City Council - Regular Meeting

Testing. Testing. One, two, three. Did you hear it? Okay. Okay. The video's on. Yeah. Do you see it? Okay, I'm going to put my phone down. Testing. Testing. One, two, three. Did you hear it? Oh. testing. Testing one, two, three. Okay. Did you hear me? Yes. Oh, thank God. Okay.

Shane.

Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Council member Bowman here. All right. The role has been called. I'll make a motion. Go ahead. Uh, I'll make a motion to excuse Council McCoy from the meeting. Second. Uh, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor? I I Any oppose.

All right, moving on. Um, does any council member wish to amend the agenda this evening? Um, move to approve the median agenda as presented. Second. All right. Motion by council member Mson, second by council member Ferrer. All those in favor I I hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. We have an approved agenda. All right. Going uh down to summary reports and presentations. Um Oh.

Oh. Well, you're already excused. You want to leave? This is your out. Kelly, can you reflect the role to show that uh council member McCoy? Yes, mayor. Thank you. All right, moving on to summary reports and presentations. Are there any council member reports this evening? I have two this evening, mayor. All right, let's hear.

Uh the first one is from the Urban County Policy Board. We met on March 9th where um we voted on selling the wick building at fair market value. Um Michelle uh I think it's pronounced Schustster. Uh she's with internal service, she's the internal services director. Um she'll be coordinating the uh recommendations made by the urban county policy board to the uh Clark County Council. There's not a date on that yet, but um she'll notify the board when the discussion is on the council's agenda and then I'll let I'm sure staff will know, but I I can still let staff aware. I believe Mark, you sit on that board. Yeah. So, you're already aware of it. Um also, Seymar has been notified of the board's decision. Um I think it'll be good that WIC will still be offered to our citizens. they won't be losing services. Um, it will allow us to reallocate funds that were going to be um, yeah, I'll just say that it will allow us to reallocate funds to applicants who originally didn't receive grant funding due to the shortages in funds this uh, next year. Um, and then it will also help BG um, meet our goals for the Oldtown revitalization. And then uh April 6th through the 10th is going to be community development week. And if our city is interested in uh issuing a proclamation, then all we have to do is let Naren know and um she'd be happy to create a a draft for us if we want. Um our next meeting will be on June 8th, so there will not be one

in April or May. Interesting. Um, next there will then there was Echko. Ekko met on Tuesday uh the 10th where we went over our law enforcement panel planning questions. Um that can be seen virtually on CVTV or at the Clark County Public Service Center on April 14th from 9:30 to 11:30. There'll be a panel discussion for the first hour and then after that the audience will be able to ask questions for 30 minutes. Um next just to let staff know and us on the board as well there will be an inter the interlocal agreement is due for document recording fees. Um, just a reminder, those document recording fees, most of those goes for shelter services and they said that the city should be see receiving that in about two weeks. That's all I have for reports.

All right. Thank you, Council Member Ferrer. Um, Council Member McCoy,

thank you. Yes, report out on RTC. Uh I'll share this with council and we can put it in this in the record if we want. But that's just some uh RTC proposed uh transportation corridors. Uh some of those are just in um working design. So that's trails as well as major transportation networks. So uh we'll have a chance to weigh in uh maybe on where some of those should say uh where we want those pathways. Uh the big one is uh RTC approved an increase to the STBG which is surface transportation block grant. Uh so that means $700,000 more to the uh Grace Rasmusen project. So good news there for that. Our dues went up 4% $318. Good ROI. That completes my report. All right. Do we have any other uh council member reports this evening? All right. Hearing none, we'll move on to the uh mayor's report. And I've got a few things here. Um let me go over some of the more pertinent business. Um, EMS District 2. We had our uh, meeting March 9th at 1 p.m. Um, we welcomed our new board members. Uh, we have, uh, MNA France, uh, Lenter Council member, formerly known as Leha, as I would know her. France, France, France,

tomato tomato. Uh so we have uh the center uh council member and then we also have Dean Thornberry, fire district 3 commissioner. So we now have five on the MS board. Um we also approved the uh medical program director contract uh with Marlo Mock from uh Clark EMS Physicians LLC. Um he will be setting the medical terms for EMS. So, what medications we can use, what best practices for for emergencies uh depending on the situation. And um let's see, we also did an interlocal agreement with uh Clark County Fire District 6 to run administration for EMS2. Previously, it was Cresa that did that. Um at least previously when we're in the type of agreement that we're in now with a contract. Uh, and so Clark County Fire District 6 will be running the admin for that. And that was a $30,000 per year contract with them. Um, and the the cost for that is already built into the contract for EMS2. So, it's not like we're pulling additional funds anywhere to do that. Um, yeah. So, that was some of the updates for EMS2. And then we move on to Catran. The CRAN, we had our board composition committee meeting prior to the CRAN board of directors meeting and it was kind of an interesting uh way that we went about this, but we went into executive session for the comp review committee. Um, and when we came out of executive session, we basically recessed our meeting. and we recessed the meeting to uh

reconvene after the board meeting was completed. And so what that allowed to uh us to do was um Ryan Davis uh from the city of Ridgefield brought forward language um amending the modified preferred alternative and uh and basically I'll read this to you guys if you guys want to hear it, which I'm sure you do. um change for section A number two um and this is the one I'll read the already existing language and then the amendment at the end but CRAN may participate in funding the operations and maintenance of the by-state transit including any new park and rides that may be constructed or colllocated station maintenance security and other operational support as agreed to and part of the project that was existing language the amended language to add on to the end of that as funding authorized as part of this section may not come from RSCW82.14.045 sales tax revenues previously approved by PTBA public transit bus authority voters which are collected outside Vancouver city limits or the Vancouver urban growth area. So what that justifiably does is kind of modified the language that we were going to bring forward. Detroit had already brought forward uh sorry council member McCoy. Um that basically it insulates a small city's taxes um from being used towards operation and maintenance of the light rail. What it does do is allows Vancouver city limits and Vancouver urban area growth boundary taxes to go towards that. Um, and so with that language, which we agreed upon, I thought it was close enough to the

um, I guess it would be the intentions that we were trying to put across um, that and I don't want to skip too far ahead, but after the board of directors meeting, we reconvened and uh, we did pass a clean 432. This was uh in my opinion very very important as our legal representation and city staff could probably speak to uh based on the current washd lawsuit that was pending towards all the cities involved. Um and so that should suffice that lawsuit. Uh the judge had already put out that if we did reach a 432 he was going to be okay with that. And so and now let me rewind a little bit. go back to the board of directors meeting because there were some other things that came up that I wanted to touch on and then I'll open it up if you guys have any questions. I'll try my best to answer them. But um we also had a strategic priorities 2025 progress update um where uh chief executive officer uh Lean Caver kind of explained and ran down where we were at at the quarter three of 25. So giving us the final update for 25 and closing. Um ADA accessible stops are at 66%. So 66% of the stops that Cran has is ADA accessible. They did fall short of that goal of 70%. But we definitely saw um I guess some some great movement in that direction and they are making a concerted effort to continue um to get those ADA stops um set up and accessible. Um and then they were projected to finish 4.6% under budget for 2025, which I thought was pretty impressive based on the size of the

budget that they operate and the many many moving parts. Um, local ridership was up 1.8% over the goal of 5%. So, local ridership was up 6.8% total um for their goals in quarter 3. Um, and that all that included all ridership across the express, regional, vine um current all their modes. But I thought it was interesting that the express, the regional and the vine collectively were down, but they are trying to make a concerted effort to move towards um more of the large modes of travel I guess would be say and the current has been utilized much more. Um the CNN ridership goal was to lower that 3.9% uh but that was still at 7.8%. Um, and their goal was to lower the C-ban ridership by adding more ADA stops to make it more accessible to just ride the standard bus. Um, versus having to utilize the C-N. Um, and I did want to point out something that I know council member McCoy has pointed out, but I I want to reiterate that that with the current coming to Battleground, there is a youth service pass for students to utilize and ride the current for free. And I think that is a a pretty neat thing, especially for kids that might not be able to afford to get around. Um it's it's a completely free service to the youth. Um so and then uh couple executive sessions happened. And then we move on to uh we did our review of the CEO um and we uh that was what we did in

exact and we came out and and did a 2.5% increase of uh Leanne's pay. Uh that brought her up to $258,000 a year. And this is again you can find all this on the record but or in the minutes. Um, but I thought all in all that uh Leanne has done a very good job in her uh first couple years there at Catran. And I believe that uh she'll only continue to grow and increase writership and um you know we're not sure what the future holds for operation maintenance of light rail and the budget going forward but what I can tell you is um I felt pretty good to protect the tax dollars that are coming from battleground to not go towards that. Um so I'll open that up. Any questions real quick before I move on? Anybody?

Yeah, I got a quick question. Uh yeah. Well, a question and a comment uh comment first and then I'll know who to direct it to, but uh I was looking at when I was on the board of our number of covered stops in the city and if they're trying to increase writership, I think that'd go a long ways towards and be cheaper than ADA and our percentage of covered stops is lower than the cran. So, I would direct that either to I don't know if it's going to be Ridgefield next meeting or if we still have a seat next meeting, but um whoever that goes to, I'd be happy to share those numbers.

I like that, Troy. That's a great idea. And uh just to follow up on that, there will be an interlocal uh coming forward uh for um Battleground Ridgefield and uh L Center and Yakold. I believe we should RTC into that interlocal too. What's that? We should wrap RTC representation into that interlocal as well. I have a question. Do we happen to have Sorry. We happen to have current data on um battleground specific wrership.

You know, they um they did not have the current data available at that meeting. Um it was asked by a couple of the cities of of very specific data, but they said that is available upon request. So, I can make that request to get the numbers of battleground ridership for the bus as well as for uh the current. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it. All right, we have uh Council Member Mson.

Uh I'd like to recognize what Council Member McCoy said about having covered stops. I agree. I think it's very important for the climate we live in, but I would say also say in 2016 2017, council member Bowman, correct me if I'm wrong, when they took out all of our coverage stops, uh, they put them into a storage yard and offered to sell them back to us at almost full rate. Um, part of their heartburn that they told us at the time was the cost of maintenance and cleaning them to come out here for the very few that we had. So, I would like to see some pressure put on them, but I would also say that with that, I don't I mean, they have them in in Vancouver and they have zero problem because they have a lot of density there, but I agree we should have them here, but I think we need to put the pressure on them that they can't look at us outliers as cost prohibitive. So, again, if council member Bowman wants to chime in on that, I think he and Council Member Johnson at the time and I were all pretty vocal about them removing that from from the city. I do think you were correct on that, Mr. Mson, if I remember right, that it was something along the lines of maintenance on those and they didn't they didn't want to do it. I know Mr. Johnson was pushing that pretty hard. Sounds like I need to bring that back. Ask about it again or depending if I'm still the representative. I guess we'll see. Um or send it to our representative. Uh any further questions about CRAN while we're on the topic. All right, hearing none, we will move on. Um that's all I have for mayor report. Uh we're going to move on to

presentations. Um, Chief Flynn, we have a new employee introduction. Well, good evening. Uh, it's a wonderful day that we have uh today to be able to share our newest member, u Brandon Degra. As you can see, Brandon brought a small tribe uh with him over here that we'll introduce here in a few minutes. But I'm really happy because uh it's the the culture that is continuing to uh grow at the police department. We've got our command staff. Uh half of them showed up, some dayshift officers, and of course the night shift off shift officers all to be able to see Brandon being uh being sworn in. Brandon grew up in Phoenix area. Uh came out to battle around about 10 years ago and then went into a life of service. He spent 10 years with the US Navy. Uh left the US Navy and attended the academy. He was uh working for Vancouver Police Department, spent three years there. Um at the two-year mark, he worked so hard that they selected him to be the neighborhood services officer. So that's something that's actually selected. uh the US government uh offered a uh a nice job to him as an investigator and one that I guess was uh too much to turn down. And so he left policing and spent the last six years working for uh the United States Department of Commerce. I put these on. I can probably read this. And then realized, you know what? Uh this calling was truly in policing. uh he came back here and tested um and before I tell you a little bit more

about that uh he is married to his uh beautiful bride Jessica that's sitting over there and he has two daughters Emma who's 6 years old and Olivia who is three years old he has his bachelor's degree in business administration and he is 90% uh through with his master's at WSU Uh so he brings over a tremendous amount of experience already academy certified um the policing experience he gained in Vancouver the investigative uh work that he did with the US Department of Commerce and he enjoys fitness as you can tell he's a small man standing next to me. Uh he enjoys spending time with his family uh being a a super dad and I had a chance to meet both of his daughters and they absolutely affirm that. And a fun fact about him is uh he met his wife Jessica while they were uh both in military service in Japan. So Jessica spent seven years uh with the US Navy uh opposed to uh to Brandon's 10. Uh but his background is so good that typically the CJTC sets a a time limit on what they will allow somebody come over and being recognized for their service. And although I argued that basically he was just wearing a different badge and when we told them of everything that he had to offer uh the entire board one abstained because they knew him but they unanimously said u we absolutely want to put him into the lateral basic academy. So he's already started his field training. uh he's already out there servicing our our citizens, already making car stops and proving already what we knew of why we wanted to make sure that we grabbed him as as soon as

possible. So, Brandon,

thanks Steve. Uh thanks everybody. Um move it move it up quite a bit. Uh thanks everybody for for coming out. Um I'd like to thank the city and the department for this opportunity. Uh it really means a lot to me. Um, I'd like to thank my family and my wife most importantly. Um, she can uh finally stop listening to me uh eammer on about wanting to get back into law enforcement after the last 5 years. So, um, it's good to be back. Um, I'm as motivated and excited now as I was when I first came into this profession. Um, I believe it was it's truly what I was meant to do. So, um, thank you. Now, uh, Officer Degrad, do you want to come up? Be welcomed by council.

Yeah. And then I was going to say we could clear out and let him do his oath. Yeah.

I just want to shake your hand, sir. Please raise your right hand and repeat after me. I state your name. I

Brandon Deg Gro do solemnly affirm do solemnly affirm that I will support that I will support obey obey and defend the Constitution and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America and laws of the United States of America and of the State of Washington and of the State of Washington. I will abide by I will abide by the law enforcement code of ethics. the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics and will diligently and impartially and will diligently and impartially perform all duties of police officer perform all duties of police officer for the city of Battleground for the city of Battleground county of Clark County of Clark state of Washington state of Washington as such duties

As such duties are prescribed by law prescribed by Thank you.

All right. All right. Moving on, uh we have a council for the homeless presentation. Um like to introduce uh Sunny Wonder and Cesan Fenny Jones.

Good evening, Mayor and City Council. Thank you for so much for having us today. Um I just wanted to Sunny, I'm going to give you a chance to introduce yourself. I promise. Um I just wanted to say thank you and um make sure you understand that we are a resource to you. um anytime there's any concerns, issue, education that's needed around housing and homelessness, we will show up to Battleground to support. So, thank you for having us. And hello, my name is Sunny Wonder. I'm the chief operating officer at Council for the Homeless. Um and I am going to jump in. Cesan is going to run the slides for me and will add in anything that I miss um as we go through it. So um we had a request for um a presentation from Council for the Homeless and uh we are bringing essentially a system overview. Um we want to talk about just kind of what is the system of our um homeless crisis response system and what is Council for the Homeless's role. Um and we'll go a little bit into some of the details and then are happy to answer questions. So far the slides are

push to the right. I promise you. I'm think I'm pressing to the right. Okay. Technology. It's not advancing. Rob, have you tried resetting it and starting it again?

Small intermission. It's okay. This is very tiny. Um so we are going to walk through um the continuum of care or otherwise known as the COC. Um as with any system um homeless response systems has lots of acronyms. So, we'll give you a little bit about what that means. Um, when you hear that term, we're going to talk about council for the homeless, our role, um, and a few pieces that will specifically talk about coordinated entry, HMIS, which stands for the homeless management information system as well as work groups that Council for the Homeless is responsible for um, either facilitating or ensuring that they are happening um, to work on addressing homelessness within our communities. and then provide a brief broad system overview looking at some of the numbers that we collect at Council for the Homeless. Next slide. So, the continuum of care um essentially this is a regional or local planning body that coordinates housing and services um funding for the homeless uh for folks that are experiencing homelessness. So,

for um families as well as individuals. A few pieces that we're responsible for um are going to be either an annual or bianual account of people experiencing homelessness. For uh Clark County, it operates all of Clark County is um our area of um kind of that jurisdiction that we're operating under. Um a point in time count is conducted. It is required by HUD every other year. in our in the state of Washington, it historically has been every year. So, every year we're responsible for going out on one day typically uh the last Thursday in January going through the entire community of Clark County and doing a count of everyone experiencing homelessness. We are also um that also includes coordinated um the coordination of efforts including local homeless action plan which Clark County just adopted a five-year local homeless action plan um that is responsible for kind of setting the agenda or the plan for the next five years which was uh an effort made up by local jurisdictions um homeless response providers um and develop that five-year plan and that five-year plan is on Clark County's website as well as um I believe it is post on um Council for the Homeless's website.

In addition, um I I think uh Council Member Affair was u part of us going over that plan in Echo. And so if you ever have any questions about that plan, because again, it's a 5-year plan and it is it is for the entire county, not just for the city of Vancouver, which often it gets confused with. Um so in addition to the local homeless action plan, there is also a need for one entity to lead that coordinated a um a lead coordinated entry agency as well as an a HMIS agency. Again, HMIS um is the homeless management information system and how we would provide information if you were asking questions about what are the number of people experiencing homelessness in battleground. That information is information that is in large part that information is collected in HMIS.

I like to think of council for the homeless as the back of the house for anyone who's ever worked in a um restaurant before. So if you think of the front of the house as the service providers, so those that are doing housing and shelter, so they're more upfront and scene. We're in the back of the house making sure that things are coordinated, making sure that, you know, information is out there. Um, informing folks of the gaps that we're seeing within the system, all of those. Next slide. Okay. So um so just to um summarize so Council for the Homeless is that lead agency and is responsible for um coordinated entry and really the the purpose of that is from uh kind of a recognition that prior to coordinated entry folks were if there were 20 shelters then an individual person was going to go to 20 different shelters to see if they qualified for services, if they were opening for services. If there were requirements like background checks, that individual agency had to go through and do that background check. The purpose of coordinated entry is to say one individual person goes to one spot and then we refer to those 20 shelters. So, we're able to assess if there are openings that are available. If the person meets the qualifications and if there's background check or any paperwork that has to be completed in advance, that information is completed by counselor for the homeless prior to that referral. We also um are responsible for completing assessment. So any housing programs, our responsibility is to have an assessment tool that is utilized for everyone where we're capturing and understanding what someone is needing.

If someone is needing short-term, they just fell on hard times, they're needing um just assistance in getting back into a place, what their needs are, us referring them to a long-term program would not be what we want to do. We want to preserve resources and make sure that we're using the limited funding that we have as effectively as possible. So again, utilizing tools as well as data to make sure that we're making get connecting people to the resources that make the most sense for them um and are going to meet their needs. So we want long-term stability. So making sure again that they're truly getting the resources that they need um but not provide putting them in programs that aren't going to be um the length of time that they need. And then that would also tie into referrals um and eligibility to program. So going through that process, working with agencies when they have referrals, openings, we're going through that process of okay, here are all the folks that we know qualify. We're going to go through that process to refer them over. Um and then as noted for folks who are not needing uh such a high level of care, we have diversion as well as resource navigation is meant to be light as touch. So there are people who again having a significant amount for a security deposit or something like that. Sometimes we've seen a pretty significant increase with those pieces. If that is a barrier, we want to be able to help divert them from that larger homeless response system because they don't need that longer term support. So that is diversion and system navigation in a homeless response system. Just to add, um, diversion also helps those folks who have an income are able to continue to pay their rent, their utilities, but sometimes it's just that one thing, that one issue that occurred in their life. It could have been a death, it could have been an illness, um, anything could have happened, but they can get back on their feet if they

just had a little bit more assessment. So, diversion is diverting them away from the homeless response system. And then um finally access points. So a part of coordinated entry is it's very important that there are um multiple access points. If you talk to some people, they're going to be comfortable calling a hotline and some people are not. Um there's most definitely a generational divide there, but also some people don't have phones. Um so it's really important that we are accessible and going out to where people are located. So, we do have our hotline um that folks are able to call to seek resources that system navigation, getting connected um to other resources in the community. Um but we also have coordinated outreach. Coordinated outreach is really important um recently had um some severe weather um with flooding and that is that coordination is incredibly crucial with all of the teams doing targeted outreach to areas that are most in danger of urban flooding. So those are the sorts of um examples of going out and connecting with people who aren't able to access um either coming in person or um able to call a hotline. We also have some colllocated positions. um many systems. One of the challenges is that systems um often for very understandable reasons, privacy concerns, health care systems for example can't share information about the folks that they're working with potentially vi violating HIPPA. Um so one way around that that has been really effective for us is having colllocated positions. So that means that we have, for example, a position at the Clark County Jail where we're going in to work with folks who have identified that they are experiencing homelessness or and expecting to experience homelessness when they exit. We have folks that are engaging in multiple systems and we want to make sure that we're being there and

present in those locations. We also have a position that is co-located in our local YW.CA UCA um which is important that um domestic violence is a significant concern for folks experiencing homelessness and is really important that they have a location that is safe for them to be able to access those services. So we do have um a position that goes there um multiple times a week to meet with folks. One of the access points that we're working towards is um hope hopefully helping out our youth. I mean, also folks who just don't want to have contact. Um, having a chat feature on our website is something that we've been looking into. Um, we know that our youth much rather text or just have conversations, you know, um, with their thumbs rather than actually talking to someone. And that's not even the only case for youth, but there are some, you know, folks that have experienced extreme trauma who just do not want to have a conversation. So, we want to have as many access points to the homeless response system as we possibly can. Next slide. And getting to the homeless management information system. Um, so this is really our if you go to the council for the homeless website and you look at our system dashboards, you can see information about um data about homelessness in Clark County. Um the uh and it really is driven by our homeless management information system. It provides an overview of homelessness across Clark County. Um it is really meant to help us reduce services um duplication of services. So if I am working with someone and I check in HMIS and I see that someone else is working with them, it's an opportunity for us to connect to talk about the services that are being provided. of, you know, hey, this person, it looks like they're in

shelter with you, can you help me understand, did something happen? Is it, you know, like what are the services that are being being provided? So, we're collaborating as opposed to duplicating services, which obviously would cost the system more money, but also means this person is not being supported and they the way need they need to be supported. So, it really is a big piece of it is being able to pick up a phone or send an email to connect with someone on, hey, what what do you have going on? What are the services that you're providing? So that we can be strategic about how we're supporting this individual. Um it also is a way for us to um increase understanding of system gaps as well as successes. So seeing where our system is um where things are going well um where we have strengths as well as areas where we're identifying gaps. One of the big pieces that we utilize and kind of circle back to on a regular basis is our annual system numbers report which is um something that um in the next couple of months we will be releasing but it is a review of the previous year. So the next one that we will be releasing is a review of 2025 and is an opportunity to look at what are the trends that we're seeing. Is homelessness increasing? Are there subpopuls that are increasing? One area of concern that I think across the United States we've been following very closely and in our community as well is senior homelessness. Um so recognizing that we're seeing more seniors that are um just getting stretched thinner and thinner with limited funds. Um so those are trends that um the annual system numbers report can be helpful. It's not the whole story but it is something that can be really helpful to understand what is going on in smaller jurisdictions but across our county. What are the trends that we're seeing?

The information that we collect in HMIS sorry the information that we collect in HMIS is also given to HUD that also gives us a larger picture of what's going on across the country. So when you hear things like family homelessness decreased by 4%, veteran homelessness increased by 10%. That is all information that was collected throughout the country through HMIS systems throughout. Next slide please. And then I think this is the last one. Um but just uh workg groupoup. So for a homeless response system it's really important that um folks are working together. I mentioned the coordinated outreach workg group. Uh a coordinated outreach um they have a workg group where they're able to connect and talk about strategize about you know um for example as I mentioned before we had a se severe weather we had significant rain which was causing potential for urban flooding and more likely to impact um folks that are camping in different locations. That's of concern. coordinated outreach work group is a space for them to be able to strategize and ensure that we're able to prioritize folks's safety during those events. Um there are several others. There's a severe weather task force which is um kind of when are we going to respond to severe weather events um uh talking about setting criteria, policies and procedures, those sorts of things. So many different um work groups that we're responsible for. Um as noted, there's the um coordinated um coordinated outreach, coordinated assessment, which is assess our assessment process. If someone is being assessed for a housing program, we have a workg group council for the homeless. While we're facilitating it, we are not the end all beall on making decisions on what that looks like. It's meant to be a collaborative process. Um and then a by nameless meeting. Um this is uh from the

perspective of we have different populations that have different needs. We've mentioned youth who perhaps would have different barriers and experiences of homelessness than a veteran. Um doesn't mean that there's not going to be crossover, but a veteran or a senior or a family is they're just going to have different barriers. So the purpose and idea of a by name list is having a list that is active in live that is like actively moving that we're sitting down and having a conversation about hey what's going on with this veteran these are the barriers who's able to take lead on this to be able to get them connected with resources. So that is the purpose that we're being able to connect in these work groups to ensure that our system is as we're identifying gaps so that we're strategizing and coming up with solutions. Anything you want to add?

No.

Okay. Next slide. And briefly, I'm sorry that these are so small um and I don't know that I will be able to see them to explain them. Um but I think that it's really important. So we've talked about um the data that we're collecting. This is an example of that. Um so these are trends for two 2024 and 2023. One of the really important pieces when you look at that information is going to be in 2023 we had pretty significant federal funding that was being um released into our communities for rental assistance. Um so 2023 um the data is going to look different. We didn't see a significant increase in homelessness in 2024. Um but I just want to note that. So for any information that comes out in 2025, we'll see if the trends like the impact from not having that rental assistance available from the federal level um what impact that has on our community as we've seen um housing costs increase. Um the this information again is really important for us to be able to year-over-year kind of understand where um potential populations where there are um areas gaps that we're seeing as well as areas of concern. The number of seniors for example is not as significant as other populations but is most definitely concerning because we're seeing proportionally we're seeing some pretty significant increases within that population. So, is an area that we're pretty focused on making sure that we're providing services um to folks who are truly on fixed incomes and not able to increase their income significantly. So, those are areas again that we're paying really close attention to. And next slide. Any questions?

Can you go back a slide? I don't understand the axis on that graph at all. What What are we looking at in these graphs? So I can't see it. Um there's just numbers. Are those age ranges supposed to be at the bottom? It looks like you put the 23 numbers at the bottom. Yeah. So So what it says, so um there's percentages on um percentages on the uh bottom portion are noted for the previous year. So we're um sharing the the changes between the two. Um

what does each bar line represent? Is that an age group? Yeah. So, the way that it is um I don't remember the I'm having a hard time seeing that. Both of us are having a hard time. There isn't a legend for the color graph. Yeah.

Yeah. So, with the So, with the information the the pieces that I wanted to share are the shifts in that. So, the colors do represent different populations. I'm happy to follow up with that information is also posted on our website. the the piece that I wanted to communicate there is that you are able to see the changes between the two years. So when you're looking at a annual our annual system numbers report you'll be able to track that information within the report yeartoyear. Um, with that I did, um, so as I recall on the bottom portion it says assessed for housing program and that's a really important piece um because we're talking about the number of people that were assessed saying hey I need um to go through this process. I am experiencing homelessness at any point in 2024 um are the top percentages. So that is the number of people that were assessed for a program and then one of them talks about the number of folks that were placed into a program

and it could be the number of people who requested shelter and the number of people who actually went into shelter. Um again this is this is kind of old data 2324. Our new data will be out in a couple months and would love a chance to come back and and talk through that particular data. Um, all of this information, our entire systems number report for 2020 three four 2024 is on our website. So 2025 will be on our website in the next couple of months. And I'll just clarify, usually when you see these colors on their website, usually their demographics, like not a not just age, but race and you know, are they like uh bipok or Asian or um Native American. I don't think we actually like break it out from into those kind of categories. We do break out bipock because what we see is um people experiencing homelessness that are bipac experience it at a higher rate than our counter counterparts. So we're always looking at that and trying to figure out what is the issue, why is that, you know, so significant and you know telling you know talking to our community providers, community leaders about you know how do we kind of put money resources into that particular Okay. Well, uh, we're on to the questions portion. Does anyone have any additional questions? Just chime in on the board if you want to speak. I have a few questions. First of all, thank you ladies. Um, Sunny and Cesan, um, I know just from personal experience, um, working with some of the, uh, houseless population that you guys do a

tremendous amount of work. Uh, and your team, right, does a tremendous amount of work. Um, and I know that when we come across somebody who is lacking services, you guys are the first people that we send them to just to get plugged in, get the information in there, right, get the data, but also be able to assess what their needs are and do some triage, but also long-term care. Um, I have a couple questions. So here recently, Echko has recommended that we do a system gap analysis. And I was uh kind of under the impression that that had to do with uh trying to um identify gaps in the system, but also duplicative services. And I know that you guys have done some of your own analysis on that. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on your guys's analysis from uh Council for the Homeless versus what we might find when the county does it um through ECHKO. If you have any input on that.

So, it's our understanding that what Echko wants to do is do a more comprehensive assessment of gaps. Um, you know, homelessness is a simp a symptom, right, of a lot of different things that are breaking down through systemically. It could be it could be in the um in housing. It could be in our health care system. It could be in our child care system. But what we do is specific to homelessness and housing. I mean homelessness and housing, right? So they want to go deeper and find out where, you know, how, you know, what what are the number of people that are impacted that aren't able to maybe um access child care um and so they've lost their jobs and thus they are now homeless. So doing a a a bigger more comprehensive study of the gaps, that is not what we do. our homeless action plan or the local housing and homeless plan uh goes into having a plan for the future that was kind of uh talked about with community leaders and folks that have experienced homelessness about you know what what are the needs and how can we you know kind of uh create a plan to look at those needs and address them in the future but we're not going into like very specific areas and I think that's what Ekko wants to Thank you.

Um, last question.

Um, you had mentioned the impact on rent rent assistance coming from funding. Um, and I know you guys don't have 2025 data, but you probably are, as far as boots on the ground, you probably have a feel for some of that. How do how do you feel initially or your you know uh rough estimate or initial thoughts on what you guys are seeing now that we've already wrapped up 25 and I know you guys are waiting on the data but have you seen like I'm looking I was looking at that graph and I noticed that you guys were able to assess much more of the population based on the numbers of 2024 from 2023

but the amount of people that were able to get into the housing of those 52 programs wasn't, you know, uh, increasing uh, as much as the actual assessment ability was. So, is that largely due to the the gap in funding for that?

So, I think I think that there there are a couple of pieces that I would want to make sure that we're separating out. One one piece is that the experience of slipping into homelessness isn't necessarily as clear-cut as, hey, I'm behind on my rent. I'm not going to be able to make it. and then tomorrow I'm experiencing homelessness. It often is depending on other support systems. So perhaps going and staying with an aunt, perhaps going So it depends on you having a support system that can provide that, right? Um so it's really important to note that. So there's not with the federal rental assistance funding um provided a really important safety net because everybody's safety net was struggling. Like that was the reality. um when kind of our economy stalled during COVID during that period of time. So that was a really important piece, but it's not necessarily a direct connection on all of those people are now experiencing homelessness. Um every single year our system has done um we have really taken to heart on we need to connect with as many folks as possible. We're pretty consistently assessing because it's really important you assess as many people as possible so you can understand what their needs are so that you can prioritize the folks that are vulnerable so that you can connect them to appropriate services. So you'll often see that and that is homeless response systems often have that of here is the need we're connecting with this many people and then here is the amount of funding that is available. And so we're having to juggle that of figuring out how do we connect people when we talk about the cost of things what I have seen prior to so let's say 2019 I could get someone moved in for $2,000 or $3,000 fully moved in everything covered

that is not a reality today so there is a cost increase that we've seen of perhaps it's $6,000 or and that so that is going to impact households much more significantly. So that isn't to dodge the question. it is instead to say I don't know like we are in the business of not making any kind of like gut jumping to conclusions on it because we're really trying to be guided by the data making sure to connect it and I have seen a really significant increase in the cost that we're supporting folks which means our system the money doesn't go as far if we have 10 people and the costs have increased by $2,000 that's going to impact the number of people we and assist.

Um, I'll add that Sunny talked about the amount of rent. Now, I want to say this and be clear, like the amount of rent in Clark County is astronomical and it is increasing year after year. And that is a hardship that families and individuals are having to deal with every single day. more importantly and then us having just a small amount of resources throughout Clark County. The more important piece is that there's not enough affordable housing to meet the need. And so if we had more affordable housing, we'd be able to, you know, help more people and kind of keep them from experiencing homelessness. But our amount, our need is this big and the amount of affordable housing is about this big. And so we're constantly talking to developers and like the Vancouver Housing Authority about increasing, you know, units, but again, they could start building today and that building isn't ready for three years. And so in the meantime, in the in between time, the amount of homelessness is increasing. And by the time we get to that building and fill that building, we we need another 25 buildings to help us. So, I mean, I want to I want to make sure that you all know that we always say the answer to homelessness is housing and affordable housing and, you know, is the most important piece.

All right. Well, thank you, Cesan. Thank you, Sunny. We appreciate appreciate you guys coming out and presenting that to us. And uh you guys thank you for continue the good work that you're doing.

All right. Thanks. All right, we will transition on to citizen communication. Um, I will now open the meeting for citizen communication. Individuals are limited to three minutes to provide comment. The total time for public comments shall not exceed 30 minutes unless extended by the mayor. This is an opportunity to hear from public or from members of the public in a limited public forum, not an opportunity for extended comments or dialogue. Please refrain from derogatory remarks, personal attacks, campaign speeches, and applause. Although the city council desires to allow public comment, the city's business must proceed in an orderly, timely manner. If your comments pertain to any item listed on the agenda as a public hearing, please reserve your testimony for the designated public hearing period. All comment should be directed to the mayor. The council may not be able to respond to individual comments and may refer citizens to a staff member for assistance. The city manager has placed her cards at the podium. Please feel free to take one if you would like to contact her with any questions that you may have. If you have handouts, please hand them to the city clerk directly to the right of the podium or Kelly. Um, thank you for understanding and participating in the city council meeting this evening. Um, Kelly, are there any members of the public on Zoom who wish to provide comment tonight?

No, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Thank you. So, we will go to people here. Uh, first one up, um, Simon Hello. I am a battleground resident, someone you were elected to represent. And in this moment, you are failing to represent your whole community. I requested a proclamation recognizing transgender day of visibility, and it was denied. Transa visibility exists because being pushed aside is dangerous. When people are ignored and dehumanized, it can become deadly. What makes this denial especially confusing is that because of violence and chronic unequal treatment, trans people are legally protected are a legally protected class under Washington law, state laws this council has sworn to uphold. And yet this one and yet this is the proclamation that was denied while others are recognized without question. Trans people are already one of the smallest communities in our society yet one of the most targeted from being harassed and turned away from housing to being denied care and even killed. all in a climate where lies and fears spread about them are continually being spread. And that's not hypothetical. Right now in Kansas, state officials are attempting to revoke IDs of every person who has legally updated their gender marker. People who followed the law and

completed the official process could suddenly find their valid IDs null and void. Imagine what that means in practice. not being able to drive to work, to the store, or to pick up your kids, and being forced into situations that expose you to harassment or danger in everyday life. When leaders choose to ignore trans people, push them aside, or refuse to even acknowledge my existence and struggles, it makes it easier for others to lie about us. It makes it easier to treat us less than human. Trans people are just people. Our neighbors, our co-workers, members of our community. Let me leave you with my final thoughts. Imagine standing in front of a group of people, a group of people in power while you are terrified, knowing they are questioning who you are and what kind of person you are. Imagine how based on their actions or inactions, you can only assume that they would rather you disappear or something worse. How long could you keep standing up? How long could you carry the responsibility of speaking for an entire community, especially for those who are too afraid to speak at all? Would you be able to do it even once? And how unfair is it that I have to

Thank you, Simon.

Next up, Jessica Cole.

Hello, council. I'm Jessica Cole. I want to thank councilors uh Jeannie Kypers and Troy McCoy for attending the school district's levy presentation and listening sessions. It's encouraging to see council members engaging with and supporting our schools. Strong public schools are essential for a healthy community and help attract uh residents and businesses. I'm especially concerned about how cuts might impact the family and community resource center and its support for students experiencing homelessness. So, I super appreciate the council for the homeless's presentation tonight. Second, I want to mention proclamations. At the last meeting, I heard the proclamation recognizing Women's History Month. I did not expect it to affect me much, but hearing a group that I am part of recognized by the city was surprisingly meaningful. It created a sense of belonging and community that I hadn't anticipated. Because of that experience, it's especially disheartening that the mayor will not issue a proclamation for transgender day of visibility. The mayor has recently recognized several groups and obser observations through proclamations, including Black History Month, Women's History Month, School Resource Officer Appreciation Day, and the American Red Cross. Transgender people are also members of this community. Our neighbors, co-workers, family members, and residents. Visibility is not about politics. It's about acknowledging that members of our community exist and that they belong here. Moments of recognition like proclamations may seem small, but they

can mean a lot to people being acknowledged. Government exists to serve and represent all members of the community. I hope the city will reflect on what message it sends when some members of our community are recognized and others are not. Every resident deserves to know they are part of the community their city serves. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jessica.

All right, that's all we have for public comment tonight. Unless we have anybody else to put a slip in the box. I don't think we do. Nope. Okay. Moving on uh to the consent agenda. Does any council member believe any item needs to be withdrawn from the consent agenda tonight? I'll move to the approve the consent agenda. Second. All right. We have a motion by council member Ferrer, second by council member Kypers. All those in favor? I.

Any opposed? Hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. All right, down to public hearings. Um, Kelly, uh, was any testimony submitted for the public hearing that has not yet been provided to the council? If so, could you read the testimony in the Oakland public key? No, there was not, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Kelly. All right, we are going to go to resolution 26-02. Um, I want to introduce finance and information technologies director Megan Lowry. Good evening, council. Before you, you have resolution 26-2, which surpluses public utility equipment, specifically our backer truck that was purchased back in 2007, and we had replaced it in 2025. According to state law, anything valued over $50,000 that's purchased with public utility funds, has to be presented through a public hearing and surplus that way before we can go to auction and sell the equipment. And so with that, we recommend opening the public hearing.

All right. I will now open the public hearing at 8:13 p.m. for public testimony. Individuals are limited to three minutes to provide comment on the surplus of utility equipment resolution 26-02. All comment should be directed to the mayor. Are there any members of the public on Zoom who wish to provide testimony? Kelly? No, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who wish to provide testimony tonight? hearing none. I will now close the public hearing uh at 7 or I'm sorry 8:14 p.m. And I would uh seek a motion to approve resolution 2602. Okay. I'll move to approve resolution 26-02 for the surplus utility equipment. Second. Go for it.

All right. We we have a motion by Council Member Fer, second by Deputy Mayor Bale. Uh, call for discussion. Anyone want to ring in on this? Okay. Um, Council Member Mson. First up. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, following documents were reviewed by legal and approved as to form resolution 2602. Was there any feedback from the legal team about this? Any concerns that they had? No. So, I see they're on here tonight and they stand behind that we're going to be okay with selling this at fair market value. Uh, yes, Councilman. All right. Thank you. All right. Any further discussion?

All right. I I do have a question, Megan. Uh, how much did we purchase that backdrop for? I believe it was 235,000 back in ' 07. It's a steal. I wish we could get those compared to today. This the one we purchased in 25 was 635,000. So yes, they are very expensive. I will say too, Council Member Kyper has had a great question earlier today. She asked, "Where do the funds go when we've received them?" And they go back to the fund in which it was purchased and that's a legal requirement. So because sewer owns it, that's the sewer utility equipment. Legally, it has to go back to sewer.

Very good. All right. Seeing no additional comment, I will uh call for the vote. All those in favor? I I. Any oppose? Hearing none. Motion passes unanimously. We're going to get our 20 grand for that backdrop. All right, Kelly. Uh, were there any communications submitted regarding business items that have not been provided to the council? No, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Thank you, ma'am. We're going to move on. Uh, fourth quarter 2025 financial overview. Megan, take it away.

Perfect. Well, another year is done. That is very exciting. We have been working very diligently in getting our annual comprehensive financial report. It is a bear of a report that we put together for our auditors um as well as our constituents. But before we get into the details of the numbers, I just kind of want to go high level. So we have 22 various funds and they're broken up into governmental funds and proprietary funds. So you can generally think of governmental funds, those are tax supported whereas your proprietary funds are rates supported. So your proprietary funds function more as a business just like you would see like a balance sheet and an income statement if you are a for-profit business. However, we're not for-p profofit. But ultimately when you're looking at those that's more similar to what you will see. I won't go through the various funds unless anybody has any questions about any of the specific funds before I move on. So our governmental funds we report on a modified acrruel basis. What that means is that while it's not a full basis of acrruel, it's kind of like cash but modified a little bit. So we recognize some liabilities. We definitely book our expenses when they're incurred as well as our revenues are recognized when they're earned. However, there is a shorter time frame. So, we anything collected within 60 days, we report as revenue. Anything beyond that other than grants is put in as deferred inflows. And it has to do with the measurement governmental accounting standards board sets those standards. And then we take that and do a governmentwide and put it at the same basis of accounting as our preparatory funds, which is full acral. Revenues are recognized when they're earned, expenses when they're incurred, assets and liabilities are all reported on all the statements. And then it, like I said, it's similar to private industry financial statements. Our state

auditor's office comes in on an annual basis and audits our financial statements. Along with a financial statement audit, they also do what they call an accountability audit. An accountability audit, they come in and go a little bit deeper than just your financials. As part of the financial statements, they also look at internal controls. Are your internal controls sufficient to prevent misappropriation, mclassification, and proper reporting? And then accountability takes it one step further. really look for, for example, like dual opening of the mail. That's something they frequently recommend. It's not something it's cost prohibitive for us to do those sorts of things. So, we definitely do a costbenefit analysis when they notice things like that. But looking at our controls a little bit deeper, making sure that we have things in place to prevent misappropriation and to follow compliance with laws and regulations as well as our contracts. And then in addition to that, they do what is called a federal single audit. So when you have federal funds, you have to have a federal single audit. If you expend more than that, this threshold has recently raised for 2025 from 750,000 to a million, which is fantastic. So getting a little bit bigger, so we don't have to have those audits as frequently. Because we have the American Rescue Plan Act funds still, we are going to have to have what's called an attestation audit. And it's a little bit smaller of a single audit because they don't have to come in and do a full program audit. They just look at our costs to make sure we're in compliance with allowable costs. So, we should see some cost savings in our audit because they don't have to do a full-blown single audit. That audit is slated to begin April 20th. And as I said before, the annual comprehensive financial report is a very large undertaking. Only 6.6% 6% of all Washington jurisdictions actually prepare one. And that's so about 54 out of 823 jurisdictions. So we go above and beyond trying to be the most transparent with our constituents.

For us, we have to do the work regardless. So it's just a couple extra steps to make sure we're extra clean and extra perfect in our statements. So that's ultimately why we do it. Are there any questions about that before I move on? Okay. So now the fun stuff. So looking at our general fund tax revenue, these taxes support 13 departments. Um there was definitely a shift that took place in 2020. A lot of jurisdictions experienced something different than us. Here in Battleground, we actually saw an uptick in sales tax whereas some other jurisdictions saw a decline. So some spending behaviors changed. Folks started shopping locally, supporting their local businesses. people started having things delivered and because we're destination based we reap the benefits of that. So this used to be a three it was divided almost equally 3 three and three whereas now it's almost 50% sales tax a quarter property tax and another quarter utility tax. So it's interesting to watch those shifts every different jurisdiction is a little bit different. Um, but I just thought it was interesting with CO. We were one of the ones I wouldn't say we benefited from CO, but we definitely saw positive impacts with CO.

What's interesting is seeing the property tax go above the utility tax.

Yes. So, that that has a lot to do with our growth, which we'll get to in a little bit. the added the new construction that comes in that adds to that base levy because that does just say as you've all almost all experienced my presentation. We have the base levy and it can only increase by 1% each year which is only about $30,000 but when you have that new construction that can add up to 200,000 depending upon the value of that new construction coming in. So that definitely has upticked with the growth that's happened in the city. So sales tax, general sales tax, we collected 5.9 million in 2025 compared to 5.6 in 24. It's a 5.9% increase. However, I will say that last year we experienced a 3.9% decrease. So this is really only a 2% increase over our highest year ever collected. So, you know, numbers are kind of special that way. You have to look at it as more than just year-to-year comparison. and we have to look at historic and more of a 5 10 year to get an idea of what the economy is doing. I wish I had a crystal ball. We try to estimate but we do we do our best with the information that we have available to us at the time. Our public sales tax was 383,000 compared to 367 and 24 which is a 4.1% increase. And then our criminal justice sales tax 516,000 compared to 498. I will say these are both countywide taxes which is why those increases are different and the formulas for each of them are different in what we get. They're both per capita based. The department of revenue takes that and there's some some differing calculations that happen with both of those. So transportation benefit district tax that was 696,000 compared to 657 and 24. So that increase matches our general sales tax and because that's a local tax.

And once we see April hit, we will also see the other 0.1% for public safety. So that public safety tax will increase with that. And again, this looks at the historic all the way back to 2018. We only collected 3.4 million whereas today we're collecting 5.9. So we thought we would see a taper off at some point after COVID, but we have not. Looking at our overall sales tax revenue and what we send to the state and our other jurisdictions, we sent about 46 million to the state, 4.9 to CRAN, 706,000 to the county for criminal justice, mental health, as well as our own TBD sales tax. So, what that means is we had about $76 million worth of gross receipts taken in in the city of Battleground, which is massive. And then the question always says, well, where is that coming from? What industries is this coming from? What does this mean? Are these stable industries? Are these industries that are consumer-based or are these building based? So you can kind of see that here looking at fourth quarter of 24 compared to fourth quarter of 25. You see there's been an uptick in retail trade. A pretty good chunk of increase in construction. We saw a little bit of a decrease in food services and lodging, public administration and wholesale. And then some upticks in some other classifications that are too small to really list. There's I believe 45 different um codes that are excuse me 21 categories. So we only present the highest that we do. The thing I want to point out though is for construction from 2016 to 2020 our average

collections was about 613,000 a year and now from 21 to 25 we've averaged about a million a year we collect from the construction trade or the construction building that's happening within the city. So that's something to keep an eye on because that's not something that depending upon how the again how the economy grows, how we grow, if folks if there's a demand for housing or not, if that will continue to be as high as it is. So building definitely touches a lot of things which leads us right into development activity. So looking at our single family new homes, we had 237 compared to 284 in 24. For multifamily new constructions, we had two compared to zero. And then our commercial for new, this does not include tenant improvements. This is just new commercial permits. Um four, we actually had the same amount, four and four. And then what does that mean monetarily? Like what did we bring in? So permit revenue was about 1.2 million compared to 1.28 and 24. Our building plan checks 852,000 compared to 92,024. Development review 627,000 compared to 330. And then for our traffic impact fees 1.4 million compared to 775,000. I will say when we have developers who build a portion of our transportation plan, we do issue some credits as a portion to them. And so it's important to keep that in mind when we're looking at new developments that we may or may not see all of the traffic impact fees that would normally be associated with it because they're building a portion of that plan and we're issuing credits. So we issued $1.2 million in credits and of those $1.2 2,80,000 were used.

For park impact fees, we collected 1.16 million compared to 1.2 in 2024. They were equal, but not quite equal. So, wanted to give an extra digit there. And then, so overall, we had a $5.3 million increase, which is 16.1 over 2024. So, development activity is definitely strong in the city of Battleground, which I know you all know because you drive in the city. So what does that same development activity mean for proprietary funds? So that means connections. So for our water system, we added 144 new accounts which brought us in 101,000 which is down a little bit from 24 for system development fees. We collected 4.1 compared to 4.4 which was an increase of 301 accounts. And again we also issued some credits there. So we issued 123,000 in credits and 254,000 credits were used for our drainage system. We had 32 additional accounts added. So 114,000 compared to 130 and 24. So contributed capital is similar but not. So contributed capital when your developments go in they input the roadways that go around the neighborhood as well as the storm water ponds and so forth. And so they then give it to the city and it becomes a city asset. So we don't pay anything for it. It's just contributed capital. I have to book it on my financial statements as such and then book the asset. So governmental accounting standards work. Good old GAP. So overall that was 4.3 million in contributed capital. So they build it, we maintain it. So interest income continues to be

record setting. We had 4 million across all of our funds compared to 4.2 in 2024. We are starting to see the interest rates drop slightly, but not as significant as you would have expected a year ago. So average earnings across all the funds is 3.9% which is just a slight decrease from 2024. So looking at our capital projects across our governmental funds so that's your parks, your streets, your facilities, we had 5.3 million in total which is about 39 different projects in various stages. So, the largest ones was the $1.1 million Kowanas Park improvements, $676,000 Southwest Eaton Boulevard. A lot of that was the right-of-way acquisitions and then 546,000 for Southwest 20th Avenue pathway. 523,000 for the event center, 264,000 for Southeast Grace, 329,000 for the park bathroom additions, and then for the capital portion of the senior center remodel, there's you're going to see we had to split that into capital and non- capital because of the project and what we were doing. There's very we book some as assets and some as not. It depends upon the improvement and what it's doing for the building.

Question. Yes. Over half a million dollars into the 20th Avenue path, a bike path through wet land. And we're not done yet. Do you have any idea what the total cost will be on that project when it's completed? Mark, maybe Mark will know. Mark knows. My recollection is the bid price was 700 something 700 and some change. I think a few hundred,000 of that was design costs. Um, so it'll be close to a million I think when all is said and done.

Million dollar bike path. That's awesome. All right. Thank you. Any other questions about any of these capital projects? Like I said, there's a lot more than this. This was as we were going through our asset accounting and reconciling and chewing all of this up. There's a lot this is there's more this year than we've ever had. It was it was a beast. Okay. Looking at our proprietary funds, we had 8.6 million in capital expenditures, which is 14 different projects in various stages. Our largest ones being 3.5 million for the water reservoir, 3.1 million for 92nd Avenue pump station, and then 117,000 for the railroad ditch. There any questions about any of those? So, looking at our street preservation, we were able to continue our funding of 1.2 million in 25, which was the same as 2024. And then our ADA ramps, we were a little bit higher this year, 478,000 compared to 400 in 2024. There any questions about the street preservation? I have a quick question. Um, I think this would probably be to Mark as well. I wanted to know if he remembered or if you could give me the information for each ADA ramp,

how much it cost. Um, right now we're running about 10 per ramp. Thank you. I'll ask this. Yeah. How many are left to do? I was hoping to see the number go down.

Yeah. So, you know, you've heard my presentations, but anytime you do anything more than a seal, you have to fix all the ramps that don't meet it. Um, we have an ADA transition plan that lists all of those. off the top of my head, I can't remember how many are in there. Um, we are making good progress on them, but there are still a lot to do. Okay, so some good news is uh we've had a lot of state and federal grant assistance. The not so great news with that is the administration that comes with that. As you all are aware, free money is not always free. Um and so for our direct federal grants, we had 2.7 million that was from our cops technology grant when we had that coordination with the city of B or not the city of Battleground school district um for the radio repeaters. This was a closeout of that. The final piece of the drug-free communities grant and then the bigger portion of this is the American Rescue Plan Act which is funding our water reservoir. That's all that's left for these funds which we have to expend by the end of 2026 which we are on track to do that. So that entire project's being paid for with the ARPA funds as well as a state department of commerce grant.

What's that project? The reservoir up on Tukques. So that big mark water. Yes. It's a water tank. Yeah. So up on up on Tukes Mountain. No, I was sorry. I I was you said cops and I think police, but that's obviously an acronym for something else. That is what the grant is called. It's called called COPS. It's a Department of Justice grant. Usually they're hiring grants. Um but they also issue technology grants. So we were issued I believe it was 400,000 for the radio repeaters for Battleground School District as well as we used it for some camera projects and some radios. So we've already spent it all. Yes, that's it's gone. This was just the final very end of it.

Okay.

Yes. And then we had some indirect federal grants. I prefer these personally because they go through a state agency typically and they do all the hard reporting to the federal government. I like these. Um so 1.5 million transportation projects. Target zero, that's your emphasis patrol with the police department. And then because the state changed for 92nd Avenue, it was an ear market. It was supposed to be state funds. they changed it to ARPA and so it's another ARPA but it's indirect it wasn't part of our initial pot of money of ARPA funds for state grants um 2.8 million again transportation projects and then also for water drainage planning and judicial the state is actually department of ecology is really good about funding drainage we get quite a bit of funds from them for the various things related to our NPDES permit um which is fantastic so overall about 6.4 4 million in grant assistance. And then looking at our general fund overall, we did very well with revenues and collected 28.5 million compared to our budget of 28. I will say we had budgeted conservatively because we weren't sure because we saw that 4% decrease in sales tax. So, we did budget for a decrease in sales tax, which that's what this then ticked up. Um, again, it's always better to get more money than you anticipate because then you don't overspend. Expenditures, we had a budget of 30.6 million and our actual is 26.1. The majority of that difference has to do with our capital projects. So, we budgeted to have our full projects go that are funded by the general fund. This is where our ARPA funds are housed and then we use it almost like a granting agency and then we re reimburse the fund for the project costs. So, that way it's separated. is kind of a segregation internal control. So that's what the difference is looking at our general fund revenues

beyond taxes. So taxes make up over 50% of the overall general fund revenues we collect. The intergovernmental revenues, that's your state grants as well as your shared revenues with state. your licenses and permits. That's all of your building permits, charges for services. That includes your cost allocation as well as impact fees. So the impact fees are things we collect on behalf of the school district and fire district as developments come in. And then we have to remit it and because again of our fund accounting rules, I have to budget for that as a revenue and expense because we can't net things. We can't net the expenses against those revenues. So we have to show them as separate line items. for full transparency. And then fines and penalties. Those are your traffic violations, your criminal violations, and things that the court collects, 185,000. And then your miscellaneous includes interest. So then looking at our general fund expenditures. So the legislative we came under budget 89.8%. This also includes any codifications. So anytime that we have to codify anything, that's where the budget is for that. Looking at our judicial, I did want to get into a little bit of details with this. I know we shared some cost per case with council and that was $326 per case. So for the judicial department, um there are things that we separate into do a rolling three-year average based on filings that we then pass on to Ridgefield and Le Center. Things like jail and interpreter. Um those are paid for directly by each jurisdiction and so we have to take those out. So those are included in your overall judicial budget, but those are not things we pass on to the three. So when I look at all of the revenue coming into judicial,

including the contract prosecutor, the general fund funds about 44.2% of the overall cost of the judicial department and prosecutor. That's 1.3. So there's only about $571,000 of general fund dollars that pays for this. I'm happy to get into more details. I have lots of numbers I can share with you if you're interested, but for the interest of time, we'll move on. I just thought that was an interesting um look at that. And then looking at our executive department, they were at 94.7%. This is is where our insurance of $457,000 is with WCIA as well as our elections costs that include voter maintenance. So, we have to pay the county to maintain our voter registry and that's where that budget is. And then looking at human resources, we did have the bargaining for teamsters this last year, but we came under budget at 79.5%. Looking at finance, we're at 76%. This does include the pass through grants. That's where we stick any pass through grant we have. So we have DHA has the CHIP grant that's through Department of Commerce to pay for infrastructure for their project. And so we had budgeted for that, which is why that's so far under budget. And it also includes the ARTG CARES worker grant that we pay for the fire district 3. They only give it to cities AWC and then we pass it through to the fire district. So that's where that's housed as well. looking at information services. All of our software that cannot be directly tied to like a proprietary fund is budgeted here and then we do through our cost allocation plan allocate that out to the various departments. And then looking at legal, $130,000 of that legal actual is the prosecutor that we were talking about with judicial. The

rest is our contract prosecutor with Muni Jackson. And then looking at engineering, we charge directly. So as your engineers do work on projects, so say they're doing work on 92nd Avenue, they charge the hours to that fund. And so it's a direct charge for that and then we capitalize those costs. So that's why it's at 74.7% of budget. And then looking at facilities, this also includes the senior center portion. That was the remodel which was 416,000 like and then we also had PD flooring and furniture and then we did receive a grant for the senior centers as well. So that helped offset the costs of that remodel and improvements transfers out and the impact fee remittance. This is where the majority of where our general fund came under budget. So this is the transfers to streets and to parks to help fund those departments as well as our capital transfers. So paying for any capital projects that the general fund was budgeted to pay for as well as again the ARPA funds to the water fund for the reservoir law enforcement. We were actually fully staffed for what was allocated or approved authorized for 2025 which was the first time since I've been here we were fully staffed ever for more than 2 weeks which was fantastic and I believe now even with the two additional positions were completely fully staffed even for 26 which again is never happened. So fantastic. Um and then this is also where our cresa and our per capita fees are as well which are not cheap. So about 400,000 for Cresa and then another 38,000 to Cresa for our per capita fee. And then looking at community development, we had quite a few contracts, professional services that included our comp plan, the climate grant, um, or climate plan, Oldtown sub

area plan, and we were able to get a lot of grants for a lot of those, which I can get into details if you want specific numbers, but the majority of those expenses, it was about 650,000 in professional services related to those items. Are there any questions about any of those departments? These again, and if any of you are ever interested, I'm happy to show you my system. Yeah, I think it's been quite a while since I've offered this to council, but you do have the ability to where I can give you rights to go into it's called in code express and you're actually able to drill down. So, I send out those monthly financial statements. You could go in and look and click and get all the way down to the invoice if you so chose. So, if you're interested in that, let me know and I'll show you how. Okay. Real estate excise tax. This is another interesting one. Again, I I find all data interesting. So, it's fascinating to look as the city overall what things affect different things. And so, our real estate excise tax, you know, that our permit revenue is up and you know that our property tax is up. Well, that also means there's home sales. So, home sales are up. So, we collected almost 2.1 million in 25. I mean, we're not at the height of 21 and 22 when rates were historically low, but with rates being as high as they are right now, this is amazing to me that we're still collecting so much because we have not dipped back down to precoid numbers. Again, not what you expect with the turn the turn of the economy. So it'll be interesting to see what continues to happen. Okay. So moving on to the other major governmental funds. These are just operational costs because we track we already talked about capital. So looking at our street fund,

our revenues were at 90.8%. Our street expenditures 72.9%. Our parks fund we're at 109.8%. And this has a lot to do with the community or excuse me, event center um collecting more rentals or more rate revenue than we anticipated. And then for our park expenditures, we're at 96.1%. Are there any questions or any details you want about either of these funds? Okay. Looking at our storm drainage fund again because of our increase in development we collected more in revenue than anticipated. So we were at 106.4% and then storm expenses 88.2%. Again this is just operational not including capital. Our water fund we were at 111.2% revenue budget to actual and then water expenses 83.6%. I will say for our water purchase, purchasing water from CPU, we were less in 25 than we were in 24. And we're hopeful we'll continue to decrease that now that W six is up and going and we're producing more of our own, so we don't have to buy as much.

And then for our sewer fund, we're at 106.9% budget to actual. And then our sewer expenses, 91.2%. A large portion of portion of that 6.7 million goes to Discovery Clean Water Alliance for the treatment which was at 4.4 million for 2025. And then looking at what debt we have outstanding for our general obligation bond for Scott and we have 2 million that's slated to be paid off in 2030. Our water revenue bond 1.17 million that's also slated to be paid off in 2030. And then our USDA revenue bond we're at 4.57 million. that is significantly longer than 2030. I believe it's 2047. So, still ticking away at it. And then looking at our total cash and investments as of the end of 2025, a large portion of what we have is at LGIP because they've had the higher interest rate. And then we have funds with the county pool. And then they take those funds and they invest them. They're kind of in their investment pools. And then for our investments, we do some of our own long-term investments that we know so we can lock in some rates that are in that four or 5% for longer. And then we also have money in our local bank. 88% of the funds shown are restricted or committed for purposes. So it's not like we can just go spend this these funds. So a lot of these have a very specific purpose and reason we collect them. So are there any questions? Uh Megan on that um investments what is the current rate on our LGIP is that that 3.9

I believe our current rate with LGIP is like 3.837 which the county pool for the first time just ticked higher than them. So we're moving we're moving. Question do you take side work as a personal financial advisor? Well, governmental investing is very different than private investing because we're restricted on what we can invest in. So, I wouldn't know anything about the private world. Megan, on our uh debt, our outstanding debt, yeah, you've got listed here three bonds. Is that just the large ticket items or are there some smaller items in there? That's just it.

That's it. That's it. Yep. And we have been we made a commitment several years ago to put an extra $200,000 a year to the sewer revenue bond. Originally, that was slated to be paid off in 2050. I think it was 2022. But paying the extra $200,000 saves us almost $2 million and it cuts off, I believe it was 17 years off the life of the bond. So, it was better to do that than to try to refinance it during the low the low time. and and if I recall, we looked at paying off those bonds early and the interest we're making is higher than what we're paying on those bonds. So, just for public knowledge on that, if this is your first time listening to this presentation, yes, we could afford to pay them off, but it we make more money by not. So, right,

thank you, Uncle Sam. Um, I just wanted to recognize the work, the fiscal conservativism that goes into these budgets. The the I I was looking for bad news in any slide, in any number. Uh, I didn't see it. Uh, other than maybe engineering has too many projects. Um, but when you see that many projects and you don't see overbudget, obviously that's a whole team effort. It's not just engineering. not just finance. And well done.

Thank you. It's definitely an effort of everyone being on the same team and making sure we're fiscally conservative. And I like to say this, living within your means. We do it at home. We can only afford what we can afford. And we don't want to get over our skis. And yes, we could go out for the moon and the stars, but then that's it for the next 50 years of our people because you have to pay it off at some point. I'll just echo what Troy said. A lot of times council gets the credit for our fiscal responsibility, but in reality it's it's our finance department. And so, thank you for making us look good. Thank you.

All right. Any further questions? All right. Hearing none, we will go on to the uh capital projects 101. Uh Mark Hersig, director of public works. Take it away. Good evening, council. Give me a second. I'll share my presentation. All right. So, we're going to do a capital projects 101 tonight. And we kind of thought there was some good benefit to it. Um, we obviously have a few new council members. Oh, isn't it working? Give me a second. Helps if you can see it. I don't have permission to share, Ellie. Yeah, if you can. at the bottom. There you go. All right. So, back to capital projects. So, um, obviously we have some new council members. Um, uh, there's always lots of questions about capital projects. So, that would kind of a thought. And then, um, I know it's you don't want to hear it, but we're getting close to budget time again. So, it's

kind of good hearing some of this stuff, um, going into it. So, next slide. So, what is a capital? So, what I'll talk about of what is a capital project? How does a project become a project? Then we'll talk about actually once it is a project how we go through and get it constructed. Um I'll give you a couple fun facts and then answer some questions. Slide. Um so definition of a capital project is a project to construct either new facilities or make significant long-term renewal improvements to existing facilities. So when we talk about projects, we have three big kind. Capital projects were like your pump stations, your reservoirs, those sorts of things. Uh we have maintenance projects which is often your street preservation, storm water vault cleaning, those sorts of things. And then what we call RNR and that's like your HVAC, generator replacement, those sorts of projects. Next slide. Um so why is a project necessary? Sometimes it's to create additional capacity and often our system plans will call that out. Um it's for RNR, our facilities capital plan calls those out. staff knowledge um for maintenance. Uh that's again with streets and our street ratings. We'll talk about that. Um safety issues. So we have a local road safety plan that addresses those. Uh sometimes there new law or permit requirements. That's often our phase 2 storm water permit. Uh there's a new law about clean buildings by the state. Um city livability which is like your parks projects and those addressed by your pros plan. And then you have council directed or economic development often comes from input from citizens or supports desired development. Next slide. Um if the project is necessary when is the project needed. So uh we have growth dependent or level of service deficiencies. So we model that and new

growth triggers those. Um when you have your RNR projects it's about useful life or running to failure. So, uh, some things will replace before they actually fail. Um, and that depends a lot on your risk tolerance. So, you can choose to just let it fail and then replace it. But there's a consequence to that. So, you have to kind of weigh the that balance if you want to replace it early or let it fail. Um, there's asset preservation. So, again, back to streets, it's making cheap improvements to avoid future expensive fixes. Uh, risk. how long can you go without addressing an issue? Sometimes they're statutoily required. Uh so new laws often have specific dates written into them when you have to make improvements or make changes. Um and then there's ones where it's as agreed and often comes from like development agreements. Um the Scott and Way project is a good example where um as part of that we had specific timelines for completing the project. Uh so we know the project is needed and when what is next? So that's when we start looking for money. Those can be grant applications, uh legislative requests, and then we move on to budgeting. So city staff will provide recommendations to council. Uh those includes our revenue sources, which can again include the city funds or grants. Uh council chooses to move forward or not via the budget process. And then once approved by council, um a project is born and it moves to public works. So first step and this step is not always necessary is planning. So if a project scope is well defined, we can actually skip this step. Uh when it's not, we often go through a master plan or pre-esign. And so examples you've seen lately are our parks master plans, our oldtown master plan, um and our operation center master plan. Um so master plans can be city or consultant. Um often you start with multiple iterations. So you'll come up

with different designs um and then we'll whittle those down to one kind of final answer via public input. Uh that input can come from open houses, surveys, our website and that input can be taken at any time and is often done multiple times depending on it. And ultimately your final project is usually a report and then a a pretty picture or a drawing that kind of shows people what you want to do. And then all projects we go to preliminary engineering. So, got a list of categories there. So, if you were to look at my files, um I would have a file for each of those categories. And so, I'll kind of talk through those and then I'll talk about a summary at the end. Next slide. Uh so, for in administration, that's a lot working with granting agencies. So, as Megan mentioned, for a lot of our projects, we'll have grants. So, uh we do a lot to get agreements signed with them, work through the financing pieces of it and those sorts of things. There's some examples there and this happens a lot throughout the project. Next slide. Um, so first off, we contract. Um, so city staff designs a lot of our projects, but there's times where we either don't have the expertise or we're just so busy that consultant needs to do it. Uh, things like environmental permitting, surveying, those sorts of things. We don't have staff that does that. Um how we do that we have a thresholds for um how we select. So if we estimate the cost is between 0 and 40,000 we can directly select a or a consultant. If it's between 40 and 100 uh we select three from our roster and we do an interview. And then if it's over a 100red we actually put an ad in the newspaper and have them provide qualifications. And then staff ends up rating those and we select from there. And then once that's done, we've got a somebody on board. We work through a scope and fee and then depending on those values, sometimes council sees

them, sometimes they're under city manager threshold to approve. Yeah. Um I will note that you'll see that the fee is discussed after the fact, which seems counterintuitive. You can thank Washington state law for that.

Yeah. Yeah. And you Chris has heard it several times from me, but one of my manifestos is to change that. Um, Oregon allows uh cost to be inputed into that decision. And I feel like Washington costs are higher because we're not allowed to do that. So, I've told everyone who will listen to me that if you could get that law changed, that would be good for us. Um, but off my soap box. um from the design phase. So again staff either does the work or manages the consultant. We gather survey environmental data. The ultimate goal of the design phase is to create PSNES. And so P stands for plans, S stands for speci specifications and E is the cost estimate. Uh when you talk about plans, you'll sometimes hear me say 30 60 90 100. Those are the level of plan detail. And so the plans get done in steps. So 30 is really some lines on the paper. It's very basic information, just kind of a general alignment. 60% has a lot more detail. This is when we kind of do a good thorough review. 90 pretty much everything's done. We're just check, you know, is there any typos? Is there any, you know, minor things that got missed? And then you get to your final. Um, just to give an example for our 503502, uh, when that project went to bid, the plans were 96 pages and the specs ended up being 344. Um, PSNES are reviewed by some granting agencies. So, washd often will review those for us whether we have federal or state funds. It's one of their requirements to um, move the project to bid and ultimately that is our end result.

Can I jump in again? Yeah. So this step is really important. As a finance person, the cost of engineering drives me crazy because it is very expensive. Each one of these documents, you're talking millions. But if without these, if someone was to get into an accident in this intersection and if we didn't properly do these specifications and have these documents to support us, we could be at fault and held liable. And so this isn't just the specifications for the project. It's also again bigger picture risk. Next slide.

Environmental permitting. Everyone's favorite. So staff manages the consultants who gather this data. Um our ultimate goal is to receive all the project permits. So there's kind of two processes depending on your funding. One is SE SEPA which is the state environmental policy act. It's required for all local and state funded projects um unless it's exempt. And then NEPA which is the national version version and it's required for all federally funded projects. Um and then also that just gets you the a step in the direction. You also actually have to go get your permits and often for us that's your wetland permit which can be ecology, the core and even the city. Um back to example projects. So, Grace Avenue, NEPA approval, it took 1,143 days from ready to submit to actually getting approval and 764 of those days was for the Nymphs issue. Um, ultimately our end result is getting the environmental approval and project permits and then grants. Uh, during the PE phase, staff works on acquiring additional grants. So, often we'll have just the PE phase funded. And so as we're doing design, we'll actually request right away and construction funding obviously if those aren't in place. And then public involvement. Um so that can happen throughout. For small projects, it's pretty limited. For larger projects, there's obviously more. Um there's several methods for doing that. Our website um or open houses, uh direct discussion with people affected. Uh there's a couple things that we're working on and it's just not public works but us as a group. Um we have a development project map that you've seen on our website. We're working on one for capital projects. Uh so you'll be able to click on the spot and it'll pop up with all the information. And then I'm sure I'm using the wrong term here, but uh communication playbook. So something

Alician I talked about is uh for each project before we start it having the kind of package that we'll use for outreach. So, we'll know if it's just going to be a website or if it's going to have openhouse, those sorts of things. So, as the project manager is working through it, they'll know what kind of communication that they'll need to do in order to to move the project forward. And then reports, um you'll see traffic, hydraology, design, and these are all documents that get created to support the project. Um and again, you'll you'll they'll vary on different projects. So, kind of a summary said start with contracting, you pick up survey, we'll get to 30% plans. Um, after 30%, we have a general idea of what we're going to impact so we can start environmental work. You get to those 60% plans. Then you can actually submit your environmental docs. Um, then you get those approved on state and federal projects. you actually have to have that environmental approval to be able to move to rightaway phase. Um, and so the good example again is Grace is that's why it took so long to be able to get to offer people um or get to the stage where we're about to be into offers because we had to wait for that environmental approval. Uh then you move on to 90% you start getting your environmental permits. We end up with final plans and specs. um the granting agency will review and then we get to go to bid. Uh next up is right of way. So uh for state and federally funded projects, this has to begin after environmental approval. Um it's work completed by a consultant with staff support. Uh so during the pro process, we determine our need. So if it's a permanent acquisition, we'll work with the deed. If it's a permanent access right, we'll use an easement. Um, if it's a temporary right during construction, we'll use a

temporary easement. And then if it's a right to complete a specific task, this is often things like reconnecting sewer to a line, stuff like that. It ends up being a permit. Um, you submit your rightway plan and estimate uh to wash and again this state and federal funding. They approve it and that essentially gives you the right to start doing appraisals. On small projects, we do something that's called a waiver evaluation. So you don't have to go through a full appraisal process. They use some comparables and essentially come up with a value for the the property. Next slide. Hey Mark. Yes. Real quick. Yeah. Back there. I can't help that. Uh beautifully colored board that will come in my construction. I want to make sure that that

I will not forget.

Um after that, uh city staff reviews and signs off on the values. After the appraisal's complete, uh, wash does some spot checks and then I come to council and ask for approval to start making offers. Uh, the property owners are, uh, made offers by our rightway agent. Um, rightway agent and staff can meet with owners on site as requested. Um, neg negotiations occur and some of those involve council. Um, once settled, council makes a final approval um, offer for payment and recording. staff then processes that wash does a review both during and after all of that's complete and if everything is good we're issued a rightaway certification and essentially that would give us permission to bid um provided the PSNES are ready um so a couple notes I say is the hope that owners are immunable to purchase but council ultimately has eminent domain authority um if we can't reach an agreement um and outreach is typically done through on-site visits versus openhouse When you get to that stage, it's kind of people don't understand what's on paper. It's hard to figure out. So, it's a lot easier to go to people on site and kind of walk that through with them and and show them how they're going to be impacted. And here's my I call it my council council. So, um once we enter rightway phase, um extreme caution needs to be exercised when having discussions with impacted property owners. So, I threw in this slide to the left. So, this is actually a training that staff has taken. Um, it's 50 ways to lose your money and it's specific to federal funding and rightaway phase. There's a lot that can go wrong during that phase. So, um, that's specifically why we have a rightaway agent to try to handle that stuff, but um, you know, I just recommend if people are reaching out to you to point them back in our direction um, because things can go wrong and we'd

prefer not to lose our money by by making an error. So, and then our fun part is construction. So, again, I've got the categories in the summary. So, next slide. Administration is very similar to PE. It involves working with the granting agencies and at the beginning of a project, we get some items from the contractor, emergency contacts, their licensing specifically for erosion control, those sorts of things. Next slide. Uh for bidding, uh we do uh vary in advertising and I'll get to that on the next slide, but um when a project's out to bid, staff addresses questions that come up. We ultimately open bids and then we review them. When you have a local or state project, you check for a couple things. One's being a responsible bidder. That's making sure they're licensed, their taxes are correct, all that kind of stuff. um and that they're a responsive bidder, meaning essentially that they've completed all their forms correctly. When you add federal money to that, you add in the disadvantaged business enterprise. And there's usually a DBE goal on a project. So essentially, wash out will say, and it comes through federal highways, um you have to have 10% or 5% of the project be um with consultants that qualify as a DBE. And so we essentially go through and make sure they meet those requirements. I will say with the new um president that requirement has gone away. I don't know where it will ultimately end up but it is temporarily gone. Um and then ultimately wash has to provide author authorization to award and we prepare for recommendation to council for award as needed. Uh for contracting uh city staff contracts with the low bidder and necessary consultants. So um we'll have consultants for like testing. Um the designer is usually kept on board to

answer some questions based on the plans they created. Um we go through and make sure contractor has insurance. They have the performance and payment bond. They've signed the contract. When we're looking at procurement, kind of similar to the design phase, um if it's 0 to 75,000, we can directly reach out to a contractor. If it's 75.5 to 350, we go through the small works roster. So MRSC actually maintains that for us and essentially you have your project documents. You send an email. It's often four to 500 contractors that are on this list. They all get it at the same time and then they bid as they feel like. And then over 350 they we have to do a newspaper advertisement. Um and generally on federal projects of any amount you have to go through the newspaper. uh when everything is good, we issue a notice to proceed. Uh financial piece of this. So staff on a daily basis tracks and creates documentation to justify every single dollar per bid item spent on a project. So that's kind of a federal standard. Um we do something similar for other projects, but not to that degree. Um we calculate amount due to contractor consultants on a monthly basis. We confirm the contractor has provided all paperwork that it's necessary to receive payment. And then we also work with granting um agencies to get reimbursed for work that's been done. Uh information. So here I'm getting to the um public outreach. So uh website, Facebook, and construction signs are typical things we use. Um Alicia worked on creating a construction sign that you'll start to see on projects. Um you can see it behind me right here, but essentially it's a sign that we can use over and over again. Um it's got replaceable stickers that we can use to change the project and it's got a QR

code that will take you to our website. Um so the one that's up is Flow Row. So you'll see that go out uh for that project. And then I think there was one for 20th Pathway as well. So you'll start to see those out on our site and good way for people to be able to get information. Also project related, we do RFIs. That's where contractors asking us questions. Uh deal with construction changes and how many working days are available on a project. And then ultimately we end up with asbuilts. Next slide. Uh prevailing wage is a fun one. You've heard me talk about this before, but essentially for any public work, all workers must be paid, which is wages plus their benefits more than the prevailing wage rate for their trade. For federal projects, that's state and Davis Bacon. So, you actually have to compare the two and they have to make more than the highest one. Um, so we confirm that the contractor and all subcontractors file intent and affidavit at the end of the project. Uh for local state projects, we confirm the contractor submitting weekly weekly certified payrolls. On federal projects, we actually have to go through those certified payrolls and check to make sure that they are being paid the prevailing wage or more.

Fun fact, do you know how prevailing wage is set? A survey goes out from Liber and Industries and it's only the contractors who respond that sets the prevailing wage rate. You're welcome.

Thank you, Megan. Um similar under reports uh for local, state, and federal projects, we have a construction project diary. Um that's the project manager's daily kind of report of what's going on. Our inspector does the same thing. It tracks workers, equipment, weather. Um and then weekly we do an erosion control report. When you have federal, you add on top of that uh DBE. So, we actually go on site and do interviews with them to make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to, the contractors treating them how they're supposed to. Um, equal employment opportunity, um, that's an annual report that we work on. Retainage is a monthly report that we review. And then traffic, um, daily reports that we get that we have to review. And then uh related to training, a lot of times federal projects will actually have a requirement to have a certain amount of training hours for like an apprentice. Um and so we track all of that that paperwork that the contractor submits to us. Submitts. Um so staff or consultant reviews the documentation that proves that the material that the contractor's providing matches what's specified. Uh the state will end up creating what's called a ROM. It's the record of materials. Um they do it for state rightaway projects or federal funded projects. Um essentially it's a big list of everything that we need to collect. This documentation can include rock tickets, shop drawings, um certification of materials origin. So on your federal projects you have to meet what's I call Baba. It's by America build America and it's essentially that materials used on the project were produced in America. But you have to prove that. Um, so we get documentation for that and then test results. Uh, so again, example project 503502, the ROM had 1,713 documents or visual inspections on the

ROM to support the 170 bid items that were on the project. Uh, for testing, we have a testing consultant that tests various things uh, make sure project requirements are met. An example of that is like compaction of your rock and asphalt. And then actually the composition of the rock material. So the specs get into the detail of you have this certain kind of rock, this certain kind of rock, this certain kind of rock all mixed together and we actually check all that. And then finally, we're getting towards the end and we close out a project. So city staff, consultants, and affected agencies, we perform a walkthrough to confirm the work is complete. Uh we create a punch list to um show all field and paperwork that's necessary to fully complete the project. city receives their maintenance bond and other closeout items. Uh once everything is done, we send a notice of release to the state agencies, revenue, labor and industries and ESD. And essentially that gives them a chance in state law. They have the ability to collect retainage if the contractor hasn't paid something or you know has some issue against them. Ultimately, we get releases from them that say, "Hey, there's no issue with this contractor, so you're okay to to pay and say when there's no claims against retainage, we release the retainage." So, in summary, we bidding, we go through the contracting process, there's construction, which involves a lot of paperwork. We get to construction complete, do our walkthrough, close out, and then everyone's happy because the project is done. I will say this is one of the areas the auditors when they come in this is part of your federal grant but it also they will look at bidding on the local side for state and local as well and they go through all of this. So this has gone through with a fine tooth comb and I can say during my tenure here there's never been one recommendation

for engineering. So, they do a fantastic job with all of this and following lots and lots of rules. And that folks is why your ADA ramps cost $10,000.

Exactly. Exactly. So, just a few fun facts. Um, so I've been here over 23 years now and so I was kind of thinking through all the agencies that I've had to work with um for my federal or my projects over the year. Um, and I won't read them all off. you can see them, but just a couple interesting ones. So, I added the city of battlegrounds. So, like a developer, we actually have to go through community development for our projects. So, if we're building a building or something like that, we do site plans. Um, community development process of our sea. Um, so we do the same thing as developers. I also like to point out on the state wash is on there twice and ecology is on there three times. Um, wash.local programs is the one that deals with the money kind of piece of it. Their design group deals with the fact that some of your projects are in their right of way. So, you actually deal with two different groups. From ecology, they have a storm water wetlands and a sanitary sewer group. So, on a project like the pump station, you could be dealing with all three. And you'd like to think they play well together with each other, but they do not. So, it it is fun. What was your um military department?

Uh military department deals with like FEMA type stuff. Um so uh we had a tornado and I don't know several years ago and so dealing with some of the reimbursement with that goes through the military department. Next one. So my last fun fact. So right now on our current list we have 73 city projects. Um, we're also working on seven plans and um, don't tell Megan this, but um, I collect all my project emails in one spot until the project is over. And I was looking at my 503502 and I actually had 5,479 emails related to the project.

I will also state that number of city projects does not include the ones we just closed out. So that is a much larger number because we haven't really kicked off the new projects for the new year. So that will grow quickly. Yeah. questions.

That was a lot to digest. But thank you. Very informative. I love you, Mark. You're awesome. That's all I have. Oh jeez. Any questions from council? All I can say is you can never underestimate the work that's going on behind the scenes. Well, thank you. So, where's 20th at on that? Um, so 20th is a fun one. So, when we got the permit from Acology, give you 10.

When we got from the permit from ecology, there was a specific requirement not to work in the water essentially when it was wet. Um, this was pretty much a lastm minute thing. So, we thought we were going to be able to work over the winter, but essentially with how wet it is out there, they're going to have to wait till it dries up in order to start back up. Understood. I I guess I should have been more specific because that's the pathway. I'm looking more to from Main Street to Onstodorf and then Main Street 6. Oh, the reconstruction work that will be bid in about two weeks. So, what does the that look like? Uh, so right now we're in PE.

Yeah, right now we're in the PE phase. So, we're finishing up design. Um, and then about two weeks, we'll switch over to the bidding, which is the construction side of it. Take a look. Is that Would you present that to council to take a look at the P& or can I just come by your office? Come by my office. Can I look at it? Yeah. Okay.

Any further questions from council? Five over 5,000 emails for one project. That's awesome. All right. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate your time and effort on this presentation. Take time out of your busy day to do this for us. Moving on to ordinance 2026-03, Northwest Natural Gas Franchise Agreement. Uh, Deputy City Manager Rob Farrier.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, mayor of Council. As you mentioned, this item deals with the proposed Northwest Natural Gas franchise agreement. some background. A long time ago, uh, way back when, when Council Member McCoy had a full set of hair, and when Mr. Frier weighed about 40 pounds less than he weighs now, this is 1994, the city battleground and Northwest entered into a non-exclusive franchise agreement that authorized Northwest Natural Gas to use the city's rightway to deliver um, natural gas service to their customers. That agreement has sunset and staff from both parties have negotiated a draft agreement that would authorize uh the gas company's continue use of our ride of way. Consistent with the terms of the prior franchise agreement, the city would grant Northwest Natural Gas the right to construct, install, maintain, replace, repair, and use their natural gas infrastructure within our right of way to transmit, distribute, and sell natural gas to its customers. Uh in addition uh a term of the uh franchise would state that Northwest Natural Gas shall at no expense to the city repair all existing GA natural gas facilities it owns within the city's jurisdiction if such repair is required um uh if such repair is required by the city for any reasonable purpose. Further, in the event the city causes a city project that causes the construction of um there's any construction by the city uh that necessitates the relocation of natural gases facilities from their existing location. Such re relocation will be at no cost to the city. Franchise is not exclusive, does not prohibit the city uh from granting a similar franchise to another private entity or public entity. The term of the franchise is for 10 years. This evening, what staff is asking the city council to do is to read the title of the ordinance and set a public hearing date of April

20th, 2026 for this matter. That concludes our presentation. We're available for any questions you may have. I'll move to set uh what? Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh, okay. We we'll open it up for discussion after your motion. Right. Yeah. It needs to be motioned, right? And second before you have discussion. So, I'm talking before you motion it, we need to read the title of the resolution prior to that. I thought that was only if we were going to approve the ordinance, which we're not approving the ordinance. We're we're setting the date. We still got to read it. Oh, okay. Yeah. Christmas. Council member Mson, did you have a question or comment? Yeah. So,

excuse me. So, we're a year 10 and a half months behind the when the sunset occurred. Mhm. I guess my question is, Miss Foster, and you can chime in, please. Um, why are we not doing another 30-year? I mean, if it's not exclusive, it's not it's not there's no nefarious act here, why don't we just do another 30? So, with the legal being vetted in this, can they provide some insight why we're not doing that? I would need to double check, council member Mson, but I believe under state it's a state law um issue and I and I can double check that and provide you an answer to make sure that I'm being accurate.

Okay. I would also just input that from like a public works perspect perspective things can change over you know quickly and so having a long-term agreement where you know you change how you want your roads some improvement you want to make something like that if it's not in the agreement you have to wait those 30 years in order to to get it in there and so our preference is a short you know not too short of amount of time you don't want to do this every year but a shorter amount of time that allows us to put into effect things that um may change as we go along. And I will say, Council Member Mson, both parties view the reviewed the agreement. Both parties amendable to a shorter term.

Well, let's unpack Mark here for a second. So, I mean, I didn't read through it in its entirety. I read through most of it, but it sounds to me like there's no harm to the city whether there's changes or not. It's all beholden to them for cost. So if you're telling me that you're there could be concern if something were to change then I would say why are we doing a tenure and not just a one year because things could change but if it's not like I said it's not nefarious why I mean I guess I just don't see why we have to exhaust staff time for both parties if there's no construed cost to it. Yeah, and I from my perspective it's more standards than yes, the agreement has them have to uh deal with costs for moving things, but again, standards change over time. So having having a tenure seems to be kind of the sweet spot for for that.

And over a 10-year period, it's not a significant amount of staff time over a 10- year period. What would be the advantage of 30 years? I mean, are we talking a financial advantage or what are you thinking? I it hasn't cost us anything in the last 30 years. So there's the advantage might cost them something though.

Well, my my point is if processes have been updated in the last 30 years to set a standard that 10 years is the normal and it's amicable to both parties. I if you don't mind, I'll chime in again. If that's the case, I could totally get that. But I would hope that I would see it on our presentation of material and I'm not seeing that there because what the way I read it is there's been no change. So there's no need to not just push through this. If there is a change or if there's something that's happened, I would hope that we would be seeing on our presentation as some kind of evidence. I just don't want us to sit here and blindly vote on something if it's not a complete presentation. Am I coming across? Okay. Well, luckily we're looking to set a public hearing, so we'll have a little bit of time to look at that as well.

So maybe if that's the case, we could get a little more information than what we see on here. So, if there's been any questions or concerns or things that have happened over the last 30 years that have come up, it would be good to know about it now or good to know about it before we vote on this. I don't understand the question quite frankly. Well, as we've said, if if council member Kyper's brought up, what's the advantage? And as mayor brought up that there could have been changes. If there's been changes or if there's been issues in the last 30 years that presented itself that warrant it coming to a 10-year, then we should see that in our presentation.

I I just to clarify, I think it might be advantageous to show the precedence of the standard procedure that changed over the last 30 years that brought us to the 10-year versus

Okay, if you want that during the public hearing, we'd be happy to do that. I guess my thought is the occurrence of 30-year agreements in today's world I don't think is very common in any industry. So I I'm just thinking that that even 10 years I was a little surprised at that because at the the rate of change of in every industry, it just seems like I I just don't know that we would want to go into a 30-year agreement on anything anymore.

I'm going to say the quiet part out loud, but who knows in the next 10 years natural gas might be outlawed in the state. So what's the point? Yeah. Um Kelly, can you please Read the title of the ordinance. An ordinance renewing and modifying the grant of a non-exclusive gas utility franchise to Northwest Natural Gas Company and fixing terms and conditions of such franchise.

Thank you. All right. I am uh seeking a motion. I move to set a public hearing for April 20th, 2026 to hear public testimony regarding ordinance 2026-3, Northwest Natural Gas Franchise Agreement. Second. All right, we have a motion by Council Member Kyper, second by Council Member Mson. Any further discussion? All right. We'll call for the vote. All those in favor.

Any opposed? Hearing none. Motion passes unanimously for the public hearing on the 20th. Administrative reports. Just a couple things and real quick on that franchise agreement. In working with the attorney with Northwest Natural Gas, they were really takenback by how much change we were making to that agreement and we were just basically updating it and make and modernizing it. And then looking at model policies that are provided by MRSC, the model policies stay 10 years. So that's kind of what we were following. Okay, real quick. The first part of West Commons or West Main Commons, excuse me. Um, we issued eight permits so far for for the commercial buildings, I believe. So, they're going to get started finally, but that was issued today. Uh, because their sign still says coming spring of 20 26, but they're going to get going on that. We've had a lot of questions about when they're going to start. 2026 legislative awards. Good news. I've emailed you. We received 1.4 4 million for more projects, a million for the 92 Avenue pump station, the force main, and then um $400,000 towards the um inclusive play equipment at Remy. Also, a part of that, if you looked at the attachment, I think that was on that email, um Clark Regional also received 600,000 for aation pumps, and there were some other awards that went into the 18th legislative district. So overall pretty good session. Uh Senate Bill 5820 also passed. This is the rail line bill. It is uh has been delivered to the governor's desk I think March 9th and I

believe he has up to 20 days to sign that. So we have sent a letter on behalf of the city encouraging him to please sign that bill. And lastly, our federal lobbyist has completed all submissions of our um CDS or our earmarks uh to all three congressional offices. So stay tuned and we'll see if we receive any awards on the federal level. That's all I have for my report. Thank you, Miss Watson. Council communications, does anyone have anything they want to say? Council member Hunts.

So, thank you for the information from the proposed budget that's being we're waiting on Governor to sign. I would like to thank our reps Mcccleinto and Lei for their help. And I would really like to show appreciation to our ladies on the legislative committee, Deputy Mayor Vale and Council Member Pere for going up there knocking on doors. Even though some doors might not have opened, they did open other doors. So you ladies did a great job and thank you for that work. Council member F. So question for uh Miss Swanson. Um so we looks like we got an update that the construction project manager is going to start work tomorrow. And so, are we going to be doing a new employee introduction at our next city council meeting? Okay, cool. Um, that was the easy one. The second one is in regards to the emails received on council by the Grace Project. I'm wondering if it would Do you think it would be beneficial for us to maybe do like kind of an update? Maybe Mark could put something together for us just to give us an update and kind of maybe help with what whatever is going on with citizens potential confusion with that project and things that are being said about the project.

Can I can I jump into this real quick with you? Go for it. If if I pulled anything away from Mark today was we should stay out of that because we're in that phase now where what was it? 50 ways to lose your lose your love. phase. So, I'm not I'm just because hearing Mark talk about tonight and reflecting on those emails, I'm thinking that's kind of what this is befitting, is it not?

Yeah, that's piece of it. And the other thing that I mentioned is it's a lot easier at this stage to meet out in the field with the citizens. Um, we do that as practice. And then I let the project manager know, especially because I've seen the concern that when the rightaway agent goes out there, reiterate that we're happy to go out there and show them exactly what this stake means, what's this stake mean, that sort of thing. And I just based on my experience, that's a lot easier because I can show you something on paper, but I as an engineer knows what it means. It's very hard for a citizen to kind of understand what that is. And so it's just a lot easier at this stage for for in field meetings.

Okay. Yeah. I was wondering that when I read the emails like I'm wondering if you guys are just going to go out there and meet with them individually and let them know. Yeah. Some people know what's going on and don't care, but the people that want to know. Yes. Well, absolutely. Go and and meet with them. I I did share your same sentiment though. I just I think tonight was a perfect night that we saw that. So that's where I kind of felt like I'm going to step back from that for a moment and just see how it plays out. Yeah. And I I think it's important for council to stay a breast of where we're at in a specific project and when we see those emails, we can direct them to staff to allow them to uh handle those situations. I guess just talk to you about it. What's the updates? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm always here. So

Okay. So lastly, I'll finish with um I would like to propose a future agenda item regarding um the creation of a city code review board to this council. Um the purpose for me to for the uh a code review is um to empower and educate this council. I know um right now currently that uh we often react to staffdriven updates, but I think this would give us um as council the option to um just kind of meet our our goals and be proactive and assuring that our um our laws are aligned with our 2045 plans and our goals and yeah, that's it. saw Chris taking a note on that. So,

well, I guess I need to if I go off of our governance manual, I think I'd have to make a a motion and get it seconded by uh this council. Let to So, I think you can just request something to be added to the agenda. So, if you request it from the mayor, he can approve it. If he declines it, then you'd come back to us and ask for three more votes. Well, he said to bring it forward on the dis. why I'm discussing this tonight. So,

I I would like to jump in and support Council Member Ferrer on this. As somebody I sat on planning commission prior to my first on council and when staff brings stuff to the planning commission, it's they're brief I don't want to call them brief meetings. They're they're pretty quick though and there's maybe not as many resources for the planning commission to digger dig a little deeper. So, I do like the idea. I like the idea that, you know, um having somebody from the community, having somebody from the developmental side in the community, um you know, whether it's building issues or whether it's just old ordinances that may be out of out of date, you know, just gives us a little bit gives us more information to tune into our ordinances that that are currently there to see if they need more tweaking or removal or addition. So, I do support council member on that.

I'd love to have some further discussion as far as

Mr. Mayor got a This is Shane. I got a got a question for you or maybe for Council Member Ferrer on this. How is this any different than your planning commission because they are a um group of people that are unelected. They are citizens. Some of them are in the development community. um and their job is to look at these same codes that we look at and give a different perspective. So why would we why would we do another board or commission or whatever we want to call it to look at things that they're already looking at um by unelecteds and have input. Um there's business owners in there. Uh uh we usually don't have developers in there um because there can be conflicts sometimes, but we have in the past had developers in there um or development community in there. Um so why why is this any different than the planning commission?

I'll speak to that since he's um and again my intent and I I'm not set on what exactly this has to look like. I have no problem even replicating what we see for the governance manual committee and just having three of our own members on the board taking a look at our municipal codes. And again, it's it's more about giving us the opportunity as council to bring forth concerns that we see in our municipal codes. And cuz I mean like you said that yeah we have the planning commission they provide their feedback and what their updates that they recommend. We have staff that do the same but us as the council do not have that opportunity and other than the fact that we could bring up one at every meeting but to go with the governance manual it seems like it's supported to do it annually and I thought we could mimic that. And again, it would also give us as new counselors coming in the ability to educate ourselves and um and get our voices heard um all at once collectively.

So, this is just a council appointed board. No, no other citizens would sit on this. I'm fine with however council wants to direct this, but my major I know that there I know that there has been some interest in potentially putting other people on there, but my intent was um most importantly for council. Yeah. Question. What were you thinking? Um, I guess just to understand how is that different from just each of us as council members reading through codes and bringing up our questions as we have them.

I guess I'm wondering so if we have three separate people for example that sit on this committee then you're only getting the insight of those three people anyway. So, we as all council members should be reviewing the codes and bringing up our questions. And so, I guess I'm just trying to see how how would that be different?

And I agree with you. I had the same um thoughts when we did the governance manual. Why is there just three of us? Why aren't we all taking a look at it and bringing forth our concerns and potentially in a study session or we're spending it that time at the retreat? But I think what holds it is the reason why we have a governance manual is that allows us to to set the standard here on from this moment on for you know um staff to continue with these efforts to have council moving forward take a look at these things. And so that's why I was I am suggesting that we do the same thing with our municipal code. Again, I I would be willing to take a look at that. Um, again, I agree with Council Member Bowman. I don't know if we need the public involved in that only because if they want to get involved in that, they can be a part of the planning commission. Um, and then might be an opportunity for us as council members, if we have questions, bring it to that review committee, allow them to look it over, and then uh we can bring it up in an agenda item. But um I also agree with council member Kypers. If you have any interest in the uh any code or uh anything like that, um bring it forward to me. You know, we can always put it on an agenda to look at or review.

And I agree with that one. My the only reason why I brought this forward is because I know that you told staff at one point that you would only open the governance manual once. And so I felt like I was trying to be respectful to you, mayor, even though that wasn't a promise that you made to them in regards to this. I was trying to um be respectful because honestly, I guarantee you I could probably go through that governance manual, bring something up at every meeting, but I don't want to do that to staff and I don't want to do that to the council on this board.

Yeah. My goal is to keep the governance manual a little bit more um cut and dry and and us to be able to review it in a pace. Uh as far as ordinances go, I mean, how often do we bring up ordinances? Exactly. I don't I I've been on here literally in the middle of discussing one right now and we only Yeah, exactly. You only have one brought up by staff. So that goes through planning commission, but nothing goes through us. So that could be something right there. That could be a step in the process. Council member McCoy,

a question for staff. Is is this something that a council driven committee that you have any experience or you've seen in other cities uh that has spun up? Do you have any experience or any any any thing you can add to this? I I' I've not heard of one, so I I don't know. Maybe you have. Uh, past municipalities I've worked for have had a similar structure as we have where you have the planning commission. Um, that is a kind of a sounding board. They make recommendations. They don't make decisions. There's public hearings as part of that process and that happens before things come to council for review. The public hearing

specifically a council seated committee just for code or do you have any experience or any knowledge of any municipality with that? I don't. I'd be happy to look into it and see if there's anything, but I'm not familiar with Doesn't surprise me if there isn't because I'm concerned about legal fees. Um, the difference between code and governance manual is right there. She's unmuted.

You'd like to add to that? Yeah, I I just wanted to note that uh because the city council has established a planning commission, at least for certain code changes, traditionally in the development code realm, those code changes do have to go through planning commission, even if the direction comes from council to take a look at something, it the planning commission still needs to be involved. And just to Mayor McCoy's question to for the two cents I can give, I haven't necessarily heard of a code review board as is being proposed. And so from a legal perspective with the interplay of planning commission, that would be something I think we would want to look into a little bit more.

And I will just add I'm not looking to look at the the development codes because most of those are already standards by this. I still have the floor. But um my concern is is well there was no there was no narrow focus when you brought this up. Um and if you commi form a committee for code uh they would all be open. Um I think it's too broad of a committee um I don't think it's been thought out well enough to bring it before council yet. I think if you want to go back and maybe do some more research then perhaps send but in its current form I'm not interested.

Thank you for weighing in on that Z. Appreciate it. All right, we have Deputy Mayor Bale.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh just for clarification, my understanding was that council member Ferrar was just asking for this to be added to a future agenda for the meeting for further discussion by council. And my assumption is that council member Ferrer would um have time then to narrow the focus of this to have more of a presentation for council. That's my understanding. This was just a request for this item to be added for future discussion on a future agenda. You are not wrong in in but what

I I guess uh what I would say is I would direct staff and uh legal to look at that and and look at the validity of having a review committee for ordinances and go and see if that's even something we want to enter or if it's a legal hot water. We might want to stay away from that. Okay. Any further council communications this evening? I have a couple things I want to touch on that I didn't get a chance to. I could have done it in the mayor's report, but I like to wait. Um, Battleground Citizen of the Year has been awarded and uh there will be a celebration April 29th at 6 p.m. at the Prairie Tavern to celebrate Joanna Hayyatt as Battlegrounds citizen of the year for 2025. And I would urge public or any council members to attend that to celebrate an amazing individual that does so much behind the scenes for our citizens involving the library and different clubs, the Ladybug Bazaar and all the various things that she's involved in. Um, and so that's a pretty cool thing. Um, also currently there are 324 kids registered for Battleground Little League forming 31 teams and that is the highest number they've ever reported. Um, and so it's a very growing viable sports league here in town that I know um past uh well, Council Member Bowman was a a big part of it uh years ago and uh it's it just speaks to the lifeblood of this community and and youth sports being a big part of that. And so I just wanted to make a note of that of how great they are doing at uh bringing in the youth and and uh teaching them a

sport and allowing them to you know get out there and play some ball. Um the other thing I wanted to kind of echo um for council member Mson's point of uh just thanking our our delegates, our legislative uh Stephanie Mcccleintoch, John Lei on helping secure all that funding to bring that money back to Battleground and this county as far as the 18th LD and uh also Senator Cortez as for getting that rail bill through. Um that was a big a big favor for us, but also Josh Weiss and the Columbia Policy Advisory uh and the hard work that they do on the regular basis for us uh on a legislative side. And also um wanted to mention that there will be a legislative town hall coming up March 28th here in the council chambers at 10:00 a.m. Wanted to invite our council members to come and support our legislators in that. So I just have a point of order. Mayor,

go ahead. I I think we have a motion on the floor and I think it's important we vote on it because I think that the task at hand will incur staff and legal costs and my preference would be to have this idea fleshed out more before it comes before council um or before we set aside staff time with it. So I would like to see the vote. Let's go ahead and make sure we formalize this motion. That was that's what I'm asking you

that you just have to simply ask the mayor and then I said well I that's the mayor is the one who told me to bring it before council on the dis and so there was never a motion made so it was and that's when um then the mayor at the end uh directed staff to look more into this to see if it's even plausible. If it's not, they'll come back and let us know. And what's best that's done is done.

Then I'd like to make a motion that we direct staff and legal to uh um bring forth to council what a potential councilled code committee would look like. Second. And and in all fairness, I'm not in favor of this motion. I'm making the motion to vote it down. We know.

We know what you're doing. All right. We have a motion on the floor uh by Council Member McCoy. We have a second by Mayor Overhauzer. Any further discussion? And I maybe we can use the pads.

I move to amend. I would like to um move to amend this motion uh to state that legal may limit or further recommend uh what municipal codes should be reviewed and if there are any like the development codes that would be problematic to please have those flagged. All right, we have a proposed amendment on the floor.

I guess I'll second that. So, my my issue with this amendment is we're deciding already what to do before we know if legal has any issues with it. That's my issue with this amendment.

Great. And we're asking legal to review the codes to bring back any that need to be reviewed or discussed further. So we're asking legal to put in time to basically review the codes that the planning commission should be reviewing and bringing back is my understanding how the process is. I think your original ask was, "Do we want to does the council have an appetite for having this discussion on an upcoming agenda?" There wasn't a motion about putting doing it or anything. It was just, "Do we have that appetite?" That was the original question, which I don't believe we had an opportunity to vote on or to respond to. We've had comments, but we haven't said yes, I'm for it, or yes, I'm against it. Kelly, can you uh

Hold on. Hold on. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Um, Council Member Bowman, you have your hand raised. Yeah. Um,

like this this is painful listening to this. Um, we have the right to review all codes and we do every year, every single one of us. And that is our job as a council member is to review codes. So, and at any point in time, you can get together with any two other council members and review codes all you want to review them. So, I don't understand why we're we're directing legal, why we're we're asking for staff to I mean, this this is just crazy to me that we're going in circles here when you can do this all you want all day long and bring it up. The difference is is because it takes a lot of work to change codes and to do things that we do it usually one time a year because if we just sit here changing codes anytime, you know, we feel like we should be changing codes because somebody told us that the fence was 4t high in the front yard and it shouldn't be four feet high and so I'm going to change the codes. And we just end up in these meetings just doing what we're doing tonight. And I think we're is 10:00 our cut off or 10:30 our cut off to suspend the rules?

I believe it's 10:30. It is. Yeah, it's 10:30.

10:30. I mean, like number one, this this should have came we we talked about this in our retreat. The to get things on the agenda, you ask the mayor, you ask the city manager. That's the two things that you do. If they deny you, then you bring it up in a meeting and you make a motion to put it on the agenda and that takes a vote of at least four people to then put it on a future agenda. That wasn't done right to begin with. And so now we're talking about it. We've got a motion. We've got amendments. Um I mean it's just it's all over the place when we have the right to review codes without ever having a body of us to do it. Now, if you're wanting to have other people on it, I think you already have that and that's the planning commission. But if you're just wanting three council members, get together with three council members and review code away. I don't care, you know, and that's what you should be doing. That's what we used to do is get together as council members and discuss this stuff, especially for new council members. I spent the first four years sitting in Mr. Ganley's house every Friday night going over this stuff because he had the knowledge of it and learning it. But but to sit here and spend the amount of time that we spent on something that already our job to do is is ridiculous to me. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Council member Mson.

Well, initially queued up to talk about Little League. So, Rob, you're not going to go away unscathed. Just questions. It'll be nice and easy for you. But I guess I'll go ahead and chime in on this. Um to Council Member Bowman and Council Member Ferrer's uh assessment of this, they're very much in line. This was just simply to have a conversation. Um, I don't think we needed to go through any amendments. I believe that council member FRA's idea was just to bring this up for discussion. As far as planning commission, I'm the only one on council that's ever served on that. I can tell you that when you sit in planning commission meetings, you don't get the opportunity to bring up code or you're encouraged to bring up code for annual review. So, is it our job? Sure, it's our job. Are we doing it? I haven't seen it. Not not in the six years, almost six years I've done this as council. I haven't seen uh members bring this up on a regular basis. Yeah, it is our job. It's the planning commission's job and they probably don't know that they have the freedom to do that kind of research and bring it up to their own meetings. So, I would put that back on the city saying that your planning supervisor that hosts that meeting needs to make sure the chair has the purview to discuss that amongst the other planning commission members. But as far as it goes to the precipice of what we're talking about, Council Member Ferrer simply just wanted to have a conversation. She brought it up. She did her due diligence. And as far as the amendments go, I or the the motions go, I mean, yeah, it's gone way too far. I'm sure Council Member Ferrer would have done her reitty manager and said, "Hey, here's some concepts and here here's some ideas." And we could have left legal out of it. So, yeah, absolutely not necessary. So, I'm going to queue up again for my little league question when we're done. Okay. Well, we do have an amendment on the floor. It does have a second. So, let's go to roll vote if we can. Kelly,

can you have her reread the motion as well since we've had such a long debate on this? Yeah. Can you restate your amendment, just so everyone hears fresh in their brain? My amendment was simply to uh ensure that legal can also if they're being directed to work with city staff to um respond to uh the motion of which uh council member McCoy requested. Um, I just simply wanted to add uh that there needs to be parameters so that legal can also direct if certain municipal code chapters will be problematic.

Okay, let's take it to a vote. Voting on the amendment. Uh, and I would be in favor of the amendment and they would be uh not in favor of the amendment. It's our first time using these pads. That's fun. Oh.

All right. I'm not able to vote. What's going on?

Channel disabled. It says panel disabled for this mode. Sorry, my mic's not on. Let's just go ahead and do a voice roll call on this. Let's not forget Council Member Bowman in that Council member McCoy,

no. Council member Fer Ferrer, yes. Council member Mson, no. Mayor Overholer. No. Deputy Mayor Bale. Yay. Council member Kypers. No. Council member Bowman.

No. Council member Bowman. No.

You got to turn the machines off. Hear you.

Council member Bowman. No. your machines. It doesn't work when you got the machines on. We got you, Shane. We got you. So, the motion fails 5 to2. All right. The amendment failed 5 to2. Now, back to the original motion on the floor. You want to restate the motion, Victoria? It wasn't Victoria's. It was

Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, Council Member McCoy. Uh, the motion is just to direct staff and legal to flesh out the idea uh to bring back to the agenda uh what it would look like to have a council seated and directed code uh committee. So, um because there's a cost associated with it, I thought we should have a motion. All right, let's go back to the voice roll on that, please. Council member McCoy, no. Council member Ferrer, yes. Council member Manson, no. Mayor Overholer, no.

Deputy Mayor Vale, no. Council member Kypers, no. Council member Bowman, no. Motion fails six to one. All right, let's finish up. Uh, council communications. Council member Mson, Battleground Little. Rob, where are we at with their contracts, their lease? They signed their lease with us for the next two years.

For the next two years. And there uh opportunities for extensions. There's the original contract had three two-year opportunities at at the end. So, they're the second two-year extension. Okay.

I'm just trying to reflect. So, when I worked with the former city manager, well, two city managers ago to get this in place, it was a total of 11 years, the first one being a five or six year. uh with the numbers that the mayor has presented tonight and the fact that that's really their own home. I just I'm encouraged to see these numbers because I had little ones come up through that program. I think there's a great advantage to it. So, thank you for working with them and getting them in there. They bring in enough of their own revenue to keep that facility in good shape. So, appreciate your work you're doing with them. Welcome.

All right. Any additional council communications this evening? All right. Hearing none. Uh the next regular city council meeting will be held Monday, April 6th at 7 p.m. No study session is scheduled. This meeting is adjourned at 10:06 p.m. Sorry.