Madras meeting agrees to 90‑day pilot placing picnic tables near shelter to reduce street congregation

Local Madras officials and shelter staff used a community meeting to discuss cooling‑center hours, air‑quality measures for smoke events, ongoing small encampment activity and a pilot to place picnic tables near the shelter as a supervised social space.

Public‑health staff said the city had previously been asked to provide a room as a cooling center and noted uncertainty about consistent opening hours; one participant said the facility is "supposed to be from 7AM to 11PM, but I've heard that those hours aren't consistent." Emergency‑management/public‑health staff offered to bring an air scrubber used for smoke events to improve indoor air quality.

Code enforcement briefed the group on graffiti abatement and encampment activity and described repeated removals under local bridges. Shelter staff explained efforts to stabilize clients, to store belongings in lockers, and proposed placing a picnic table on shelter property to give people a place to sit rather than congregate in visible public spots.

Some members voiced concern that a designated spot could become a new campsite. A code‑enforcement participant said, "If you give them a designated spot to be … they will soon start to accumulate more than what they have on day 1." The group discussed mitigation steps—trash cans, time‑limited pilot and social policing by the majority of shelter users.

Participants agreed by informal consensus to pilot one or two picnic tables for 90 days and to remove them if the pilot led to an increase in camping or accumulating belongings. There was no formal vote recorded because a quorum was not present; the group asked shelter staff to report back at the end of the trial period.