City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming out tonight. I really appreciate you taking your time off. My name is Douglas Orr. I'm the mayor. And today is Wednesday, June 10th at 20, June 10th, 2026 at 630. And I'd like to call this meeting to order. Finance Director Williamson. Can we get the roll call, please?

Francie?

Here.

Gaiken? Here. Hodgkin? Hubbard?

Here.

Moynihan? Nipper?

Here.

Fredo? Radjic?

Here.

Shaw? Here. Swore?

Here.

Taylor?

Here.

Wilson?

Here.

Orr?

Here. Moynihan, just Gaiken.

Oh.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor.

Yes.

Motion to excuse council members. Second.

First and second. All in favor.

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. Thank you. Okay. I pledge allegiance if you'd like to stand for the closing.

I just to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you for the motion to approve tonight's agenda second and second by council person never any discussion. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. Thank you. Okay, that passes. Okay, we're going to go into public comments now, so it'll be three minutes since and start off with your name and your ward or your city. And then be kind if you can and go ahead.

Anne Wilson, program also president of history 952. And I note that on the agenda tonight, the Council will be voting on authorizing the mayor to sign a volunteer services agreement with us. And I just want you to do that. This is an important step in the revival of Aberdeen's Museum of History and we're glad to be partnering with the city in this important work. So thank you for your support.

Thank you. Any other public comments?

Seeing none, we'll move on. Okay, come on up.

Thank you. My name is Valerie Pinson with the Baldrige administration. Just to let you guys know that we're still here. If anyone that was actually impacted by this last storm that happened December 12th on the 15th and 19th actually, And the deadline period for economic injury, so the business owners, is January 7, 2017. We offer business disaster loans. That's basically replace damaged property, economic injury loans, working capital loans to help small businesses. And the credit requirements are you need to have a decent credit history and the ability to repay. The interest rate for the business loans are 4% and non-profits at $3.65.

And the cap on the loans are $2 million. Thank you.

I just wanted to say hi. I'm Stephanie Reese from the Timberland Regional Library. I'm replacing Eddie Houle as the regional manager here. So I wanted to introduce myself and say hello. I was the manager for the Aberdeen Library for, I was with the Aberdeen Library from 2013 to 2022. So I'm returning to that. And I wanted to say thank you for supporting the Aberdeen remodel. And thank you to all the members. So, I'll be here more often. Thank you, Stephanie.

Any other public comments?

Okay, we'll close public comments and go on to the consent agenda with Council President Smart.

Motion to approve tonight's. Sorry. I was just waiting for her to turn on my microphone. Motion to approve tonight's consensus agenda, which includes minutes from the May 27th meeting, accounts payable and payroll.

Second. There's been a motion by Council President Spohr and seconded by Councilperson Brantley to approve minutes and accounts payable.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? I'm sorry, I left out the comment section, but did anybody have anything to say about it? Okay, sorry. Okay, so I just have this really small report today. I read in the paper the other day in September of last year, GoBankingRates named having the number five on its list of America's top 30 hidden gem housing markets in 2025. And I think I mentioned this before, but I don't think I mentioned that that's a pretty big thing. It says this market offers lower home prices than the state averages, manageable mortgage costs, solid medium incomes, along with a strong livability rating. I just, and then on the same note, wanted to point out that there was a recent housing summit here in Grays Harbor, and there's NeighborWorks of Grays Harbor has 16 lots in South Aberdeen, and there's a study underway to see if it's suitable to create a neighborhood with 12 to 16 modular homes. The new neighborhood would include green spaces or a park. They don't know yet whether the houses will be sold or rented out, but if they're rented, they'd probably be managed by somebody like CAP and would offer us more than low income housing in our neighbors, in our community. And the study of the results will be announced in September, but it's a great thing to have more housing, especially more affordable housing for our workforce. And that was my public or my comment. Are there any council reports?

All right, this past week, I had the opportunity to attend Harbor High's graduation and celebrate the hard work and achievements of the students. I also graduated this past week and was fortunate to be surrounded by many supportive people. As we continue to discuss youth engagement, youth involvement, and making young people feel included in our community, I believe it's important that we show up for the milestones that matter most to them. Graduation is one of those moments many students will soon become active voters and community members whose voices will shape our future. Supporting them, whether by attending ceremonies, recognizing their accomplishments, or simply just sharing a message congratulating them can make a meaningful difference. But yeah, I didn't see any council member but council member nipper there. So don't say you support the youth and want and want to make them feel included, but don't show up on a day they work so hard for. Also, today was the last day for students in Aberdeen School District. As summer begins, I want to highlight the district's free lunch program, which will run from June 15th to August 28th, 1130 a.m. to 1230. at Finch Playfield, North End Park, Peterson Park, Garley Park, Cosmopolis Lions Club, Robert Gray Elementary, Stevens Elementary, and Central Park. Summer school also begins on June 15th, and I'm looking forward to checking in with the students and learning about their experiences through the summer school program. More information can be found on the Aberdeen School District's website. And also, the Aberdeen High School cheer team will be hosting a bake sale and garage sale in the AHS Commons. June 13th from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the 14th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. If you would like to donate anything, please show up to the high school June 12th from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., and then that's all. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilperson Grancy.

I just wanted to mention I took part, I moved my daughter, and I took part in the cleanup of the Chehalis River Stewardship Group over at the book launch. I only found one search area. It's good to see other people cleaning up their watershed.

Yeah, they're a great group.

That's all I got.

Council President Swart.

I just wanted to take this time to point out that the Economic Development Advisory Committee has three open positions for community members or stakeholders. Letters of interest should be sent to Administrator Clemmons. Her email is rclemmons at everywa.gov.

Thank you. Any other council reports? Okay, we'll move on to the staff report with Administrator Clements.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'm going to share my screen. I was asked by Council President Swarr to share

information on the coordination meeting that took place between the city and the city and our community resource groups. This meeting was hosted on May 8th and this was around the idea of coordination and better coordination, not only departmentally with the city, but also to see what we can do with these resource groups that are around the community, the goals of the meeting were to learn about each organization and their missions. One of the things that we recognize is that each organization that serves different populations here in Aberdeen have different missions. So we wanted to kind of understand where our common goals could be or where our missions might intersect. Another goal was to ensure the community's experience to ensure that the community's experience is effectively conveyed. That was one of the harder topics to face with the group, but we were able to get through it very respectfully. We also wanted to clearly identify what issues we were trying to solve together. We didn't know if the issue we were trying to solve together was homelessness or if it was substance use disorder or untreated mental health issues. We think we know what the problem is, but we wanted to really narrow it down to what we were exactly trying to like, what the problem actually was. And then we also another goal was to determine if coordination was a viable option for our organizations. Coordination seems to be the choice for a lot of cities around the nation. And I wanted to see if that was an option for all of our groups and to do something scalable to our city. WHICH ORGANIZATIONS PARTICIPATED, CAP, WHICH IS COASTAL COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM, DESTINATION HOPE AND RECOVERY, DSHS, FAMILY PROMISE, THE COUNTY PUBLIC HEALTH, FIRELANDS, THE SCHOOL DISTRICT WAS ALSO PRESENT. WE HAD TWO POLICE OFFICERS PRESENT AS WELL. AND THEN, I'M SORRY, I FORGOT THE FIRE DEPARTMENT WAS THERE. And code enforcement. I'm sorry. I do care about your department. I promise. And then we also had a couple city council representatives and Mayor Orr. Others who were invited but did not attend were the Union Gospel Mission, Connaught Wellness Center, Catholic Community Services, CIHS, Columbia Wellness, Elena Moore, United Way of Grace Harbor, Grace Harbor College, Chaplains on the Harbor, and Lamar Wright Group. So hopefully maybe in the next round we'll be able to show them the success from this meeting and they will be more willing to join in on the conversation. I think sometimes people get nervous about attending these types of conversations with like they might think that they'll be contentious or You know that they won't be there won't be like a constructive conversation happening, which there absolutely was who makes up. And so questions that we closed of these groups is who makes up the populations you serve. So we needed to really clarify and have clear definitions of what the problem was. I had stated that earlier. And then we kind of identified the groups that are like very difficult to work with. And I think that's what we had narrowed down what the issue was for all of our groups and how do we help these more difficult populations. Um, what are their needs? We wanted to better understand how are they helping these people? What what do they need from their organizations? What are the gaps? Not only in our systems with the city, but also in their own system, they identify that housing is a really big gap, not just low income housing, because it would be very difficult to take a person that is actively in addiction and. living experiencing homelessness take to take that person and to put them in a brand new apartment. So they recognize one of the things that was discussed was that there's this missing piece of transition housing that like tiny home villages or some something that would allow a person to transition to stabilization. And we also wanted to know why people sign up for the programs within our organization. So what is happening with them that they would need to sign up for these types of these services. A big focus was the community experience. What are the people of Aberdeen experiencing when it comes to the clients? One of the things that was said was that homeless people are moving to Aberdeen specifically to receive these services. And if these services didn't exist in Aberdeen, we wouldn't have homeless people. That's why cities like Monticello and Hoquiam and Ocean Shores don't have the homeless issue that we have. And so that was brought to the table and discussed at length. we discussed how the community feels unsafe and how people, and we relayed that from prior surveys that we conducted, how people feel unsafe at night downtown. And so that, again, that question, does the presence of these services fuel the growing population of homeless people, people with substance use disorder, people with untreated mental health conditions. And so, and then also, and then lastly, again, we discussed that at length and Council Member Hodgkin was a huge proponent of that. She really drilled that home with them. And I think that having all of the different perspectives at the table really helped the groups understand the community experience, but we understood the mission of these different groups as well. And then I think there were some realities that we had to face. When talking with the representative from DSHS, I asked her, like, approximately how many people, you know, like, where are the majority of their clients from? She said Aberdeen. She said we have thousands upon thousands of people who use some sort of state subsidy or some sort of state assistance who live in Aberdeen. We also have the highest concentration of... Re-entry housing, which is like that pipeline from prison to re-enter into society. We also have the highest concentration of that type of housing here in Aberdeen. So I think that there are some realities that we also have to accept when we're When we're like, having this discussion with these groups of like, what the demographic and what the population makeup is of our and I think we also see that with things like our EMS rate. So, those are the types of realities. I think we, as a group also, as we're trying to address this issue that we need to accept as well. So, the big question was, is coordination right for our team. Right now, this is the way that the current response model looks. We have placed our police officers in a very difficult position in playing social worker, something that they're not trained for that puts the city at liability and that we don't provide any training and we don't send them the training to address this issue. So a complaint comes in, the city responds, it's a temporary solution. And that maybe depending on the time, if it's late at night, we're not going to be able to get to reach out to the HR to assist us. So the police officer has to kind of use the best solutions that they, you know, the best tools that they have to solve the issue. And that same goes with the fire department. If someone's having a mental health crisis, our fire department is not equipped to solve that issue. So this is what our current internal response model looks like. So one of the things that we did to kind of determine if co-response or coordination is right is we did a group exercise where we broke into groups and I didn't really allow people representing the same groups to sit at the same table. I wanted different perspectives at the table. And I gave them a problem. I gave them about different problems, each table a different problem to solve. As you can see, a 35-year-old homeless male wants to go to treatment. He sleeps on DOT property. He has a pet, unemployed. He's waiting for housing. But he can't go to treatment. And he wants to go to treatment, but he can't go because he wants to take his pet. I know that sounds very trivial, but those are the types of things that homeless people have to face. They have these pets that have protected them because being homeless can be very It comes with a lot of risk being homeless. They are subjected to a lot of crime and things like that. So they have these animals that support them through that time. We have unmarried couples that want to go to treatment together, but they can't. These are actual problems that our police officers are having to solve and our code enforcement officer are having to solve. But they can't go together. And so how do we solve that issue? 24 year old male is violent. You know, how do, how do we, how do we get the help. For this particular person, 30 people at the last part, collecting the open openly used illegal drugs. That's a real issue that we face last year. We have solved that issue with the mobile surveillance unit that's located there. And then again, 60 year old male, the defecation issue that we have downtown, how do we solve that issue? So we gave these problems to these groups and I think they did an excellent job working through them. And at the end of the exercise, coordination was definitely the answer. They figured out a way to make coordination work. This is how it will work. So I think what resulted out of this, and this is the groups working through these problems. I think that the key takeaways were for this is that we decided to apply for a grant through the Association of Washington Cities in the amount of $200,000. We decided to partner and to create a program called Aberdeen Cares Team Act, and it's an alternative response team that we are going to put together. And CAP, our partner in this, believe that they also have some funding that they can contribute to this. But once we find out whether or not we get approved for it, we'll move on to the next phase, which will also include training our staff on how to respond. Um, and, uh, ensure and possibly hiring people cap, we'll have to hire 2 more people and then we'll also be able to kind of determine what we need on the cities. And as far as that co response goes. Hopefully this program will reduce arrest custody time and recidivism. Increase access to non emergency behavioral health services. So, hopefully, you know, hopefully there's something there either with the hospital or the wellness center, or, you know, we can figure out or Columbia wellness. We'll just have to figure out where those partnerships exist. Reduce the use of emergency services and increase resiliency, stability, and well-being. So again, we'll follow up once we find out. We're all in agreement. We want to meet again. But the next time I want to have a really, I'll be able to create and want to figure out what curriculum could look like moving forward as well. We want to launch something by October. Transition housing still remains an issue. And again, I think that the question that we're asking, because we are seeing, we have seen a significant decline in the number of actual street homeless people, I think is the question, the group questioned if the issue is more of a substance use disorder. So are we going to use this group to not only address homelessness, but to also interrupt illegal activity that's occurring in our streets? So like, how can we, it might be like, we will have it on paper one way of how we plan to use this program, but it might like evolve into something else as we really dive in to find out what the actual needs of the city are. So I just wanted to give you that update and see if you have any questions.

I'd say thank you for the productive direction for the city.

Thank you.

Yes. Do we know if anyone is bilingual so that if we have Spanish speaking or some need sign language or any kind of information?

We have one officer who is bilingual, a police officer who's bilingual. That's not helpful in the fact that, like, people will have to be on shift. Code enforcement has someone who speaks Spanish as well. Sign language. I don't know. Yeah, fire department.

Fire department. Fire department does.

Thank you.

Yeah. Any more questions? So, at the next meeting, I will be out for 2 weeks and at the next meeting, which is the 24th, I will not be present, but we will be bringing something forward to, to address some of the activity that happens in the alleys. It's a ordinance that was modeled after the city of Bellingham. We met with their assistant city manager who walked us through. this program or this ordinance that this code that they created, and it was something that they had used from, I guess Seattle has something similar to this. So we will bring it to you the next meeting. So it's running, it's going through the legal, it's going through the legal team right now. So. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. And we'll move on to director's reports. Do we have any directors wishing to make a report?

I just have a quick report. I just want to let the Council know that our annual financial report for 2025 was filed with the State Auditor's Office on May 24th, and we will be having our audit, our yearly audit will be in August. So that will be an accountability, financial, and a federal expenditures audit. Just a little update.

Thanks. All right, we'll go on to presentations now. We have an annual update for the Port of Grace Harbor.

Thank you for having us. Hard to believe it's that from you again, but here we are giving our annual update or annual outreach. I want to introduce Commissioner Tom Quick. Thank you. And of course our executive director who likes to play Vanna, Leonard Barnes. So with that, I think most all of you, a lot of familiar faces up here are pretty familiar with our annual spiel. So I'm going to try to be brief and just kind of touch on the highlights since I was here last year. But if I don't cover something you want to hear about, please feel free to ask away. Next slide. So just a quick review. Ports were formed in the state of Washington in 1911 with the passage of the Port Act. The airport of Grace Harbor is the second oldest port district in the state. We are actually celebrating our 115th year this December.

So keep your eye out for some fun events around that time of year.

As a reminder, the port is governed by three port commissioners who are elected by the voters of Grace Harbor County. We are a county-wide port district. Those three gentlemen are on the left, Bill Papik, representing the first district. In the center, and with us, of course, tonight, is Tom Greig, representing the second district. And on the right, Commissioner Sam Finnick, representing the third district. They serve six-year terms. One of them is up for reelection every two years. So Commissioner Finnick is wrapping up his fourth term next year. All completed his fourth term. Next slide. Just a quick reminder of our mission. I know not everybody cares about mission statements like we do, but in essence, those three golden terms are what I ask you to remember. So the three things the port does are international trade. So all of the awesome things coming and going across the docks, all that seafood going out to many, many countries from Westport. There's some really cool things that are made right here in Grace Harbor that go all over the world, international trade. The one thing ports are the most important term up there. The one thing every single port district of which there are 75 is charged with in RCWs of the state, of course, is economic development. So looking to bring jobs and business opportunities to our communities, no matter what that looks like. So if you're the Port of Pend Oreille, you know, maybe a couple thousand people, Port of Seattle has over a million people in their port district or a rural county port by district like us. That's what we're all striving to do. And of course, tourism. We offer several opportunities for tourism throughout the county and support efforts by others. I think next slide is our business model. Yes. All right. So just a reminder of what our business model is. We, as your public port, our public infrastructure. So all of our docks, our rail, our roads, we use that to bring in private investment, which we feel like you've done a pretty darn good job. And for sure, at the marine terminals, we're approaching how we an $800 million mark, maybe even a little north of that. We think it's worked very well, creates jobs and opportunities for our community. We apply that same model out of Westport, as well as the SACS at Business Park, and we will continue to do so.

Next one.

Sorry, I'm trying.

There we go. Just to get our seven lines of business, I will briefly walk through each one of them. How we fulfill our mission, of course, is through these 7 lines of business or 7 ways that the work generates revenue.

I'll be a small.

Should we want to? Yeah, it's about an effort 5,000 foot jet capable runway out West Oakland as I'm sure everybody knows. Life Flight is going on, just starting to be operating out there. That is a peak at their hangar that they opened up in October. So more investment out at the airport, and they also extended their lease to be a long-term partner here in Grace Harbor. We, hopefully later this year, will be starting a project to replace the fuel tanks out at Bowerman. So they are currently underground, and we'll be replacing them with above ground tanks. So that'll be another big project. that comes on the heels of several years of big projects out about. We think that the airport is a pretty big asset for the community in the long run.

you know, use hammers and to the engineer, Nick Bird.

Alrighty, well, let me first start by apologizing. I didn't realize there was going to be three presentations. I will try to move through this as fast as possible. You got 10 minutes. 10 minutes. The clock is counting. All right. So hopefully, We can see the screen looks like we are going to go. So again, thank you guys for having me here today. Again, my name is Nick Berto, City Engineer. Back in February, we talked about the various different capital projects that we had going on. This is intended to be an update. I wish I had great news and could say everything was on time and on budget. Maybe I'm just rubbing that one in. But I can't. That's not the nature of the piece that we did. So, what I've actually handed out to all of the council members is a bigger version so that you can actually read it to the audience. I do apologize. Just sort of a capital process that they're facilitating right now. There are 41 items on this list. Fortunately, none has been deleted. But what you'll note on this list, and again, it's very, very hard to see on the screens here, but there's a number of red arrows. There's actually, I believe, 20 red arrows. And every one of those red arrows means that something has slipped. Something has caused the schedule to slide. And that could be, you know, you look at item number three, the FRA, rail crossing elimination and improvement study. We had 10 posts that start that back with W, advertised for, you know, consultant services. You know, I was told, well, we'll get to the grants agreement. Well, I had to wait for three months. The great news is that hit my inbox earlier this week. So that one will be in front of you guys here shortly. And then we need to close the gap on the consulting services, which we're meeting on tomorrow. So part of the challenge is that I think when you look at this list, and again, part of the representation is that the North Shore levy is just one of these single lines. The rail separation is just one of these single lines. And part of what I don't know if everybody truly understands is the amount of effort that goes into doing something like the North Shore levee or even just a normal sidewalk project like the US 101 safety improvement project on the south side out the door. So part of what we'll try to do is I'll talk about those here in a little bit. But one of the things that I wanted to identify is common things that often affect schedules. So there are a number of resource constraints that can come into play. You've got time, money, staffing, expertise, other competing priorities. Those are sorts of things that do cause people to kind of engage and bounce back and forth, and that does translate to, many times, delays. There are external factors that do come into play. You've got, as we just heard about, the permit challenge that has delayed that project. that's something that the developer had no control over. It was an external factor that affected their activity and their ability to move forward. Scope growth, which is adding new things to the project. When you add new things to the project, that changes what you were previously permitted to do, or it changes the amount of money that you're going to need to spend and you're going to need to go chase the money. So that also creates a form of impact. There's sinking delays, planning and estimating errors, unforeseen conditions. When you open up the roadway and you have no idea what's underneath. For example, if we were out there today talking about the West Coast River rehab and it was, you know, Bridge Harbor PD and a number of city staff that are out there, Bridge Harbor PD intends to relocate a power line. Well, in doing that, there's, you know, underground utilities that they could end up accidentally hitting, and that causes a delay during the project, because now the underground utility wouldn't be repaired. So all of these things kind of add up. And the funny thing is that in the real world, everybody deals with this. So I was trying to think of a good way of explaining this to the group. And I've never been on this traffic jam like this. This photo on the left is Currently, some gates in China where it takes a lot of lanes and tunnels down. But the concept of a traffic change is one that continues to come to mind when I look at that schedule. At the end of the day, when you take a number of lanes and you neck them down to one or two lanes, there's going to be a traffic jam. It's a function of how many cars you're trying to get through that area. And honestly, that's part of what we're dealing with today. when you compare it to what's happening in in real life um you can compare a capital project to you know just getting to an eight o'clock appointment uh you know finding your pieces gathering the project data something can happen if you misplace i'm the type of person i put my keys in the exact same spot every single time but when i don't well yeah i'll have bracelets because i don't know where they're at uh because they're always in that same spot so There are delays that can happen in every little fraction of our life. When we're trying to get to that AFL appointment, if there's a traffic change, or we didn't anticipate, or we didn't know how to get there, those are things that do create those delays. So all I'm trying to do is create kind of a real-world tie to part of what we're experiencing. So previously, back in February, I identified the top projects that were driving 2026. We identified them by budget, and we identified them by effort. And you'll see here, the thermic pump station is now aligned through it and it is wet. So that project, unfortunately, we have the material inbound. We have the contractor under contract. We were ready to go actually starting on Monday. And at the end of the day, the permitting components of installing a fish screen was not identified in the contract plans. And so Fish and Wildlife would not issue us an HPA or a hydraulic project approval. So at that point in time, we either, A, had to scramble and throw fish screens in the project, which means we need more money, or B, we need to demonstrate that the ditch there on the south side of the water drum doesn't have fish in the ditch. So that translates to a impact. So we are going to have to spend time, money, resources to solve that problem, one way or the other. But what we do know right now is that we're not going to advance the construction, taking that pump station off or out of service, knowing that we didn't have a real strong and solid gate plan. The huge proponent would plan to work with the plan, and when the plan goes sideways, it sometimes started to take a step back, take a deep breath, figure out what the path is forward. So the Farragut Pump Station will not be going to construction this summer. Our expectation is that we're going to have everything solved this summer so that we can start construction and management of next year. The top four projects by effort, those are the three projects we are continuing to advance as a purchasing plan. The top four projects by effort, you'll see that Pioneer 3 is an orange color. Pioneer 3, if you don't recall, that's the new turf field over at Pioneer. We shortened it to try to get on the slide. That project, we hired a consultant to facilitate the cultural resource investigation that was required by the granting agency. The cultural resource consultant was hired in December, and we were not able to get the cultural resource report from them until the end of May. Then we go ahead and submit that to the. Uh, recreational conservation office, they've got a person tuned out. There's got to be consultation. I just lost 90 days, so 90 days from June. 1 puts us at September 1. Where there are balances, and so diving into opening that field up, trying to get the drainage in. There's a question mark now, if they're able to deliver that project a little bit sooner. or deliver the cultural resource determination sooner, great, we can dive into it. So right now, it's an orange. It's not a red or the red line yet. One of the things that I think I really wanted to convey, though, was our level of effort. And so when you talk about the team that we have, the engineering team, and what I'm showing here on this chart is our engineering team support by project. So these are the bigger project activities. So on the left, I've got the 2025 level of effort. So on Sumner Avenue, our team spent 700 hours managing that project, dealing with the problems that came up, processing all the paperwork, and then stepping in when the consultant wasn't executing the way that we needed them to. We spent 628 hours on the treatment plant. We spent 385 hours assisting on Market Street, designing and providing assistance on construction there, 380 hours on the systemic pedestrian improvements on First Street. I'm telling you these from a comparison standpoint, it is May in 2006, and we're already at 944 hours on the US 1-1. Part of the challenges is that we were so disenchanted by the consultant services that we saw on Sumner Avenue and the systemic And we said, we have to make formalize this work. So our team members are out there working on the project. So we have, I'll get to it in a minute, but we've got a full-time inspector out there on site. From a comparative standpoint, we had a full-time inspector from a consultant on summer. They're a full-time consultant on systemic. And we had a full-time project manager on both those two projects. We spent, I think under contract, $300,000 to $400,000 between those two and spent over 1,000 hours on them. And so when you're talking about spending that sort of money to get the level of service that we got, we said we can't do that again. Thus, we made the decision to advance with internalizing this work. So what I'm seeing with the U.S. Rental Safety Improvement Project, we are going to probably close to 2,000 hours this year is my expectation. But in cresting those 2,000 hours, the reality is that we're going to be saving a couple hundred thousand dollars associated with this. So you take the good with the bad, I guess. I included this schedule and phase distribution because I talked about it back in February. My intent wasn't really to dive into it. I just wanted you to have it from a comparative standpoint. But I do have some fun stuff. I've got some photographs so that you can see, you know, the neat things that the teams are out doing. These are photographs, mostly recently, of the U.S. One Wood City Improvement Project. Again, just as a reminder, we got about $3 million of external money. This is the Transportation Alternative Program, the Surface Transportation Program, the Sandy Williams Connected Communities Program, and the Transportation Improvement Board. So we're able to kind of cobble these things together And on projects like this, part of what we want to do is we want to make sure that we're spending external dollars first. The more money we can spend on other people's money to improve our community, the better off we are. So when we go back and look at that list, and that's, I think, probably one of the things that I will add at the next update, is to make sure that we're identifying these are all projects that have a significant amount of external money associated with them. And that's part of why they draw a lot of attention. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to show some sewage pipes in a City Council meeting. We do have a pretty significant project underway. You've seen a backer trough all around the community. That's part of our inflow and infiltration investigation. That is quite a mouthful. We should try it a couple of times later. Part of what we're trying to do is we're trying to see where water is coming into the priority collection system. and overloading the wastewater treatment plant. If you recall, basically we'll have normal flows of roughly 3 million gallons a day at the wastewater treatment plant. Right now is a perfect example. You know, we have very low flows at the wastewater treatment plant. When it rains hard, we're going to be pressing 20 million gallons. Where's all that water coming from? Well, I think through our investigation, we are under the impression that we do have a lot of sump pumps We do have a lot of problems throughout the system that we know we're going to be able to fix. And then we found a couple that are very significant problems. We'll talk briefly about H Street. We'll be talking more about that in the future. This next project is our reservoir recoding work. We do have two tanks actually under construction. And when I say under construction, basically it's just for recoding the inside of the tank. You'll see in the bottom right of the photo, The roof has been initially blasted, but the paint that is remaining there on the sidewalls, those are examples of what the paint looked like. As you get these rust wounds, that paint then starts to delaminate, it pops up, falls in the water. We don't want that. That's not a good thing to be distributing to our customers. So the intent is to maintain these assets on a regular basis. So the photo on the left is actually, the big photo is a photo of the entire tank on the inside with the door sheet cut out of it. That is a one million gallon tank. It's really hard to comprehend how much one billion gallons is. But when you think about eight gallons is roughly the size of a basketball, roughly a million basketballs can fit inside. A lot of basketballs, again, that's hard to contemplate. Our wastewater treatment plants, again, like I said, is advancing. We are so close to finishing up. We do have a number of minor headaches that we're trying to deal with. As we push towards the finish line, this project has been underway since the end of 2024, but we are getting very close. The top right is the new inflow pumps that were installed recently. The bottom right is our headworks. That's the first place where the sewage gets to go. The big tank on the left is the gravity thickener. There's a fun little photo on the bottom left of some underground work that actually, that photo was from 2024. It's very hard to see when you're looking at the screen out here, but there's a little person up on top of that gravel section, using an idea how deep the piping is through that area. So, looking forward internally, like I said, we're finding roughly an FTE on US 101. I do expect that this is going to continue through the end of the project. Construction should be complete September slash October. And then there's the back office work that we have to facilitate to clean the project up and fully close it out. Right now, through May, we are at 82% of the overtime that we had in 2025. I'm fully expecting we're going to go up to 200%, and again, much of that is being driven by the U.S. safety project. One of the things that I thought about, and I don't want to go into a lot of detail here, but I do need to reevaluate our capital project delivery expectations as well as methods or approach. How we have this list the way that we do, it's not ideal. I can tell you straight up. In my role, doing what I do, It's not an ideal way to execute. The flip side of that coin, going back to the traffic jam analogy, when you're stuck in a traffic jam, you know, you can be angry, you can be upset, you can be frustrated, you know, but at the end of the day, that's not going to change whether or not we're in a traffic jam. My approach right now is all I can do is control the controllables and try to get through the traffic jam. So that's our method to the madness right now. As far as the last two items, we do have a project management series that we're looking at, or a project manager series that we'll try and push through internally. Once we have that, I believe we have a funded project manager position. And as soon as we get that PM job description buttoned up, we're gonna be able to get that out and hopefully alleviate a little bit of the pressure here. And then the last item as it relates to internally, We are seeing a lot of inflation. I don't know if you guys are seeing it as well in the gas pumps, for example. That's just a small representation of what we've seen across the construction industry. And part of what that does, that means that when we secured a certain amount of money and we're seeing inflation exceed what we had projected, that means I have to go get more money, or I have to cut stuff out of the project, or I have to, at the end of the day, I have to do something and not try and stay separate. So there are adjustments that we're working towards on a number of different projects. As far as externally, I want to point out, again, the reservoir over in the south side is going to be back online soon. One thing that I want to point out, and I've done that number of times in my career, one of the things that we're going to be super intentional about is this taste and odor that oftentimes comes through after a tank is put back online. And so part of what Brad, our operations supervisor, and I have talked about is part of what we want to do is we want to let the water soak for a little bit, and then we're going to go ahead and dump. half a million to a million gallons of water to make sure that we don't have those taste and odor complaints. There are base industry standards that we do follow, but we're going to be a little overly intentional and overly cautious. If there are any taste and odor concerns, please let us know. We need to know that stuff. If we don't know, we can't go fix it. So please let us know. If anything comes up, we'll make sure that we respond to it. Again, secondary component, the safety improvement project will continue throughout the summer. We are advancing that as fast as we can, but it's an instruction that you can only move as fast as the equipment and or manpower allows us to. To that end, part of what we are expecting is that the permitting term time will probably be a little bit slower. Again, we've got one FTE that is out there. I say one FTE, but from a manpower standpoint, it's actually the individuals that are involved the total time equals roughly one FTP. So three individuals is more than half of the team that works. The last item that I wanted to kind of bake in here, because my expectation is that I probably won't be doing new project updates for a few months, but I wanted to bring up the winter forecast. I have a tendency to look into the future to see what is happening or what is being projected. I'm a little concerned about what I'm curing and wanted to kind of bring some attention to that. So we are paying attention on the operation side. What is being forecasted for the winter of 2026 is potentially a very strong El Nino. There are three very strong El Ninos that have occurred since 1980. That's the 1982 and 83 El Nino, the 97, 98 El Nino. So I don't know if you remember the flooding that occurred in 97, 98. And 2015, many of us were here for 2015 as well. So when we talk about the operational side, part of what we want to do is make sure that we're working in advance or prepared for the headaches that can come up and things like this, but things that we know can be very disruptive to us. So we take Farragut, for example. I don't want to take Farragut offline knowing that something like this could be coming down the pipe. But we're going to do what we can from an operations standpoint to have our game to top shape. We need 100% prepared. So that's what I've got today for you guys. I tried to move as fast as possible. Hopefully it wasn't too fast for you.

I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any.

All right.

Should I keep the slides back up?

Nick, thanks. As someone with some project management experience, you and I have gone through and bring forward to council what we need to put in the toolbox. You got a traffic jam, you add another lane. We have issues where I watch this and we're smearing to the right. And there's all these issues that will, there are all these reasons that we have that we're smearing to the right. Time is going to be cost, all of it. And you guys, I know we're working at 11, dials all the way up. But I'd like you to bring to council for the budget cycle what we can do to fill the toolbox. And I'm serious about that. We really have to know what we can do to fill that toolbox so that we can. I don't like the idea that people are saying 200% projection in overtime. There's an effectiveness that we start losing as well. And so just working people to death isn't a good answer in project management. So if you would take seriously, bring us some, bring the council, what we need in the toolbox to help with this project management. Thank you.

I know Public Works does a lot of things. Appreciate what you guys do. And just is the website going to be updated with this project list? Sure, we can throw it on there.

I'm just looking at this, and I think most of it makes a lot of sense, but the green boxes, what are those?

Those are going to be check marks. You've got something done. So that was the other question.

The check marks are the ones that are done on that one. Yes.

Thank you.

in them. Okay, thank you, Nick. Appreciate it. Thank you, Nick. Yes. All right. Thank you. Now we're going to move on to the next question.

Councilperson Freydel is not here. Who's?

Our chair would be Councilman Fokker.

I didn't know I had to do anything. Finance and.

Your microphone.

You can't hear me?

All right.

Now you're going to have to listen. Okay. Finance. We did meet. Deb and I both approved moving this thing forward. And the first item is an ordinance. First reading of ordinance to amend AMC 13.64, low-income senior citizens rate remission to now include low-income disabled citizens under Bill 26-10. Second, please.

I was listening to you both. I move we accept the reading.

Second.

And moved and seconded by Councillor Franci. Is there any discussion?

I can say I asked for a bigger thing, but I'm happy with this. Thank you. Thank you to Director

Williamson for piecing this together. This was a request that came from the Utility Rate Advisory Committee, so we're happy to make this happen for the community.

Any other discussion?

I read the following paper, the first reading of Ordinance to Amend AMC 13.64, Low Income Senior Citizens Rate Permission to include low-income disabled citizens. Bill number 26-10. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Passes. Thanks, Katie.

Nice job on that. It's going to be first reading the Board's New England Act with assistance penalties at licensed health care facilities and extending utility rate discount programs Bill 26-11.

I move to accept this reading.

Second.

We have a first and we have a second by Richard. Ravchik. Ravchik, I'm sorry. Is there any discussion on this? Seeing none, all in favor? include the ambulance and emergency medical services utility bill number 26 dash 11. Say aye.

Aye. Opposed? Thank you, doctor. Thank you.

Now we'll move on to public safety with Chairperson Hubbard.

Okay. So we met earlier this evening. And we'll start with some information from the police department. They had the numbers in from the month of May for our VIP volunteers. They contributed 146 and a half hours to our city and city of Papalos and calculated at the national volunteer rate of $34.79 per hour. That comes up to a contribution worth over $5,000 to both cities. Looking at the fire department information, the big thing I wanted to point out from that is that we have the mass notification system up and that has been started to be advertised on the platform. There's going to be a brief presentation on the system at our next sales meeting on June 24th, but it is up and live and I've already signed up for it straight. Moving on to requests for council action. We have a request that the City Council approved the amendment to the current contract for fire suppression services between the City of Aberdeen and the Washington State Department of Corrections. And I move that we accept the term. Second.

Second.

Seconded by Councilperson Nipper. Is there any discussion on this?

So there's a request. or excuse me, all in favor of the City Council to approve the amendment to the current contract for fire suppression services in the City of Aberdeen and the Washington State Department of Corrections, say aye. Aye.

Any opposed? This passes, thank you.

Next, we have a request for City Council approval of the inter-local agreement with the City of McCleary for temporary boarding of seized and impounded animals. And I move we accept this request. Seconded.

Moved and seconded by Councilperson Wilson. Is there any discussion on this?

I have one change. Yes. In the background rationale section, there's one spot that Westport has mentioned, and there's a McClary. So it just needs to say, I hear when a McClary police officer needs to impound a dog or cat. So I move that we accept it. Seconded.

SECONDED BY COUNCIL PERSON ENTERED. IS THERE ANY DISCUSSION ON THIS? ALL IN FAVOR OF THE REVISION? CAN YOU OPPOSE? THANK YOU. NO OPPOSED. OKAY. THAT'S ACCEPTED. NOW WE'LL GO ON TO THE OKAY.

NOW WE'RE GOING BACK TO ACCEPT.

the original request for City Council to approve the interlocal agreement with the City of McCleary for temporary boarding of seized and impounded camels as revised. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? That passed.

Thank you.

Now we'll go on to public works with Chairperson Grancy.

We have three items tonight. First ordinances is the first reading of ordinance amending the fencing portion of the zoning bill number 26-07. Second. Second.

SECONDED BY COUNCIL PRESIDENT RATCHETT. IS THERE ANY DISCUSSION ON THIS?

TO UPDATE OUR FENCING CODE TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUILDING FENCES BETWEEN BUILDINGS THAT ARE TOO CLOSE.

IT'S AMENDING OUR FENCING CODE.

THE BIG PART OF IT IS TO start people from building fences between buildings and your two books.

Thank you.

Seeing no more discussion, the request for the first reading of ordinance amending the fencing portion of the zone code bill number 26-07. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Thank you, this is .

Seconded by Councilperson Hubbard. Any discussion on this? All in favor of accepting the first reading of the franchise agreement

FORGED FIBER 37 LLC BUILT NUMBER 26-12. SAY AYE. AYE.

ANY OPPOSED? THANK YOU.

IT'S ADOPTED. OUR LAST AMENDMENT TO PUBLIC WORKS IS A RESOLUTION OF REQUEST RECOMMENDING CITY COUNCIL APPROVE OF RESOLUTION ADOPTING THE REVISED AND EXTENDED SIX-YEAR TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENT 2027 to 2032 in this resolution 2026-23 and we accept this. Second.

Seconded by Councilperson Ratchett. Is there any discussion on this? Am I still saying it wrong?

No, you're fine. You're fine.

This is gasoline. Okay. Is there any discussion on it? Yes, go ahead.

I would like to move that we add a section to it to add a section of sidewalk along 4th from East Wichita to East Market. Which is the entry point from the bridge to the roundabout.

I guess.

Thank you.

OK, so there's been a seconded by Council person. to have the sidewalk between Vermont, Polar.

Okay, from along Polar from East Wichita to East.

From East Wichita to East Market. Colin Carver, is there any discussion on this? All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Opposed, that passes. As amended, there's a request recommending City Council approve a resolution adopting the revised and extended six-year transportation improvement plan for the years 2027 to 2032, resolution 2026-23 as revised. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, it passes. That's all. Thank you, sir. Now we're going to special committee items with Council President Swart.

Yes, we have two items on your special committee items. I also want to note that there was a third item that was on the final agenda that is not on the agenda packets on our desks. They're related to the discussion item for Willapaw Behavioral Health and the Department of Health. If we go over that, please note that it's not on the agenda on your desk, but it was on the final agenda. So under reports, we have a request recommending the city council authorize the mayor to sign a contract with history 98520 and move the office request. Second.

Seconded by Councilperson Nipper. Is there any discussion on this, Councilperson Swart?

Previously, I did make a motion for this item to be tabled until it could be further reviewed by Mr. United in our legal team, based on the comment that we received from Mr. Hamilton. Today, I'm going to assume that that has been done and should be moving forward accordingly.

Thank you. Any other discussion? Okay. All in favor of request recommending City Council authorize the Mayor to sign the contract with history 9520 say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you.

Next we have a request recommending the City Council approve the deaccession of the items identified and recommended by the Museum Committee. I move we accept this request. Second.

Seconded by Councilperson Prancy. Is there any discussion? And then all in favor of requests recommended the city approved the deaccession of the items identified and recommended by the museum committee. Say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you.

And last but not least on a special committee items is a discussion item, not an item for vote. There is a request in our pocket for us to talk about engaging with Willapa Behavioral Health and the Department of Health. I printed this out just to be safe. The specific question that we are looking to answer is whether we are wanting to have a special workshop with them or have them come present at a regular meeting. So I'm just going to share my piece here and then pass it off. But given that we're still working on the updates to the code, Chapter 17, I think it's best, and just given the nature of what we're looking to discuss, I think it's best for us to have a workshop. I know that's not always a fan favorite because it requires an additional meeting, but nevertheless, I think that's going to create the right environment for us to ask the questions that we want to ask and for those that will be in attendance to answer them in a more open way.

I agree. Councilperson Abbott.

I agree. I think it should be a workshop. I think this Has there been a lot of back and forth on this? I don't see that this is something that we would be able to cover as one component of a regular meeting. I think it's going to be, it's going to be a lengthy conversation.

Any other discussion? All right, so do we have to have a motion to?

I will make a motion to adjourn.

All right, so now we'll go on to public comments. And please keep your comments to 3 minutes. Start with your name and your ward or cities.

Jerry's also more of 1. 1st of all, thanks for voting on his United 512. And I want to mention something we had a ribbon code for the women's ways downtown on May 7. And during just before the ceremony, I was having a discussion with Justin. student council member and talking about the background telling about some of the history of the buildings downtown and he made a comment to me that it's important is all you know i've been working in the last few years i'm really trying to connect our youth with the community and he told me and i just i think you'll remember this he said you know the last couple of decades i felt everything was going downhill but i feel like now that we're on the way out Now that's an 18 year old in our community having that view. And I hear that from a lot of kids that want to appeal that way. So I really appreciate that comment, Justin. The other thing I want to do is thank the council for the two town hall meetings. I did the Citizens Academy and both of those meetings. I was interested in the main topics of each of those meetings with different issues. And the last one at Miller Junior High, one of the issues was you know, homelessness, but also the mental health facilities, the services we have in the Harvard. There didn't seem to be a lot of information. I think some of the councilmen warned about what some of the agencies were. Ruth mentioned that even in this meeting we had that some of those agencies weren't there. I've been working with Harvard Strong the last couple of years, and what I'm seeing is that There are a lot of resources here, and a lot of people don't know who they are. One of the things we've developed is something called helpingtheharvard.com. If you look at that, it lists all the agencies. But what's actually happening is the people in those agencies know each other, and there's a lot of turnover, both in staff and even leadership. So there's not a lot of continuity. And so people from outside that need those services often don't know how to start, how to access them. And I like your effort in trying to promote that. So we do that from both directions. I think that's something we can really build on in the community because there's a lot of research out there that people just don't always know about. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other public comments? All right, seeing none, we'll move on to the order.

Yes, County President Suarez.

I have two things. First, I'd like to make a motion to extend the meeting no later than 9 p.m. Second.

Discussion on this? All in favor of extending the meeting to no later than 9 p.m. Say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you.

Second, I'd like to make a motion for staff to pursue a workshop with Mobile Behavioral Health and the Department of Health for a date to be confirmed. Second.

Seconded by Councilperson Knipper. Is there any discussion on this? All in favor of creating a workshop? Say aye.

Aye. Aye. Thank you. Any opposed? Thanks. Now we can motion to go into executive session.

Anybody else have anything for end of the order?

No, sorry. Thank you. Okay. Just making sure. Okay, thanks.

Motion for us to go into executive session under RCW 2.30.110 for the number of minutes where litigation or legal risk is a proposed action or current practice. The agency has identified when public discussion of the litigation or legal risk would likely result in an adverse legal or financial consequence to the agency.

Okay. Seconded by Councilperson Francie. Is there any discussion? All in favor of going into executive session?

Aye.

You close. Thank you. Um, that for 30 minutes, 30 minutes, maybe back to 42 back to be 42.

Chips have no action.

I suspect that.

All in favor. Hi.

2nd, 2nd, the discussion.

All in favor of the journey. Hi. Look at you. I'm so.