then you go the other days is there's

[47:10] a ton of parking. So when I drive through and I know events are going so when there's like

[47:15] middle school cross country meet and there's like five different teams there you know we found

[47:19] okay buses can't park there so we make those adjustments. We had a debrief about fall fest today

[47:24] and try to wonder, have we outgrown it?

[47:26] What do we do with these parking?

[47:28] Do we, whether we're just going to talk with PD

[47:29] about a traffic control plan?

[47:31] So there's things that we are trying to mitigate that

[47:33] because it's a few times out of the year where that happens,

[47:36] but it is very impactful.

[47:37] So I really appreciate you bringing that up.

[47:40] But I think getting additional parking may be tricky

[47:41] there with the uses we have,

[47:43] but you should explore an option we have.

[47:45] Thank you.

[47:46] Appreciate the comments on the crosswalk also.

[47:48] We should do that.

[47:49] I used to live along there, it's very hard to cross over

[47:52] get to Marius and it'd be helpful for access to the park.

[47:56] I'm going to go to Carol and I'm going to go to Leo and then we will wrap up and move on

[48:01] to the next agenda item and I'll give Council Chancellor put any concerns they have on the

[48:05] record or any information requests after the Council of Rights please.

[48:10] So I was going to say on Saturday I walked over from where I live to the fall fest and one

[48:16] thing I noticed, yes there was a lot of traffic but I also noticed a lot of people walking on

[48:22] pathway in front of Marius Young. I don't know, I didn't recognize most of these people,

[48:27] so I don't know if they were my neighbors in Robinwood, but there is a park and ride at the

[48:32] church there on the corner, and it's possible that people knowing that parking could be a challenge,

[48:38] took advantage of the park and ride and walked to the park.

[48:44] Thank you for that. Councillor Groner.

[48:47] Yes, I just want to throw out an idea for revenue. I think sometimes I have stickers that you can buy

[48:54] and put on your car, that might entitle you to park on certain days in the park or for that matter

[49:00] use of might be a different sticker for the boat ramps, but this might be, and it doesn't

[49:06] involve somebody standing there collecting revenues presumably somebody could periodically

[49:11] patrol and see who doesn't have a sticker and give them traffic ticket or something.

[49:18] Just a thought.

[49:20] Councillor Bonnington, last comment, thank you Councillor Groner for that.

[49:24] Yeah, this reminds me that there are actually parking program

[49:29] computer programs that have been developed.

[49:32] You just need a clear camera view of the lot.

[49:35] And when someone parks, they pay, and they put in what spot

[49:38] they're in with their license plate.

[49:39] And the camera can detect that cars in there,

[49:43] or there's a car there that hasn't paid.

[49:46] And it skipped the entire need for manpower

[49:48] for the most part compared to what we're talking about.

[49:51] So that could be a very cost effective way

[49:53] doing that? Well, as you go forward with working on this leap.

[50:00] And then we'll move into the next phase where we go back to kind of the status quo of using the park, if there's issues that come up on the revenue side, where you feel like you need, you know, there's a huge deficit or, you know, issues with Marius and that would require council conversations about revenue for the park, just bring it back to us.

[50:23] And as I know you would, if there was something going, but like if that borrower shows up and we're in the whole somehow we might have to have some serious conversations about those sorts of ideas, but for now I think it's good to just get the least done and then we will see what we need to do going forward.

[50:41] Sounds great and I really appreciate Kaylee brought a lot to the table and had just her resources and knowledge.

[50:47] I was super grateful to have that support through this. I couldn't have done it without her, so thank you.

[50:51] Any, any issues, any council would like to put on the table for changes to the lease or

[50:56] additions to the lease or any sort of thing like that at this time just for a check.

[51:04] And obviously you can, this is a work session.

[51:06] So if you think of something, you can write into the city attorney and parks director.

[51:10] But I think you've done a great job on behalf of the city.

[51:15] So, no to the next steps.

[51:16] So we'll schedule this for a business meeting and November pending DOJ's legal review.

[51:22] It sounds like.

[51:23] That's exactly the next step, so we will schedule it as soon as we can, based on the review

[51:27] we get back from the state.

[51:28] The last thing that I want to add is obviously all of the financial issues that Megan described

[51:33] for this park.

[51:35] It's the same.

[51:35] We have hundreds of other acres of parks and every single thing that you just heard is true

[51:39] about every other acre.

[51:41] If we have the ash borer or the emerald borer in our park system generally, we don't have

[51:47] some massive sinking fund to pay for a huge unexpected incident like that.

[51:54] And so we would be having just as much a problem and it won't be confined to one

[51:59] park.

[51:59] It'll be everywhere.

[52:00] This is one where we have this opportunity to assess and agree to a level of

[52:06] involvement, but for the other 500 acres or 600 acres of park that we own, we don't have

[52:13] a agreement.

[52:15] We own it all and we're responsible for it.

[52:17] So it's a pretty big deal, and I think thinking of our park system much like a water system,

[52:22] much like a street system, it's an infrastructure that we own that comes with deferred maintenance that comes with potential liability is probably important,

[52:30] because I don't think we all always think of our park system that way, and it takes something like this to make us realize, oh my gosh,

[52:38] we had to pay $10,000 a tree to have it removed and properly disposed of in our entire hundreds of acres.

[52:45] It would be a huge thing for this community.

[52:48] So it's worth thinking about more globally.

[52:51] That's great point.

[52:52] And on that, you know, people have parks.

[52:56] I know I usually suggest goats, but beavers, just saying.

[53:02] And Megan, if you go to, there's a parksport meeting

[53:05] and if you'd like, I'd love to hear their thoughts on,

[53:08] just whether we should approve the lease.

[53:10] Yes, I will add that to the agenda.

[53:11] That's great.

[53:12] For them, I know they're very engaged in a good group of people.

[53:15] So we'll look forward to hearing that.

[53:17] I'm sure they'd appreciate the update on this, too.

[53:20] Absolutely.

[53:20] Thank you all.

[53:22] Thank you, Megan.

[53:23] With that, we will then transition to another big topic

[53:28] for the city, which is the Waterfront Vision Plan,

[53:32] which is nearing its final stages here.

[53:36] It's in the final stages nearing adoption.

[53:39] We've received some public testimony earlier.

[53:41] We received a couple of letters as well

[53:43] that will be entered into the record

[53:44] for this work session, and this is envisioned to be the final work session till we adopt.

[53:50] And I know that we have some folks here from the advocates who I also send in a slide

[53:55] show that they would like to present.

[53:56] Are they able to present that as well when they speak?

[54:01] So, Mayor, would you like the public comment to happen first, or would you like an initial staff

[54:05] report?

[54:08] Let's do a staff report so that we can hear, because there was some language that was discussed

[54:13] last time about the I know the advocates here talking about preservation and I'm you probably

[54:19] have an update on that language and then they might have a suggestion so we can kind of

[54:22] try to see where we're at. So let's kick it off with the staff report then go to public

[54:29] testimony at the appropriate time.

[54:32] So take the way.

[54:33] All right thank you Mayor and counselors. So I've got Adrian Whitty with me again tonight.

[54:38] Adrian will be going through a short presentation, but we just wanted to recap the five items

[54:46] that Council asked the project team to address at your last work session on the seventh.

[54:54] Adrian and his team have updated maps to address the first three and then we are looking

[54:58] for feedback.

[55:00] Interaction from the council on the final two, which are potential language additions to the document itself. So I'll turn it over to Adrian. Adrian is just going to run through a quick presentation and get to the decision making process.

[55:17] Yeah, Adrian, we deal with tools on, good to see you all again.

[55:20] So from the meeting two weeks ago, if we go to the next,

[55:25] oh, we've got that.

[55:28] There are a few action items that you had asked us to address

[55:32] out of the session that we presented two weeks ago,

[55:40] including three map modifications of then two language changes.

[55:45] So those map modifications were to do with the floodplain boundary and planning commissions

[55:52] recommendation to use the 1996 flood boundary rather than the 100 year floodplain.

[55:59] Then to remove the specific language around the medium density residential currently

[56:05] in the planning stage in the Pond District and replace that with more generic language

[56:10] And adjust that area to be outside the flood boundary and then lastly to add those sort of ecological corridors to the district maps.

[56:24] And then we have some draft language related to the preservation, encouraging the preservation of these existing structures we would like some feedback on and also language around incorporating affordable housing language into the vision plant as well.

[56:41] So in terms of the map changes, they really impact maps in two of the districts, primarily the pond district.

[56:54] So the primary changes here in the area that you see above the lower pond, where we've changed the floodplain boundary to represent that 1996 level.

[57:09] and adjusted the nomenclature around that potential development area to remove the specific

[57:18] language on that and to remove it outside of that floodplain.

[57:24] We've also added some designation around the ecological corridor in that area as well.

[57:35] In the cultural heritage district, there's not really a major change here, but we did

[57:40] want to flag that the changing of the floodplain boundary just changes the plain boundary here

[57:46] in this district as well. So I just wanted to bring that to Council of Tension. There's no

[57:50] material difference in any of the recommendations or designations in this zone.

[58:00] Do you mind going back to slides? Yep.

[58:04] That one. Thank you. I was just looking up the current image to compare it.

[58:12] So, thank you.

[58:14] Yeah, no problem.

[58:14] Go ahead.

[58:17] In terms of learning changes, firstly, talking about encouraging preservation of historic structures,

[58:25] we wanted to flag this was in the meeting packet where there is existing reference to that

[58:31] in the document as well as some places where we could encourage more reference to that.

[58:38] So, in the document, the existing language around the goals on page 5, you know, mentioned supporting cultural and environmental stewardship,

[58:49] the guiding principles on pages 11 and 12 bringing in some of those elements as well,

[58:55] as does language in the planning framework, as well as in the district specific plans in the historic city hall district and in the cultural heritage district.

[59:07] So, those are the existing references, if you like, to encouraging preservation,

[59:15] but we are also bringing forward some additional language that would be added to the cultural heritage district planning framework as well, that would encourage preservation of those structures, and there's, and we've got several different options here for how though that could be structured.

[59:37] in terms of wording so adding a bullet to that section that would say something in the way of

[59:44] evaluate structures for historic significance and cultural integrity. It could say encourage

[59:50] rehabilitation and reuse of he historic structures where economically feasible could say support

[59:57] opportunities for rehabilitation.

[1:00:00] And reuse of historic structures. It could say work with private sector partners to identify key historic sites

[1:00:07] where rehabilitation and reuse would enhance visitor experience and support projects that showcase

[1:00:14] industrial heritage, or it could say encourage exploration of rehabilitation and reuse of

[1:00:21] so structures in partnership with property owners or some combination of those different variations.

[1:00:32] In terms of affordable housing, there is some reference to that in the document on page 23

[1:00:41] that talks about, you know, financing affordable housing in the market analysis and the

[1:00:48] challenges with that, but adding potential language to page 12, which is the guiding principles

[1:00:54] that would say something like river access key elements, encourage affordable housing development

[1:01:00] to ensure equitable access to the river. And then on page 37, which is the section on housing

[1:01:08] density and parking, a couple of options here would be to add language supporting new affordable

[1:01:15] housing projects potentially with tax increment financing funds could help meet the needs

[1:01:20] identified in the Westland housing capacity analysis that referencing things back to

[1:01:26] that housing capacity analysis and the need. It could say the city should consider allowing

[1:01:31] a variety of housing types to encourage affordability across income ranges and use targeting

[1:01:37] targeted infrastructure investments incentives and expedited permanent support development.

[1:01:42] So thinking about how affordable housing could be encouraged or it could say it will be important to work with private sector partners to identify opportunities for affordable housing development, which is maybe a little bit more broad.

[1:01:58] So, those are the changes being brought forward both map and wording, I'll sort of have a full discussion.

[1:02:12] Once somehow everything just shut off up here and I don't know if that.

[1:02:17] Maybe it goes.

[1:02:18] There it goes.

[1:02:20] We heard a sound and it was everything went like, oh no.

[1:02:24] Okay, we're back.

[1:02:26] Okay, you may continue.

[1:02:30] You might have been that day.

[1:02:31] I am a bien.

[1:02:35] Well, for the sake of process,

[1:02:39] let's just talk about this,

[1:02:41] the affordable housing language.

[1:02:43] Would you like us to kind of look at the language

[1:02:46] and kind of give direction on a particular option?

[1:02:50] The last one I'd like to hear from the community

[1:02:51] about the historic structures issue,

[1:02:55] but this one we might be able to just tackle real quickly.

[1:02:59] Councillor Groner.

[1:03:00] Yeah, I like the word encourage, which is positive.

[1:03:03] If that is kind of neutral, I don't think we can commit

[1:03:09] without understanding all the factors in the expenses.

[1:03:14] And I think we realistically do have to work with private

[1:03:16] owners as well, and so that should be part of the language.

[1:03:20] So I think it's the last of the options,

[1:03:22] bullet at options that I like.

[1:03:30] You talking about the third one here.

[1:03:33] There was one with bullets on various language.

[1:03:36] A couple earlier, I think.

[1:03:39] I think that one was relayed.

[1:03:41] Yeah, that one.

[1:03:41] Related to the preservation of historic structures.

[1:03:45] Yeah, but I think something similar for local lower costs or affordable housing as well.

[1:03:50] Do you have thoughts on the affordable housing bullets that were these potential language choices?

[1:03:57] And then I will turn to the historic structures, agree with you on the

[1:04:03] Anchorage.

[1:04:05] I would propose the second line here, just changing it to say,

[1:04:25] should encourage the city should encourage a variety of housing types to encourage affordability

[1:04:32] across income rates and use this targeted infrastructure investments and then have an

[1:04:35] expedited permanent support development. Of course, it's an aspirational statement, but it's

[1:04:40] whatever, whatever. Everybody okay with that type of language? I agree with that. I was kind

[1:04:47] of looking at that one in connection with the other, but how specific do we want to be in this

[1:04:53] Vision process, I think, acknowledging that we will encourage.

[1:05:00] A variety of housing types at various affordability levels, I think is important. So I kind of like the middle one maybe word Smith the little.

[1:05:12] Any other?

[1:05:15] That's cut two counselors, but I want to hear from everybody. It counts as a bomb burner.

[1:05:19] Thank you. I think the second wording is fine. I think it does need to be. At this point, a little bit more general.

[1:05:30] and this does that and includes the elements that we're hearing about and that we've

[1:05:38] been talking about that we want to prioritize.

[1:05:44] So I would agree with so far what you all said.

[1:05:50] Councillor Bontina, see you nodding?

[1:05:55] I agree with them.

[1:05:56] The more general and these things, the better.

[1:05:59] It's too early to try and be that specific, I guess.

[1:06:04] Thanks.

[1:06:05] And I think Councillor Groner, you were an agreement.

[1:06:06] I would say to your agreement earlier.

[1:06:07] Really positive, but not commit to anything.

[1:06:11] Thank you.

[1:06:12] Councillor Brey.

[1:06:13] Just looking at it, how about the city should allow a variety of housing types?

[1:06:19] we haven't done the zoning and so the zoning would initiate various housing types so kind of take out the

[1:06:26] Consider allowing and just they should allow and then that paragraph. I think states what we're trying to present.

[1:06:34] Exense. Okay, so I thought we would tackle that potential change. We've done that and so now we will turn to the

[1:06:47] historic preservation issue, and I would like to take public testimony at this point, if that's okay with

[1:06:56] presenters at this time. Okay, how many folks do we have signed up? I see we've got to look at it.

[1:07:03] Just two. Okay,

[1:07:10] Dan Butler.

[1:07:14] Okay, I come on up, whoever would like to come on up for.

[1:07:24] Welcome and I got your slide show and I heard you might need to go a little bit over three minutes and that's totally fine

[1:07:31] Okay, so welcome and just at your names and city of residences and take it away.

[1:07:36] I'm Dan Butler. I live in the Clacamus in the shadow of Mount Albert.

[1:07:41] I'm a really a Rebecca. I live in Westland.

[1:07:44] So, we come from the Advocates of Limit Falls heritage and our President Troy Powers sent you this email and I'm just going to read it really quickly and that might go through some of these slides.

[1:07:57] As you know, we, the Advocates for Limit Falls heritage, continue to proactively assure that the history of Wesleyan community around the Falls is not lost as the city grows when it comes home to future generations.

[1:08:07] The waterfront, vision plan will play an important role in determining the future of the area around the falls.

[1:08:14] The vision plan offers the City Council the opportunity to incorporate elements of Wesleyan's rich waterfront history, including its industrial heritage into the waterfront's future.

[1:08:24] Because our mission and involvement, advocates has considerable knowledge about more as island, the limit, locks, and the area covered by the vision plan.

[1:08:31] We do not encourage for saving all or a majority of build structures and industrial artifacts.

[1:08:37] We do request the vision play and clearly encourage the preservation or reuse of some of the built structures and industrial artifacts.

[1:08:44] We would like to share with you pictures of some of the existing treasures and a couple of concepts that we purpose and industrial elements to preserve the heritage of the area.

[1:08:53] We think incorporating such concepts into the vision play and will be instrumental in highlighting possibilities opportunities and expectations.

[1:09:00] Thank you for your continued consideration support on behalf of the Advocate Stripe Powers.

[1:09:05] This is sort of redundant as what we just saw.

[1:09:07] You guys have some great ideas for changing some of the language.

[1:09:12] So this is just a sort of underlying that point.

[1:09:16] So to introduce myself and Dan, I'm a resident here and I grew up in Westland.

[1:09:21] I have an architecture degree from PSU and I also work in architecture for a long time.

[1:09:26] Dan is an industrial photographer and for the past 10 years he's been touring more as island

[1:09:31] extensively with former employees and he has a wealth of knowledge about the goings on and the

[1:09:38] intricacies of the area.

[1:09:45] Okay well what we have this is what we have and it's somewhat misleading

[1:09:48] and that we have a whole lot more but I think this is a little restippant of some of the areas in the mill

[1:09:55] that, frankly, a lot of bill employees have not seen and land on it.

[1:10:00] Peter P. G. has not seen. Picture here on the left is grinder room number 3. This is where

[1:10:05] they used water power to grind wood into fiber. Paper making. It was one of the two methods

[1:10:12] they used. And this is a big structure that it's out closest to the falls. To the right shows

[1:10:20] it's almost a cathedral-like space where the big 13-foot pinstocks come from the face of the

[1:10:27] to the turbines to spend the grinders, and these were very unique spaces, and have a lot of potential for multiple uses, and it's truly one of the treasures within the mill.

[1:10:43] What's

[1:10:48] the right way?

[1:10:50] I got those on the way.

[1:10:53] Thank you.

[1:10:54] Okay.

[1:10:55] Moving to the lower part of the island on the left is in Milby the base of the digesters.

[1:11:02] This is where they use chemical process to cook the pulp.

[1:11:08] And they're essentially big pressure covers.

[1:11:10] And that process stopped in 1968.

[1:11:13] These four story high digesters are what you use to smell.

[1:11:17] the bad smell of paper-making operation was a sulfide process, and I can say that discontinued

[1:11:24] 1968, but the structures and the digestors remain. The one on the right is an acid

[1:11:29] accumulator, but it's, they're most of the show, some of the views that you can see from

[1:11:34] the various structures on the site.

[1:11:40] This is still in mil B, that's on the left, is towards

[1:11:43] the top of the digester. Again, this is like a big thermospodel, four-story, high thermospodel.

[1:11:51] to the right, that is the top of the digesters, where the

[1:11:55] winch ships would fall in and they would cook it for about

[1:11:57] eight hours under pressure.

[1:12:00] And looking at how the windows, this is about half

[1:12:03] we have the big structure of this right next to the

[1:12:05] small stack.

[1:12:06] The area above this is filled with winch ships or was.

[1:12:12] Okay, almost like that.

[1:12:15] I just wanted to juxtapose that digester that we have with

[1:12:19] project in San Antonio, Texas. This is the stern worth, which is the bar inside the hotel

[1:12:24] Emma, which sits inside what the former Pearl Brewing building that was built in 1894.

[1:12:35] Here you can see the beer tanks have been playfully repurposed into seating booths for the bar

[1:12:39] and restaurant. I'm going to read a little bit from the hotel's website.

[1:12:42] When you visit hotel Emma, you'll see the industrial artifacts respectfully and sometimes

[1:12:46] intrinsically incorporated into graciously design spaces.

[1:12:50] A sweet ceiling is the bottom of the cast iron hopper.

[1:12:53] An early 20th century compressor has been retired to the lobby

[1:12:56] and solid bronze industrial gadgets are

[1:12:59] repurposed as lighting fixtures.

[1:13:01] The brewery's tangible history is taking on new life at Hotel Emma.

[1:13:06] So I personally visited this project and it's incredible.

[1:13:10] There's a couple other just sort of inspopex.

[1:13:13] Um, this one on the left is the coming needs brewery, it's in an original brewery building built in 1860 in the Czech Republic.

[1:13:21] It was used as a warehouse after brewering operations cease after World War II.

[1:13:27] In 2016, it's been bought and turned into a brewery again.

[1:13:31] On the right, we see Empire stores, which is a mixed use adaptor reuse project on the formerly industrial waterfront in Brooklyn, New York.

[1:13:39] Which is pretty similar to what we have here.

[1:13:41] The architects are called S9 and this little bit from the website says S9's sympathetically

[1:13:47] joined 7 separate historic buildings and added an additional 2.5 floors to create a new

[1:13:53] public space that celebrates and preserves the area and dust real past while establishing

[1:13:58] a new community hub.

[1:14:01] I'm sorry, what was that originally?

[1:14:06] I don't know originally what it is, there were 7 buildings, so there was less

[1:14:10] different functions on that area.

[1:14:15] And this is a more local project elected, do you want to talk about it, Dan?

[1:14:19] Yes, as you see, Seattle, excuse me, the Spokane

[1:14:22] steam plant on the left, which was in the right and downtown Spokane,

[1:14:27] powered a lot of buildings in Spokane.

[1:14:29] It was decommissioned and set idle for many years,

[1:14:32] and has now been repurposed into both of hotel and restaurant.

[1:14:36] And you can see on the right what they've done to incorporate

[1:14:39] a lot of those entities and artifacts of the original structure and to a very attractive and

[1:14:45] functional facility.

[1:14:48] Okay, so just in conclusion what we're asking for is to strongly encourage and incentivize

[1:14:53] and adapt to reuse the approach that turns some of the embedded energy and strong visual historic

[1:14:58] elements in the existing.

[1:15:04] Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for being here and I want to thank also the other. Other advocates behind you there that have been part of the process for a long time.

[1:15:15] including a couple of former city counselors, Jim, and Joe D. Nice to see you both. Welcome back to the chamber.

[1:15:22] I think the historic preservation is very important to us, so I will get into the specific language in just a few minutes,

[1:15:30] but we really appreciate the examples and photos, and it would be so cool to see something like that in the future at the falls.

[1:15:37] I know we've been dealing with the tension of not restricting the private sector to the

[1:15:42] point where nothing can happen but making sure that we can do something to see where

[1:15:47] we use can happen.

[1:15:48] So, we will discuss momentarily here on any other questions or comments for the advocates.

[1:15:57] Councillor Groner.

[1:15:58] Yeah, a couple of observations.

[1:16:01] One, it seems most of your examples are in downtown areas and I think more as island

[1:16:05] has some real problems with access, just a comment, but the other is who would be doing the

[1:16:14] investing to do these rehabilitation? Do you have any thoughts on that?

[1:16:19] I think that would come down the line to him Edwards has a lot of experience in this.

[1:16:24] He's a urban planner and so there's lots of options.

[1:16:31] Thank you.

[1:16:32] I think that would be when talking in the form of government around on the trust and engagement

[1:16:36] process that they're going to have, I think this is the type of thing that we can talk

[1:16:41] about as she's doing fundraising and that group is working hard on that, making sure

[1:16:45] that there's some advocates for reuse wherever possible would be great.

[1:16:50] This is basically our dream for your vision.

[1:16:52] I think we can talk about it.

[1:16:53] No, absolutely, we definitely appreciate that and like I said, be awesome to see those sorts of

[1:17:00] brewery like that sometime on the right near the falls. Do you have a comment?

[1:17:06] Councillor President Baumgren, go ahead.

[1:17:08] Thanks, Mayor. Yeah, so thank you for the engagement and also the information.

[1:17:15] My concern about this area is the reason why I started coming to council meetings originally six or eight

[1:17:22] years ago or however long ago was, is the toxins that are present in these sites.

[1:17:28] So a brewery is a different type of use than a paper mill.

[1:17:34] And a steam plant is a similar way as a different use that didn't have the level of chemical use.

[1:17:44] And so those are the concerns I have is the cost to make safe a building that was used with such toxins present.

[1:17:56] So I think that's going to be our big challenge with this whole area is how to be able to repurpose it reasonably, financially, reasonably.

[1:18:09] So I'm not against saving buildings or I'm just being realistic about the possibilities

[1:18:18] and not wanting to restrict what we can do with some with a preservation kind of restriction on it.

[1:18:30] But not every building, maybe some of the buildings that were not used with, you know,

[1:18:35] not in such close proximity to toxic functions that certainly a possibility, but I appreciate

[1:18:44] all of your work and diligence on this.

[1:18:48] Thank you.

[1:18:50] Any other comments for the advocates at Councillor Bonnet and go ahead?

[1:18:55] Yeah.

[1:18:55] I've been strong agreement with what Council President said there.

[1:18:59] I guess I would be supportive of something to the effect of encouraging adaptive repurposing

[1:19:08] as you called it to the extent that it's not going to become cost prohibitive to the

[1:19:14] property owners who end up developing it.

[1:19:18] It's great and very to think about some of this being preserved in that way, but if it

[1:19:23] sinks the entire project and it ends up continuing to sit unused as it is, that would

[1:19:28] a tragedy. So we need to strike a balance there for what we're trying to accomplish without

[1:19:34] voiling the entire thing.

[1:19:38] Good comments. Councillor Groner.

[1:19:40] Yeah, I can open Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And there have been some really creative

[1:19:44] reuses of old railroad stations in Pittsburgh that have basically been turned either into office

[1:19:49] buildings or basically shopping malls. But both of them had easy access on the city.

[1:20:00] Any other questions for the advocates or may we let them go back to? Okay. Well, thank you for coming and presenting.

[1:20:08] Thank you. And we will now engage in our review of these proposed language from our staff.

[1:20:18] And

[1:20:21] with it, language in mind that the advocates also presented about encouraging some adaptive reuse.

[1:20:29] Yes, that'd be helpful if you put there are the bullets right there.

[1:20:37] It came off somehow.

[1:20:38] I don't know how that happened.

[1:20:43] Oh, Chris.

[1:20:47] Miss Solberg, would you like to make a comment?

[1:20:52] Welcome.

[1:20:53] Sorry.

[1:20:53] I didn't know you had maybe there was confusion on the form.

[1:20:56] I'm glad you flagged us before we moved on.

[1:20:58] Please.

[1:20:59] From the historic review board, the steam chair I'd go ahead.

[1:21:03] Go ahead.

[1:21:03] Thank you.

[1:21:04] I had emailed with Lynn.

[1:21:07] I didn't realize there was an extra step to take care.

[1:21:09] So my name is Kirsten Solberg.

[1:21:11] I'm a Westland resident.

[1:21:13] I'm an architect with my business based in Westland.

[1:21:17] I'm also a member of the Historic Review Board,

[1:21:19] but I'm not here to speak in that capacity.

[1:21:22] I have a handful of comments about the waterfront plan.

[1:21:25] I'm not connected with the adaptive,

[1:21:28] or the group that just spoke advocacy,

[1:21:30] but I am a huge proponent of adaptive reuse, I admit that access over a lock is definitely

[1:21:39] challenging but that is a building that maybe people don't realize how amazing it can be but

[1:21:45] it is worth trying to preserve and reuse and treasure. There are examples of paper mills that

[1:21:54] have had successful adaptive reuse projects in Danville, Virginia, and in Maine.

[1:22:01] There's textile mills in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

[1:22:06] One of the most interesting ones I saw was in a floodplain and also incorporated a trail

[1:22:11] that encompassed the history, and I'd like to follow up with some of these images to share

[1:22:18] with you later this week, and links if you want to learn more about those projects.

[1:22:23] The next thing I wanted to say is that during the Planning Commission meeting, when there was discussion about toxins in the wetlands area and also the supplies to Moors Island, it would be nice to know who is our contact person in the city.

[1:22:40] In the event that we can get these areas cleaned up, it seemed to be unknown about who's who's the contact person and whether or not these areas will be cleaned up.

[1:22:51] If we don't deal with the toxins now, it's just going to cause problems down the road.

[1:22:57] And I haven't seen the report.

[1:22:58] I don't know what the contamination is, but with a background in architecture and life safety and welfare.

[1:23:05] Like, you know, bad stuff happens, and the longer you kick the hand down the road, the harder it is to take care of.

[1:23:12] And then the last thing I wanted to mention is that the language about citing the 1996 floodplain.

[1:23:19] I would like to, instead, suggest referring to the FEMA floodplain documents.

[1:23:25] That considers not just the 96 flood, but all floods and all projected floods.

[1:23:32] It has information about base flood elevations in it.

[1:23:36] And just for example, the base flood elevation, if you build below the base flood elevation,

[1:23:44] you have to follow FEMA design guidelines.

[1:23:47] normal materials for a standard home or commercial project can't be used below that

[1:23:54] base flood elevation.

[1:23:58] Installation. Gip board that has a paper face on it. A whole bunch

[1:24:01] of items can't be used below there. It can't be a habitable space. So for instance on

[1:24:06] the, I've a print out of the FEMA flood zone for these areas that we're discussing and

[1:24:11] include that in the information I send later, at Burnert Landing, the base blood elevation is 75 feet,

[1:24:19] on Moore's Island, it's between 69 and 49 feet, and then for instance, at the Cedarot Boat

[1:24:25] Boat Landing, the elevation in the flood plains that you can build above and have a normal habitable space,

[1:24:33] or commercial space, is 46 feet. And jurisdictions I've worked in, it's a pretty rigorous process

[1:24:40] where the drawings are scrutinized to make sure they comply with design guidelines.

[1:24:46] There are pre and post-construction, professional survey reports that are submitted to make

[1:24:52] sure it's complied with.

[1:24:55] And it has repercussions for whether or not a jurisdiction can have access to the next

[1:25:00] National Flood Insurance Program. It just seems like it's such an important document. Anything that has to be built needs to comply with it. It seems like that's the document that should be used for making some of these big decisions.

[1:25:14] I thought it would also mention that municipalities that don't comply,

[1:25:22] they can be put on probation or suspended from the Flood Insurance Program,

[1:25:27] which is very bad for a municipality and it can also interfere with jurisdictions receiving

[1:25:33] FEMA or state disaster aid.

[1:25:37] So please share that map with us and the information you just mentioned and we'll have

[1:25:43] our planning staff take a look at that.

[1:25:46] I'd be happy to.

[1:25:46] Before the next.

[1:25:48] It works the next the adoption meeting and if we have to make a change.

[1:25:53] Thank you and thank you for your comments on the historic preservation and

[1:25:57] and all that you do for the Historic Review Board as well.

[1:26:02] Look forward to reviewing that when you send it over tonight.

[1:26:07] Okay.

[1:26:09] Back to the issue at hand, which is the President,

[1:26:12] I would say here we have kind of a breakdown of the existing language

[1:26:18] just showcasing that there is some preservation language in the plan

[1:26:25] and we could transition to the, oh, there's another more language, okay?

[1:26:30] And there's some potential language.

[1:26:33] Now, we've got five options for a city council to choose from.

[1:26:37] How does a city council narrow it down to one?

[1:26:41] It a timely manner with five good people up here.

[1:26:45] A council or break has a thought.

[1:26:47] I would eliminate the first bullet because evaluating structures

[1:26:51] doesn't have an action item associated with that.

[1:26:54] It's just look at them and I think we need to be a little bit more specific about encouraging

[1:27:01] the rehabilitation or those kinds of things.

[1:27:06] I would almost propose, I agree with that, I'd almost propose a combination hybrid of

[1:27:10] bullet point two and four because you're encouraging rehabilitation reuse of key structures

[1:27:16] where economically feasible and work with private sector partners to identify sites where we

[1:27:21] have been reused with enhanced visitor experience and support projects that showcase the heritage.

[1:27:26] That merger is almost exactly bullet five.

[1:27:29] Oh, the. Okay. So what do you, what do you guys think of what I, I don't

[1:27:38] prepare? Yeah, I think the element of five that was missing from that one is identifying

[1:27:46] which what ones are the key historic ones, so that I don't know some of that those resources aren't going into the wrong areas.

[1:27:56] And then encourage the private property owners through whatever means we have whatever incentives we have to work on this.

[1:28:05] Thank you.

[1:28:06] For that.

[1:28:07] Thanks for that, Councillor Groner.

[1:28:09] Councillor Bracky, have done a thought.

[1:28:10] And I think also in the wordsmithing I really liked the language that the advocates had in their last slide.

[1:28:16] that seemed very concise, specifically said what we were hoping to do, and so if we can incorporate

[1:28:22] that language into our statement, I think that would be good, at least a portion of it.

[1:28:29] So it sounds like there's some agreement among key themes on what we'd like the final

[1:28:35] language to say, maybe reflecting some of what was in the advocates statement, just encouraging

[1:28:41] adaptive reuse.

[1:28:42] They had the plane was strongly encouraging and then maybe we could take a stab at based on the council discussion coming up with a bullet point that kind of captures the partnership with property owners, that you know the key of the importance of the private sector.

[1:28:59] And, you know, the economically feasible element because that's another key that I heard from the discussion from council's bottom tin and growner.

[1:29:08] So that makes sense.

[1:29:10] We'll trust you all to draft something up and you could even send it out to the City Council at some point.

[1:29:22] Yeah, we can draft a couple of options for you and send it out to you.

[1:29:28] In advance of you.

[1:29:30] I have a chance to look over it and on it.

[1:29:36] Okay.

[1:29:39] That makes sense and I think it reflects that we're, we're, we're, we hear the advocates

[1:29:44] testimony.

[1:29:44] We want to make sure that the plan reflects your values, which I think are our shared values

[1:29:50] as well from the historic preservation and reuse wherever economically feasible.

[1:29:56] So that kind of handles the two issues, go ahead, Darren.

[1:30:00] I do want to just ensure council knows that what Miss Solberg talked about with the building materials and the review process.

[1:30:10] That is all part of the city's current process if you're going to develop in the floodplain. So we have all those rules in place in the community development code.

[1:30:19] The building official ensures any development in the floodplain meets the standards. So the city's already doing that.

[1:30:26] So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, thank you for pointing that out.

[1:30:29] And if, if, if, if if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if another map comes in that has a different line that may be made made make more so we can review that and take a look at that.

[1:30:37] Yeah, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's the property owners responsibility to establish the, the floodplain elevation and then provide the drawings that show whether the building is above or below the floodplain elevation.

[1:30:49] So just just so the community knows that that's, that's taking place in the city of Westline.

[1:30:54] Thank you, thank you very much for that and before we so I think that kind of addresses the main

[1:31:01] Couple of things that you had from your slideshow for potential changes and I just we did want to take a moment to

[1:31:08] Address some of the public the public comment that came in that we've received from a few folks and I

[1:31:15] I just have been thinking about that because at the last city council meeting

[1:31:19] And this is in relation to the map and the delineation and the pond district that shows

[1:31:25] some potential development area, south of Fifth Avenue, and I wanted to clarify what's

[1:31:30] going on with that, and the shading on the map.

[1:31:33] That yellow color is used across the entire waterfront, basically, to show areas that are technically

[1:31:38] developable, meaning that they're outside of the floodplain.

[1:31:42] It does not mean that housing or any other kind of development is planned or encouraged there.

[1:31:47] And at the October 7th City Council meeting, I raised the issue with the Council of whether we should

[1:31:53] remove the yellow shading, South Fathau, New or remove the language that was said medium

[1:31:59] residential and in the planning stages, and we, the Council decided we're going to remove

[1:32:04] the language on a medium density residential.

[1:32:08] And then when we talked about the map and the planning staff recommended that we keep that

[1:32:12] place for consistency across the entire waterfront plan.

[1:32:19] And so I just want to be clear that whether that area is yellow or not has nothing to

[1:32:24] do with whether a development could or couldn't occur there.

[1:32:27] And I think we heard that tonight.

[1:32:29] But the city council was in charge of that and directed that that was how the area should

[1:32:36] appear on the map at the last meeting.

[1:32:38] And I want to thank the planning staff and our consultant for your professionalism and work and

[1:32:44] doing that.

[1:32:44] There were some criticism of the planning department because of that that map continued

[1:32:49] to show the yellow over that South of Fifth Avenue property, but that was from my perspective,

[1:32:58] a council decision or really, the council did not object at the time last week or two weeks ago

[1:33:04] to that provision and you all are doing a great job, bringing forward what we are asking

[1:33:09] you to.

[1:33:10] And I am willing to open up the conversation to the Council, just for a final check.

[1:33:14] If folks have any final comments on the plan, the map, I know the Council really does support

[1:33:20] wetland preservation, it's part of the plan, and there's just seems to be a hang up over

[1:33:25] that last little part of the map, but I really don't want that to be something that makes

[1:33:31] a really negative adoption hearing, even though it's something that, you know, is just showing

[1:33:38] developable area that's technically developable under city zoning code, that's it.

[1:33:45] So it's not an endorsement by the city council.

[1:33:48] The endorsement was taken out because we took out the medium residential and the planning

[1:33:52] stage is language last week and not that that wasn't endorsement.

[1:33:57] But just that potential tilt.

[1:33:59] any thoughts from the Council? I thought Councillor Brack and then the Council of

[1:34:03] Bonnie and Ten has a comment. I kind of want to jump in a little bit to the

[1:34:09] concerns raised about the Ponds and my understanding is that there are various

[1:34:14] levels of remediation that would be required depending upon the use and yet

[1:34:20] there's concern that if we don't have remediation start immediately that there is

[1:34:26] chance of incursion of any of the toxic sludge from the ponds escaping. I don't know how

[1:34:35] we deal with that because we're not the owners of the property. We don't have a development

[1:34:39] plan for the property. And as I said, I believe the remediation would vary depending upon

[1:34:47] the type of development that is determined. So I don't have an answer to this. I just think

[1:34:55] it's something that we need to consider and at least express that yes.

[1:35:00] We know that there could be some risk there, but we don't really have the ability to do anything

[1:35:08] about it at this point.

[1:35:11] With the ponds in general, the environmental risk there.

[1:35:14] Yeah, no.

[1:35:15] That's been an important topic for council president, bomb gardener as well, and this time

[1:35:20] it's not under city ownership either, so it's kind of, but I think we should do some studies

[1:35:26] on that at some point and something we definitely know in the plan from the standpoint of making

[1:35:31] sure where that area is not toxic or not spreading toxins around, Councillor Bonnington had

[1:35:38] a comment on the plan.

[1:35:42] Maybe I'm being overly cautious with this analysis, but to the extent that this map just

[1:35:49] flexible area just like we are not including language that says we're encouraging that specific

[1:35:57] part to be developed to deliberately remove it from the map and state that we're not going

[1:36:06] to allow development there would immediately have an inherent bias for our land use decisions

[1:36:12] we might have to hear in the future so we kind of need to leave it in the middle I would

[1:36:17] think of just being realistic about the fact that it's

[1:36:21] developable and whatever comes after that, that's the

[1:36:26] decision we may hear in the future.

[1:36:28] Something to solve our city regulations and appreciate

[1:36:32] that. Any other thoughts, council president, please?

[1:36:39] Thanks. So I do have, and this is kind of in the interest of

[1:36:45] clearing up something that I continue to hear, concern,

[1:36:49] and brought to us, and including tonight, the reference to the public comment not being

[1:36:58] available to the, I don't know if it was, it has been stated about, it was not available

[1:37:06] to the working group.

[1:37:08] I don't know if maybe you could clarify that a little bit, I know that was a question

[1:37:16] you've answered in the past, but maybe you could just for the record remind how that was made

[1:37:22] available.

[1:37:25] Yes, thank you.

[1:37:26] So when the survey was done, or was put out for the community to respond to in December of

[1:37:35] 2024, it was open for about six weeks till the end of January.

[1:37:40] We received a number of comments from the community.

[1:37:44] We had distilled those comments down into a matrix and then provided responses that then we gave to the working group.

[1:37:55] We did not supply them the hundreds of pages of actual emails and comment letters.

[1:38:00] We put it into that matrix, so it was more digestible.

[1:38:04] So that was provided to them.

[1:38:06] We heard feedback that that wasn't acceptable.

[1:38:09] So moving forward with the Planning Commission and Council, we provide all comments that have been submitted from that time forward in your packets.

[1:38:19] There are links on the page five of your agenda bill.

[1:38:23] Links to all of the comments we received leading up to your decision making process.

[1:38:30] Thank you.

[1:38:31] I just wanted to clarify that because I had kept coming up and I just wanted the public to know that

[1:38:38] their comments are being read and we are taking them into consideration and on the subject of the

[1:38:47] cleanup of the ponds and I don't know if this is a question that can even be answered right now

[1:38:54] but it's a it's really a legal question that can the city require a more strict level of diligence

[1:39:04] than DEQ, can a city of Westland, for instance, say, well, DEQ is only requiring

[1:39:13] ex steps to be done. That's not good enough for us. We're going to up the empty. Is that

[1:39:19] something that cities can do? Yes, that's a great question. And I did speak with staff at DEQ.

[1:39:27] They have never had this happen, but they said it would be possible for a city to enact

[1:39:34] stricter standards, like parts per million of a cleanup if they wanted to, but you would

[1:39:40] have to go through the process of setting that through a scientific research project, and then

[1:39:48] get it into your code, which takes several years, and then they said that there could also

[1:39:55] be a challenge of, because the standards set by the State of Oregon and...

[1:40:14] And then just kind of now we're speculating so bear with me. But in your experience, would that then need to be

[1:40:30] property would that be then a new standard or could we apply it on a case-by-case basis?

[1:40:39] It would be the standard.

[1:40:41] Okay.

[1:40:44] And I'm very interested to hear about the potential of converting paper mills.

[1:40:51] So if anybody, and I'm putting this out there because I'm genuinely interested,

[1:40:56] but at least one of the examples that you mentioned is was a text-style mill,

[1:41:00] not a paper mill. So it was,

[1:41:06] well, textile mills, of course, had less chemical. That's the concern.

[1:41:11] I'm just saying that if there's paper mills that were the similar process of what these mills

[1:41:19] were doing, then I'm really interested in not reinventing the wheel if some other human disability

[1:41:25] has found the ability to do this. I think it'd be great to learn about that, how they were successful

[1:41:32] and maybe even we could find out funding sources for clean up.

[1:41:37] Maybe there's federal funds available for instance for these purposes.

[1:41:46] That's it.

[1:41:48] Okay, and I did want to note, Mr. Schumacher brought up the resolution.

[1:41:55] It just did the Plenty Department of Justice City Attorney draft the resolutions.

[1:41:59] I don't recall the process for this one.

[1:42:01] I drafted the resolution.

[1:42:02] And if you would like to add the, with recommendations, be happy to do that.

[1:42:07] Yeah, and I was thinking, when it gives to the adoption stage, like, if you had the planning

[1:42:11] commission's recommendation specified out, and then the next whereas, and they're kind

[1:42:14] of specified, what the city council that the city council accepted them and took some action on it,

[1:42:20] you know, and what we basically, what we've been discussing and what we decided to do,

[1:42:24] based on those recommendations, it could be helpful just to make sure the resolution's

[1:42:28] that we adhered to the Planning Commission recommendation or we received the recommendation and acted on it in X-way.

[1:42:38] Okay, we can update the resolution to have a...

[1:42:42] Yeah.

[1:42:43] Do exactly as you just said.

[1:42:45] Sounds good.

[1:42:47] Thank you for that.

[1:42:50] Is everybody okay with that from the City Council just making the resolution a little bit more

[1:42:54] and certain, okay, see not. So with that, are there any other issues on the waterfront plan?

[1:43:04] I have to tell you, everybody I'm excited because this has been a long time, long-term

[1:43:09] process that's been, the Council President and I were elected in 2020 and we've been working

[1:43:14] on the waterfront trying to see this through for many years and so I'll save my longer statement

[1:43:20] until the next meeting, but very exciting to get to this point and 10 years in the making.

[1:43:26] Darren, I think this has been one of your main projects.

[1:43:28] The entire time you've been with the City of Westland, if I'm not mistaken, so it would

[1:43:31] work.

[1:43:32] We'll get to get across the finish line.

[1:43:35] Mr. Williams, any final thoughts on the waterfront plan for we turn to the next exciting

[1:43:40] plan?

[1:43:41] Let's keep the agenda moving, but we will be making those changes that you've defined.

[1:43:46] And the current adoption schedule is November 18th meeting.

[1:43:52] I'll talk a little bit more about Council over.

[1:43:54] Schedule later in the meeting.

[1:43:56] And also just to note that we will perhaps forward some options by email.

[1:44:01] But the Council does not make decisions by email.

[1:44:04] So you just be reviewing those individually and making the decisions in our meeting.

[1:44:10] Exactly. That was my thought.

[1:44:13] I'm going to...

[1:44:14] I'd like to reassure the public about things like that.

[1:44:16] No, I appreciate that.

[1:44:18] A Council President has requested a break,

[1:44:20] and I agree we've been at it for almost two hours,

[1:44:22] so we will take a quick five minute break,

[1:44:24] and then get to vision 43.

[1:44:26] We are ahead of schedule tonight, so appreciate that.

[1:44:29] We're in recess going

[1:44:38] on back there.

[1:44:39] We've got to restore,

[1:44:40] or thank you very much, everybody.

[1:44:42] Now, the crowd has filed out,

[1:44:43] but we still have Rebecca Holland back from Main Street

[1:44:46] and Steve Cooper back there.

[1:44:48] Thank you for being here.

[1:44:49] We will reconvene the meeting.

[1:44:54] Again, we're in a work session on October 21st, 2025.

[1:44:59] We have finished.

[1:45:00] The waterfront vision plan review and sent that on to the adoption phase. Just for the record, Mr. Williams, when is that going to be forgot to clarify, the waterfront plan will be adopted on November 18th, okay.

[1:45:12] So we will look forward to that and we'll transition to the vision 43 project update.

[1:45:18] So lots of two important plans being discussed tonight and I'll turn it over to Mr. Chris Myers, associate planner who's been working very hard over.

[1:45:27] I don't know if it's been two years now on Vision 43, but glad to have you on board.

[1:45:34] Thank you, Mayor Bill Estoski.

[1:45:35] Appreciate it, Council President, Baumgartner, and Councilors.

[1:45:39] Appreciate your time tonight and yes, to confirm it's 24 months this month that we've been working on this project.

[1:45:45] Since both approval and we start as many money on it, so yeah, I call it 24 months.

[1:45:51] Yeah, we're getting there.

[1:45:52] Peace by peace, we'll talk a little bit about that.

[1:45:54] Yeah, thank you very much for the time tonight.

[1:45:56] It's been a little bit since we've given you an update on the project and we've had a few changes and strategic pivots on a couple things that I want to bring you up to speed on and then talk about the timeline.

[1:46:08] So before I get started as you know, I really enjoy giving credit to those who do a lot of work that you don't get to see.

[1:46:15] And so as it has become regular, I have to give a shout out to Lynn Schroeder. She's been the back one of this project internally for us and without her I wouldn't.

[1:46:24] This project would not be where it's at right now, and I also want to give a second shout out to our new community development director Steve Coper his insights coming from outside of the city

[1:46:34] Coming from another jurisdiction and multiple jurisdictions have actually been really enlightening for me as a project manager to kind of a few things maybe a little bit differently

[1:46:42] We get a little lost in it sometimes stuck in the I can't see the force in the trees and really appreciate that

[1:46:48] Plus he's my boss and writes my review. I'm kidding. I actually do appreciate it. See you. Thank you

[1:46:54] So it's, oh, I have a controller, I don't know if

[1:47:02] I apologize, technical difficulties, on the side green, look at that.

[1:47:09] Okay, all right.

[1:47:12] So tonight's topics, we are going to talk about a project timeline extension, a budget amendment.

[1:47:18] phase approach to our rezoning process and a larger strategic pivot.

[1:47:25] Thank you, Mayor Bill Estoski, for that language that I completely took from you today.

[1:47:33] All right, so as I normally do, just in case there's someone viewing in the audience or on TV online

[1:47:39] that doesn't know what vision 43 is of a brief description.

[1:47:44] We are out developing a new community vision for the Highway 43 corridor here in Westland.

[1:47:51] We are collaborating and have been collaborating for almost two years now with community

[1:47:55] members to shape our project recommendations, we're out to enhance walking and biking connections

[1:48:00] within and to the corridor.

[1:48:03] We're trying to expand opportunities for local businesses, housing and community gathering,

[1:48:11] community gathering places.

[1:48:13] And lastly, of course, sort of how the

[1:48:15] sausage is made up dating city plans and policies

[1:48:17] that support that vision from our community

[1:48:20] and implementing those project goals and recommendations.

[1:48:26] So project timeline extension.

[1:48:28] We originally planned for approval to be this month,

[1:48:31] October of 2025.

[1:48:33] We've had to adjust a little bit as we've gone on,

[1:48:35] I'll get into some of the details as of why.

[1:48:38] We have extended the project timeline with a plan for approval of July 26, June July 26.

[1:48:49] The extended timeline is going to allow a couple things to happen.

[1:48:53] We are going to increase our outreach with residential property owners within the focus area.

[1:48:58] I'll get into a little bit more of the detail on in a few slides or a little bit here.

[1:49:02] And then also it's going to give us more time for some community open houses to review some of the proposed code language.

[1:49:09] Again, I will dive a little deeper into that as we move through tonight's presentation.

[1:49:15] And then the next another smaller update for you is we've had a budget amendment to the project.

[1:49:22] As you may remember, this council will approve $200,000 for the Vision 43 project.

[1:49:27] And we, with the extended timeline, it adds a little bit of consultant project management

[1:49:34] cost.

[1:49:35] And as part of that extension, we've also asked for some simplified visualizations,

[1:49:40] some renderings that might be a little easier for the lay person to understand exactly

[1:49:45] what we're talking about.

[1:49:46] And in those newer renderings that we're going to, you'll simplify versions of renderings,

[1:49:50] we're going to get what can be done now, and then what could be done with what's sort

[1:49:56] be talked about as new code.

[1:49:58] So give me a sort of a before.

[1:50:00] After a few weeks, it really let the community understand what it could look like, what it would look, possibly could look like.

[1:50:09] The amended budget, we added $19,850 to our contract with MIG, our consulting firm on the project.

[1:50:16] Those funds were actually already budgeted for the vision 33 project through the budget cycle that started July 1, 2025, and we are now utilizing them for the project.

[1:50:27] So that is done, but just thought I, full disclosure, show you our new amended budget,

[1:50:36] and let me pause there for a moment.

[1:50:38] Just any questions about the timeline or budget, any concerns, outrageous remarks?

[1:50:45] When you say visualizations, are we talking still images or video renderings?

[1:50:51] Still images. I would love some fly through type renderings, but they happen to be quite expensive and beyond the range of the budget that we have for this project.

[1:51:00] All right. I'm sorry. Leave me, I've seen them for other, like they're really cool.

[1:51:07] Yes, they'll be still, but I think they're going to be a far more palatable view than our sort of side version

[1:51:13] that we've had for this project, the sort of that cross section. You're going to be a little bit easier to kind of see what we're talking about.

[1:51:22] I think it's going to help the community understand more of what the code shift and change might do for it for the city.

[1:51:29] Our friends at TBCTV always tell me, they ask me, do you have any ideas for, do you need

[1:51:35] any video projects or, you know, things, promotional things that they can help us out with?

[1:51:41] So if you ever want to, you know, quick 60 second or two minute read however long video

[1:51:48] for on Vision 43 to talk about, you know, whatever you'd like with it, I'm sure they'd be willing

[1:51:54] to help out and come out and even film and work on the project.

[1:51:59] So something to think about.

[1:52:00] Yeah, that's great.

[1:52:00] We'll reach out and discuss options and see where that's fantastic.

[1:52:04] Speaking of videos.

[1:52:08] Any other questions on the timeline or budget?

[1:52:13] See, none.

[1:52:14] Too pretty easy updates.

[1:52:15] I have four total tonight, so get the easy ones out of the way.

[1:52:18] So the next part, and let me say this before.

[1:52:23] to that next screen. I really appreciate Council's patience. I know we all want this project

[1:52:27] done a year ago or last month of this month. Sometimes when you get into a long-term project,

[1:52:35] things change. You hear things from the community and you need to shift and pivot as a mayor

[1:52:40] was talking to me about earlier today. And those pivots take a little bit of time. So we appreciate

[1:52:44] that your patience and getting through this with us. We all want it done quickly, but we also

[1:52:48] really, really want to done right, especially for a

[1:52:51] a visioning project that should go for decades,

[1:52:54] or should a document that's helped guide us for decades.

[1:52:56] So I just want to say I appreciate the patience from council.

[1:53:00] So the next part, let's talk about it as the rezoning strategy.

[1:53:05] So you remember we have three focus areas,

[1:53:08] and sort of the initial concept has been

[1:53:10] we'll rezone all the properties within those focus areas.

[1:53:14] Well, we've been getting some feedback from the community

[1:53:17] that maybe that's not entirely, some people are concerned, I'll put it to you that way, and we

[1:53:25] do our best to listen to the community and hear what they have to say, so we are going to pivot

[1:53:31] just a little bit on that strategy. So what we're going to do now, based on concerns and then staff

[1:53:36] recognition that the extensive outreach we've had so far, maybe this rezoning residential

[1:53:43] properties deserves a little bit more specific outreach. So we're going to take vision 43 and do a

[1:53:51] rezoning process in a phased approach. So we're going to start with, we're essentially at this point

[1:53:56] going to do two phases. Phase one is going to focus on those primarily commercial, commercially

[1:54:03] zoned properties in the corridor right now within the focus series. I'm going to give you guys some

[1:54:08] here in a minute. A few of the properties will be residentially zoned. Most of those are already

[1:54:16] acting as commercial properties. However, that happened over the years. We're not sure it did,

[1:54:21] so we're going to clean that up. But most of these are already zoned commercial properties.

[1:54:26] That'll be phase one. And then phase two, we'll go back and look at residential properties within

[1:54:33] the focus areas. I think that's where a lot of the concern has been coming from some of the

[1:54:37] community is like, hey, wait a minute, like, we don't understand how this is going to affect us,

[1:54:42] we are concerned, and so we hear those concerns and don't want to just rush through a process.

[1:54:50] So the other part that this will allow us to do, taking this phase to approach what I envision

[1:54:58] is inviting each of the...

[1:55:00] Proper residential property owners within the focus areas to come meet with us, probably in smaller groups or one big group of not sure.

[1:55:08] And really discuss their concerns, what reasoning would look like, what could happen, you know, what sort of worst case for them.

[1:55:16] And really talk through that with them, so that they have a level of comfort if we do reason on their property.

[1:55:21] I think that we owe them the respect to do that, and we hear those concerns.

[1:55:26] So this is why we're kind of pumping the brakes

[1:55:28] and wanting to take a phased approach.

[1:55:32] Councillor Grunner has a question for you.

[1:55:35] Yeah, from a homeowner's point of view,

[1:55:39] in a property that's going to be resowned,

[1:55:41] is that likely to increase or decrease the value of this property?

[1:55:44] Well, you know, I honestly might amateur opinion

[1:55:48] about that, or I assume a professional planner,

[1:55:50] but I'm not an agent.

[1:55:52] I mean, Kevin has some hurt.

[1:55:53] Councillor Bonney has some thoughts.

[1:55:55] I think when you open up the opportunities on a property, it probably has an added value.

[1:56:02] If you can only build a home there today, it has one value if you can do five or six different

[1:56:08] things.

[1:56:08] Maybe that increases the value, but again, that's just my opinion, I don't know if Councillor Bonney

[1:56:13] is in a professional realtor.

[1:56:14] Professional opinion, it definitely increases it, I mean it may be valuable to someone

[1:56:18] to have a home where their neighbors aren't going to develop something larger, but in general,

[1:56:24] it is worth more to be able to open it up and on market much more valuable.

[1:56:29] Thank you.

[1:56:30] And one other comment to that is that question has been asked of me recently at the Robin

[1:56:39] with Neighbor Dissociation in the last week, and I think there's a little bit of distrust

[1:56:46] when we give the answer of, oh it'll increase the value of your property.

[1:56:49] And I think we want to be able to sit down and show someone that that's the case versus

[1:56:53] just sort of off the cuff say sure it's going to increase the value for property.

[1:56:56] We want to assure them we're not out trying to take value for anyone and I think again

[1:57:02] it's not that you'll see on the map we're not talking about hundreds and hundreds of

[1:57:06] residential properties and I also don't think those would be the properties that would

[1:57:10] get developed first so I think we're okay if we just kind of slow that part down and

[1:57:17] move forward with that phase one of really getting at those commercial properties.

[1:57:21] Yeah, but for most owners of properties, they're concerned with their properties.

[1:57:25] That's 100%.

[1:57:26] 100% correct.

[1:57:28] And we want to be able to hear those and assure them what we know.

[1:57:33] And there are some hard truths in there as well.

[1:57:36] Yes.

[1:57:37] If your property is resumed, your neighbor might do something different than a single family home.

[1:57:42] Or maybe they'll add an ADU that could have a small business.

[1:57:45] I don't know.

[1:57:46] We haven't really sussed that part out.

[1:57:47] The reason we got to this phasing approach was that we had already been in discussion internally

[1:57:53] and with our consulting firm and even counselor break was in on some of these conversations

[1:57:58] about how do we, we've got two different things going on here, we have commercial properties

[1:58:04] that are adjacent to the highway and then we have some residential properties that are not.

[1:58:08] The same zone for those properties is probably not appropriate, one probably needs to be a

[1:58:17] and sort of two different zones or sub zones

[1:58:22] or how do we want to call it.

[1:58:24] So it kind of made sense as the feedback kept coming in.

[1:58:27] Yeah, let's just tackle the first, let's phase it

[1:58:30] and tackle the commercial first.

[1:58:32] I'll give us time to talk to folks and address the concerns.

[1:58:37] Thank you.

[1:58:37] Yeah, absolutely.

[1:58:40] Uh, I think, oh, here we go.

[1:58:44] Oh, I did them already, didn't I?

[1:58:46] I'll reach.

[1:58:48] Okay, yeah, here we go.

[1:58:50] So the language on my left, I suppose we are left as well.

[1:58:54] The language on the left is actually consistent

[1:58:57] through the next three slides.

[1:58:59] What you're looking at are the focus areas outlined in red,

[1:59:03] and the blue shade are the properties

[1:59:06] that we would intend to rezone in phase one.

[1:59:09] Almost all of those are commercial properties today.

[1:59:12] Again, there are a few lingering residential properties in there, but primarily these are commercially

[1:59:19] zoned properties.

[1:59:20] This is a focus area one, I'm trying to, I don't have a cursor, but yeah, Walmart's down

[1:59:29] there toward the bottom of the screen, the big square white box there, all the way up to

[1:59:34] the burgerville area at the top of the screen.

[1:59:36] So that would be phase one in focus area one.

[1:59:39] I'm going to go through the next two maps as well.

[1:59:44] Councillor Breit has a question.

[1:59:45] Oh, I'm sorry.

[1:59:47] Just I think that the concern is going to be more with the properties that are just outside

[1:59:55] the focus areas that are residential, more so even then residential.

[2:00:00] Properties that that could be resound, especially as we've looked at this many of these don't act as residential properties anyway.

[2:00:10] So I'm hopeful that with the outreach that we can also set up time to talk, maybe with some of those adjacent property owners, too, so they can get kind of a sense of what might happen next door to them or in front of them.

[2:00:24] Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I'm glad you brought that up. How we get at that,

[2:00:30] do we have everyone come together or do we separate that? We can kind of work that out through

[2:00:35] the process, but I think that's a really good point. Thank you for bringing that up. I've got to know.

[2:00:41] So here's Focus Area 2, sort of the center of the screen, the point of that middle triangle is the

[2:00:45] old-bolt and firehouse, just to give you some context of where we're at. And you can see we've taken

[2:00:52] all those residential properties out of the phase one approach.

[2:00:57] The focus area boundaries have all stayed the same.

[2:01:01] And so we're just removing those residential properties

[2:01:04] for the most part.

[2:01:06] And then focus area three, bottom of the screen is I205.

[2:01:10] You can see the market of choice kind of in the middle there

[2:01:13] with the library not too far north of Burnt Street.

[2:01:17] So again, we've removed quite a few residential properties

[2:01:22] off of the west side or to our left or phase one? Councillor Bonnetton. Was the Bolton Firehouse

[2:01:35] removed on purpose? Not as it was not blue. Has it always been removed? It's blue. Is it new?

[2:01:42] Oh, okay. The only thing that we all want to do. Never mind, my bad. Sorry. I had a moment of panic

[2:01:53] So that's our phase approach, I'll pause here and certainly take issues, concerns, questions of council.

[2:02:09] I will keep going and feel free to stop me.

[2:02:11] Can you continue?

[2:02:20] So the next and last thing I have for you tonight is our strategic pivot.

[2:02:28] So previously I've come to you with policy questions.

[2:02:30] And then we talked about pros and cons, and there were some questions on those questions, right, and that's perfectly normal.

[2:02:37] So we're going to pivot a little bit on this.

[2:02:39] And what we're going to do is, because it's a fairly time consuming process to go through,

[2:02:45] is we're going to sort of bake the cake a little bit more before we bring it back to you.

[2:02:49] And what I mean by that is we're going to take out the draft code, I'll show you here in a moment.

[2:02:56] And we're going to, we're going to go through, and we are going to take it to our technical advisory committee, and our project working group both in November.

[2:03:06] We're going to go to some neighborhood associations in January.

[2:03:08] We're going to have open houses in January and February.

[2:03:12] And at some point, well, then we'll start our work sessions with planning commission.

[2:03:16] So what we're going to do is take more and more of the community feedback specifically about that draft code.

[2:03:21] I envision those open houses being big round tables where we're kind of old school planning,

[2:03:26] talking about what the code means, and we're going to bring you back a sort of some higher

[2:03:31] level questions, but we're going to be much further down the road and that way you guys as a council

[2:03:36] won't have to get quite down in the minutiae. We're going to let the community and our advisory groups

[2:03:42] kind of vacate a little bit. You'll still get all the time you want with the code, but we feel like we

[2:03:50] can be a little bit more effective and efficient that way and remove some of that noise

[2:03:54] so you can see a little bit more of a finished product and then let's feed back from

[2:03:58] there.

[2:03:59] And the issues get further, some vetting for the community too, so it's not like us as five

[2:04:04] city counselors making these seemingly pretty big decisions, get some public feedback on

[2:04:09] that.

[2:04:09] So when it comes to us, we already kind of know where the public stands on it.

[2:04:12] That's great.

[2:04:13] Yeah, that's exactly what we're trying to do.

[2:04:15] When we realized how long it was going to take to move through those, it just seemed like

[2:04:19] really onerous for Council, we'll take on that work and work with the community and bring

[2:04:24] something back.

[2:04:26] Council Brighk has a piece of feedback?

[2:04:29] As you know, I'm really impatient for all of this to happen.

[2:04:33] What I understand, though, is by going through this process and drafting the code, then when

[2:04:42] we do finally approve Vision 43 right after that, the next developer that comes in

[2:04:49] wants to do something will be under the new code because it will all be kind of rolled in together.

[2:04:55] So, if we approved the vision this month or next month.

[2:05:00] Anybody that came in between now and when all the code was written would still be under the old rules?

[2:05:08] And I also think by doing this, especially the community outreach, people are going to have a much better understanding of what that is.

[2:05:16] If we just say, the code's going to change, we'll talk about that later, then they have a lot of unease. They just, they don't know what to expect.

[2:05:24] By going through this process with the code, I think we're going to end up with a really great product

[2:05:30] That people will understand and will be excited about hopefully as excited as I am.

[2:05:36] Yeah, I appreciate you saying.

[2:05:37] I think that's exactly kind of the approach we're going to that shift that pivot that we're going to take is

[2:05:43] Let's let this get vetted more through our both our advisory groups, but also our community

[2:05:49] And I think the community will feel more comfortable.

[2:05:53] Now, does that mean every person's going to love it?

[2:05:55] Of course not.

[2:05:55] We know how this works.

[2:05:57] That's not going to happen.

[2:05:58] But I think it will address a lot of concerns

[2:06:01] as we move through that process in that manner.

[2:06:04] Again, this is also part of why we've extended that contract

[2:06:07] and why we've extended the timeline.

[2:06:10] And I feel like it doesn't really extend the timeline.

[2:06:14] Because as I said, if the code hasn't changed,

[2:06:17] somebody could come in with a project

[2:06:19] before we change the code and they're going under the old rules.

[2:06:22] That's right, and just as an FYI to Council, I'm sure you know this, but a reminder,

[2:06:26] if someone applies for a project today, today's code is what applies to their application,

[2:06:31] even if tomorrow the code was changed.

[2:06:34] So yeah, until the code is officially adopted, and then there's a 35 day notification to the state

[2:06:41] once that clears, the code is active and live, so yeah, there's still some waiting time there,

[2:06:47] But I think this will get a better product and it will allow council to see something a little

[2:06:53] clear and not have to kind of load around at 30,000 feet answering 15 different questions.

[2:06:58] I think we can get there without putting you through that torture as a process.

[2:07:03] That is our goal with how we're that that's the pivot that we're talking about.

[2:07:10] And then while we're still on that, this is again the last part of it here, just a couple

[2:07:16] things. There's a lot of different policy questions and thoughts and discussion about the code.

[2:07:21] This is just two slides of things that are being discussed, topics that are being discussed with

[2:07:26] the consultant, internally, things like limiting drive-through uses or expansions and remodels of

[2:07:34] existing structures. Do they get exemptions or not? Hight limits adjacent to residential zones.

[2:07:41] We all know that's important. Ensuring the massing of buildings doesn't create sort of

[2:07:45] that can in our tunnel effect, and exceptions process, do we have, will we have an exceptions

[2:07:51] process?

[2:07:53] Prioritizing pedestrian access to and through sites, fearful consideration of what is an

[2:07:58] allowed year, what is an allowed use near residential areas and properties we obviously have

[2:08:05] a fairly hot topic with a car wash application right now.

[2:08:09] So, we want to make sure the community has given their opinions about what those would be,

[2:08:15] what allowed users those would be, can we get every single one of them? Of course not.

[2:08:19] We want to make sure that we are out getting those answers. And then obviously creating

[2:08:23] enough, creating enough flexibility that development happens, but with our community's vision,

[2:08:30] not necessarily just a developer's vision. So it's a much like Councillor Bright said,

[2:08:37] we all want this done, we've wanted this done, we can't wait till it's done. But the reality

[2:08:42] of it is sometimes we have to slow down back up, listen to the community that we said we

[2:08:46] are going to listen to anyway and then try and redirect a little bit.

[2:08:50] So that's where we're at.

[2:08:51] Those are my four pieces for you tonight and I'm happy to answer any questions or concerns

[2:08:57] that you might have.

[2:08:59] Just one question on a related topic that Erborneud district feasibility study, any updates

[2:09:05] on that can, you know, now that we've delayed the timeline on this maybe it gives some

[2:09:09] to synchronize the two potential efforts.

[2:09:13] Yes, so we received Steve, our community development director is the project manager on that,

[2:09:18] but we did receive an email from the consultants earlier this week, and they're looking

[2:09:28] at these kind of analyzing the scope right now and we're expecting some feedback.

[2:09:32] I think this week, so that process is moving forward.

[2:09:35] We had a little bit of a pause there on our end, but it looks like we're moving

[2:09:39] I think there's something there with the changing the zoning and then having an urban

[2:09:45] dual district there in case development happens to capture those increasing the

[2:09:49] accessibility there for this infrastructure and everything for the planet could help

[2:09:53] fund vision 43 plan implementation even down the line.

[2:09:56] I think it's a very key and important piece to eventually have a

[2:10:00] Thank you for the update. We'll look forward to hearing more about that in the future. Any other questions?

[2:10:07] From the council. I also just got to thank you for your even Stephen Lynn for all your work in the community centered approach you're taking to this.

[2:10:14] I think is awesome. It's really feels like this community and foreign plan and we'll be when it gets adopted in a few months.

[2:10:22] Even more, so now that we're taking a few extra months to go back out to the community,

[2:10:26] this planning department listens to the community, I know that about them.

[2:10:30] So, Councillor Groner, did you have a comment there?

[2:10:33] Yes, thank you.

[2:10:35] I see no other from closing comments.

[2:10:38] Last thing, just next steps, so I guess this will, will this not come back to us for a while

[2:10:43] as you go out and to do that.

[2:10:45] I think I'd like to bring you just a small, like a 15-minute update, maybe in the next two to three

[2:10:50] just to keep you informed and not have such big gaps in briefings. Nothing major, but let

[2:10:56] you know, we're on track, you know, kind of generally what we're hearing, I think that would

[2:11:00] be, you know, something that we could probably pull off pretty easily, and I just want

[2:11:05] to make sure Councils informed.

[2:11:08] So yeah, that's, that's kind of my thought process.

[2:11:11] So, that sounds great. I see no other comments from the Council. I see no other comments

[2:11:17] from the council at this late hour.

[2:11:19] So I will let you go.

[2:11:21] Thank you for your time.

[2:11:22] Thank you, Chris.

[2:11:24] And Steve Lynn, we will move on to the final item on the agenda

[2:11:30] and believe it or not.

[2:11:31] We are actually ahead of schedule for the agenda.

[2:11:34] It's 823 and we were scheduled to get it this at 850.

[2:11:39] So Mr. Williams, you always have some great report.

[2:11:43] So thank you, Mayor.

[2:11:44] Take it away.

[2:11:44] But I did hear you say this is late hour, so I will keep it short.

[2:11:49] As always, starting with your upcoming meeting calendar,

[2:11:53] this is your last session in October.

[2:11:57] We have three meetings scheduled in three regular meetings where

[2:12:02] work sessions scheduled in November, work session on November 4th.

[2:12:07] Planning will be back talking about the Metro Town Center boundaries.

[2:12:10] We'll be explaining what those are, why they're important,

[2:12:12] and how you can think about them, and also an update on the operations complex design and funding.

[2:12:21] We're doing a lot of work on the funding piece of that, really lately, and we very much

[2:12:26] want to have clear council direction and community awareness of where we are. The November 11th meeting

[2:12:33] is cancelled because that is Veterans Day Day off for the city. Instead, the business meeting will be

[2:12:40] November 18th, that'll be a special meeting and we have a number of things on that topic,

[2:12:46] including adoption of the Waterfront Plan, as we talked about earlier. We also have a special

[2:12:52] meeting scheduled November 17th, this is the morning meeting, the next follow-up meeting on the

[2:12:59] budget priorities and strategic plan work, which I talked a little bit last week. We are working on

[2:13:06] a draft plan is directed by Council and we will have a draft of that out for your consideration

[2:13:12] well in advance of the 17th. So we're excited about doing all that work and then as I

[2:13:17] always say this time of year, only two regular meetings left for 2025. So you've worked hard all

[2:13:25] your long way of a few more big things to do. I also enjoyed the Metro Mix with this afternoon.

[2:13:31] I mean, it's specific pitches to specific metro department directors about things that are going on in Westland.

[2:13:38] And it's my belief that everything you just heard about tonight is squarely in the wheelhouse of Metro.

[2:13:43] So I've made a case, as I'm sure some of you did, for Metro interest in Highway 43, including infrastructure improvements in the future.

[2:13:51] There's a possibility to be a new transportation bond floated in the region within the next five years.

[2:13:59] Westland needs to be on the list of projects that would be part of that we were last time we should be again and with the ambitious work that you are doing that's grounded in the community

[2:14:09] I think we have a great chance to be included in consideration so that we can turn highway 43 into something that we can really be proud of so we should continue to advocate for that

[2:14:19] even more squarely connected to Metro's goals is the waterfront project and the

[2:14:23] environmental and cultural work that is happening in that plan or that needs to happen after the vision is adopted.

[2:14:32] I think we have so many potential overlaps with Metro that we should just be having a mixture with them every week because sort of my plan.

[2:14:39] But they rejected that plan but maybe some periodic event where we really we really make sure to meet with them.

[2:14:48] And having our district counselor be from Westland and so and familiar with the work happening

[2:14:54] here and involved is a huge advantage and opportunity for us right now.

[2:14:58] uh... we are the only clock

[2:15:00] Members County Community that has that, so let's take advantage of Councillor Lewis's passion for

[2:15:05] what's happening in Westland and make use of it. So I just think it's all very exciting.

[2:15:12] On the upcoming calendar, we have an AP meeting on Thursday night that we Councillor Bonnet and I will

[2:15:19] be attending, I believe, hopefully we have a quorum of any P members at that meeting. On the city

[2:15:26] calendar, I noticed something, how often do you have a chance to be in a meeting with a Nobel

[2:15:33] peace prize winner? The library's author talked tomorrow is Malalo, you suffice, you

[2:15:39] suffice, I, sorry, and talking about her new book, and I think it's a pretty cool opportunity

[2:15:48] for a clock tomorrow, if you want to join, you can find information on the city's calendar.

[2:15:52] That is super cool, library is busy with Comic Con.

[2:15:56] We heard earlier today about the fall forest fall festival in the forest.

[2:16:02] And our staff did an amazing work on that from multiple departments.

[2:16:06] And I appreciate all of that.

[2:16:08] Also in the library vein, still time to participate in the libraries strategic planning work.

[2:16:13] That was that comment period is open till November 4th.

[2:16:16] And you can find information on the city's website on that as well.

[2:16:21] So speaking of the library, as you know, I've been participating in a county wide library district task force that was convened by the county to think about the future of our library system.

[2:16:32] As we are heading towards 20 years from the current agreement, folks are thinking about what is the future of our library system is our funding adequate.

[2:16:41] How is funding a divvied around the county by the various people that pay the the levy work is happening on that and I think enough is happening now that at some point in the next few months would be good to have a council topic on this

[2:16:57] We don't tend to talk much in this room about the about library county services and funding and I think it would probably be good to get us up to speed on that

[2:17:07] have a conversation so that you can know what the county is thinking about. The reason

[2:17:13] this is important is there are a lot of people around the county thinking of potentially

[2:17:18] a major restructuring of the way county library services are provided and what the funding for

[2:17:25] those services are which would be pretty complex and I think it would be good to put a little

[2:17:32] marker and get some counsel feedback early on this process.

[2:17:36] So the next couple of months, probably early in the new year,

[2:17:39] we'll think about something like that.

[2:17:40] If you're interested, presuming you're interested.

[2:17:45] That is, I think most of what I had, I will be at the ICMA Conference,

[2:17:51] my national professional association, leaving Friday and back next Wednesday evening.

[2:17:57] So you know who to contact and while I'm away,

[2:17:59] I will be working those days, but just a little less responsive than usual.

[2:18:05] So, I wish you the joy of the season, and we'll see you in November.

[2:18:10] Sounds good.

[2:18:11] And I heard to the great fine on LinkedIn that you will be speaking at the conference on a particular topic.

[2:18:17] I am speaking very excited.

[2:18:19] My predecessor, we're talking about creative community outreach and how you reach community in new ways.

[2:18:24] So it's going to be fun.

[2:18:26] Awesome.

[2:18:26] Well, best of luck and best wishes to Mr. Gabriella Lados as well as always, and have fun at the conference, and learn a lot, and we will see everybody in November, happy Halloween, everybody, and very early happy Halloween from the Western City Council.

[2:18:42] We're adjourned.

City Council Work Session

Agenda

Transcript