Approved Minutes - 2021-05-13 PM <<" CITY OF LAKE OSWEGO
r'` n Budget Committee Meeting Minutes
v May 13, 2021
OREGO�
Members Joe Buck, Mayor Al Calabria, Chair
present: Jackie Manz Lin Carson, Vice Chair
Massene Mboup Gary Corgan
Daniel Nguyen Shannon Cruz
Aaron Rapf Steve Dodds
Rachel Verdick Scott Havens
John Wendland Theresa Nute
Staff Present: Martha Bennett, City Manager; Anthony Hooper, Deputy City
Manager/ Public Works Director; Shawn Cross, Finance Director;
Megan Phelan, Assistant City Manager; Jennifer Waverly, Budget
Analyst; Dale Jorgensen, Police Chief; Don Johnson, Fire Chief; Ivan
Anderholm, Parks and Recreation Director, Melissa Kelly, Library
Director; Erica Rooney, City Engineer; Stefan Broadus, Assistant
City Engineer; Scot Siegel, Planning & Building Services Director
and Weston Pay, Chief Technology Officer.
The City Budget Committee meeting was taped and is online with supporting information. Click on
any Interactive Agenda item in color to go to that point in the video.
1. Call to Order and Roll Call
Chair Calabria called the City Budget Committee meeting to order at 5:37 p.m. virtually via
Zoom meeting.
2. Approval of Budget Committee meeting minutes for April 28,2021
Wendland moved the approval of the minutes of April 28, 2021. Mboup seconded the motion
and it passed by a unanimous voice vote.
3. Recognition
Havens was recognized for his service on the Budget Committee and received the city's
Distinguished Service Award.
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 1 of 27
4. Public Comment
Chair Calabria called for public comment and there was no public comments received.
5. Municipal Grants Approval
Chair Calabria asked for the Municipal Grant recommendations from the Municipal Grant
Subcommittee to be displayed. Chair Calabria summarized that the requests were about 45
percent higher than the budgeted amount, so there was quite a haircut that needed to happen
in order to make this compliant with the budget. Wendland moved to accept the Municipal
Grants as submitted. Cruz seconded the motion. Chair Calabria called for discussion. There
was no discussion. Chair Calabria called for the vote and it passed by a unanimous voice
vote.
6. Capital Improvement Plan FY22 — FY27 Proposed Summary
Chair Calabria asked for the presentation from Rooney. Rooney introduced herself as the
Director of Engineering and introduced Broadus the Assistant City Engineer. He is the one
who gets to implement the CIP. Rooney explained that the vast majority of this presentation
follows similar ones given to the budget committee two years ago and last summer they had
some street fund updates. The CIP document is bigger than just the proposed biennium
budget, this is their plan for a six-year period with two-year proposed budget and then
projections for the following four-year period. The document covers these major categories
parks, streets, transportation, water, surface water, wastewater, facilities, large equipment and
vehicles. Being a full-service city they do have a very full service capital improvement plan to
go with that. Rooney mentioned it's a six year plan where they anticipate future work efforts
within projected revenue levels, it's also a place where they identify and keep track of all the
projects that are identified for both the near short and long-term infrastructure, rehabilitation,
replacement and expansion. They are often asked, how this entire document came into
existence because it again becomes a couple hundred pages by the time they're done. It's a
centralized place where identified projects go to rest, if they will, for the city and pull together
from multiple sources. Master plans are the main area for the infrastructure, but maintenance
records, advisory board input, citizen suggestions, staff knowledge and of course council goals
and policies are all contributing to what ends up in this final document. This is a way for the
city to track and plan for those identified needs and wants in multiple categories of
infrastructure as shown on the earlier list. All of these plans look at the existing and future
infrastructure to accommodate current and proposed development, within the defined urban
services boundaries. Rooney talked about basically the pipes and the streets and not just the
area that's in the current city limits, but what they anticipate being in our city limits in the urban
services boundary. More specifically, as an example, the area to the west of town, west of
Lake Grove, basically that is unincorporated, but in our urban services boundary. They plan for
that as well, in these master plans. Many of these infrastructure master plans are based on
extensive modeling using growth projections from their comp plan, current asset information
about the size, age, and condition of our systems. Then it extrapolates those needs anywhere
from a 0 to 30 year period. Eventually the outcome is a list of short, medium, and long term
needs that inform the final capital improvement plan. The water master plan, the wastewater
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 2 of 27
master plan, they all have a list in them. Then they take those lists and incorporate them into
the capital improvement plan, as sort of one centralized location where they can see all of the
needs, all of the infrastructure needs. Rooney mentioned that they take into consideration
current council goals and policies, and as can be expected, those things will change over time.
While specific wording or projects may change from year to year, the goals tend to trend in
certain directions over several years. For instance, many will remember the pavement was a
top priority for past councils. She isn't saying it's not a priority, it's just maybe not the top
priority right now. Right now, the trend is a bit more towards pedestrian and safety
improvements. That's not to say that they don't still have needs in other areas, but these are
the ones they need to focus on, if possible. Rooney referred to the council goals that were
approved back in in January, or developed and approved by council in this most recent year.
She highlighted some of the attributes that are specific to infrastructure and transportation. Of
course, completing Boons Ferry Road phase one, that's important, safe routes to schools,
important, and that was a previous council goal too, so that's again this trending that happens.
The third bullet, the pedestrian safety and bicycle facilities and the corridors of Highway 43
and Mcvey, Stafford are also a continuation of past council goals. Basically, these goals help
them in making recommendations or choices and they take these goals into consideration
when putting together the proposed plan, with all of that information feeding the CIP.
Rooney explained the details of what they're expecting for this budget cycle, this two-year
budget cycle. Diving in a bit deeper, she highlighted the plan CIP expenditures for the next two
years in the major categories that are within the proposed budget. Twenty-six million for parks,
that's up much higher than in past budgets, but that's thanks to the passage of the parks bond
measure a couple years ago or 18 months ago, which the department is of course
aggressively implementing. The proposed infrastructure expenditures are quite similar to past
bienniums, with the exception that the street expenditure is a bit less, as they're finishing off
the expending of the of the bonded money that was used for our pavement management
program that began implementation nearly four years ago. They'll be finishing that up in the
summer of 2022, not this summer, but a year from now. So overall street expenditure for the
two year period is less than the last two year period. They have vehicle and equipment needs
that can be anything from street sweepers, to replacement vehicles in other departments, and
things like that. That runs about the same year from biennium to biennium there's not much
difference there. Cruz inquired about bridges. Rooney confirmed bridges would come out of
the streets section. They do not currently have any money planned to expend on bridges, in
the current proposal, but yes, that's a part of the streets. The streets cover so many different
things. Rapf stated the parks tier says 26.2 million, but in the book it says it's 25.8. He asked if
he was missing something. Rooney explained 25.8 was the park bond and 400K is part of the
general expenditures. So it's the bond, plus the 400. What they're planning to spend on capital
work can come from multiple sources. Rooney discussed the funding sources for the pipeline
related work, such as sewer, water, and storm water. The funding sources for that come
directly from the monthly utility billing and that is where the vast majority of CIP expenditures
come from as well. The other potential source is system development charges, when doing
strictly capacity improvements such as making a pipe bigger to account for expansion or
taking it into a new location, then they can use system development charges. But that is less
often, it's not happening a lot right now, so the SDC funds are currently growing, the balance is
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 3 of 27
growing, in the sewer, water, and wastewater area. But the balances aren't terribly high,
however they're good placeholder for when they do need to make capacity improvements,
they can use those system development charges specifically. There's not a lot of money in
there and those balances would be depleted rather quickly with one or two projects in each
category. So they're saving those for when they do need them for expansion specifically, as
opposed to rehabilitation or replacement, because they are constrained funds that can only be
used for expansion. Now the street fund is a little bit different story, it's much more complex
than the other infrastructure, in addition to the street maintenance fee which is part of the
monthly utility billing, there are several other sources that they rely on for all of their
transportation needs. This is some of what Rooney covered last Fall for those who were there,
she tried to just bring in the highlights for the new folks. The street maintenance fee is the
monthly utility billing, they get state motor vehicle revenue or sometimes referred to as gas tax,
and vehicle registration. They also get money from the county's new vehicle registration fee at
thirty dollars, per vehicle, and then unlike many cities they have a very generous contribution,
and have for several years now, from the general fund to support their transportation system.
Again they also collect system development charges from new and expanding development
work, but once again these are fairly constrained funds and can only be used for capacity of
improvements, i.e. expanding the system or adding facilities that didn't exist before be it
pathways, bike facilities, but more typical is to use them on signals. That's where they're using
their SDCs right now, is on the new signal at Jean and Pilkington. Those go quickly when they
have signals that cost a million dollars. Some of the other things that the street fund has to pay
for, it doesn't just go to capital, it pays for a portion of the staffing in engineering and public
works. They have a ton of maintenance and upkeep of other transportation systems in the
street funds, such as street lights, replacing them, painting them, traffic signals replacing the
heads, signs, either new ones or replacing ones that have faded, and striping. A couple good
snowstorms and some sand on the road takes off the striping pretty quickly. They have to do
street sweeping in the fall, after snow storms, and median maintenance, the pansies in the
medians are all coming out of the street fund because that is the appropriate location for those
expenses to come from. Fixing potholes, sidewalk repair, and replacement, so those are just a
small list of other areas where that street fund goes to, that are non-capital. Rooney discussed
the street fund capital expenditures that are in the book for the next two years or in their plan.
They're planning on about 7.9 million for paving rehabilitation, as a part of that ongoing
program, after that next two years they're anticipating about a four million dollars per biennium
budget. So that's less than they've had in the last four or five years, but nonetheless a
reasonable amount to do and they will no longer have the larger programmatic approach to it,
but they will certainly have projects and that they can do in that range of four million every two
years. Rooney addressed paving, and what that will do to what's called their pavement
condition index, or sometimes referred to as the PCI. A few weeks ago, Mr. Broadus
presented the state of the pavement management program update and shared that they
estimate the PCI will be around 73 and might go up a bit higher in the next two years, as they
finish off the expenditure of that bonded money. After that they anticipate, and this is just an
estimate from our hip right now and from past experience, they anticipate it will flatten out for a
while, and probably stay in that mid 70s range as the expenditure rate goes down. But they will
know more when they complete their 2022 city-wide analysis, and that'll give them an idea of
the state of the roads at that time, in the spring of 2022, and some projections based on
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 4 of 27
anticipated funding revenue. They'll see it start to dip down over time if they go too low on
paving expenditures. They'll talk more about that when they have that 2022 report to give them
some ideas about what it would take to maintain it, in that 70s range. In general, the 4 million
probably is not going to be a sustainable funding level to keep the PCI from eventually turning
downward, but it'll be a slow downward trend. Pavement is a long-term, never-ending demand
for continual maintenance and repair, it has a shorter life cycle than most other infrastructure.
So it just never ends, it's always a challenge for every city and especially Lake Oswego, that
has a lot of old roads. So don't compare Wilsonville, their PCI is much better because their
roads are newer and they're put in by developers, in the last 20 years think of the expansion
that's gone on in Wilsonville. Lake Oswego can't begin to compete with that, there are roads
that haven't been paved in 50 years because that's what they acquired from the county. So
they have a very different environment than some of these other regional suburban cities that
have been growing and expanding. Another big project for this biennium, will be the installation
of a new signal at Jean and Pilkington, and they've touched upon this before, this has been in
the pre-design stage and now it's in the design phase and they're about 60% done with
design. They're identifying all of the construction challenges that they need to plan for, one of
the biggest challenges will be the relocation of overhead utilities. It's a diagonal crossing of
overhead utilities, which will clearly affect the schedule for implementation and possibly the
costs as well, they'll know a little bit more as they proceed into final design on these, in the
next few months. But the good news is that's coming out of the SDC fund, not out of the street
fund. So it's not taking away from pavement, they couldn't use that money on pavement, so
this is a good use of the SDC's, the system development charges.
Lastly in the transportation category, Rooney talked about the biggest change that they have
which is this one time proposed, one-time infusion of two million dollar investment in the
pathway program, in order to focus on the top five school priority pathways. The funding
source is a transfer of one-time general fund infusion, recommended to meet the very specific
council goal that was mentioned earlier. Last Fall when they made a street fund overview
presentation to the budget committee, everybody can maybe recall they shared a bunch of
information about where this came from and how this all got started. It started before spring of
20, but in spring of 2019 the TAB was directed to prioritize the pathway projects based on
proximity to schools and benefit to those areas. So again looking at a previous council goal
which was safety around schools for pedestrians and bicyclists. The TAB, the transportation
advisory board, took on that charge and developed a list that was indicative of this map on the
on the left, then whittled that down and prioritized it to identify for council what were the top
priorities. There was a memo from TAB that went to the City Council in July of 2020 that
highlighted their recommended priorities from this subset of 38 or 40 and this is where they
ended up. There are five school related projects that they believe they can accomplish with
that two million dollar infusion. Their goal is to bundle this as one design and construction
package, and try to get this finished as close to the two-year time frame as possible. However,
no two locations are similar in these five locations shown, they're all very different, and they
anticipate a robust and varied neighborhood and property owner outreach effort. Interactions
are going to be pretty extensive because there's a lot of challenges on these locations, there's
no such thing as a simple sidewalk project, there really isn't. But as they develop these
alternatives, they'll have to meet the needs for more pedestrian facilities that help the students
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 5 of 27
get to the school safely. Rapf asked Rooney, in her opinion, what she thinks the right PCI
index number is for Lake Oswego, based on her experience, her expertise, what Lake Oswego
should shoot for. Rooney stated they need to make sure that their arterial systems function
well and are safe, for pavement to be a safe traveling experience. Those need to be their
highest priorities, the Boones Ferry, the Kruse Way, Bryant, Country Club, A Avenue, down
here in downtown, South Shore, the ones that carry the most traffic need to be traversable and
they need to make sure that those stay at a good level, she thinks that's what they've done.
That conversation happens every year when they say, okay what projects are they going to do
and they do a little bit of a balancing act between some of the neighborhood needs, local
roads very low volume, compared to fixing Park View, fixing Fosberg, fixing West Lake. They
need to make sure that they maintain those collectors, and arterials, and above, that's their
number one priority. Volumes tend to be fairly low on local streets and they can have a lower
PCI there. In Rooney's opinion, she's not going to give a number that 73 is perfect or 78, it's
not that easy, and she can't tell them the difference between a 73 and 78, if they were to show
her the two on the street, it's such a nuance. But what she does think is, they need to make
sure that the system, the major system streets are well taken care of and maintained on a
regular basis, they're doing that and she thinks they can continue to do that at a reasonable
rate making that our priority. She's not saying neglect really bad streets or local streets, that
needs to happen, but the main priority of expenditures should continue to go to maintaining
those streets. Rapf agreed, the main arterials are absolute priority. Rapf stated city staff and
elected officials really do, at the municipal level, have the ability to really improve the lives of
people in the community by just improving those. It's as simple as that, having their road from
their house redone, when it's terrible and pot-holed, really changes people's lives and makes
people happy. Rapf agrees that the residential roads may not need to be at the highest level,
he thinks that they should identify those roads in their community that are absolutely
dilapidated and push those up. Rooney stated she understood what he was saying, they
struggle quite a bit with the fact that there are some roads out there that are just really bad.
What they try to do with the local roads, is to maintain their PCI, is to do something which is
much more cost effective, which is to do slurry seals. So they're spending a lot of time and
money on slurry sealing the local roads, to give them an extended life and they're doing the
more robust overlays on the major arterials. The cost to reconstruct those roads that are super
bad is much higher, so the cost benefit ratio is smaller, if all they care about is PCI. That's the
point, PCI is just one tool in the toolbox of making decisions on where to spend the funds.
Internally they don't always focus on, its PCI or nothing, because it's a variety of things that
they have to balance. How bad is this road, they really do have to fix it, they can't keep putting
it off. Rapf commented at some point he would love to see a list of all the roads in Lake
Oswego that her team considers just absolutely horrendous. The people that live on those
streets, those are the people that are calling, come on their street, it's terrible, can they do it.
Not a rush, but that's his drum beat. Rooney stated, absolutely. Rooney commented that she
can give preview or she can show them the past ones too. The past they have the documents
available that show the PCIs of all the streets from 2019's, most recent effort, and then they'll
be doing the same thing in 2022 and sharing all of that with them. It's a list of every single
street and segment and what their PCI is, good, bad, ugly. Dodds stated he didn't enter this
committee as such an advocate for the roads, but having been on the committee and thinking
about it, and the demographic of the city, he who cannot be named, advocates for a PCI of
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 6 of 27
over 80, he's enthusiastic with that. But on the other hand, the PCI was in the 60s, at 63 or
something before. They dig that deep hole, it's hard to turn a battleship and it sounds to him
like right now they're starting to turn around the battleship. They talk about general funds being
in pretty good shape, in general funds it takes some discipline to keep going. If they start going
from six to four that's going to set the battleship going the wrong direction. Dodds said he
thinks that they ought to think real hard before they lessen their commitment. Again he who
would not be named, would raise it by a couple million dollars, but actually spend less
because the roads have got into good shape and their citizenry, a great percentage of them,
it's really important to them, it's sort of a showcase. Chair Calabria asked a clarification
question, if he understood the preliminary report correctly, it was projecting that they expect
the PCI index to be rising to 73, which is an improvement over where it was. Chair Calabria
asked, is it correct to also understand that same graph as saying that if they attain 73, which is
unproven yet, they will be below where they were in 2002. Rooney stated, she'd have to go
back and look at that, she didn't have the graph in front of her to confirm. Chair Calabria
stated he was looking at the interim report that was presented to Council on April 20th, and
there's a graph that shows the PCI from 2002 to projection 2020. If he's reading it correctly, it
looks to him, if they achieve 73 which is a substantial improvement over where they were, they
would be below the 75, which was measured in 2002. Broadus said in a note, that the PCI in
2002 was 75. Chair Calabria clarified, this plan puts them below a level they were 19 years
ago. Rooney confirmed, it does. Chair Calabria stated he just wanted to make sure he
understands. Rooney said they've brought it up over the last five years, that's what they've
done from being in the 60s. Prior to that, she just wanted to be clear with people, there was
one year where they had $250,000 for paving. Rooney stated that was before the general
fund came in to infuse them with extra dollars, so there were many years, even in the time
frame that she's been here, that they didn't have hardly, they barely had enough money to do
a project, except for a little bit of slurry seal. So that's the ramification of the lower funding
levels when that happens. It does tend to change the direction, not rapidly, but over time.
Manz asked, roughly, what percentage of roads haven't been paved for 50 years. Manz said
she didn't want to know which road they are, she would just be curious, is that a large number.
Rooney answered, she thought a large portion of the FAN had not been paved in probably a
good 40 maybe 50 years before they just repaved it this last year. Rooney stated she didn't
have that number, but one can deduce that from looking at how thin some streets are, as far
as how much how little AC they have on them, and then they might be on very little base. They
know the trends of what the paving practices were 40 to 50 years ago and they can see that.
Other areas like the west side of town, in the West Lake area, up in Mountain Park those
roads are in much better shape because they're again only 30-40 years old. The 80s and 90s
was West Lake so they're in pretty good shape, but other parts, especially parts that they've
acquired through annexation through the county, old areas have had fairly minimalistic roads
that probably haven't been paved since the time they were put in. Manz stated, she's aware of
FAN, if someone could get back to her with a percentage of remaining roads in this next cycle
that haven't been paved for 50 years or areas of concern, she'd be really interested in that
because everyone's aware of FAN, who's ever been to FAN, but other than that, she's at a
loss as to where else that might be other than newly incorporated roads. Manz asked about
sidewalk repair, where are they on whether citizens repair sidewalks or the city repairs
sidewalks in front of their homes, particularly, are they trying to take that over or is it citizen,
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 7 of 27
homeowner repair sidewalk or replaces. Rooney explained, to start with, of course, the code
says that the adjacent property owner is the responsible party they have implemented a
program where if the street tree has in front of residential areas, if the street tree has been the
source of that they have been trying to come in and help take care of that on a first come first
serve basis. Hooper confirmed Rooney's statement, and added they have about a hundred
thousand dollar contract per year in sidewalk repairs that they contract out, but then they also
do some in-house. Hooper went on to say, right now it's on a first come, first serve basis, and
they concentrate on residential, commercial it's still their responsibility and they do not take
care of those, but for residential it's meant as an added benefit. Council asked for them to see
if they could accommodate on just a limited, first-come, first-served basis, it does take a
tremendous amount of their time, however I know that the residents really appreciate it and it
does add a lot of value. Once again, things like tripping hazards are eliminated, more
efficiently because they are taking care of them. What they find is that sometimes, some
residents don't have the ability or capacity to be able to handle those things, so they do make
an effort, but there is far more demand than there is availability, he can tell them that much, by
a long shot.
Broadus confirmed for Manz that he would pull from the report, and filter out the roadway
segments that their data shows have not been paved in 50 years or more. Broadus noted and
offered a friendly reminder to the presentation a couple weeks ago, they very consciously
avoid a worst first approach to roadway paving, if they recall from the presentation. When a
city of their size, in an investment level that they typically have, uses a worst first approach,
new roads fail faster than they can pave them, the number of roads that have failed will
actually increase with that approach. So what they typically do is they'll have a combination of
slurry seal to hold the roads where they currently are, rehabilitation of their major arterials and
collectors to keep those high volume roads performing like they should and then they also
have a segment dedicated towards low volume roads that have failed, need attention, and it is,
its own segment. But they do, very consciously, avoid the purely worst first approach because
it will dig them deeper into that hole. Vice Chair Carson asked where the sweet spot is, where
is the goal for the PCI because they keep talking about PCI and they keep hearing it's 73, it's
going to be, it's lower than 75, was it ever the Council's goal to have the PCI at a particular
place or why are they doing this. Rooney answered from a purely technical standpoint the
sweet spot for PCI is around 84 and that information is shared every time, every three years
when they do the pavement management report which is a complete survey of the city. They
go through this process they say again sweet spot, the best place to keep PCI is 84. Rooney
explained that's prima, if their city's doing that, they're doing great things, so to speak, from a
purely technical pavement management standpoint. Several years ago Council set a goal to
get to 70 because they were in the low 60s, they thought that would be a big stretch. Council
added general fund money to the street fund, so that they could reach those goals and then
they also bonded money from a gas tax increase, House Bill 2017, and used that money to
infuse it as well. So there's never been a specific Council goal that said 84, it's clearly from the
technical geeks and the geotechnical people and pavement management specialists, so they
will all tell them it's 84, whether it's in this city or any other city, that's the sweet spot. But it
takes an enormous amount of money for them to get from where they were which was in the
low 60s to 84, enormous amount. Vice Chair Carson stated, great job so far, she just hopes
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 8 of 27
that they don't lose the focus on that, and they target above 80 because to her, 73 is still not
enough. She thinks they've done a lot to get here, she thinks they should still focus on getting
it above 80, unless someone disagrees with her position on that. Rooney addressed Vice
Chair Carson's comment about getting to 84. Rooney stated to get to 84 the amount of
infusion of money needed over a four to five year period is well over 70 million dollars, and
they have to spend it now, a large chunk of it now, like a huge infusion at the beginning, in
order to stop the flow in the wrong direction. So what they've always run up against is that the
amount of money needed to get to 84 is very difficult to fathom because they need it now to
stop the flow, to slow down the degradation, they've got to hit it now and hard because every
year the roads are degrading every year after they put it in, it's like a car that lost some value
the minute they drive it off the lot. Same thing happens with roads, next year the PCI is no
longer 100 it's down to 90 something. So it's always been such a large amount of money to get
to 84, that the resources just haven't been attainable. She's not saying they haven't put in a lot
of great money, they have and it's been wonderful, and they've made some great progress,
with a big large part of the focus being on maintaining at least their arterial system. But they
will talk about all of that again and go over this whole thing in 2022, when they do the city-wide
analysis. Dodds commented they're not talking about going to 84, they're talking about going
backwards right now, were they're going to go in 22, they're going to be going to 4 million,
rather than 6 million. Dodds stated, she herself said, that they would start to slowly slide back
and he thinks they, at the minimum, maintain the pace they're at. They'll forget Jeff's
enthusiasm for 84, but to go backwards, right now is, in his mind, a bad idea.
Rooney explained the TAB used this as their large list, from this they prioritized and gave
Council in June of last year, June 2020, a report that highlighted their recommended priorities,
from this larger list here, this is where they ended up. There are the five school related projects
that they believe they can accomplish with the two million dollar infusion. They're going to
bundle these all together and anticipate hiring one consultant to do the design and then
hopefully have one construction bid, if it all looks like the right way to handle this. They'll know
more as they get into it, if it needs to be separated out, but nonetheless this is where they
would propose using the two million dollars and it comes out to right around two 2.2 overall
that they think, at this moment at the early stages, they would start that in July. So that's the
overview of the CIP, with some details in some of the areas, particularly in the street fund.
Rooney did a shout out to all the folks who've contributed to this because this is a citywide
effort, it's not just the Engineering department who puts it together, they put together the last
document, but Parks obviously contributes quite a bit to this, the Public Works staff do, and
then many of their Engineering staff work on different cost estimates, so it's a multi-department
effort to get this pulled together, and then Finance, of course, keeps them in line and makes
sure that their numbers all balance and get put into the to the budget proposal correctly, so
that if it says 14 million over here, it's 14 million in the budget document as well. As for next
steps, after the budget is approved by the City Council, typically in early June, then their
department produces the full detailed CIP document that provides more project details for
each project in both the funded and unfunded categories and then they make this available for
the public online for easy access, or if people needed a printout, which has been a long time
since anybody asked for one, but she certainly uses a hard copy on her desk every single day,
they do make those available as well. Rooney explained what they are doing this summer,
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 9 of 27
just so they know, again not the next biennium, but the one that they're still in for a few more
weeks. Rooney shared with them, this quick map that shows our major infrastructure projects
that are coming up this summer, it shows all the work for sewer, water, and transportation.
They don't have parks in this diagram because this was internally made there, just the other
day, but they can see they'll be busy all over town. Just a pleasant little reminder to please be
patient with them as they have a lot of traffic control plans that'll be in place as these workers
are doing this construction, this badly needed construction. So take time when driving through
their work zones and stay safe, as they bring the city a variety of improvements to keep things
moving and make those necessary improvements, so that's their map for this summer, which
is right around the corner. Buck commented it's great they're putting the two million dollar
additional investment in pathways, specific to safe routes to school, which has been a large
community issue. He thinks, pretty much, all of them that have run for office, campaigned
around safe routes to school. They hear families, when they all think about a future Lake
Oswego, they think of the safe connected community where, whether it's families, whether it's
seniors, that people can get around the town, they can ride their bike to school, and they can
traverse the town in a safe way, outside of the automobile, which makes them a healthy
community, makes them a more sustainable community and it really is in line with their
community values. It's just so important that, like they've done with the roads, it takes them so
long for these investments to really materialize, they can't just one year say, well let's have
great roads, and the next year they have great roads, it takes a long commitment as they've
seen and it's really thanks to this committee and past Councils for ensuring that they have
now, relatively speaking, well-maintained roadway. They know other jurisdictions, there's
examples of newer jurisdictions of course that have great Cadillac type roadways, if they will,
but then others whose roadways are in very, very, very poor condition. Buck thinks it's worth
pointing out as they go along, and if this community of connected pathways is really something
that they would like to see, this 2 million investment while it's great, they have just on the
unfunded pathway list of the city identified those pathways connected to schools, the pathways
they would consider the safe routes to schools, and those total in the 45-50 million dollar
range. That's then not including the other unfunded pathway projects with a total, of course as
they all know, of just under 100 million dollars, a very large number. There's no funding source
for this right now, so he's just making it as a comment for them to keep in mind, they have this
money allocating this biennium, which is great, but as they go into next year, the year after, as
they're thinking ahead to what potential options they may have to put this effort into this
community asset, that he thinks future generations would hopefully be looking back and saying
they're so glad that they have this safe connected community. It's not just about the pathways,
it's also about the accessibility, they think of some of the main roads through town, Country
Club, yes there's a sidewalk, but for anyone who's ever walked, it's abysmal and there's
mailboxes in the center of it and it's absolutely not accessible; South Shore their route around
the lake, wonderful, his favorite run, absolutely not accessible and very dangerous. It's great to
see what they've done on Boones Ferry because that's such a main arterial, but even our
downtown they hear from people their downtown is great sidewalk-wise, but they can't ride a
bike downtown, it's very dangerous. They have a great city that they can make even greater in
terms of this accessibility and it's just food for thought in these in these years ahead. Chair
Calabria asked Manz if her question was answered. Manz stated her computer shut down
and that she will go back and look at the recording, to not stop the flow of discussion. Manz
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 10 of 27
thanked Mr. Broadus and Director Rooney for answering her questions. Manz wanted to
echo what Buck said, as well as the thought that they're very fortunate that they have such an
engaged team in Engineering who are able to basically pull up any information questions they
have at any point in time. This is highly unusual, but completely delightful. Havens asked, how
worried are they about these bridges, how bad off are they, are they desperate, are they some
desperate, that kind of thing, those are big numbers there. Wendland replied that they have
24 million of unfunded bridges. Havens stated they've got one bridge that's about nine million
dollars, over nine million. Rooney stated those numbers could be interesting, these are not all
dollars to necessarily replace them, some are replacement dollar amounts, some are not.
Rooney explained every two years or 18 months, ODOT goes through and they inspect all of
their bridges, and they do it for everybody, that's how it is, and they give them an inspection
report. They have bridges that aren't great, then they have a couple that are not good, she just
put it that way. They have continually put in for grants to have retrofit money or replacement
money for those bridges that are on the lower scale. So far they have not received funding,
they don't qualify when competing with all the other bridges in the state that are asking for
retrofit money and part of it is because, quite frankly, most of our bridges are super low
volume. So it's very hard for the little tiny bridge on North Shore that gets maybe 1,500 cars a
day on a very big day, to compete with any bridge in Washington County on an arterial, so part
of the challenge is that they have low volume bridges. She reminded everybody that the
bridges on highway 43 are not theirs, so it's the bridges around the lake and they're all really
relatively low volume. That being said, it's one of these weird things with bridge funding, the
worse their bridge is, the better their chances of getting funding for replacement and they're
hoping that, that's what's going to be happening with a couple of their bridges because that's
how they get significant funds for bridge replacement. Most agencies such as theirs, and they
have a fairly generous budget, most agencies can't begin to handle this kind of one bridge
replacement let alone 24 to 30 million dollars' worth, so the bridge fund is the main source for
almost every agency to get replacement funds, so they all take their turns and when it gets to
some point that'll happen. What happened to them, probably 15-16-17 years ago is that they
had, not quite a catastrophic failure, but a significant failure on one of the bridges at the west
end of the lake and that catapulted them right to the top for bridge replacement funds and they
did an emergency replacement there, took them a while, but that's how they got the funding
and they were certainly not in line for it before. But quite frankly, that's what every other
agency does they might spend money on small maintenance, a couple hundred grand here,
there that sort of thing, but these kind of numbers that they need, most agencies can't begin to
fund that until they get it through the bridge fund from the state. Havens stated, so it almost
has to fail by the time that then they can actually get money for it. Rooney explained, they
want to catch it before it fails. Yes, there's this sweet spot that they work for, based on a whole
bunch of metrics, that they use to try and find where's the sweet spot before it fails because
nobody wants that, and hopefully fund those that are in that sweet spot of really needing to be
replaced. But they're watching it and they're watching it as well, and applying for grants every
time they get an opportunity to do so. Cruz asked if they have any type of liability for, if they
know, if they get this report that bridges are failing, that if they don't do anything about them is
there something like, they talked about the one 16 years ago that failed and she wasn't here,
so she doesn't know. Bennett explained state law actually recognizes that jurisdictions don't
have enough dollars to fix every problem that could potentially occur, and so actually this
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 11 of 27
process they're going through right now, with them, in the capital improvement plan is really
important for the city because they've identified all of the capital needs and they've identified
the amount of money that they've had and then they have applied the money that they have to
the projects, so they're building as many projects as they can. Rooney stated discretionary
immunity is typically the word that's used for that. Bennett stated she wasn't going to actually
say the legal term. Bennett explained at some point no jurisdiction in the United States can
actually repair every infrastructure problem that they have, there's simply just not enough
money to go around and so they have to make choices about what their highest priorities are
and so that's essentially what the capital improvement plan does. Cruz asked when the report
comes out about, Rooney was saying that the bridges are inspected. Cruz asked if it is once a
year, once every two years. Rooney clarified they get inspection reports every two years and
then those reports are used to apply for grants and so they're in the grant application phase
right now, they applied back in the Fall, and she can't tell them off the top of her head, it's
probably sometime later this summer that they might find out. Broadus clarified the grant is
still upcoming, they're still a few months out. Rooney said they'll certainly let the Council know
the status, every time they do grants they let the Council know if they got them or didn't get
them. Chair Calabria asked of there were any other questions for Director Rooney. Chair
Calabria thanked Director Rooney and said he always finds her presentations to be very, he
always comes away learning something and that happened again. Rooney stated if they have
any questions don't hesitate to send her an email they'll try to get answers for them. Chair
Calabria called for a five minute break at 6:47pm.
7. Deliberations and Adjustments
Chair Calabria reconvened the meeting at 6:55pm and called for the next order of business,
deliberations and adjustments. Vice Chair Carson said she saw on the FTE that they
remained at a 9.0, so great job, however they are adding eight more FTEs, which is quite high.
Vice Chair Carson said she knew they are probably there to support council goals, have they
considered getting this eight FTEs from all council goals that are no longer the focus. Bennett
stated, in her view, the proposed budget recognizes FTE that the council has already added
during the current biennium that they're in. Bennett listed what those four were, so they're all
clear, they have added an Adult Resource Officer back in 2019, recognizing that actually
seniors in their community actually have very special needs when it comes to public safety and
that they needed a person who specialized in working with the older adults in Lake Oswego,
so the Council added that in 2019, actually really shortly after the budget was adopted. They
also added a Maintenance Technician at the water plant because what they found is, if they
only had operators and managers out there they actually weren't taking care of the building
and considering that, that investment is hundreds of millions of dollars, it made sense to
actually hire somebody who specialized in keeping their systems up and operational, she
thinks that got added back in 2019. Back in 2020, the Council added a Program Specialist to
actually do capital projects for the parks department, with a 30 million dollar bond they needed
somebody whose job it was to actually deliver capital projects, actually they had one person,
but they couldn't ask that one person to do the volume of capital projects that the parks
department was doing, at one point last summer they had 14 capital projects in the parks,
which was really pretty overwhelming for one staff person. Then in January of this year the
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 12 of 27
Council added a diversity, equity, and inclusion Program Manager to implement their diversity
equity inclusion plan that came out of the task force work, so in that case, it was really a new
body of work that the city did and the people they asked to advise them told them that they
needed technical specialty. So in her view, the proposed budget really only adds four FTEs,
they can pick that knit with her later if they'd like. So for the four additional positions, she made
all the department heads proposing new positions go through four steps, first ask can they
shift work, have they had some project end or conclude and they can give a new person some
work. For example, in the City Manager's office when the person who worked on the diversity
equity inclusion task force stuff got done, they shifted that staff person over to work on the
Council's goals around the community dialogue on policing, so that's an example of that. The
second thing they looked at is can they outsource, she thinks many of them know that the city
contracts out a lot of stuff that some cities do in-house, but if they can do it less expensively or
more efficiently with fewer resources, not just money, but also staff time, they often contract
out. For example, the city's maintenance of the medians and the right-of-way is done by the
outside company. Rooney could tell them, they had lots of debate last year when they have
construction inspection taking place in the summertime, if it's just for a confined period of time
and they need a lot of people, they contract it out, because it turns out to be cheaper or if they
really need a technical expert for a short period of time they contract that out. The third thing
they do is they look at, can they just sort of surge staff, can they hire a seasonal, can they start
a temporary, can they just bring in a temporary service for a while. Right now, for example,
they are seeing record building permit activity, they are having a hard time clearing all the
building permits that are coming in, so they're going to hire temporary staff to sort of deal with
that surge. The last thing she always asks is, is this a forever thing because she's worked in
places where they hire somebody as a limited duration employee and it's kind of a back door
way to get new FTE because the truth is when that limited duration is over they almost always
still need the person, and so it ends up being a shell game, that she doesn't like to play with
budget committees, so if it turns out that it's a permanent new amount of work that the city
needs to do and it's less expensive than contracting it out and it's not seasonal or temporary
then they can approve an FTE. Bennett walked through the four FTEs that are in the budget,
so they all knew which one of those categories it fit into. The first one, probably the most
controversial one, is the additional staff in Planning. Here's what's happened in Planning, two
things, one is the Council has given them some pretty hefty goals, House Bill 2001, economic
development, and affordable housing, generally speaking. They can look at their budget,
which is on page five of their book and what they will see, which is what she sees, if they look
at it, is that in the last couple bienniums, well the last two they've budgeted 1.1 million of
dollars in materials and services, but they've only spent half of that, and so here's what this
tells her, they're budgeting to do long-range planning projects and they don't have enough staff
to do them and that's what she heard from the director in his request, so what he asked her
matched, they have a body of work that the Council's asked them to do, that they can't get to
and it's because the permanent activity in Lake Oswego. She talked to them about this during
the budget message, right, a lot of activity even though they're built out, they're seeing a lot of
activity that's coming through the Planning department. She also told them that the current
fiscal year it's even worse, by the end of April they've done the same number of pre-
application conferences that is for proposed development that they would normally do through
the month of August, so they're already 35% up on the year, so if they want to get those
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 13 of 27
projects done, that the Council's identified, she's gotta have somebody to do it. So that's
probably the most controversial one, she thinks, of the proposals. The second position is a
Behavioral Health Specialist in the police department. She thinks they all know, that some of
what they are hearing in best practices nationwide is, that instead of sending law enforcement
or police officers to some kinds of cases, especially when they're dealing with folks who are
dealing with mental illness, and they ought to have folks who are actually trained in how to
work with people who are dealing with mental illness and so they've added that position. She
simply can't take a police officer and convert them to somebody who's a behavioral health
specialist, so that feels like a new body of work for her and it feels like it's forever, so it met
those tests and they did look at contracting out, candidly, they did examine that one and see if
it was cheaper to contract it out, but the reality is they couldn't get the kind of coverage or the
response time that they wanted to be able to offer here in Lake Oswego. The third one is the
Park Ranger and those of them who've been on the email thread today know that they have
increased users, they have more parks and more users in the parks, than ever before and they
have more people using their parks, this means they have more people who don't necessarily
follow their park rules. She doesn't know about the rest of the Council, but she got over five
emails today just talking about their enforcement of leash requirements for people with dogs in
their parks, right now they have one person who works five days a week, but people use the
parks seven days a week and they have more parks, so that's, that one, meets her test, that's
a definite forever program, and that for her is just caused by growth in program. The last one is
the person for them to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, they're actually going to
use a specialist to help them develop their transition plan, but after they develop that transition
plan they will need to actually implement it and they will have to have an expert in compliance
with the ADA on staff. It's actually been a requirement of the law for some time and they sort of
just allowed the responsibility to bounce around and consequently she doesn't think they're
fulfilling all of their mandated responsibilities related to the Americans with Disabilities Act, so
to Shannon's question earlier it's a significant liability for the city, if they don't add that staff
position, so that's it. People who know her, know she's pretty fiscally conservative, she's not
excited about new staff people because headcount is probably the biggest thing that
influences their costs, but every single one of these meets the test of being a better investment
for the city, than doing it a different way.
Rapf asked, the contingency line item for streets, 7.2ish, is that the minimum they need to hold
legally in the contingency fund or is there room to maneuver in there. Hooper stated it's
definitely above, it's above the minimum, so there is room to maneuver, but it's also
anticipating future projects that are in the CIP. Rapf recommended that they try to get ahead
of their street and bridge issue, he knows it's an expensive endeavor and listening to Rooney
he knows there's a lot that they need to do and there's a lot to be done now so that they can
get ahead of it or else it's going to get ahead of them. So his one recommendation is they try
to find some money to bolster our street fund in the next biennium, he personally maybe
there's some wiggle room in our capital reserve 5.5 million, and as Hooper said maybe there's
a little bit a little bit of money in their street fund contingency that they can, look in their city 500
thousand dollars, a million dollars extra, does a lot of great things, so that was his one
recommendation. Bennett reminded them, they already moved 1.6 million out of the capital
reserve into the police department's operating budget. Rapf said he would be comfortable
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 14 of 27
trying to find a little bit more. Wendland asked City Manager Bennett on her explanation of
the adds, which he agrees with every one of them, is there any position that is a minus that
they could take, so that their overall head count maybe is not plus eight, maybe it's plus four or
plus five, not that each individual employee is not valuable and wonderful, but he's just asking
when they make value judgments, this is what they think is important or this is something that
they need to have, he thinks often times they don't take the other side to say what do they
maybe have that's of less value in their priorities that could help fund those projects, if that
makes sense or those people. Bennett stated it makes sense and if she had a sense, she
hasn't heard or seen any discussion on the Council to indicate that they feel like they're over
delivering service in the area, so she would probably need to have a discussion with all of
them about whether there were program areas that were less important or that they were
willing to see decline in terms of the overall output. Bennett said it's hard to have that
conversation, in a way, when their jurisdiction is fiscally stable and sound and also the other
thing she thinks she's shared with them in the budget message is that they've done a really
great job at the city of controlling the cost of personnel increases, 20% reduction in healthcare,
for example, collaborative relationship with their union partners, so that they're not giving them
wage increases that are unaffordable to the city. She thinks they do a pretty good job of
controlling that cost, so if Council wants to go there she would say they ought to do that as
part of a larger conversation. They're also able to make a 5 million transfer out of the general
fund into the street fund and so it's hard to have a constructive conversation about not meeting
the increased workload demands by cutting elsewhere when they have sufficient resource, if
that's where they want to go she's happy to go there with them. Wendland stated, no, but he
thinks the point is that he doesn't manage the 380 employees in their city, he would have no
idea what they would have as maybe a department or that maybe has less workload and they
maybe have shifted into more workloads in other ways. Maybe her answer is no, they in fact
have a larger workload in every department. Wendland thinks it's irresponsible to have the
conversation to say they're adding, but they haven't analyzed headcount to say, is everybody
on target, do they have the right resources in the right places because that's how they get to
gradual creep and then yes they do have the resources, but they also have other projects and
other things that maybe they could use resources for that are on priorities that the Council, and
citizen budgets members, and other people may want. Bennett agreed with the danger of the
creep, she agreed with him that without going back and saying are they doing this because it's
easier than having the trade-off conversation. She thinks they try to do that for their first step
when they add new work, can they absorb this, can they bring it in house and just absorb it
with existing stuff before they go to the next step. She thinks in three of the cases that she
illustrated there is no way to actually just take that work in-house, the fourth case around
Planning she thinks that's just really a conversation about, do they really want to get those
projects done or not, because it's just not realistic to manage the current planning activity that
they have and long-range projects at the same time with the same staff, they just can't do it.
Wendland understands and he agrees with her on that. He's just asking that in his worlds that
he's always been in, they always have to look at total and they just don't add, they also have
to look at places where they're efficiently using resources and maybe they were so
understaffed in other areas that they needed these happen to be the lucky four or five people,
that got added on. He knows other department heads have said they could use a person or
more, but they know from a citizen budget and city council standpoint they're not in the weeds
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 15 of 27
they're in the, so he's just asking from a policy standpoint or from a practice standpoint if
they've gone through that exercise from the staff level to make sure that when they add
headcount, they're reviewing all headcount to make sure that they're working for the citizens of
Lake Oswego, they've got to make it efficient, that's all he's doing. Nguyen asked so when
they talk about adding, and it's kind of related to the FTEs again, but they're talking about
adding the eight FTEs, do they also have a sense too, of how much natural attrition they'll
have, people that may be retiring and maybe not in that particular position, but in other
departments,just as a net. Bennett stated she thinks Jorgensen told them, they can't actually
ask people if they're going to retire, but they do know how long, how many people they have in
each age cohort. Bennett requested to have Phelan answer. Nguyen continued with his
second question, he didn't expect an answer right now, but he thinks in light of them coming
out of the pandemic and having to have adapted to all the challenges the pandemic really
imposed on all of them, he'd like to see if there's a chance to do a self-audit. During this time
when they had to close down all of their buildings, they had to work remotely were there things
that they learned that maybe they could keep from the pandemic. He thinks, certainly in all
sectors, he thinks in the public and private sector they're learning that maybe these Zoom
meetings are more efficient or maybe they can have them more frequently with less travel. For
example, those are things he'd like to take a broader look at, maybe at a later date, maybe
have a chance to do a post-mortem, not the right way to use a pandemic. Bennett said they
call it, after action, she wrote that down and said it'd be great to include the Council in that
conversation. Bennett asked Phelan, what kind of turnover are they looking at. Phelan
responded they generally, as an organization, have fairly low turnover, it's been a while since
they really tracked, quite frankly, the amount of employees who are eligible to retire and it's
difficult for them to track that too because under PERS, if they have prior experience in
another entity that counts towards their retirement years of service they won't necessarily have
access to that information, so it's not as reliable as they might think. Her thought though is
typically when they have someone leave the organization, they absolutely do look to see if
they need to refill that position or if it can be utilized in a different way. Typically though, it's
difficult when they're looking at adding FTE in one department and they have attrition in
another department. The way the budget works, that wouldn't necessarily alleviate the
department that's adding a position in a fiscal way, but she's fairly confident their department
heads do a good review every time a position becomes available to make a determination is
that something they need to continue to do the way it has been done before, is there a way
they can do it differently by moving resources around and that's typically what they've been
historically doing as an organization around hiring folks. Havens echoed what Wendland and
Nguyen said, both those gentlemen own businesses, he owned a business and they do need
to look at all sides of their income and their expense. When he started on the budget
committee they were talking about something called a glide path and it was after the 2008
debacle and they were cutting some positions, he wanted to say it was six, but he can't quite
remember, times have a way of changing, so he's inclined to support these FTEs, but also he
really liked Nguyen's idea that they do a study of where they can save and he thinks they
should commit to that over the next few months as a Council, or possibly the budget
committee can be involved because it's very important, because overall picture they don't want
to add too many people, he thinks that's very important. Buck added as a follow-on comment
and stated he appreciated Phelan's comments around their department manager's constant
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 16 of 27
look at performance of the folks in the city and the goals that they're working on. As a Council,
as members of this community, they have really high expectations for the services that their
team delivers, they expect from their Planning department a very high level of community
engagement and they see how they fulfill that in the work that they do on the many projects.
From their Police department they expect that they come on to the calls, every call, no call too
small, and they do that. They're more likely to survive from a cardiac event in Lake Oswego
than in other communities because of the speed at which first responders are able to arrive in
Lake Oswego that's because they're staffed a certain way in their Fire department, so there's
always the trade-offs. But he thinks that folks come to Lake Oswego because they demand a
certain level of service from the city and that comes at a higher cost, but he thinks that's also
why they see that and he thinks the city's operated very efficiently for many years, keeping
very consistent with the staffing, while trying to meet different goals and they're really trying to
achieve very, very, very, high, high levels of service that they do really well.
Rapf stated he'd been advised by a person that shall remain unnamed that in order for him to
actually have any kind of impact, he actually needs to be specific, so he threw this out there,
he's trying to get multiple text messages for how he did it wrong, but he's going to recommend
from his previous thought about streets, if they could take, he knows they already spent some
of the capital reserve money on Police, but if they could take five, he would recommend they
take 500,000 out of that and if his math is right, they could probably take a million out of the
street fund contingency and put that more towards our capital improvements for their streets.
So one and a half million total. Chair Calabria asked for clarification and asked if Rapf was
making a motion. Rapf stated he didn't think he needed to make a motion. Rapf stated he was
making a motion to take, use $500,000 out of their capital reserve fund, add that and then use
of the 7.24 million they have in the street fund contingency, use a million of that to add some
more projects to our street capital improvement project, so it's a total of a million and a half,
that's his motion. Dodds seconded the motion. Chair Calabria called for discussion. Manz
commented and asked Bennett, in all of the activity in Washington DC around infrastructure
money which they don't know what's going to happen with that, it's very up in the air right now,
would there be opportunities to obtain money at their level realistically at Lake Oswego, city
level for this sort of infrastructure push the kind that they did over the past five years or two
years, whatever it was. Bennett replied, they certainly hope so, but the truth is she doesn't
know the answer to that question right now and it partly depends on whether or not the
congress does what it appears that it's going to do and earmark dollars, they don't call it that
anymore, they call it congressionally designated allocations, but it's an earmark, and whether
or not there's actually other funds that they would have to compete for. So certainly that looks
like there's going to be money for roads in the infrastructure bill, should it pass. Manz asked
about the 1.5 motion that was on the floor, to Director Rooney, as to what sort of value this
would add to the current budget, in other words would it be one half of a project, a quarter of a
project, she knows how expensive these projects are, which is why she put it in that term, but
if she could give her an idea of what 1.5 million would do to help what they already have that
would be really useful. Rooney clarified the question she is asking, if given the 1.5 million to
go to pavement, what would that do for them. Rooney told them every extra dollar they give
them for any infrastructure will help, that may not be a great answer. How much does that buy
them in PCI, can't quite tell them that, but it will, it will either slow the turn or it will improve the
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 17 of 27
situation. Bennett added, one million of the motion though is coming out of their contingency,
so what it's going to do is advance projects and mean that they'd have less money in future
years, the half million they could talk about that. Rooney stated she'd misunderstood and said
she will never turn away extra money for any infrastructure, she put it that way. But five
hundred thousand dollars, as an example, last year's slurry seal was around eight hundred
thousand, nine hundred thousand dollars they spent, that's what they did for that kind of
money, so it would be less than that, 500,000. Rapf interjected, right now, they don't use
contingency money in his understanding, so the way he's wording it is, they're releasing a
million out of the contingency, where it just sits because it's for, lack of a better word, rainy day
fund, so he's authorizing, he's saying that they should authorize the use of it, of some of that
contingency. Bennett said, if she spends down her contingency in the next in the upcoming
biennium that means she'll have less money that carries forward into 23-24. So what she'll do
is, she'll move projects that she was going to do in the out year, she'll move them up that's
what she'll do. Rapf said his point is really, let them try to get ahead of projects, so like what
she was saying, it's getting ahead of them. Manz finished her thoughts, so she's clear on this,
so the 1.5 million now, now being the next budget dollars, would perhaps buy them a little bit
more time, for example, not definitively on slurry seal or other low maintenance, low reparation
projects because that's not anything near any sort of large project, as they well know. Manz
asked if that was that correct. Rooney said, if that were to happen they would do more in the
summer of 2022, than they had identified, so they would do more that year and then summer
2023 would be pretty, pretty low. Yes, pretty low. Manz asked how does that work for them, if
it is a workable situation. Rooney said they can do that right now because they have the
pavement management team that they hired Murray Smith, that Stefan spoke about, they have
them on to get them through the summer of 2022 effort and then that's the end of that. Manz
said, so it does sort of make sense in that regard to utilize them now because they're on staff.
Manz clarified if that was what she was hearing. Rooney confirmed, it's easier for them to add
another 1.5 million dollars in funds or expenditures now, than telling her this two years from
now. Manz said she got it, and thanked her. Wendland stated, he's always been for paving
and he guesses his question is to Mr. Dodd's comment earlier today about paving, he had a
really good, he thinks the 30,000 foot level, what do they need to do, so they don't go
backwards, even if they maintain, that's should be a minimal goal and his question is with this
adjustment do they think they can at least maintain, if not maybe go forward a little bit or do
they think they're in a situation where they're going to start going backwards after they spend
the money that they have planned for the next two years. Wendland continued his second
question, is the million and a half, precluding them from doing something else that they need
to be doing. Bennett stated they put the money into the capital reserve for the pool, so if they
take the half a million dollars out of the capital reserve, they're taking away their flexibility on
the pool. Wendland stated that's why he would not support this motion. While he applauded
the idea of pavement, he thinks they have a number of other things that are on their plate that
may be precluding them, if they commit all of their funds that way, so that's just his thought.
Buck stated he had his hand up for the same comment as Wendland. Buck agrees entirely,
that they set the money in capital reserve to have flexibility for funds they know they're going
to need on the community pool, which is another high priority. The streets are great, but
they're already investing a significant amount in them and the pool is a large community
project, so he also cannot support this motion because of that. Dodds stated the one thing
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 18 of 27
that concerns him is they're dropping the goal, they had to benefit zealots, but there were a
bunch of road zealots for a long period of time, and in a perfect world he would like to see
them, they were experiencing 6 million and then 4.2, the 1.5 would bring it up to 5.7, so they
would be maintaining their commitment through the 22 rating that they're going to see, and
see where they are. This whole group is a relatively new group it just seems to him that it
should be strongly considered. He knows it's already been considered, it should be
reconsidered that to retain a goal and because he thinks that it comes around, it'll bite them in
the butt because if they start losing it, it's going to cause a series of situations with the
constituency. He knows they all know that, but he'll say it again. Nguyen stated he wants to be
very careful as they are starting to make some adjustments to the budget and taking from one
budget of one department and adding to the next, he thinks that, again he just defers back to
the their staff that has spent hours and hours and weeks and months of time on this and he
thinks that they as Council, speaking from the standpoint of Council, they rely on them as the
experts in the field here. Secondly, at the beginning of the year they all met together, they
established their Council goals for the year and he thinks that if they were to try to revise this
budget they need to look at these proposed revisions through the lens of the things that
they've agreed as Council, that they're going to be focusing on. He thinks if they look over
some of the other things that they have on their council goals list, there are many more that
that still need to be addressed, so he doesn't see the roads. In the past the roads have been a
council goal, but for this year it's not, so if that's something they decide that they want to
pursue for the 2022 council goals, then they should discuss it then, but this wouldn't be the
appropriate place to do that.
Rapf stated it was great feedback from everybody. He said he would address Nguyen's
remarks first. Rapf asked Bennett if roads were on their city council goals. Bennett stated
actually in past Council, last year's Council did have a goal of continuing paving to achieve a
PCI of 70%. This council didn't adopt that goal. Rapf stated, but they did have goals around
public safety, sidewalks safety. Bennett confirmed they definitely had that, that's why they
funded the pedestrian improvements, as they had a lot of goals around pedestrian safety and
they also had some a very specific goals on trying to find resolution to the traffic congestion on
McVey and State, and increase both bike and ped safety in that stretch. Rapf stated in his
opinion it's still roads, good roads are part of safety, part of keeping people healthy, so he
thinks it's still part of their city council goals. Maybe not explicitly pavement, however he still
understands what he's saying, let's stay on task, noted. Rapf stated Wendland and Buck
made a great point about the pool, which he obviously really supports. So if he could amend
his motion, it would be forget about the capital reserve because they need that for the pool, he
would say, if he did his math right, the minimum contingency they need in the street fund is 1.7
million and it's at seven, so instead of taking the 500 out of the capital reserve, they allow
Rooney to use one and a half million out of the contingency, street fund contingency, for
further projects this year. So that takes care of the pool issue, they still have the money for the
pool, but they also allow Rooney to leverage some more of her funds for, to get ahead of, get
them ahead of their pavement and road and safety issue. Chair Calabria stated he wanted to
make sure they have it clear, that amendment is going to require a second. Chair Calabria
asked Waverly to read the motion back to them. Waverly stated, move to approve for
biennium budget 21-23, 1.5 million from street contingency, moved to street fund for capital
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 19 of 27
improvement projects. Chair Calabria asked did that capture it Rapf. Rapf concurred. Chair
Calabria called for a second, for the amendment. Vice Chair Carson seconded amended
motion. Manz thinks that it for her personally, if they are able to do this and that the street
contingency fund remains robust enough, now there's no predicting this, but given climate
change and some of the things that they've had happened over the last biennium, if they can
do this and they have some of the consultants on hand, and Rooney has the bandwidth to
move additional projects forward, she could agree to move those monies from the contingency
fund to the current budget, or the next biennium budget for street improvements. But her
biggest question is, in that contingency fund minus, that 1.5, would that cover anything that
might come up in 22 as far as emergency repairs, etc., etc. Her question is for Direct Rooney.
Rooney was crunching numbers while they're all talking. Rooney stated the answer is they
know, they always like to have some cushion in there because, as sure as she's here to speak
to them tonight, there will be something that happens between now and the end of this two-
year biennium. They need to finish Boones Ferry Road for one, they have a couple of other
paving things that have come up, with that, people are asking them can they finish paving, just
go a little bit further, go a little bit further. Some of those things they've said they're not sure
they have the funding for it at the moment, so there's already people chomping. She doesn't
mean that negatively, but she should say needs, real needs out there that aren't specifically
identified. They do need to keep a good healthy contingency in there for emergencies though
absolutely. She doesn't know exactly off the top, again she was trying to run some numbers,
what that number might be, but they can take advantage of the pavement management
program people being available to them, that team, and upping that up a little bit for the last
year. Verdick stated this goes along with what Manz asked, and it's really for Rooney.
Verdick asked, does she have any major concerns, if they were to use this 1.5 million to our
streets, is there anything that are red flags for her, that she would say well she'd really maybe
not do that. Rooney said, the needs are endless and whether it's in paving, or replacing
signals, or fixing signals, or painting signals, or fixing sidewalks, it's really a matter of priorities
and if that is the priority of the Budget Committee and then Council approves, then that's what
they'll do. They can certainly use more money in all of the transportation needs. One of the
other things to think about is sometimes that happens, and she doesn't know this for sure off
the top of her head, but let them go back to that bridge conversation for just a minute, why it's
nice to have a little bit of a of a cushion or a contingency in the bank is, that should all of a
sudden they need to participate in a bridge fund replacement, sometimes there are matches
that are required. If they get a grant for signal maintenance safety issues that they've applied
for, right now they're going to need some money that's not in here at the moment, because
they're 16-18 months off from being able to find out if they get grants and they'll need some of
that match money, so having some flexibility is important. But, she thinks 1.5 out of the seven
that still leaves quite a contingency, that's her opinion, if they want to use it for paving then
they'll do that. Manz stated she has, after this, she has a put, there's something that she'd like
to put forth to the group, after they're done with this discussion. Chair Calabria clarified that's
a second, that's a separate issue. Buck stated he appreciated the amendment, he's more
inclined to support this without that capital reserve piece included, but his question is why if
this was a good, why didn't they have a policy around the contingency, so his first question is
are they maintaining that are they following their policy around the contingency with this move,
with this allocation. Then two, why didn't they just allocate these funds initially if they have too
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 20 of 27
much in the contingency. Rooney stated, Cross can back her up on this, but as he mentioned
that money, they're only seeing the two-year budget, they've got to look at the full CIP, which
goes out another four years. So they were planning money out there based off of both the
contingency and anticipated revenues, so if they spend more now they'll spend less than they
were planning to in the future. Even though it's available today, it's just a matter of when they
want to spend it now or in the future, it's not more money, it's just available at the moment and
so they would have to reduce their future capital outlay in streets as a whole, in the future to
accommodate for the fact that they're going to spend that contingency down, so matching the
revenues and the expenditures and keeping that contingency fund balance in there is
important, they'd have to readjust that a little bit. Rooney asked Cross to correct her if she's
wrong, or say it the way the finance director would say it. Cross confirmed she's correct, he
thinks out in the CIP, out about four years, they have like 5.3 million, which is much more than
they would usually spend in a typical year in the street fund. That might just have to be
reduced a little bit, it's just shifting projects to accommodate the spending of the funds now,
but those were already planned to spend out in the six-year CIP. Buck asked if these are,
knowing what they know about the benefit they get from doing the projects in advance, are
these the projects that receive that kind of benefit, given where they are, they've talked about
this in their Council study sessions on roads, when hitting streets before they get to a certain
point, so is that the benefit here, that they'd be hitting streets or is this literally just a matter of
changing the timing of the projects. Rooney stated, grabbing them early and getting to some
of those streets earlier is definitely better before they go off the cliff, the failure that they talked
about a couple weeks ago and so it doesn't hurt it. But, then where will they be and they'll
have less money three years out, so it might buy them a little bit of time, over time. The
response rate to the funding is not as immediate as everybody thinks it is, it takes a couple
years for the shift, several years sometimes for the shifts to occur and it's not a perfect
science. So it's very hard for her to say if they spend 1.5 today, it'll save them 500,000, 3 years
from now. She can't, it's not that kind of an equation. Buck said, they're still in line with the
policy, he just wants to clarify. Rooney stated, with the contingency policy they would for sure
not go below the required contingency amount. Hooper added the minimum contingency is
ten percent and as Rapf said, that would be at 1.7 million. Hooper stated, they're way above
that, they're currently at seven point two million, so they're not even remotely close to hitting
their contingency thresholds,just so they know. Corgan clarified his question was answered
by Wendland. Dodds regards it as a given that they're going to spend the money well, he
assumes they're going to know what they're doing and his thrust is more that they maintain the
commitment that they have, they were and so he would say that the word contingency works
both ways and it would seem there's not a stretch of imagination to think that they will be
getting federal money and if they did get federal money, his sense would be to put the money
back in the contingency and spend the six million dollars wisely, which they'll do, but if they get
federal money they can put it back in the contingency for down the road. He doesn't know if
that makes budgeting sense, but that's what he would think. Manz said, after listening to all of
this, it sounds to her like the greatest benefit to doing this is leveraging the consultants that
they have in place now, rather than later, to do those smaller projects because 1.5 in roads is
bupkis okay, it's not anything to do a large project. Slurry seal as Rooney said yeah, but more
than that they can't do, the benefit is the consultant. Manz asked Rooney if that was correct.
Rooney stated, yes she thinks it's wise that they have this opportunity and if they want to take
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 21 of 27
advantage of that and get a little bit more extra paving out of the summer 2022, this is a good
time to do it. Chair Calabria said, he certainly didn't want to close off conversations, but his
sense about the discussion is that they had a motion. Rapf heard some good feedback about
the motion and some specifics, and he amended it and they have a second and they've
confirmed that there is excess, there are excess funds in that contingency. They can still
satisfy the requirements that they have to meet for reserves and contingencies, so are they
ready to go to a vote. Wendland called the order. Chair Calabria stated, they're going to do a
roll call on this one, because it's not clear to him that this will be entirely unanimous, so he
asked Waverly to call the roll. Waverly asked if everyone clear on the motion. Wendland
asked to please re-read the motion, so that they're all clear. Waverly stated, move to approve
for biennium budget 2021-2023, 1.5 million from street contingency to street fund for capital
improvement projects, the motion was from budget committee member Rapf and Vice Chair
Carson seconded the most motion. Chair Calabria stated, on the amendment. Waverly
confirmed on the amended motion. Waverly called the roll and it passed unanimously by roll
call vote. Chair Calabria stated, it sounds like it was unanimous.
Manz said, she wanted to put forth the idea of increasing the funding in the Municipal Grant
program. Given that they've gone through COVID and the amount of dollars that people put
in for the grants this year indicates to her that perhaps their current funding level is not
enough to satisfy people's desire to improve the community, their ability to get out there and
actually do something. So she'd like to leverage all of that energy perhaps in their next
biennium and increase their Municipal Grant fund to eighty thousand dollars. She doesn't
know if they even need to have a big giant robust discussion or if people agree or disagree,
but she's going to go ahead and just make a motion, see if she gets a second and they can
take it from there. She'd like to move that they increase the Municipal Grant fund to 80,000
for the biennium, the next biennium coming up. Chair Calabria asked if that would be for two
years, for a two-year period. Manz stated, for a two year period, eighty thousand per year
over the two-year period. Vice Chair Carson seconded the motion. Chair Calabria called for
discussion on that motion. Rapf asked Manz, where she would find that extra money from
the budget. Manz stated, given the small amount of money that it truly is, she would probably
ask the city manager to. Bennett said, she'd take it out of general fund contingency. Manz
stated, general fund contingency or out of the. Rapf stated, 8.9. Bennett said, yeah the
general, general fund contingency unless; Cross is making a face. Rapf asked, if Cross was
making the face. Cross stated, it's already at the 14% minimum. Bennett said, so she would
probably take it out of Council's contingency. Manz said, she'd be fine with that, she didn't
know if anyone else would have any disagreement with that. Bennett offered to that, they are
about to get the American recovery plan act (ARPA) money and it's very clear that they can
spend it on non-profits that are helping the community recover from COVID, so actually she
hears where Manz is going, but Bennett thinks they're going have a chance to substantially
increase the amount of money that they allocate to the community non-profits that support
folks, who've been impacted by COVID. Manz thanked Bennett and said this was the first
that she's heard of this. Manz asked if this is something that is relatively new, that they now
know. Bennett stated, they don't yet know, no, in fact, Cross and she can tell them that they
both went to a session yesterday on the guidance, the treasury guidance and they feel
slightly more confused than they did before, but it is clear that, and they were already thinking
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 22 of 27
she thinks she mentioned to all of them that they were going to try to do revenue recovery
first, a small grant program for their nonprofits and then a capital project. It is clear that they
can do grants to nonprofits, that are either supporting people who are impacted by COVID or
who have been severely impacted by COVID, so as soon as they have clearer guidance
they'll be back in front of the Council to talk to them about allocating those funds. But she
guesses, she also learned yesterday that the amount that the member of congress told them,
they were going to get may not be the amount they actually get, so she's a little hesitant,
she's actually really glad that Cross convinced her not to put it in the budget because they
would be 100% wrong, but she does believe that they'll have funds to make grants and so
she thinks they will also be able to make grants larger than an additional 80,000, if they so
choose. Bennett said, she's going to take a note that in future years they might want to
increase the amount they award in grants, not just COVID related, but in general, so they'll
deal with that in the next budget cycle. Chair Calabria asked Manz, in light of that answer if
she wanted to maintain her motion. Manz stated, other folks had their hands raised, so if they
had questions germane to this or comments she'd like to hear them before she withdraws the
motion. Nguyen stated, on this particular topic, he was wanting them to maybe talk about
how they go about awarding grant funds. He knows that there's always more requests than
what they can actually fulfill, but he'd like to see how, because he looks at some of the people
some of the different organizations that are on here some got all of it, some got half of it
some got nothing and he knows that a lot of times putting these grant applications together
requires a great amount of time and research and effort to do it. Nguyen would like to see at
least, something again, something awarded certainly, look at some of the causes that they're
awarded zero dollars, he thinks when they're related to homelessness and temporary
housing and providing food, those are all things that are very important. He thinks that they,
the community, should be able to, if not provide for the full amount at least something. He
thinks that just knowing, having worked with non-profits before, it's where they get their
funding and when they go the effort of putting in an application, unless it completely misses
the mark altogether, he'd like to have this on future requests, in future reviews of the
proposals. He'd like to see how they decide that and then also be able to maybe nominate
the committee that does review those because he wasn't aware that they were being
reviewed. Chair Calabria offered to meet offline with Nguyen, to share. Chair Calabria
stated, there are other people in this group that were party to that, and he'd be happy to
share. There are, as he knows, there are grant criteria and in one case, all of the causes
sound worthy, all of them do, and so it's not a question of whether the judgments as to
whether there's a worthy cause or not, they're not qualified to make a judgment like that, but
they are qualified to make a judgment, in their opinions, as whether something meets the
criteria that have been set, not by them, but by people who crafted the criteria in the
beginning. But he'd be happy to spend some time with him offline, or he can give them some
details. Nguyen said, do some general comments here. Nguyen always says that certainly
they also know that among nonprofits, not all are equal, right, and so some have more
access to professional grant writers than others and so he just wants to be careful that they're
not awarding grants to those organizations that may have the most well put together and
absolutely most shining example of a grant proposal. So again he just, not to pick this thing
apart, but he'd like to see maybe when they look at these, these grant applications that there
is a way they can look at through more of an equitable lens. Where maybe they can take in
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 23 of 27
consideration if it's an organization that has somebody, that there are people that, that's their
job in the in the organization, that their job is to write grants and receive funds that way then
there are other organizations that are all volunteer, so they may not have the resources and
access to the tools to be able to present a proposal that meets all the credentials, and so
again just want to take a deep look at that in future applications and see how they can make
that more easily accessible for other organizations that are doing good for the community, but
may not be as well-resourced as others. Chair Calabria said he understands the question.
Vice Chair Carson said, Chair Calabria and she were on the grants team itself and the
grant application process to her, did not look very difficult. Vice Chair Carson said, so to
answer Nguyen's question, a lot of the recipients did not use, or couldn't have afforded a
grant writer to do it. Vice Chair Carson stated, it was a very simple process and she does
not think a majority of these grant recipients would be eligible for COVID relief, so that's her
concern there. The criteria for giving that money from their COVID relief might not be
applicable in this particular avenue, so her objection. Bennett requested for the list to be
brought up. Bennett said, she actually thinks a lot of them will be, for example, anybody
who's doing anything related to tourism and hospitality will be eligible, and she knows
Lakewood Center. Vice Chair Carson said, she's concerned about people like the
Clackamas Women Shelter, Food for Hunger, she doesn't know these organizations are
eligible and some of the people that they denied grants to were the veteran tools, and all
these things, she doesn't think is eligible. So that's why she supports, Manz motion. Vice
Chair Carson said, they need to budget for this as a community they need to take care of
those who are suffering in their community, COVID or not. At this point in the meeting, the list
was available to view. Manz stated, given that, she thinks she'll let the motion stand and if
they could just get a vote on it, they'll know where they're going with this. Manz said, it'll
probably be the easiest way to go about it. Rapf stated, Bennett suggested they couldn't
take it out of general because it's already at the. Bennett stated, she can't take it out of
Council either, because it's not high enough. Bennett will probably take it out of City
Manager's office contingency, city manager. She can't really, she can't really take it from any
department. Rapf stated, so that concerns him a little bit and he doesn't, which line is hers.
Bennett stated, she's on page 37. Rapf said, he got it here. Bennett stated, take it out of her
own budget. Rapf repeated, take it out of her own budget. Rapf asked, if she could survive
without that. Bennett stated, she is already spending down, but not too much, yes they'll be
fine, they'll manage to it. Bennett said, she hears what Vice Chair Carson is saying, but she
actually thinks, based on what she heard yesterday, she honestly thinks they're going to have
more discretion with those the grant dollars. She'd hate to have them allocate forty thousand
and think they're done. If they could have access to a larger, more flexible pot of money, is it
actually trying to get where they always want to go with more money, not less. Wendland
stated, he applauds this group for, and Manz, for bringing this up. Wendland sat on the
committee and helped allocate, a couple years ago and it is a difficult process when they
have more requests than they have money available, but that's real life, resources are never
as great as the need. He thinks they have an opportunity with outside sources that will be
coming into them that Bennett alluded to. Wendland said, while he thinks they're all good-
hearted and they want this to happen, he thinks it's going to happen and he would say that if
they find out that it's not, then he would propose that in one of their quarterly meetings or the
next meetings that they take care of it they allocate it at that point, but he would hate to put
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 24 of 27
the money out. Then the other part that he's concerned about is that there's people that know
about this grant writing proposal money and there's a number that, there's a lot of people that
don't, and so it's if they get a bigger fund are they giving more money to fewer people, that
know the system or are they really reaching out and getting money to the people that truly
need it in their city and that's just a harder situation. He thinks they'll probably be set up pretty
well, if they get a big federal chunk of money that they'll have to set up a system to make
sure that they allocate it correctly to everyone, so that's just his thought. Havens suggested,
if possible, approving the idea to take it from 45 to 80. So they're looking at, if he's not
mistaken, it is 35,000 dollars here, which is not a big deal. But also giving Council the
freedom that if these federal monies do come through and the criteria is set over the next few
months that they can either use it or not use it depending because they won't be meeting as
a budget committee, but this way Council can just go, oh, well we just received a hundred
thousand they can use for similar type stuff, they'll just use that instead of adding the 35 on. It
gives Council the freedom to make an action later when they have better information. Buck
thinks that it's a great point, he hears everyone loud and clear, they hear the budget
committee, the Council members, and Bennett. Buck stated, he thinks that everyone, is on
the same page in terms they want to be able to provide these resources and in the best way
possible. If they have other funds to be able to provide them with great, so he believes they're
all on the same page, he doesn't think they necessarily take this specific action to get there,
so he just want to let them know he hears everyone loud and clear and he thinks they're all
going forward on the same path here. Chair Calabria called for a vote and asked for the
motion to be read. Waverly clarified that the intent of the motion was that it would be
increased from 45,000 to 80,000 in the first year and from the biennium that they'll be going
into, that they're discussing tonight, and then the second year of the biennium would also
increase from 45,000 to 80,000. Waverly asked Manz if that was what her intention was.
Manz answered, yes and thank you. Waverly asked about the municipal grants
subcommittee meeting again and discussing how that increase would get distributed.
Bennett stated, have them act on the motion and then they'll talk about how they're going to
implement that half because she thinks Havens had the right idea. Waverly stated, she was
distracted with something going on and apologized. Waverly stated, move to approve
increasing the Muni Grants from 45,000 to 80,000 in the first year and the second year of the
biennium budget 2021-2023, the increase offset would be a decrease from the city manager's
office contingency. Waverly asked if that sounded correct and clarified that it was motioned
by Manz and seconded by Vice Chair Carson. Chair Calabria confirmed everybody was
clear, and asked Havens if he was good. Chair Calabria, stated they were ready for a roll
call. Waverly called the roll. The motion passed 8 to 6. Budget Committee members Chair
Calabria, Vice Chair Carson, Corgan, Havens, Nute, Nguyen, Mboup, and Manz voted in
favor of the motion. Budget Committee members Cruz, Dodds, Buck, Wendland, Verdick, and
Rapf voted against the motion. Chair Calabria called for a time check, but he wasn't
suggesting they cut off conversation. He said, they're still in the section for more deliberations
and adjustments, if any. Chair Calabria called for a five minute break at 8:09pm.
Chair Calabria reconvened the meeting at 8:19pm. He stated they are in deliberations and
adjustments, any additional topics that they wish to introduce. Chair Calabria stated he was
not seeing any hands. He said he was going to wait another few seconds. He didn't see any
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 25 of 27
hands. Chair Calabria continued, so unless there was an objection, he would move to the
next item on the agenda. He clarified that was okay with everybody.
8. Approve City Budget and Approve Property Tax rates
Chair Calabria called for a motion. Wendland moved to approve. Rapf seconded the
motion. Wendland read the motion. Moved to approve the proposed budget for the 2021-23
biennium of four hundred eight million, three hundred thirty five thousand, six hundred fifty
three dollars, as proposed and amended, with the property tax rates as shown in the budget,
the rates of for four dollars ninety seven point o (zero) three cents, inside the LO School
District and four dollars point five eight eight four, outside the LO School District per thousand
dollars of assessed value. Also approve the amount of one million, nine hundred and twelve
thousand, seven hundred sixty six dollars for the fiscal year twenty one, twenty two and one
million, six hundred fifty six thousand, three hundred eighty three dollars for fiscal year twenty
two, twenty three, for the general obligation bond levies. Corgan seconded the motion. Chair
Calabria called for discussion. There was no discussion. Chair Calabria called for a roll call
vote. Waverly confirmed that Corgan seconded the motion. The motion passed by a
unanimous roll call vote.
9. Budget Committee Protocols and Onboarding
Chair Calabria mentioned a memo that was circulated by Hooper that had the details of this
topic. Chair Calabria explained, at the last budget committee meeting the idea that they
would do two things, one would be a more formalized and structured onboarding process for
new budget committee members, although they would not preclude others from attending if
they wanted to, and the second idea had to do with restructuring the budget committee
meetings to make them more productive. The primary idea behind that was really more or
less, an educational component. But there's also a component that has to do with being
made more current on actual versus budgeted performance, different periods during the
year. The third idea was that, and this he would call the Maulin Patel idea, that in order to
more fully utilize the considerable talent, and he wasn't talking about himself, he was talking
about the people that are the volunteers and the councilors that are on the committee, there
may be special issues, from time to time, that one of the councilors, or Buck, or someone
else might want a second or third set of eyes. These would probably be limited to a very
small number, one or two a year, so those are the three ideas. They had rather extensive
conversations and he said that he really appreciated Bennett, Cross and Hooper, they were
very patient with the questions that they were asking and Vice Chair Carson was a party to
this with him. They were working on this together and she was doing that while handling a
family emergency, which he thinks was very diligent of her and they appreciate that. So that's
where it was born and that's the idea. Chair Calabria asked Bennett if she might want to say
something. Bennett said, she thinks they're interested in having productive conversations.
She knows that it's really important for them, for members of the budget committee, to offer
their perspective on city services, really as residents of the community and so if this will help
them be more productive when they're in the throes of the budget process she thinks they've
sort of reached a level where it seems like the right level of effort. Chair Calabria thanked
Bennett. Chair Calabria asked if there's more discussion or they can make a motion and
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 26 of 27
then have the discussion. Chair Calabria asked to entertain a motion to accept the meeting
protocols. Manz moved to accept the meeting protocols as written. Wendland seconded the
motion. Chair Calabria called for any further discussion. He didn't see any hands raised.
Chair Calabria stated, without further discussion, he thought this one they might be able to
do with the voice vote. Chair Calabria called for the vote and it passed by a unanimous
voice vote. Chair Calabria stated he appreciated the support.
10. Budget Committtee Meetings Going Forward
Chair Calabria stated, they have the onboarding first, and now they have the meetings. So
he guessed they needed a second motion. Chair Calabria stated, that was technically for the
onboarding, but the next item was for the meetings and so it's basically what he explained
earlier. He didn't know if he misrepresented, he didn't mean to jump from one topic to
another, but so he guessed they could entertain a second motion for that second item, the
item number 10 on the agenda. Corgan moved that they accept the proposal as proposed.
Manz seconded the motion. Chair Calabria called for any discussion. He didn't see any
hands raised. Chair Calabria called for the vote and it passed by a unanimous voice vote.
Chair Calabria invited any comment or any input from Buck or Bennett, Vice Chair
Carson. Rapf stated, he just wanted to say thank-you Chair Calabria, as a previous budget
committee member, he appreciates what he's doing, moving the budget committee forward,
and figuring out ways to bring more value to the city, as the citizen representatives know, as
stewards of the budget, so great job, way to be innovative and move forward he really
appreciates it, so good job. Chair Calabria thanked them.
11. Adjornment
The Budget Committee meeting was adjourned by Chair Calabria at 8:31.
Respectfully submitted,
Jennifer Waverly
Budget & Financial Analyst
APPROVED BY THE CITY BUDGET COMMITTEE: October 28, 2021
City of Lake Oswego Budget Committee Meeting
Minutes of May 13, 2021 Page 27 of 27