Transcript
On February 18, 2025, the misspelling of Councilor Sally Brandsen’s name was corrected.
Mayor McKennon McDonald: I’m going to open it up to the Council for final discussion, are there any topics that you would like to bring before the Council this evening?
Councilor Sally Brandsen: I realize it’s 9:15 p.m., so I’m wondering if I should wait for my topic, but I also know that …
McDonald: I think since we have started, we have people here, let us know.
Brandsen: Yeah, so I’ve had an exacerbated amount of constituents contact me, I would say in the last 30 days, business owners downtown who are having an increased amount of challenges with the homeless population and the issues that are going on with their businesses at their doors downtown. And so in advocating for the community, I wanted to raise it to the Council to see if A, we should, I think we should have a deeper conversation about the challenges that we’re facing and then possibly create some sort of solution to move forward so that we can support our businesses. I also should say I empathize with the houselessness people but I also empathize with our business owners. I’ve heard stories of situations that they are going through and they’re quite, I don’t know, I think shocking. And we have a really big problem that I think we need to publicly talk about and get more people involved in the discussion. So, I don’t know if I should go further, Robb, do you want to say anything?
City Manager Robb Corbett: Yeah, so Councilor Brandsen and I spent some time on the phone today discussing this and I suggested that she bring it up and talk to you about this. I also asked Chief Byram to be here tonight in case you might have questions about [the issue] that he would be best qualified to answer, I know when she told me that there’s an elevated number of calls and notifications that she’s getting … when I called the Chief and asked him about being here tonight, because this might come up in conversation, one of the things I asked him was if he was seeing an uptick in calls … always wanting to know what’s happening in the community … and what he shared with me was that the only increase in activity that he’s seeing or we’re seeing out in the public is from … it’s just seasonal that when it’s cold out, there’s more interaction between the homeless and the public because people are looking to be warm, so they’re wanting to go into businesses. So from his perspective, I’m repeating to you what he told me, and so part of what I do is try to always keep a pulse on what’s happening in the community. I’m not seeing that, but obviously you guys might be and we always want to know what’s happening. I know Counselor Innes is frequently out in there and so I would, you know, obviously you might be seeing something that that I’m not seeing, or you might be seeing something that is consistent with what Counselor Brandsen is saying. One of the things that we talked about is solutions and what can we do and potentially what direction can we go in. And I would just reiterate [that] there’s efforts underway by the city to try and address this proactively as much as we can and we are advocating for resources to assist Neighbor 2 Neighbor to make a day-center available year-round so that the population has a place to go during the day. For obvious reasons, I think … the Chief has also added with the new positions on his department, he’s added a beat that focuses on the downtown and the walkway and I think he would tell you the reason that he put that position there was specifically to try and address this issue, to be there as a resource for the community, to help make sure that the impacts on the community are maybe not so impactful. I also know that part of his grant is to provide assistance with peer review or mental health providers that are there with them to interact with this population, to make sure that as much as possible, people that need help, there’s somebody there, a professional that is reaching out and interacting with them. I attend and have faithfully for some time, meetings locally to try to engage with the partners in the community around this topic, to try to find ways that we might engage in problem-solving. My personal opinion … there are groups that are meeting to try and solve this problem and address these problems … that are horrific … in some instances, we’ve all heard and maybe had firsthand experience of the impacts of this problem in our community. The city has been meeting and the City Attorney, the Chief and the former-Mayor … I think maybe even the Parks Director was involved in meetings, numerous meetings with a business group that was headed by the Blagg family, where they put together a coalition of concerned community members trying to find solutions for our community and there might be some feedback on there, what positive things might have come out of that and I know that the Chamber is also working on some solutions … they have a committee … but I think what they’re primarily looking at is addressing some of the symptoms of the [homeless] population in the downtown. For example, there are some issues with people going through the garbage cans and so the Chamber’s looking at implementing a new system of trash collection down there that makes it much harder for the population to go in and empty trash cans in search of cans and recyclables. So there’s those kinds of efforts underway but at the end of the day, you know, there is no easy solution. One of the things that that has been suggested is that we work towards solutions … which I would suggest that effort is underway in a couple of different areas and I’m certainly willing to talk to people about other ideas that they might have. I’m not sure, you know, [that] I feel fairly confident that we’re doing just about everything that we can short of putting together some kind of a shelter in place, similar to what has happened in Walla Walla. But that is an enormous cost and it is unsustainable. And I’m sure it probably has some kind of a positive impact but at the end of the day, I think what they would tell us or tell you if you talk to them at the Promise Inn is that there’s a lot of people that are homeless that are disruptive in the community that don’t want to live by rules. And so anybody that runs a shelter is going to require people to follow rules. I just don’t know that is a solution for us. We can talk about it but but I think, you know, when we start hearing that we have staffing shortages, you know, in police and fire, that funding comes out of the general fund. And I’m not you know, I know that Walla Walla put in upwards of $350,000 initial investment. And it was matched with maybe County money and other grants, which, you know, requires a team of people and a nonprofit stepped up and ran it. And there has to be sustainable funding. It is a big endeavor to run a shelter like that. And I just feel good about what we’re doing as much as we can in a situation that’s really not good. So I am not really confident that having having an open conversation with the public about what’s, you know, what we know again with another group, it makes me nervous because I feel like people would walk away disappointed.
Brandsen: I hear that. I also think that we can’t just stop there. I mean, I completely understand what you’re saying, but we are doing so much to advocate for small businesses and new businesses and to energize the downtown. And this issue, like, from my perspective, we need to look at it more from a macro lens, because if we have businesses that are having such huge issues where they’re having to invest a lot of money to put cameras, to turn off their their water outside, you know, their spigot or whatever, outside the building, the the amount of, like, issues that I won’t go into more details, we should, at some point, with all these stories … but there are so many layers to to the businesses thriving or not thriving … and this is a huge challenge that they’re facing. And I think as a city, we have an obligation when we say we’re advocating for, you know, all of these businesses and we’re advocating for them to go downtown and we’re advocating and we’re trying to revitalize; all these grants and all the things … but then these are the challenges that you face and that’s just that. I don’t feel like that’s the answer but … and I realize that the entire world is up against this, I don’t think we’re unique in it and I don’t think this is my swim lane so I don’t have any solutions … but I think convening everyone and talking about the realistic problem is an important first step. And to your point, no, I don’t … the shelter is not in our future … but when you have so many people calling and …
Councilor Carole Innes: How many is “so many?”
Brandsen: I’ve had four in the last week. And that’s not the month. And they’re business owners with a door who have traffic coming, who can’t go, like their employees can’t go to their car or people are banging on their door or like, real stories … that’s why I wanted to bring it up, because it was like, Okay, I have to … our job is to advocate for all. And, I know I just don’t feel like we should just say this is above our …
Innes: The one comment I would like to make is that not all of those people who caused those troubles are homeless. I wish we would take that out of our vocabulary. It is true that a lot of the homeless people who have nowhere to go, who are visible, get blamed for a lot of things. But not all people who do those things are homeless. And I think that is, that probably bothers me more than anything else. I mean, I’ve been doing Sunday dinner for homeless and needy for five years, five years this month. And we’re doing 120 people a week now. And we did the pit-count last week and the people who came through since the first of the year, I went through and counted how many of those people who were truly homeless and the group that comes to get Sunday dinner, there were maybe 40 who were homeless. Now, most of them look homeless, I mean, they’re not well dressed but they have a place to go and a lot of them are drug-addicted and mentally-ill and all that kind of thing and I’ve been in, like Robb, I’ve been in these meetings for five years, convening another meeting with a different group of people who haven’t come to any of those other meetings, I don’t know if that’s going to do anything to make it any different. Hermiston has the Stepping Stone shelter and that was about $1,000,000, Robb … that got Oregon Housing Community Service money, it got some federal money and it was over $900,000, you know, so it is a huge issue. But I am very sympathetic to business people about having customers who are not comfortable in coming, I get that and I and I don’t know what we do about it either. I don’t know, yeah, I don’t think there’s an answer. If people are breaking the law and somebody sees it, they need to call the police department. And if they don’t, then what do they expect to happen?
Brandsen: Have you ever convened a group of business owners together to have a conversation?
Corbett: The Chamber is doing that now.
Innes: There is one.
Corbett: The Chamber has a group of businesses. They have a committee made up of business owners.
Brandsen: Chamber members?
Corbett: Yeah, I don’t know the ratio of how many of them are or not. But I think one of the things that you said is [that] all the people that you’ve talked to have communicated with the police. So they are working with the police?
Innes: They did? Good. Yeah. I guess I that’s absolutely important.
Corbett: I think the hard part is just some, you know, we’re all just confronted with things that are just sometimes just shocking. Well, and it just doesn’t feel like it’s getting better sometimes. But again, what Chuck told me, Chief Byram told me was that there’s a seasonal element to this right now so …
McDonald: I think I want to give Chief Byram an opportunity if there’s anything that you want to add to the conversation that Robb hasn’t already shared since you did sit here through two and a half, three hours of the meeting.
Innes: No, we do want to hear what you have to say.
Pendleton Police Chief Charles Byram: Mayor, City Council, Chuck Byram, Chief of Police. Councilor Brandsen, you are 100% correct, 100% correct, in what’s going on in the downtown corridor. But the reality of the situation versus the perception of the situation is where we are diametrically at odds with our population versus what we know, meaning the actual crime versus the fear of crime. The numbers, the numbers don’t encapsulate individuals fears of what they’re seeing on the nightly-news, of what they’re catching on Facebook, of what they’re seeing at the macro level and not the micro level. It’s reinforced at the micro level when they see somebody banging on the door, when they see somebody who has defecated in their doorway, when they know that when they step outside, they are now vulnerable because they are a female at dark at six o’clock at night and they know at Brownfield Park, there’s at least three or four shady looking dudes standing there and “I don’t want to be the next rape victim.” That’s the reality of the situation. That’s the fear of crime we deal with every day. The numbers show [that] last year, zero homicides in the City of Pendleton, zero stranger rapes in the City of Pendleton. So it’s trying to balance that, in running from a macro level to a micro level, this problem isn’t going to be solved at the micro level as we all know, it is a macro problem started at the state level some 40 years ago, with the decentralization of our mental health system and not identifying addiction as part of a mental health disease at that time, when we all know that it is now. And so now, it’s like Groundhog Day all over again … 2020, we are taking the police out of the mental health business! Great, I don’t want to be in [it]. I don’t. We took 28,000 calls for service last year that resulted in 1,600 arrests, so what are the other calls for service that we’re doing? We are addressing the fear of crime or we are addressing family [or] neighborhood disputes. We’re doing a lot of the stuff that other people could be doing. But at the same time, what we’re finding out now is those people that say “yeah, the cops need to be out of that business, we need to send social-workers in there.” Well, guess who doesn’t want to go in there because they get yelled and assaulted all the time? It’s the social-workers themselves. They were the ones that, I’ve seen social-workers get up and say, I’m going to be the first one to go do that. No, it’s like, “can I take a cop with me?” Because we want to feel safe. So you’re you are never going to separate law enforcement from social [services], not going to happen. So now it’s Groundhog Day all over again. We couldn’t solve the problem in 2020 by decriminalization and a decentralized system where we’re throwing billions of dollars out there to all these different entities that want the money, but don’t want to communicate with everybody else to actually solve a problem. So if we’re going to do this, [if] we’re going to build a centralized system, [it] has to start at the state level or federal level, make one pot of money, make one set of goals and then push it out to the cities and give them the funding in which to do that. And don’t tear down the buildings that we already have, Blue Mountain Recovery, which was perfectly good in our area and allowed us to do the things that we needed to do. I’m tired of it and I’m tired of talking in circles about it. I’m frustrated, because again, it’s now falling back on us. We’re not arresting our way out, if we could, we would have done it a long time ago in our small little town, we would have put the people that needed to go to jail, in jail and that would save them … but also what we’re not talking about is, we’re also not talking about the sentences these individuals receive, we’re not talking about the judicial procedures that these individuals are receiving when they do it. If so, then why do I have people that have over 100 arrests that are still sitting out in our community right now? It’s not the police’s fault, it’s not our community’s fault … they’re calling us, we’re going and doing our job. What’s happening on the back end? Where’s the accountability? So [if] there’s no accountability, how are we changing behaviors? But there’s no treatment centers, how are we dealing with addiction? If we can’t keep people in the mental health [programs], how are we treating them? You have a confluence of all three of those right there. People want to talk about the root cause of all this. There it is. It’s not lack of affordable housing because how do you afford zero dollars? Because that’s what these people are complaining about.
Corbett: Thank you, Chief.
McDonald: Very quick. So one thing I will add and Robb, you can correct me if I’m wrong, in the last week, we’ve had, Robb and I had the opportunity to travel to Salem. We were advocating on behalf of this. One piece that came out of that for me is conversations with other local communities. I was asked by Mayor Primmer in Hermiston to attend a meeting with him to be able to talk about what they’re doing there, to just kind of hear that perspective, I know you were already doing this and Robb is as well, but I think it’s a new kind of a new perspective with that, I know that conversations have been started with city staff or continuing with the county, around the jails and really emphasizing that piece of that, so there are a few things that are happening. I was also asked yesterday by the Chamber president and the PDA president to meet with them to talk about the priorities that they have. I know it’s not going to fix the solution or have an answer right away, but we are also in the process of starting a strategic planning process as the City Council and I think that this will be an important conversation as we go forward because that will set the course for the Council and I feel like it needs to be an important conversation if it’s something that rises to the top with that however it is. My final thing I will just say is, I talked to Councilor Brandsen about this and I think a lot of it comes back to what is legally allowable and the restrictions that we have and how do we kind of work within that framework, oftentimes solutions that at least have been presented to me would probably not pass the muster of Nancy saying that they are legally allowable. So I think [that] us having those conversations and I did also mention that there are some communities right now that have gotten a lot of publicity around this topic and they are yet again in litigation for what they’ve been doing within the State of Oregon. So do I think that’s, you know, correct? I’m not going to, you know, make a claim either way, but I think that we can also learn from what other communities are doing and how to, you know, connect those resources. But thank you for staying and sharing your thoughts.
Innes: And tomorrow there is another hearing to review what’s happened to Measure 110. I’ll be on that Zoom call and they’re going to talk about the deflection program and I will be on mute because I will not be …
Byram: When you have zero people in the program. Oh, we have one now?
McDonald: But what I will say, Council Brandsen, I think it’s important and things like this, especially for our new counselors, if there are things that come up that you want to talk about, I think it’s important for those conversations to get started. And I would imagine Robb’s hearing loud and clear that it’s a concern, you know, of the Council and we can revisit the topic.
Corbett: Well, now I have another concern because I just found out that the deflection programs are not working the way it was supposed to work. I mean, that’s the frustration about it is we put, you know, what comes down from Salem is supposed to help the problem.
Innes: We have to decide at the county level … Salem …
Byram: That definitely did not come from Salem. It came from a group of us that was put together and we put Mark Royal in charge of that, who has dedicated his life to this and he is trying to do the best he can but what we wanted to do is get people in the program but we put too many restrictions on the people that were going to go into the program. So, if we go out and arrest somebody, basically we just had to arrest them for the new crime of being in possession of drugs. Very rarely does that ever happen. We find somebody that’s committed another crime or has warrants and they have drugs on their person, but that’s an automatic disqualifier for our programs. So, how are we going to get anybody in said program? We have to be able to understand that the people that we are going to be dealing with are going to have crimes under their fingernails and it’s a matter of figuring out which ones we’re going to be able to accept and we’re not there.
McDonald: Chief Byram, I have a question for you. With the deflection programs, is there a process of review or where you can submit adjustments or changes like this as you’re learning?
Byram: Yes, there is, because we’re building this from the ground up and we wanted to start small, but I think we started shooting small. And again, this was a collaborative effort from mental health, addiction treatment services, County Corrections, the DA’s Office, all of us sat around in the room, me and Jason Evans and Sheriff Rowan, for the big three entities in this county. So, it’s seeing that and objecting to it, but understanding that we wanted to start small, we knew we were going to have to expand that scope and being one of the authors of this, or being one of the ones that had a say in it, I can be critical and say, yeah, it’s an abject failure right now, we need to broaden the people that we let in and then go from there, at least get a few within the program, but again, do I think the long run is going to be sustainable? No, just based on what I know about human nature, what people were dealing with for 25 years. I mean, I have my experience, my training, but we’ll see.
Corbett: Councilor Thomas, do you have a question?
Councilor John Thomas: Yes, I just wanted to speak to that, Chief, you’re basically in a no-win situation. I mean, Salem has been really keen on, over decades, sending down mandates to the communities without the funding behind them, or they hamstring the rules just in a big old knot, I mean, I was part of the early implementation of Measure 110 until I realized what a cluster that was going to be and I got out of there, but it was like you were saying, that you would approach these people with addiction problems, but if they had a mental health problem, they’re out because that goes to mental health. Well, mental health is woefully unfunded. When we’re below Alabama on mental health status in this country, it’s pretty embarrassing. Now I’m working on, with the Youth Authority, looking at bills coming out of Salem, that they’re looking at coming out of the [20]25 legislature, finding new ways to add charges to people, finding new ways to criminalize behavior, but doing nothing for intervention, doing nothing for recovery, it’s maddening.
Innes: You’re young, you’re 18, [you] can’t be in a state hospital.
Thomas: Yes. Or my favorite one that I’m looking at right now that, God, I hope it doesn’t land, because I deal with sex-offenses, one of the ones I’m reviewing is that they’re looking at, if you’re a child, a youth, a child who exhibits problematic sexual behaviors, you can get bounced from public education until you’re 18. What are they going to do with those kids? What are they going to, how are they going to give them [an] education? How are they going to make them functional members of society? No, we’re going to make some more homeless people and criminalize that.
Innes: Uneducated homeless people.
Thomas: Uneducated homeless people. We’re adding more, we’re adding just layers and layers of new sex-offenses that you’re going to have to enforce and that there’s no treatment for it because the State doesn’t want to pay for it.
McDonald: One thing I’m taking away from this conversation is that we have a lot of people that are watching things very closely and that have perspectives and things to share that I think that when we, when we have further conversation on this, that I think it will be a good, good perspective to be able to have.
Thomas: Let me bring this back to the solution, the only solution I think we have is involving the nonprofits, the Neighbors 2 Neighbors, things like that, the people who could get out and work around the structural deficiencies and get needs met. But now they’re adding new challenges of whether or not they’re going to get grant-funded.
Byram: Well, I’ll push back on that just a little bit with a caveat, is that with all these nonprofit organizations propping up shop now, because of all this money out there, they don’t want to work with each other because they’re fighting for the same dollar. It’s now becoming its own market and so that’s why I say decentralized. We need to decentralize something like that, throw a billion dollars at it … wolves can show up with good intentions, so they say.
McDonald: So I think that this warrants further conversation. I don’t think that it’ll be obviously an action before the Council, but maybe in a future work session and kind of as we move into the strategic planning process, it would be important. But I know Sally, as you know, if there’s immediate concerns that people are having the person for them to contact would be Robb and we can figure out, with the system of how to navigate that piece. I know that that doesn’t immediately fix the solution that people downtown are facing and I know that they need to be heard and have that process.
Brandsen: Yeah, and I don’t want it to be like a stop-gap. That’s why I feel like it’s happening, is that there’s communication that it’s just like, you know, because that’s how we all feel and that is the reality, like there are things that we literally can’t control but what I heard over and over again is what are we doing locally and what can we do locally not to get us in hot water, but are there creative, like there are more people in this room that have really great brains.
McDonald: So I’m wondering too, if there’s a way, because we do have turnover with the Council, we have new people here. I don’t want to, you know, spend an entire meeting on it, but would there potentially be a future work session where we could talk about what efforts are underway and what’s being done around this area? If, because it is a work session, if the community wants to attend that piece, you know, that would be there but I think that it would be good for us to be able to talk about what is happening right now in that space, just to be able to share that as well.
Corbett: That’s a good idea.
McDonald: So maybe that’s a more immediate, immediate response and then we can see from that kind of what direction the Council wants to go.
[The discussion did not transcribe from this point onward]