City Council - workshop

All right. Good evening. The time is 6 p.m. and we will convene the study session of Discovery Clean Water Alliance General Super Plan. I'd like to introduce Public Works Director Mark Percy and John Peterson of the Clark Regional Wastewater District.

Good evening, Council. So as you're probably aware, we're in the middle of POMP plan updates and As part of those updates, we update several of the utility plans. And so one of those being the sewer plan. And so John's actually going to talk tonight about the alliance's general sewer plan. And I don't want to steal too much of his thunder, but the city does a sewer plan. our regional does the sewer plan and then the Alliance has to do one as well. So he's going to talk about that and then specifically about the transmission system and the results of the analysis that's been done related to that. So I will hand it over to John.

if you need counsel thank you all for your time and attention appreciate devoting a player work session to this topic there's a lot of good information here and an important decision for the city and um just so i don't forget to mention that uh we have nice water bottles that should be on each of your They're part of our phase five celebration, which happened last September. The city was a full partner in funding that, so I wanted to make sure to provide those for any books that weren't able to make it out to the plant for our event. I also want to mention I have one of my district board commissioners here, Commissioner Denny Kiggins, as our official liaison to Battleground. So if you ever need to talk elective to elected, Commissioner Kiggins is a their partner and Mr. Bill Owen is our principal engineer for the Alliance. So he's been helping with this analysis as have your public works director and finance director. Appreciate all the thoughtful, good questions over about a year's worth of work is what I'm going to summarize for you tonight. Let's get started. We have a pretty traditional agenda. We'll set up the question. look at four alternatives in some depth and then come back and stack them against each other and try to sift through those findings and lead towards whatever you determine is the right direction for the city. This is ultimately a city decision here. I'm just trying to provide a lot of good information and helpful context to help bring that up for you. So just a Start the process, a few introductory terms, as Mark already hinted at. The alliance is currently developing its first official general sewer plan, even though the alliance has been in existence for 12 or 13 years now. When we formed the alliance, we borrowed the comprehensive planning of the agency that provided infrastructure to the alliance. adopted by reference, the parts of the county, Ridgefield and Battleground plans. This is the first time we've done a wholesale update just for the alliance. And also, as Mark rightly framed, we're aligning this with all of the comprehensive planning work. We're kind of the tail on the dog, you might think. So the county, of course, is the countywide framework. And population and jobs are allocated to the cities and the city's plan for land use and zoning to accommodate that. And when that is framed up, we start getting an idea of what the sewer collection systems to serve all that need to be. And then eventually we have to collect up all that flow and treat it. And that's where the alliance comes in kind of at the very end of the process. So we are using the official 2045 planning period and the official population allocations. Specific to the wastewater world, of course, we're governed by Department of Ecology in almost everything we do, and they have a specific statute I've listed here for the steps to plan for and engineer and build wastewater infrastructure. And so i'm just giving you a flavor that on this slide that we're at the very first step. What ecology calls a general sewer plan. These are higher level engineering assessments. It's just usually a preliminary two to five percent design. We carry little bit higher contingency levels, because there's a lot of details we don't know. But it helps to frame alternatives and think of being kind of at an intersection and deciding, are we going left, right, or straight ahead? And then once that decision is made, we'll progress to the next step that Ecology calls an engineering report. That's when you get into more engineering definition, start to walk back the contingencies because we know a little bit more. And then the final step pre construction is called plans and specifications. So just the bid documents that a contractor would bid on to build whatever it is we need to build. So we, we are at the general sewer plan stage trying to set an overall direction. And then that will be perfected over time. Just so I don't slip into sewer jargon accidentally, just a couple of key terms here. So we'll talk about both million gallons and million gallons per day. And those might sound like they're almost interchangeable, but when we're talking in terms of volume, millions of gallons, that's just purely volume, like a gallon of milk is a volume. And then when we're pumping that material, we talk about millions of gallons per day. And specifically what we're here to talk tonight about is once Battleground has collected up your flows and you're ready to ship them over land into the regional system, that's what we call a transmission system. How do we How do we think about that? It's always governed by the peak flow that ever might need to go down that line. So it's what's called a peak hour flow. It tends to happen in very wet winter conditions when you have rainstorms after rainstorms. And there's a little bit of unintended leakage in every sewer system. So we have to plan for that worst case scenario and make sure the pipes and pumps are big enough to take that peak hour flow. Also in terms of just context, when we've done some major planning initiatives, we found it really valuable at the Alliance to do just touch base with our customers and the community we're serving. So about a year ago, we did a statistically valid what we call the customer values survey. And this is statistically valid, plus or minus 3% or 4%. And it's correlated to the demographics of the service area. So we looked at things like gender and ethnicity and age and income and those types of things to make sure we're getting an accurate read of the complete customer base that we're serving. And this is part of a much larger slide deck, but I just pulled two slides out to bring a couple messages here that we think factor or provide good context for how we make these kind of decisions. So we tested affordability from the customer base, and that's what's depicted on the slides. Here, the darker blue and lighter blue are folks that think their current sewer bills are at least affordable or somewhat affordable. The yellow and gold colors are where folks are saying, hey, even today I'm feeling that this is somewhat unaffordable. And you can see kind of in the middle of the slide, it's really defined by income bands. So folks with more modest incomes are really, really feeling the affordability. issued today. And then on the bottom, there was a slight difference in the entire alliance service area battleground versus the balance of the area. It's 10 or 15 points, a little more sensitivity here in battleground to affordability. So just something we want to keep in mind. mind. When we asked folks, the question here was, tell me the number one thing you want me to care about when I do sewer planning. And you can see here that nearly half of the folks said, keep my monthly bills affordable. Again, that affordability ethic also was strong scores for reliable service and environmental protection, of course, important parts of any sewer program. The thing that changed for us here from when we did this several years ago is those top two priorities switched. It's always been reliable service, affordable price, environmental protection, but with the last six years or so of the inflationary environment, we're seeing folks responding to that. So again, just something that you'll see how we kept that in the back of our minds as we went through this discussion. So let me just briefly remind us of kind of our starting point, the system that we have today here in Battleground. So if we went out to your Public Works Operations Center on Grace Avenue, we would see a large equalization basin that was built 15 or 20 years ago. And this is a large storage facility that when it does rain really hard, it can catch those peak flows. and then wait for the storm to pass, and then pump them out at a more gentle rate later. And so there's a primary basin, 3 and 1 half million gallons, and a secondary basin, about 650,000 gallons. So right now today, you have the ability to buffer about 4 million gallons of flow that comes through your facility. Now, most of the flow that comes through Battleground is from Battleground, but you're probably aware the district has two smaller satellite service areas. Lost my slide. Yeah, we have lots of sewer jokes, but probably not for a city council meeting.

Are those a little too dirty? Yes.

We're number one in the number two business. That's probably OK. We washed our hands before we came to the meeting tonight. In the old days, when we first started doing these slide decks, we would always bring paper copies of the slides. But the last few years, things have seemed so reliable, we don't always do that anymore.

Yep. While we're waiting, I'll just say that I was lucky enough to take a tour of the facility a few weeks ago, and I was so impressed with the facility, with the staff, with your knowledge about each thing. There was nothing that we could do on. So it was great. And what was great is that the public also can take a tour of that facility every June, I think it was. Yes.

You have an open house for the public every June, and we want to next year try to advertise that a little broader in the Ridgefield and Battleground areas and see if we can get some more folks down there.

Yes, well, it was a wonderful tour, so thank you so much.

Yep, and I remembered to bring your water bottle to you tonight.

Thank you.

OK, we're back. Perfect. So at the bottom of the slide, most of the flows are from Battleground. But I started to say, the district has two satellite service areas out here, Meadow Glade on the southwest corner of Battleground. And we have customers out in Hawkinson. And both the Meadow Glade and Hawkinson flows also flow through this facility and are part of the equation. So how do we pump the flows out? You have a nice trench-style wet wall with good pumps in it. So you have pumps in the concrete structure in the foreground here. And they can pump at a rate of up to about 5 million gallons per day with what's there today. And so where does it go? There's a nine-mile overland pipeline constructed in the early 1990s. I think it was April of 1993 that flow first started coming down from Battleground. It's a 16-inch pipeline, a heavy plastic pipeline, same type of pipe material you'd use for a water main or a higher pressure line. The pipeline has a similar, just slightly larger capacity at about five and a half or six million gallons per day. And at that point, it becomes pressure limited. We try to push too much flow there. We exceed the pressure rating of the pipe. So what do we need to plan for in the future? When we plug all the numbers in from the comprehensive planning, we're projecting that peak hour flow, just that kind of instantaneous flow into the basin could be as high as a little over 12 million gallons per day. That's at the 2045 planning period. And those two smaller systems from the district also contribute about 1.3 million gallons per day. So what we're trying to find home for is a big rain event in 2045, where there could be about 13 and a half million gallons coming into the facility. And we ended up doing this math twice with two different consultants here, partly because the county comprehensive plan got delayed by almost a year. We had our process carefully curated to follow how the county would make and start plugging that into the sewer world. And that process, as you well know, is gonna end almost a year later than originally intended. But talking to the city staff and the electives at the alliance meeting, the city really wanted to understand their options here. So we did it through an independent estimate, and then we confirmed it when we got the planning. information from the county and both firms arrived at a similar number. So we feel pretty confident there. Wanted to, while everything in the GMA world, like we've just heard nothing but 20-year planning for three years now with a comprehensive plan process, and that's all right and good, and it's required by statute. But in the sewer world, we tend to build assets that last a lot longer than 20 years. So it would really not be a bad thing to do 50-year planning or even longer. So appreciate your staff's input. I actually added this slide based on their comments. So just a reminder that that Salmon Creek plant, it is handling a lot of the growth areas in the community, and we have a very carefully managed plan for expansion. We can double the capacity of the plant that is there, and that's more than 40 years worth of growth. I looked it up just today for tonight's meeting. About 2075, we could be approaching the capacity of the plant just short of 50 years from now. So beyond that period, we have some options to kind of turbocharge the plant. There's some advanced. processes that allow you to intensify things with chemical treatments and other newer technologies. Or those of us that are in these roles decades from now may be wrestling with, do we need another regional treatment plant site somewhere in the central northern part of the county? And so we overlaid that, again, with your staff's helpful input to some of the non-cost considerations, like when we start looking at options to send flow different directions, how could it be used today? How could it be used for other purposes in the future so the community gets full value out of that? So that's the setup. Hopefully, you're excited and energized now. We're going to talk about four specific alternatives that were fully evaluated. And I'll just say at the outset, all four of these work. They will meet your needs for 20-plus years. And they all provide different cost and non-cost frameworks. And that's what I want to unpack for you. So the first option, the green box, and there's a dashed green line. kind of what we've called the baseline option, is just build a parallel pipeline to the existing one. That's what's always been in when the alliance was formed and inherited this pipeline from Battleground. That's what was in the Battleground General Sewer Plan many years ago. So that's not a new concept. We can just build a second pipeline and chase the route of the old one. Also in pink, kind of centered on your Public Works campus, we looked at ways to optimize what we already have today. Is there something we could do there and get additional capacity? And what is that price point? And then the city's recently invested option C and D both build off of your new pump station right on the western edge of the city today at 92nd Avenue. So you have a large new facility that has just recently been constructed there. So what if we use that as the jump off point to get flow out of the city? And there's kind of option C and the light orange means you would jog due west along the state highway 20 blocks. to 72nd Avenue and come due south down 72nd Avenue till you catch the route of the old Forest Main and then it's parallel from there. Or the blue option, just keep going west down the state highway and plug into the district infrastructure at the Gee Creek Rest Area. We have a regional pump station there called the Neal Kimsey. Regional pump station, that's part of our transmission system that brings flow down from Ridgefield. I'm going to unpack each of these for you with about four slides each, just trying to give you a good flavor of what each of those look like. And then we'll stack them all together at the end. So how do we do this kind of analysis? Of course, costs are always top of mind, especially with the affordability overlay. So we have fully built capital costs. They include our estimate for construction today plus some planning level contingencies for the things we don't know with only a 2% to 5% design. And we also include an allocation for what we call project delivery because To get a project to construction, it has to be engineered. There's surveying, design, right-of-way acquisition. And then when it's in construction, we have to manage and inspect that. So these are meant to be all-in costs to do each of the options. I will also present a little bit later in the presentation. It's also important to look at non-cost items here. So what if all the costs were the same? How would we differentiate them? Well, just like if you go to buy a new car and you have options that cost about the same, you're going to think, Well, what are the other things I get with this model or I get with that one? So there's a list of eight items here I'm going to unpack for you on a later slide. But we also evaluated these options against these non-cost criteria. So let's start the journal. So I'll put our junior sewer ranger hats on and start the evaluation. So let's put our minds in option A. Again, just paralleling your current forest main, following the route. This, again, has been what's in the previous planning documents. And again, your staff asked an insightful question. Could this be completed in phases? And there's a little bit of engineering detail here. On the lower right of the slide is a profile of the pipe. So the plan view is a map, like you were looking down on a map. But the profile is like we sliced through the earth and looked at it sideways so we can see it on its grade. And the main thing to know is it's very flat out here in Battleground. for about the first four miles, and then there's a grade break, and the pipe starts flowing down towards the Salmon Creek drainage. So that grade break's critical to that phasing option. So what did we specifically find for the 20-year needs? If we just put our 20-year hat on, another 16-inch pipe would meet the needs for that. And we're assuming the existing pipe is in service, and we just add a second one next to it. There are some pump upgrades that are also built into the costs. But is it possible to phase that? And the answer came back from the engineering work. Yes, you could build that first four-mile section first. That's where the high-pressure zones are and any pipeline is right where you first start pumping into the pipe. And then that second five-mile section could be delayed something like 10 or 15 years if that helped to break up the capital cost load. Are there concepts for optimizations? If we decided this was the right general idea, yes, we could think about things like if you made the pipe just a little bit bigger, 20 or 24 inch, it could handle all of the flows for the city and would allow you to eventually retire the older pipeline, which is about 33 years old today. So obviously, that would cost a little bit more, but that gives you some levers to pull if this is the direction we want to talk about. Other factors that are significant. So this is a long pipeline and a lot of roadways. So we went on the road and we met with WSDOT. We met with Clark Public Utilities and Clark County, who manages most of the roadways here for this option. So Clark Public Utilities also has some major water lines planned in some of these same roadways. So we went down this pathway, we'd want to sync up tightly with them and make sure we're preserving pipeline corridors and the roadways for everybody. For this option, it would mean your Grace Avenue operation center is the center of the sewer universe, so to speak. You get all your flows from the city there and then ship them out from that direction. So Mark is developing a general sewer plan for the city internal system. So there would be work within that plan to make sure we can get all the flow over there. So bottom line, after working really hard on all the factors related to this, this project all in is about a $55.7 million investment for the city. And again, it can be done in these two still large, but a little bit more bite-sized pieces, four miles and five miles. So that is an option with this scenario. I'm going to shift directions now and unpack alternative B for you. So this is working on your current site. What's the most that we could do here? Could we increase that equalization basin and solve the need? This facility that you have, the 3.5 million gallons, is there today. It was designed even 20 years ago to be expandable. It has a knockout panel, it's called, on the west. side, so it could be extended. And the analysis we did looked at adding another 2 and 1 half million gallons of storage volume there. Again, it's all driven by those heavy winter storms. So what would meet the 20-year need? We could expand the base into a total of 6 and 1 half million gallons. It's about a 60% increase. And that, by itself, would meet your 20-year needs. It wouldn't have to do anything else. Is phasing possible? There's a component of phasing. Sometimes folks that have these storage and release facilities, if they use them a lot, they'll automate them. So when they store sewage and the storm goes by, they'll be able to flush them out automatically. And so that is a concept related to these types of facilities. In order to keep the costs low, the scenario we're presenting tonight is based on a manually clean facility, which is what you have today, because it's not used every day during the winter. We would suggest maybe designing it to be retrofitted in the future and be flushable so that if you wanted to do that someday, you could phase that in in the future. If this is the direction that's of interest to the city, there's also some refinements here. We could look at putting in slightly larger pumps that might make the basin a little smaller. or build a bigger, if you're going to all this work, why stop at 20 years? What would be practical? Can you get to 30 years? Or if you're making that investment, the extra cost or the incremental cost to make it a little bigger is not that high. So we could drill down and try to find the exact package that works best for the city. Some other things to be aware of here, whatever flow you store and equalize as the engineering term and send out more gently, it helps every part of the downstream system. So like our major pump state, we have significant investments planned at the 117th street pump station, the largest station that the Alliance owns. And it would allow those improvements to last a little bit longer because we're not, hitting it with quite as high a flows. And so it would allow growth to happen for a little bit longer. This option, just like option A, is based all on Grace Avenue. So again, whatever internal work with your system, we need to get all the flow there for that to work. And this one, after doing some deep research, is at about half the cost of most of the pipeline options. So we could build this system with appropriate contingencies and things for more like $25 or $26 million. And it would meet your 20-year need just by expanding the equalization basin.

And a point to that too, is that it could potentially go longer. And the thought being the key piece of what he said earlier in the 50-year plan is that option for another treatment facility because Salmon Creek will be built out. So if you think about where that is, and I don't think he showed a map of it, but it would be either the Ridgefield or the section along 50th because it Excuse my term, it's the best place for that type of facility. And so that's closer to Battleground than Salmon Creek, just as a point to look out long term.

So let's shift our thinking now to option C. So now we're going to start using the new westerly pump station at 92nd Avenue and go west from there. So how do we define option C? We build that pipeline, do west for about 20 blocks, and then turn south and go down 72nd Avenue until it catches the route of the existing out-of-ground force main. This one also has a different kind of internal redirection. Now, instead of your system sending everything east to Grace Avenue, you would split your system, and part of the city would go west to 92nd Avenue, and part would go east to Grace Avenue. What are the specifics here? This can be done with a new 18-inch force main from your new pump station. It's a little bit shorter route, which is one of the reasons it wanted to be studied. So 7 and 1 half miles. The grades are a little bit different. So there's some pump updates at the pump station. Can it be phased? Yes, technically, we could. When it catches up to the battleground force main, we could tie the lines. together. But we look pretty hard at that and it would only delay that second phase for a few years. It's not the 10 to 15 year delay. So maybe 2345 years. And we optimize that further while the city through your comprehensive planning is looking at growth to the west of the city. And now this would be a major pump station on your western front. So again, we've already factored in the 20-year planning there. But if the city intends to continue to the west over time, we might want to take another look and just make sure that station could do everything you could conceive that it would want to do over the long haul. This goes through different roads, but we're back in the meetings with WSDOT, Clark Public Utilities, and the county, making sure we understand what other projects they have, what their requirements are, if we're going over a bridge or under creek and again what the city general sewer plan calls your lewisville sub area on the western side of the city would get redirected to the station if you do this it meets the 20-year needs and you don't have to do anything at your current facility at the current equalization basin The all-in costs here for pipes and pumps was a little bit lower than the alternative A, largely because the route is shorter at just around $51 million. And then lastly, you're being very patient with me. Nobody has nodded off quite yet. A lot of sewer information, I understand. So now let's just take that 92nd Avenue pump station and go all the way west down Highway 502 to the district system that serves Ridgefield. So when Ridgefield was brought into the alliance and they turned over their sewer system to the district in 2014, we had committed to build a regional transmission system from Ridgefield down into the Salmon Creek area. And there's a key intermediate point called the Neil Kimsey Pump Station in the Gee Creek Rest area. So this option is patterned around pumping to that area. And then, as you'll see, it's a shorter pipeline. But the city hasn't invested anything in that discovery corridor. So we had to do some analysis to see what would a fair buy-in cost to own some of that capacity and that infrastructure with the district. So specifics, what do we need in 20 years? Also an 18-inch force main. It is quite a bit shorter pipe route. uh, 4.5 miles. It, we do need new pumps because that grade goes up. If you go West out of battleground down the battleground highway and you go past 50th Avenue, you are 72nd Avenue. You climb a pretty good grade to get up to 50th Avenue. So we're pumping up that Hill. So that changes the hydraulics a little bit. And then, as I mentioned, um, there would be a buy-in to the district system. Now, I had a separate work session with the district board earlier this year to just ask the questions. Would you be willing to sell capacity to Battleground? And would you allow them to pay for that over time? Anything we can do to soften an upfront cost? And as your community grows, you get more rate payers, you get more... connection charges, and it really helps on the financial side. And the district board said yes to both. Battleground's been a hugely important partner to us. They're the ones that are funding the alliance with us. We would sell them capacity if they wanted that capacity, and we would allow the payment to happen over a 20-year period. So that softens a little bit of that cost. optimization needs. Again, this is framed around the 20-year capacity. But if you wanted to really dig into these westerly options, that expansion of the city to the west, I think, is the area we'd want to dig into and just make sure everything was set up, not just for 20 years, but longer when you make this type of investment. um again coordination with the three other public agencies one item to note if you go past 72nd avenue you know there's a wetland area there a large one and the states had issues with the highway settling uh there and so that's part of the mill creek drainage and So there's no pipelines in that WSDOT roadway now. And what we usually do when you cross a big marshy area is build what we call a pipe bridge. So we build a separate light structure just for the pipeline. Usually, it involves driving piles in and creating a steel structure to put the pipe on because the ground is just too soft. to be able to dig in the ground and do a traditional pipe installation. So we've included costs for crossing that wetland area on a pipe bridge just to make sure we're framing up the option right. And again, just like the other option to the west, if we go west, we don't have to make any improvements in the current system. So what does this look like dollars and cents? So quite a bit less on the actual construction costs for the pipeline and the pump upgrade, just short of $40 million. The discovery corridor buy-in is estimated at about 13. That's about half of that six or six and a half is for the system that we have today to buy four, for MGD of peak hour flow, your long-term needs in that system. But the other half, the other six or seven million is we're doing phased upgrades of that system and to just make sure you have all the capacity that you would need. If you make this investment, you want enough capacity to utilize it. So it's roughly half to buy in what's there and half to pay a portion of the future expansions to maintain a full block of capacity. So just under $53 million total. So now we can start to stack the options up together. Again, just these are the same numbers as the previous slides here, just summarizing the total cost for new infrastructure on the left, the one buy-in for the one project that uses the district system, and then the total costs. for each. And of course, obviously, what jumps out, all the pipeline options are 51 to 56 million total. And expanding your current system is roughly half of that. So then we'll shift to non-cost considerations. So we also have to think about what we're getting for each of these options. So we went through an analysis to think about, what does this mean for your operation and maintenance staff in taking care of the system in town here? What does it mean for environmental impact, environmental permitting, mitigation? requirements what about public impacts these pipeline projects and roadways are very impactful for a season as you're constructing along. We're talking about nine miles of pipeline for alternative A. Now, it was done 30 years ago, and it can be done again for sure. But there would be a different impact to the public there. Construction risk. So most of the work is in roadways. It's pretty straightforward. But the constructability across the wetlands and things like that were evaluated on a non-cost basis. Similarly, just what would we be up against in getting land use or other permits, easements, wherever they might be required? Most all of this is in public right-of-way, so there would be very limited private easements. But the current Battleground Forest Main goes through a short section of private property in the Meadow Glade area. So if we were paralleling it, we would need to go back to those folks and negotiate an expansion to the easement. As we've talked a lot about, what are the planning and phasing and sequencing opportunities in the 20-year horizon? If we can break this into more bite-sized pieces, that can help a lot. As Megan just spoke to, what about adaptability future. If we end up building other regional infrastructure, we want to be able to multipurpose anything we build so it can serve the community for a long, long time. And what about different aspects of resiliency? So if you have two pipelines and two systems out of town, if something happens on one, there's at least a relief valve. But if all our eggs are in one basket, then that's a different factor for what we would call resiliency. So when we stacked them all up, we gave everything a 1 to 5 score, 1 being worst case or it's bad or difficult. 3 is kind of an average expected. 5 is like this is easier, better, less impact. So generally, what you would see is the pipelines have lower scores on things like environmental permitting and public impact as we're going through wetlands or roadways and things, whereas the option B to stay with our current system just has lower scores on resiliency and the ability to adapt to the future. locked into that one program. So as we wrestled with this, again, this is your decision. So I wanted to be really careful not giving you a formal recommendation from John. So I called it a possible recommendation. You are the counsel. I'm your helpful advisor. So clearly, the lowest cost option to meet the 20-year needs is alternative B. It's half the price. It's also supported by the non-cost score. They were fairly close, but it did have the highest non-cost score. It's consistent with the customer value survey, where folks are really mindful of just do what you can to keep my rates low. And then for all the options, wherever we land, we can explore further optimizations and drill down and try to make it even a little better. And then if we do land with alternative B, we would recommend, and this would fall to us as the alliance, that nine-mile pipeline is one of the alliance regional assets, we would look through it through an additional lens of that resiliency piece. It's something we call asset management in the utility world that if we're going to have a thriving community of 24 plus thousand people growing to 37,000, I think is your official planning number, and everything's relying on this one pipeline, we're going to double, triple down to make sure we keep it in good condition. We know what's going on with work around it. We really are diligent to keep a focus on that because that pipe would be over 50 years old at the end of that planning period. And then if you did go that way, we would want you to not take your eye off that 50-year vision. And so this solution, the lower cost option, would get you through 20 years and be the lowest cost pathway for your citizens. But at some point, If the city keeps growing and expanding and thriving, then there'll be somebody here in 10 and 20 years looking beyond that period. So if you identified a preferred location, one of the pipeline options and kind of just soft manage that and work with other agencies, making sure you preserved corridors where they needed to be, or sometimes we put dry sections of pipe in and cap them off. If there's other work going on, there could be some limited engagement. But preserving that option and knowing where you would go beyond the 20-year period. So you're very patient. That's a lot of information. And I was hoping for 45 minutes and we're pretty close there to give the council time for questions and answers or additional observations from staff.

Go ahead. Council member Kuypers.

Thank you. Thank you always, John. You are so thorough. I love it. Really appreciate all the great information. And it's very helpful to me to see the alternatives and the comparisons very clearly. And I really appreciate not just the financial comparisons, but those, as you say, the more the operational comparisons. I won't, because... that can have a huge impact that isn't necessarily claimed up front in the cost um i was wondering uh do let's just take b for example um do you have any sense of what the project timeline is on doing that type of a construction project is that Five years? Is it eight years?

It would need to be done a little sooner than that. Probably Mark and Megan can talk about other improvements at your operations center that are being planned and this would be coordinated with.

I was thinking more length of time.

We would do this, if we did option B, it would be with the op center expansion to maximize costs. And that was actually, the timing is a little serendipitous with it because we were looking at the op center, looking at the GCCM, and this would be a piece of that. It would take a little bit of time for the design for it, but it would be an easy add to it because of what it is. And already speaking with some contractors and getting some estimates of what it would look like that we're looking at the op center itself. So it would be within the next year or two that we'd be able to do that. And I just want to reiterate, too, that when he's talking about the 20-year expansion, we are able to go. How big can we go, John?

At the Salmon Creek site?

No, no, no, at the EQ.

Well, you could go a little bit. It depends on how much real estate you want to preserve for your other improvements, I think. We looked at a 8 million gallon option as well.

In lieu of the 6.7. So that would get you beyond the 20 years, which would get you closer to the timeline that Salmon Creek is then at capacity. Again, trying to time it. That was why we asked the question of when is Salmon Creek going to be at max capacity? Because there's only so much real estate there. And if you can time those two together, if you think about where growth is going to happen in the city, we're trying to go out towards I-5, right? So as we build out that way, and depending upon where that ends up, it may build some of that pipe for you. Okay, thank you.

And this is a lot easier one to design and construct. You always hear me talking about wetland permits and this permit and that permit. Kyle Magyera, Because it's on our site there's no critical areas it's a easy we work with ecology to get approval from them, they ultimately have to sign off, but other than that there is not the typical critical areas that we deal with on all of our other projects.

Karen Hollweg, Great thanks.

Hal Hallstein, councilmember Bowman.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Peterson, for coming. I'm sorry, I was a little bit late. Two things. Number one, this is in today's dollars.

This is all 2026 dollars.

And we had a building moratorium in the late 90s. And that was sewer water or water.

Um, there was both at one point there was a water and then a sewer.

Okay. So, um, this is the stuff council should be doing is paying attention to this stuff and planning. And I think, uh, from, from my standpoint, um, Anything that we can do sooner is better because when we did the outfall, the secondary line on the outfall, which was two miles, three miles, something like that.

It's a mile and a half.

Mile and a half, okay.

11 years.

Yeah, it took 11 years. And that went from six-ish million to 14, correct? It was somewhere in there. in that period.

It was a significant increase, especially through that inflationary period during the pandemic when all costs blew out.

Yeah. So, you know, when we look at this as today's dollars, when I first got on council, we were talking about this and staff has done a really good job of preparing our rates and putting money away. And I think we're 30 plus million that we have, correct?

32. 32.

32 million, okay. This was originally like a $35 million parallel force project to put in the whole line all the way to the plant 15 years ago. We're at 50-something now. And so I think that's the important thing to realize is every 5, 10 years we wait, how much more expensive it's going to be. And so if we're not doing something and if staff's recommendation is to do the equalization base and give us more, flow there or ability to store there and, and release flow when we need the, and we can do it quicker. I think that's a better option for us right now because we can, we can capitalize on today's dollars and not 10 years from now and getting through all the permitting. And that's, that's the biggest challenge we have, whether it's the plant expansion or the outfall or any of those things is the amount of permits that we need to get through to even do any of that stuff is very difficult. and so this is something that wouldn't be as difficult so i support it if that's what staff thinks is is right and then but not being short-sighted enough to realize that we've got to continue because there's going to be a second phase of this that we have to we have to bite the bullet on thank you councilmember mccoy

Thank you for the presentation, Sean. Well done as always thorough professional. My concern and Megan kind of touched on it with option B is doing my math. We're currently at 5.5 pumping out EQ basin gives us 6.7. That gives us 12.2 and our maximum that we're looking at is 13.6, which gives me a Delta 1.4, which makes me nervous.

I can answer that question. I was worried about that very question. So the peak flow, the 13.6 million gallons per day, that's only a peak power flow. So even though it's a big number, it's just the very crest of the storm. It doesn't happen over a full 24 hours.

What's our peak 24-hour then in the highest peak 24-hour we're looking at? Say we get a winter storm. I don't know. It used to be called Pineapple Express. I don't know what they're called anymore.

Well, and that's what the – if you'll invite me back for an engineering-based session, the consultants modeled this with a computer model that simulated two back-to-back very wet Pineapple Express storms so that – You were empty when the first one hit, but you hadn't recovered completely when the second one hit. And so with all the timing and the flow rates and the pumping out, it's been balanced to handle what they think is a prudent design event.

And what happens if we're under? So say that happened and we're at 12.2 capacity and say we have a 13.6 day. Where does that go?

Well, it backs up in the sewer system because it can't be pumped out. And that's what sewer engineers, just like bridge engineers, never want their bridge to fall down. Sewer engineers want to make sure the flow never backs up. So it's been, I would say, prudently, conservatively designed for that worst case design.

And then my last question is the life of the current parallel forest main. You said we're at 50 years. What is the expected life of something like that? And would that be on the alliance dime, the maintenance of that pipeline, or is that on city ratepayers?

So it's a little over a 30-year-old pipe today, and it would be 50 years old at the end of that Planning period. It is an alliance-owned asset. And so the alliance would pay for that, but the costs are split based on capacity ownership.

90% better.

The city owns most of the capacity because you need and use that capacity.

But what's the life you think of that pipeline in general? In general, I mean... 75%?

It could be any, it depends on the service condition for the pipe. Just like if you said, what's the life of a car? Well, what condition is it in? How's it cared for?

Give me an average.

All those, I would say 75, 80 years is likely. And if it's cared for well, it could be more. there have been pvc pipes that have failed um in portland that were over pressurized though so we have to manage it very attentively thank you john uh thank you sir uh you are a wealth of knowledge and and a great asset to the alliance and also the battleground as a whole um

Just want to voice the appreciation of all of staff for working cohesively together on this and coming up with these options. you know, option B looks awfully good based on what we have right now for funds towards a project, buying us the time that we need and the ability to upgrade, expand, upgrade pump systems. And as long as that pipe holds up, we'll be in good shape. And I, the maintenance of that pipe would probably be the most importance for our service of our, uh customers and our citizens um yeah it you know looking at all these different options i i i truly believe that buys us plenty of time to look at the future and what that means for discovery cleaning water a good way to think about buys you real time to work on

the next solution, but totally meet your needs for 20 years.

Yeah. And with other areas around us expanding as well, the share of that alliance is, you know, 90 to 10, as Troy would say. But I feel like the balance is swinging in our favor in that direction as well. So, yeah, I'm a huge fan of option B. But thank you, John, for your time, and we appreciate it.

I appreciate being invited here. Again, the presentation was much better after Megan and Mark's reviews. I just know they worked hard on this with me. So thank you.

All right. We will take a quick break and convene the meeting at 7, City Council.

Thank you.

Oh.

All right.

The time is 7.02 p.m. on August 17th. I call this meeting of the Battleground City Council to order. Please stand, if you can, for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to

All right, clerk, if you could please call the roll.

Mayor Overholzer.

Present.

Deputy Mayor Vail. Present. Council Member McCoy. Here. Council Member Ferrer.

Present.

Council Member Munson.

Present.

Council Member Kuipers. Present. Council Member Bowman.

Here.

And the clerk is present. That concludes the roll.

Thank you, Liz. And we will move on to summary reports. Are there any council member reports this evening?

I have one, Mayor, that I'll provide this evening. It's the Mosquito Board. Tomorrow night, we have a special meeting, which is going to go into an executive session to discuss the qualifications of our applicants for Mario's position. So who is the district manager? He's been there for a while. And he is leaving us October 30th. We gotta find a new replacement for him.

I have a couple.

Go ahead, Councilmember Kuipers. Sorry.

Thank you. Just wanted to give a quick update on the Regional Parks Funding Task Force. Their meetings are going to be scheduled in September to bring staff together from each of the regional parks. as they begin to discuss and develop a revenue sharing um framework and ultimately that would lead to an understanding of how each park system will benefit from a potential new funding source so that is continuing to move starting in february and its staff is what the report said so i i need to follow up and find out if the rest of us who are staff but our representatives of council are going to be included in that Also just mentioning that the Municipal Research and Services Center, MRSC, is gonna be publishing an article next Tuesday on their Insight blog about the work that that task force has done over this past year and explaining how metropolitan park district options could work for Southwest Washington region and also discussing the challenges we're facing with funding arcs. So just FYI, if you're getting those MRSC blogs. The other thing I wanted to give an update on was the government's manual review committee. I'm sorry. Assuming this is the right time, not council communications.

Yep.

Okay. I think I'm okay. Just to confirm, give everyone an update. Council members Ferrer and Munson are part of that as well as city clerk Kalali and interim city manager. farrier we meet on the second thursday of the month from 3 30 to 5 or 5 30 next meeting is scheduled for september 10th what we've done in the last couple weeks when we've met is we've reviewed a process kind of developed a process to outline how we would work as a committee that has been somewhat vague other than giving us an outline or give us giving us the ultimate outcome is to update the manual well We felt we needed some more guidance on how that worked and kind of what our parameters are when items, because there's so much that needed to be updated. Much of it was what we consider non-content. It's... formatting, those kinds of things versus real content, things that we might want to recommend changes for. So we will bring that document to the, have that at the bi-weeklies. We'll ask interim manager Farrier to bring that to all council members to review and see what the process is. Our expectation is that that would go into the manual itself. We've also established some goals to complete each sections. There are four sections in the manual, and hopefully that will give us some guidelines as to when we, some targets as to when we need to get things done, get some recommendations back in front of the council, and then ultimately bringing the final document, which will be drafted recommendations to the council for their review and approval end of the year. That's it.

Thank you, Council Member Kuipers. Council Member Munson.

I just want to touch on one thing Council Member Kuipers was talking about with the governance manual committee. Something we also discussed is for the use of future councils is we're going to do a complete debrief when we're done. discuss the wins and losses, and hopefully provide, like she was talking about earlier, some framework so that if it's useful to future councils, they'll have something to see where we succeeded and where we failed, and that way they have that reference point. So I think when we do the debrief, Councilmember Kuypers can speak to this, but once we're done with that, that might potentially also be a presentation to council as well.

Very good, and thank you, Council Member Kuypers, for leading that charge and helping to create that process that'll make it a lot smoother for future council members past our years to help coordinate that. I don't have anything for the mayor's report tonight, so I'll move on to the agenda approval. Does any council member wish to amend the agenda this evening? PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Mr Mayor.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I would like to get clarification from legal before I make a motion to amend the agenda. If I could PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Do we have legal on here.

Yeah, I'm available.

If I may, Mr. Bowman, I'd like to introduce to the City Council Hillary Evans from the law firm at Kenyon Decent. Hillary is succeeding our attorney at Mankey Jackson. Their last day with us was last week.

Thank you. The question I have is we have been presented with a contract for the interim city manager, and I'm wondering if if we can discuss that in executive session, or if we need to discuss it from the dais if we have questions for that.

It depends on the topic areas that you are going to discuss. So if you're going to discuss the interim's qualifications, you can discuss the qualifications of an applicant. If you're going to discuss the potential downfalls to certain contract provisions and risk of litigation related thereto, you can do that in an executive session. But everything else has to be done publicly, including benefits, pay, whether or not you're going to post and how quickly. So depending on what you want to discuss, you can do that in executive session.

So if we we had made a motion in the last meeting and it passed five to to enter into negotiations with this interim city manager and we received a contract from the interim city manager. So if we've already said the qualifications were met because we voted 5-2 for that person to be the interim city manager. We were just waiting upon a contract. Would it be inappropriate then to go into executive session to discuss the details of that when we should be doing it from the dais?

If you want to discuss the provisions of the contract that could arguably relate to potential litigation, then we could do that in an executive session. But without knowing more, I'm not really sure how to help.

Okay.

So then, Mr. Mayor, I would like to move to amend the agenda to put the interim city manager's contract on the agenda tonight under business.

I'll second that.

Okay, we have a motion by Councilmember Bowman, second by Councilmember Kuypers to amend the agenda and add the interim city manager contract onto the business.

Anybody want to discuss that or we'll go right to a vote?

All right, hearing no discussion. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Nay. Roll call, please. Clerk, we've been called for a roll call. I'll let you go ahead and take it away.

Mr. Mayor, did you want that to be a verbal roll call, or would you like it to be via the pads?

I think verbal will be fine.

OK.

Yes, sir. I know.

Council Member Bowman, how do you vote?

Yes.

Council Member Kuipers, how do you vote? Yes. Council Member Munson, how do you vote?

No.

Council Member Ferrer, how do you vote?

Nay.

Council Member McCoy, how do you vote?

Yes.

Deputy Mayor Vail, how do you vote? No. Mayor Overholzer, how do you vote? No. Motion fails four to three. Or my apologies, that would be three to four.

All right. I will entertain a motion for the agenda.

I'll move to approve the agenda as presented.

Second.

All right, we have a motion by Council Member Ferrer, second by Deputy Mayor Vail. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Nay.

I'm assuming that's a four to three.

Yes, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Liz. All right, we will move on to citizen communication. I'll now open the meeting for citizen communications. As authorized under the city, the council's adopted rules, the mayor may adjust both the individual speaking time and the overall length of the constituent comments period to ensure the orderly and efficient conduct of the meeting. Due to the number of individuals wishing to speak this evening, each speaker will have three minutes, and the total public comment period will last 40 minutes. This portion of the meeting is a limited public forum for receiving input from the public. It is not intended for dialogue with the council. To help maintain an orderly and efficient meeting, please avoid conduct that disrupts the proceedings. This includes speaking out of turn, exceeding the time limit, creating loud or coordinated demonstrations such as applause, cheering, jazz hands or other visible or audible interruptions, calling out from the audience or otherwise preventing others from being heard. While all viewpoints are protected under the First Amendment, obscene language, derogatory remarks, personal attacks or campaign speeches can create disturbances that interfere with the orderly conduct of the meeting, Speakers are therefore asked to present their comments in a manner that allows the meeting to proceed efficiently and respectfully. Threatening behavior, intimidation, or any other conduct that substantially interrupts delays or interferes with the meeting may result in removal from the chambers to protect the safety and order of the proceedings. If your remarks relate to an item scheduled for a public hearing, please wait to provide your comments during that designated hearing period. All comments 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. If due to time constraints, you are unable to provide verbal comment this evening, please submit written comments to the city clerk's office with the title public comment for disbursement to council. The acting interim city manager has placed his cards at the podium. Please feel free to take one if you would like to contact him with any questions. If you have printed materials to submit for the record, please hand them to the city clerk seated directly to the right of the podium. Thank you for cooperation and participation in the council meeting this evening. Clerk, are there any members of the public on Zoom that wish to comment?

No, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, ma'am. All right, we will start down this roster. Here we go. Denny Kiggins. Denny Kiggins. All right. Judy Blevins. And next up will be Drew.

Thank you. I'm Judy Blevins, and I'd like to talk about the Battleground City Council issues today. In the 34 years I've lived in Battleground, our City Council has always been busy trying to attract more business opportunities. but I felt that how that's affecting present and future residents has had little input from us. And since I try to vote for those who seem best at caring for citizens of our nation, state, and city, that cause becomes more important than leading up to any election. Now that we're finding out that Doug Wilson is attempting to promote and that Longview city councilors have been present at all of our council meetings as an influence for years. I have questions that I want answered. Are you councilors from Longview? Also at all the other Clark County City Council meetings each month, and are there counselors from other cities here too? I'd like some answers about that. The council and the police know who's here, but it's time to show yourself as our neighbors, not another version of what you'd like us in our county to be. Every one of us here wants to also be considered upstanding. And we live in a world where pedophilia and child trafficking is continually present. We have programs trying to keep our children safe, but what are we doing with the background checks on those who get elected to act as representatives and senators, school boards, and other programs that affect our youth and families? What about our sheriffs, our police officers, and others who are in contact with our youth? We in Battleground and our neighboring communities surely want to be known as a hospitable community here in Battleground. Instead, will the main focus still stay on the particular faith, culture, and national background of people that Doug Wilson and some of the city council seek to put into place to deport or precariously support anyone who's in our country? Thank you.

Thank you, Judy.

Drew, you're up, followed by Liz S. Two weeks ago, the mayor and three city council members voted to fire the city manager without cause. The mayor told OPB that the city council was exercising their authority when they fired her, though I think flexing would be more accurate. The mayor gave short notice, but people showed up anyways. and they spoke about the city manager and what she had done for them and what she meant to them and why she should stay. The mayor and city council listened to the community speak and with hearts of stone, Mayor Overholzer, Deputy Mayor Vail, Council Members Ferrer and Council Member Munson voted to fire the city manager anyway, with no reason given except the mayor's desire to see it done. Was it loyalty or obligation which moved council members to vote with the mayor? Perhaps it was something else. I wonder what could have swayed them, what they would have needed to hear to change their minds. I wonder if they ever had any attention to, or if their minds have already been made by someone else. And I wonder if Maddox employees are at will hires like the city manager was. Thank you.

Thank you, Drew. Liz, you are up, followed by Colleen Eubanks.

Let us have the grace to live by the values we profess and examples, even those who we meet. Disagreement and anger, division or contempt. Resist the temptation to answer cruelty with cruelty. Recognize the capacity to change others without ignoring the harm they have caused. Remembering that redemption requires accountability as well as opportunity to do better. When confronted by aggression or injustice, have the courage neither to seek vengeance nor cruelty, surrender to it, stand our ground with dignity, defend ourselves when necessary, and defend those whose voices are too easily ignored. Do not condemn people who simply for what they believe do not believe. Have the humility to question our own certainty. Seek the truth even when it makes us uncomfortable and change our minds when reason and evidence demands it. Lift up those who have been pushed down. Challenge arrogance when power has allowed it to flourish. Remember that leadership is service, not dominion. Defend the marginalized without exploiting their suffering for your own status, ideology, influence, or gain. Judge our principles not by how loudly we proclaim them, but how faithfully we practice them, especially when doing so is inconvenient. Be peacemakers without becoming passive in the face of injustice. Build community without demanding conformity. Seek understanding without surrendering reason. Defend freedom of conscious equality, the freedom to believe, the freedom to question, the freedom to doubt, and the freedom not to believe at all. And when we fail these principles, as human beings inevitably will, Let us have the humility to acknowledge the harm, make amends where we can, learn from our mistakes, and choose a better path. None of us is beyond accountability, and none of us should be denied the possibility of becoming better than we were yesterday. Let our actions be guided not by fear or division, but by compassion, reason, justice, and our shared humanity. Thank you, have a night, and rahmen.

Thank you, Liz. Colleen, you are up, followed by Karen Scott.

Hello, maybe I can hold this a little bit more steady than I did a couple weeks ago. Good evening, honorable mayor, deputy mayor, and council members. And thank you for this opportunity to once again speak to you about the sale of Battleground Mobile Home Community. manufactured home community on Southwest Seventh Avenue. My name is Colleen Eubanks, and I am the acting spokesperson for the tenant group at the park. Our park has been here in Battleground for over 50 years, and we have an estimated 350 residents there, most of most of which are seniors, in addition to a number of families. Up until four years ago, our park was affordable. And in the last four years, our rents have gone up over $400 a month per month. There has been a substantial increase in park ownership by investors across the country with residents facing closures and displacement, losing everything they have worked for. despite assurances from the current owner that the intent of the buyer is to maintain the park as an MHC without legally binding documents, contracts, or deed stipulations, the assurances are worthless. And we have indeed gotten those. In our case, the investor's offer to purchase the park serves two purposes. excuse me, serves to effectively eliminate our opportunity to fairly compete for purchase. This is simply not, there is simply not enough time for the group to come up with an estimated $40 million in the timeframe that the state allows us in the code. And it's clearly not right. To protect our homes and community, we are asking the city council to enact zoning and or overlay measures to keep the park secure as an affordable senior housing, as affordable senior housing, similar to what the the action taken by Clark County Council. We are also left without partners referred to us by the Department of Commerce, such as the Northwest Community Development Center, or also known as ROC, who also do not have the resources to assist us. They have suggested that we do this on our own and we are trying. It's clear we need help, partners, guidance, and significant funding. We ask the city to assist in any of these areas through grants or meaningful referrals, whatever you can do. Thank you, Colleen. Okay, thank you.

Next up, Karen Scott, followed by Fia Marie.

Good evening, honorable mayor and council members. I am a resident of Battleground Manufactured Senior Home Community. Two weeks ago, the Battleground Council heard a report from the Council on Aging. They reported that in the near future, one of four citizens in Clark County will be a senior. Where will they all be living? Right now, my senior community of 186 units is in the process of being sold. It's very likely that the land our homes sit on will be repurposed and we'll be expected to walk away from our homes without any compensation. The expectation is that we can move our homes. But the reality is it is expensive to move our homes, and we would need a place to move them to. The logistics and cost of moving a manufactured home is a nightmare that many seniors cannot afford or deal with. For many seniors, apartment living isn't feasible for many reasons. Older people need to live on a first floor so they don't have to climb stairs. Many seniors have mobility issues and they need to be able to park close to the entrance of their homes. Parking in most apartment complexes are not assigned and walking a long distance can be an issue. Also, apartments cannot be modified to accommodate a senior's needs. Owning our own home solves these problems as we can fix our homes to accommodate any of those issues. The people owning a manufactured home cannot afford a traditional home, but some of us are lucky enough to afford a manufactured home. Living in a senior community has its benefits as we are surrounded by other seniors who have the same aging issues. We can share our problems and our solutions. Living in battleground where we live is a huge advantage. We have access to the stores we need. Emergency services is around the corner from us. We have a safe neighborhood in which we feel comfortable. Affordable housing is a problem in Clark County. My hope is the council will prevent the land my community sits on from being repurposed. Thank you for your support and time.

Thank you, Karen. Fia Marie, you are up, followed by Holland Martin.

Love doing that. Hello, my name's Sister Fia Marie. I'm your local everyday Pacific Northwest anti-fascist punk rock trans femme ordained nun by the Church of the Holy Molies. Today I ask the congregation to open the good book to the book of Maddox, chapter 69, verses 6, 7, And then ultra-conservative, far-right, white Jesus stepped onto the mound and addressed his followers. O ye of little mind and even less tolerance, hear me, for a white man is speaking. And a hush fell over his bigoted crowd. I speak to you today of the revised Ten Commandments, for you so pick and choose which ones you are going to follow anyway. Number one, capitalism is the Lord thy God. Thou shall have no other gods before it. Two, thou shall not take my name in vain unless it's during really good sex or you're going to direct it at marginalized peoples. Number three, honor the holy day, but only if you are wealthy enough to take it off. Otherwise, you must be forced to work a minimum wage job that is still not enough to pay your rent. Number four, honor your father and mother by electing officials that completely gut their health care, their retirement, their social security, their veterans benefits, leaving them to die alone, afraid, and in poverty. Number five, thou shall not kill unless you're a member of ICE or the police, and then you can do so indiscriminately without facing any charges, especially if we're murdering unarmed, marginalized peoples. Number six, thou shall not commit adultery. You know what? Scratch that one. You may not lie with your sister or brother as you would your wife or husband. Your cousin is probably okay, though. Number seven, you shall not steal from large corporations or the billionaire pedophiles that run your nation. You may steal from the poor through taxation. Number eight, you shall not bear false witness, but you can send a bear to maul children for laughing at bald white men. Number nine, you shall not cover your neighbor's wife because after all, she's his property and we value property more than anything else around here, don't we? Number 10, you shall make no idols before me except athletes, entertainers, billionaires, mediocre sensationalist debaters who pick on college students or presidents with terrible tans and even worse, hair pieces. If you would please bow your heads, oh Lord, we ask you watch over our community's most vulnerable peoples. the wealthy elitist and their lapdog cowardice mouth dog lap pieces as they slowly destroy the fabric of society and guide them into the sweet release of the guillotine that the people have awaiting them. God bless anti-fascists, God bless Antifa, and God damn imperialism, Christian nationalism, fascism, and the majority of this council.

Amen. Thank you, Fia. You're super. Colin, you're up, followed by Wynne Gursich.

Good evening.

I am really- Hold on one second. We're not allowed to hand out publications here. Thank you. Go ahead, Colin. Sorry, we'll reset your time. You're good.

Good evening City Council members. Tonight I am speaking out about the misconduct with C-TRAN. I've been on those buses since 2018. And there's been some misconduct with drivers recently on routes, hiding alcohol from me, being intoxicated, having an attitude problem with me. And I've been bullied by a few of them. Also, we need to look into the misconduct with C-TRAN institutions. Hopefully they can change their conduct I'm really concerned with the ice presence in battleground I've seen undercover Ice agent vehicles in battleground just driving around and I was on a walk the other day and I just saw one circling around and And they're out there. And we have to be vigilant around us and watch our surroundings, help our neighbors. And I'm really concerned. There's been a lot of ICE presence at the Battleground Walmart, and they took somebody away recently. So... I don't want that to happen. Also, I'm really concerned about the misconduct with how there's ICE. They have been just harassing people, trying to harass me, even though I'm walking by myself. and we need to put a stop to it. Also, we need to, again, stay vigilant and watch our surroundings. I cannot let our battleground residents go through this ordeal. We are hardworking families. We are hardworking individuals. We pay taxes. We go to work. And with the ice presence in our city, it has became a nightmare. So please look into that. So it doesn't happen again. Thank you. Thank you, Holland.

When Gersage followed by Jessica Cole.

My name is Wynne Gersuch, and I congratulate you for not renewing your city manager's contract. And I hope it sets precedence in other cities and stuff too. Because if you don't like something right now, they're having a recall on the mayor of Seattle. I know you've all heard that one, right? So they're trying to get rid of people that are not doing what the public wants. And it's important that people understand that you're supposed to represent the people even though they're not. and this New World Order stuff, communism, you get no choice. So what you did was really something. And I tell you, I sent that to everybody to see what Battleground did. Anyway, one of the things that I think is needed here is your Battleground pharmacy in Walmart needs a pharmaceutical drop-off. They don't have one, and yet it's a huge pharmacy. So where are your pharmaceutical drop-offs in Battleground? And if you don't have them there, they should be either at the police station or someplace where people can take their stuff. Today, I went to Walmart on 99th Street, and the thing was full. So you have to take your stuff home or they say go to Safeway and it's full. These things need to be picked up weekly, not every other week. And if it was at the police station, people could drop the stuff off. It's being protected. It's in a container that nobody can reach in and steal the stuff. You know, I've got a bunch of old vitamins I want to get rid of, and I'm sure people just throw those in the trash. So pharmaceutical drop-offs is super important. One other thing, too, is the fact that Dr. Russell Blaylock wrote about this. Geoengineering spraying air with various chemicals to fight so-called global warming should be discontinued immediately because it puts huge amounts of nanoaluminum into the atmosphere. He says, I warned you years ago, if inhaling through the nose, nanoaluminum carried into the brain and deposited is associated to Alzheimer's disease. I predicted years ago that we could see drastic increases in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease as a result of global engineering. neurodegenerative diseases have risen exponentially since then. You could have Dane Wigington be one of your guests and actually tell you what's happening. They almost burned his house down. They caught the forest on fire and he was videotaping that while these trees were burning. And it's important that people know all the things that causes Alzheimer's Our fluoridated water is one of them, too. And I think you should go back and have another session on that. And the people should be able to vote when they're non-consenting, not some dentists that think that children dentists should not tell the public. That's malpractice.

Thank you, Wynne. That's your time. um for the public's information i believe we have a pharmaceutical drug drug drop-off at the battleground police station that is a secure drop-off yeah and as a matter of fact our next speaker might be able to speak to that uh jessica cole followed by david terry

I don't have time to speak to that today. My name is Jessica Cole. First, at the special meeting, someone called a local church, the one that the mayor attends, a Christian nationalist church. And to my knowledge, that is not true. I've been at public meetings where people say things about me that aren't true. While that's allowed by freedom of speech, I wish people would give accurate information because it's about individuals.

So it would build community, not tear it apart.

I also read the recent reporting about complaints involving the former city manager, Chris Swanson, and it puts some previous council discussions into a very different perspective. The first complaints involving parking enforcement resulted in an independent third party investigation and they cleared the city manager of wrongdoing. Knowing that now I think back when several council members piled on the city manager for not having information to share about the police award ceremony. That was information that hadn't been given to her in the first place. I specifically remember Deputy Mayor Amy Vail going overboard praising the police chief during that discussion. Looking back, it appears to me that some city councilors weren't approaching the conflict between the police department and the city manager from a neutral position. Then there was a second separate complaint sent to the mayor. Those apparently weren't independently investigated before four council members voted to fire the city manager without cause or explanation. I'm surprised that Ms. Ferrer voted along with counselors who at the meeting prior to that were mocking her. And I'm disappointed that Mr. Munson voted for it when he consistently talks about saving money and this is going to cost a lot of money. If those complaints were serious enough to influence her termination, why weren't they investigated? And if they weren't the reason she was fired, why are they now being pointed to as an explanation? I also questioned why employee complaints are being directed to elected officials instead of going through the city's HR process. The more we learn about what happened before this firing, the more concerned I am that the city manager wasn't given a fair and neutral process. Seems that there's been trouble stirred up behind the scenes for quite some time now. And while I don't know everyone who's been involved, I don't appreciate seeing some of our city council members contributing to it. Our community needs peace. Stability and cooperation, not more division and dysfunction. And since I actually do have some more time, yes, we have a Dropbox for medications at the police department. We have one in Safeway. We have one in Albertsons. And those are the ones that I can remember off the top of my head. We also do drug take back twice a year in September and October. And you could, no sharps to those. And you could go down to the transfer station on 503 to do sharps drop off. You could go in and they guide you. It's easy, even though it looks creepy. It's really easy. Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica. David Terry, followed by Amelia Malaki.

I am David Terry. I'm a battleground resident and I'm pretty pissed about what the council did last week. I was out of town. And I just like to address the staggering and entirely avoidable financial hit that this is going to infect our taxpayers in battleground. When this council voted four to three to terminate the city manager without cause, it triggered a massive guaranteed payout funded straight out of our pockets and Let's look closely at the numbers you guys approved. The severance package price, it's going to be about $315,000. That's to let Chris walk away and do nothing for an entire year when she could have been here as a city manager. You fired without cause. What was Chris doing wrong? I think you guys need to be responsible enough to the citizens of this town to tell us why she was really fired. You don't just send somebody away for 300,000 bucks and say, Jack, say nothing. we're going to have to pay for recruitment and search costs. That is not going to come cheap. I did some research in what it's going to cost in Washington, and it's typically between 25% and 33% of a candidate's first year total compensation. That's going to add $60,000 to $70,000 more dollars onto the bill if we can even find someone who will come and work for this council. You guys have done nothing in the time you've been in office, nothing. Please tell me one accomplishment that you've made. I mean, please explain to all of us. What could we have done with that money? It's gonna come out to be around $500,000 at the least. We could have gotten a pool for that money. Instead, we made somebody who seems perfectly competent to us, we let them walk away. In fact, we kicked them out the door. And that's if we don't get sued. And what is that going to cost if we get sued? So what is really the cost? It translates to about $50 for every single household in Battleground. If you guys walked around to the households and asked us for 50 bucks to fire the city manager, how many citizens do you think would actually say, oh yeah, here's my 50 bucks? If you walked around and asked for a pool, maybe it'd be a different story. You've totally wasted our money. I don't know how you could face the citizens by doing this. Let's talk about support. That's about $100,000 or more for every counselor that voted for this. How many counselors think they would do that again? How many approve of spending $100,000 of our money? Please raise your hand for me. I'd like to see who really supports that. I don't know why you guys are afraid to not raise your hands and show us. Every single household in Battleground is dealing with economic pressures, carefully balancing their own budgets, and expecting local government to do the same. Instead, the council has treated hundreds of people.

Thank you, David. That's your time. Amelia?

I'm brand new, and I'm so nervous. the mayor and the member of the councilor. Valley Scholar International Nursing Student. From the island of Tonga to the front line of the healthcare, Valley Scholar is building a bridge, one nursing at a time, There is quite a reservation that happening across the South Pacific in Tonga. The need of a skilled nursing has never been greater. Health care is a crisis. It is real. But it's a hope that follows color. Sorry. This is a hope that fellow scholar believe answering his answer right here in the heart of Tonga, the brightest young people ready to learn and heal and be a leader. We're removing every barrier. We open every door. with selecting a student to receiving a full fund, a full fund to enter the journey to be a Bachelor of Science of Nursing, BSN, in the United States. Tuition fee, full cover, room and pool provided, meal, transportation, textbook and other supply included. hands-on clinical experience with the study we build in. There is no, I'm so sorry. This is a very hard for us to create that for the community, Tongan community here in America, but we're trying to move our community to help our Tongan students. Once we help them in every donation, it goes directly, which is asking to a direction to get funded by the leader. And we are here. We live here in Barrow Crown since 2005. Thank you.

Thank you, Amelia.

Is it possible, Amelia? I'm not sure that I could hear everything you were saying. Are you able to leave your notes with the clerk so we could read them?

I will.

Thank you. Thank you.

I'm sorry. I'm brand new and I haven't been. This is my first time.

No, you did great. All right. We will... Move on to the consent agenda. Does any council member believe any items need to be withdrawn from the consent agenda?

Mr. Mayor, I move to remove item B from the consent agenda for further consideration.

We have a motion for withdrawal of item B. Do we have a second?

Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. We don't need a motion on that.

Move to approve consent agenda items A through C. Second. All right. Now we have a motion.

Not A through C. A, C, and D. Oh, I thought she removed D. No, she said B. B.

My bad. Old errors. Motion to approve A, C, and D. Second.

Now we have a second.

Now we have a second. OK. Yeah. All right.

Who seconded for Liv? OK. Deputy.

All right, we'll vote on that motion with the removal of Section B from the consent agenda. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none. All right, let's have a discussion about item B.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just saw a comment I wanted to bring to the clerk's attention. It was on page four of the meeting minutes, and it directly follows the motion carried for invocation. It was a comment that was mostly off mic that the clerk could not have heard. But the comment here on the actual notes either needs to be, in my opinion, struck, or if the clerk can just review the video and add the additional comments by the mayor that was made? I would actually ask that this comment be struck. I think that the remaining conversation that is on the video suggests that it was more of a comment and not anything for the actual minutes themselves.

Could you read the comment, please, so we know what you're talking about?

Of course. So it's on page four, about halfway down the page. It says, Mayor Overholzer requested resolution 26-04 be reviewed by staff, brought back before council for consideration, and then presented to the governance manual committee. Then... mayor overholzer said or are we done and this was a lot off mic and then city manager swanson said to the fact that yes you're done and then miss uh mayor overholzer raised his hands and said okay we're done um and that portion i believe was meant to display that it didn't need to be brought back before council for consideration the resolution was actually signed and done And that because half of that conversation took place off mic, our clerk could not have been aware that that occurred. So when I saw this comment in the meeting minutes, I wanted to make sure that that was either struck or that we had a conversation to ensure that that was corrected.

Forgive me, you're talking about the minutes to the August 3rd meeting minutes?

Correct.

Because the item you pulled was B, which was the minutes of the August 5th. Everything else had already been approved.

OK. That was my fault. I circled the wrong number. It was meeting minutes of August, the August 3rd meeting minutes, Monday's meeting minutes.

I'd like to make a motion to approve item B as presented.

I'll second since it wasn't the right one, yeah.

Okay, well. With the motion that was already on the floor, We need to reconsider that motion to remove A for that discussion.

Withdraw my motion.

Withdraw.

There's a motion on the floor for approval of B. Yeah.

So motion on the floor for approval of item B. We have a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none.

It makes sense now why you said page four. I was like, page four has nothing on it.

All right, so help me clarify here. I'm going to go to you on this. Do we need to go ahead.

So we would need to do a motion to reconsider the motion that was just made that approved item A, which is the item that Deputy Mayor Vail is referring to. The clerk would also note that she is more than happy to determine, you know, to review, and I mean, the goal of the clerk is always to provide accurate minutes.

Where is it? I can't find it.

Well, do we have any motion to reconsider? If not, I think Liz will be able to review that and we can move forward.

All right.

We'll go on to business. Back to you, Liz. Are there any communications that were submitted regarding business items that have not yet been provided to the council?

No, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Liz. We'll move on to ordinance number 2026-16, storage of trailers and recreational vehicles in residential areas. We have a presentation and then to set a public hearing, I'd like to introduce Kristen Leto.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, council members. Per direction received during the June 15th meeting, we have Ordinance 2026-16 drafted for you for review and discussion related to the storage of trailers and recreational vehicles in residential areas. Joining us this evening is Fire Chief Drone, who's available for questions and comments as we discuss this topic. And just a quick summary of recent activity. The original language of BGMC 17.135.150 was updated recently for ordinance 2026-04. A memo was received with some concerns from Fire District 3 of the language related to setbacks that were removed as part of that updated language. And so this evening, what we have for you, and I'll share my screen quickly. So what we have for you is some proposed changes for you to look over and give us some direction on. I'll call your attention to two specific areas. We have added letter C in this draft. And what I'm sharing right here is just the staff report because I feel like it's a little bit easier to consume. So the blue text is newly added. C, we've added this verbiage to reintroduce the setback-related language. We're proposing a requirement to keep RVs and or trailers parked a minimum of five feet from the side and rear property lines. We have also added some language. Bear with me. Apologies. So we've added letter D as well. This draft language was added to address the comments heard from council related to allowing some ability to store more RVs and or trailers based on zone. Staff felt after looking at this that lot size was a more consistent and predictable method to use. So you'll see what we're proposing in this case for discussion is a half acre threshold for you to consider. The only other final change that I'd like to draw your attention to is in Section A. So again, currently the code language reads that currently any RV and or trailer can be parked in the legally established driveway, and we have edited that to propose allowing one in the legally established driveway. So with that, I'll go ahead and pause and ask for questions and discussion on the topic.

and uh i'll just clarify before we have any motions we will want to read have a reading of the title ordinance okay all right councilmember bowman thank you mr mayor uh thank you kristin um

Maybe this is maybe for Megan more. If we have an RV storage, which we have them in town, do they charge a sales tax for RV storage? Do you know?

I don't know that offhand. I can find out though.

They're only changing. They do now. So my, my, my concern is, is this, I don't have, I like the, I like the ability to, you know, depending on the lot size, my concern is this is if you're running a business and you're leasing out your lot for people to store their RVs on, um, number one, do you have a business license to do so? Um, and number two, if there is a tax that should be being charged, are you charging that? Because, um, it is not, um, in my opinion, it's not fair to those people that have RV storages and pay those fees and that kind of stuff for someone that would potentially be leasing out their lot. those so i don't have a problem um i think there's ways around it it could be legally licensed to the property owners um that kind of stuff um but i think that uh it does lead to potentially have the ability to lease out your lot for um For RV parking. Still could do it. You could even do it on a lot smaller. I could do it on my lot. So is there anything that would keep us from doing that? So that is a little bit of a concern that we're just leasing out lots for that. And then it is a business and it is not, they should have to jump through the same hoops as everyone else does to own a business. So that's the only concern I have. Thank you.

Council Member Ferrer.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm fine with the setbacks. I feel like that's why you're here today, is to address the concerns that we made amendments to the original language. And for safety reasons, to get your men in there without a fire by feet isn't that much. I've seen houses that I think there's room for it. I could be wrong. But to put, I still don't like how we've put however one recreational vehicle or trailer. I feel like it should have been left alone with however recreational vehicles or trailers are allowed to be parked on a legally established driveway. And there's the Battleground Municipal Code because right now you have driveways that they have a trailer with an RV behind it or an RV with a trailer and a boat behind it. And right now we've just, taken that off. And this isn't a half acre, not acre. And it's a very, you know, well-established lot in our original language, a code that we had for 25 years, we didn't have these restrictions on it and we did just fine with it. So I don't know why we're adding all this additional language that's putting restrictions on it.

Um, if we go back to the original language, I do believe there was a restriction to one vehicle behind the frontage.

No, it's that you couldn't park in front. It had to be high. It had to be behind the frontage. And then what's up? Exactly. Exactly. Well, it's saying that we're only saying you could park one. That's what I mean by restrictive is you can only put one language was none. Right. But it's, we're giving them saying you can only park one on the driveway and then also, oh, you can also put one on the side. Yeah. It says right here, maximum number of recreational vehicles and or trailers allowed to be stored outside is dependent on your residential lot size. We're not talking about exclusively to a driveway. Now we're talking about to that lot. We have put now a restriction on that lot that you can only have one recreational vehicle on a driveway and one recreational vehicle or trailer may be stored outside provided said storage meets the setback requirements.

Chief John, do you have anything you'd like to add there?

Yes, thank you. Thanks for having me back again. So when I originally spoke with you, I still stand by what I said in that those setbacks are there for fire protection, right? Those five foot setbacks. So when staff showed me this, I was pleased. However, I do have a background in code enforcement. So as you travel through battlegrounds, some of the established neighborhoods where they have side yards with board pads and they're sold as RV parking on one side and people are doing it what they think is the correct way. I brought that to staff's attention and found out basically that the existing code as it was written wasn't enforced for the last 20 years. So I wanted to point out that, you know, I still support this, but I think there may be a middle ground of if they can't meet the setbacks on the side to allow parking on one side only if done properly. And that would, I think that would give a good balance between risk and reasonable enforcement. So. And then, of course, I'm here for any questions on that or any other fire-related questions on this topic. Thank you, Chris.

Can you explain what that would look like? So if they can't meet the setback, because I know a lot of people park right up against their side yard. So what would that exception look like? They could still park on that side yard?

So without a setback, the exception that I'm proposing or that I'm okay with would be allowing them to park on one side of the house only if the setbacks cannot be met.

Okay. So they could still have one. Okay. Thank you. That seems reasonable to me.

That would still allow us access to the rear of the home and minimizes risk, but doesn't eliminate it.

Council Member Kuypers, floor is yours.

Can I call the question and ask for the reading of the resolution or the proposal and not call the question, sorry. Could somebody just read it?

At the direction of the mayor, the clerk will read the title of the ordinance.

Thank you. Thank you. Please do.

ordinance number 2026 dash 16 an ordinance amending battleground municipal code title 17 zoning chapter 17.135 supplementary regulations for specific uses. Section 17.135.150, storage of recreational vehicles and trailers in residential districts, providing for severability, providing for corrections, and establishing an effective date.

Thank you, Clerk. I'll just say something. Uh, this was brought back forward for our review and consideration again, after we just approved it not long ago for one simple thing was to add the setbacks that, that is what the intention of the consideration was with the additional information from our chief drone. Uh, and now we've made this a spaghetti plate yet again. Um, Yep. I'm in favor of the way this is worded, but I would advise council, let's not play around with this too much. If we can't meet the setbacks and get this thing nailed down, I'm okay with just letting it all go. And we still have a review set a year from the original ordinance, which by now is probably only a mere months away. And so I just, I agree with the setbacks. I agree with the need of that for public safety and the safety of our fire department and our first responders. Aside from that, I don't know why we're diving way deep into this again. So that's just my opinion, but Council Member Bowman.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The only thing I would say to that is if we can't figure it out now, we're not figuring it out in a year. So if we can't slow this process down to help us look at it, we came out of a retreat with One Direction, changed it in a meeting, and then changed it again, and here's where we're at today. And so, I mean, to just say, oh, we can figure this out in six months, we couldn't figure it out in the first six months. So what's going to change in the next six months? And so I think we need to look at this. When we say, well, you should be able to have as many as you want, you can't use that as a statement because then I can say, well, I can have as many dogs as I want. I can have as many cats as I want. I can have as many rabbits or cows or whatever it is because it doesn't matter. Um, and so we have, the County has ordinances. Uh, they might be a little less restrictive than some of the ones in the city, but we have these rules in, in, in these ordinances that are put in place for a reason. And, uh, We could go with this here, which I don't have a problem saying you got to meet the setbacks. Do we want to put that on code enforcement then? Do we want code enforcement to go out there? Because by our ordinance, it would state that you don't meet the setbacks. And so I would say there's not too many lots because most of the lots, mine included, is a lot that is almost 8,000 square feet. And if you can't drive over the curbs, you can't use that side yard that is the biggest to meet the setbacks. And it's always right next to the garage. And the garage is usually 12 feet off of the property line. And you're not going to meet those setbacks. And so, you know, what... what we need to figure out is, is there a compromise? Is there a way to compromise? Or we could go this route or we could throw it out like you're suggesting. And, and we could do this again in six months and it'll be the same exact thing because I have no faith in this council that we can, if we can't decide it now that we will decide it in six months. Um, And so I think we just, you know, rip the bandaid off, figure it out and be done with it. And then if it, if this is what it is and code enforcement is going to have to go out and potentially enforce that stuff. Um, the good news is, is we are a complaint driven code enforcement system. So, you know, someone's going to have to complain about it. So that's my opinion on it. Thank you. Council member McCoy.

So, uh, I want to move to approve ordinance number 2026-16 with an amendment to the end of C that says unless adequate emergency access is available on any side, so on the alternate side of the RV. In other words, if you have an RV on one side with no setback, if you have access on the other side, then the setback doesn't matter.

could we just uh say a rear and one side yard setback of five feet like just singularly at least at least one side of the yard must have a setback that that would do it as well whatever you guys think is more clarification on that though because this is just to set the public hearing i'm sorry i couldn't hear you this is just to set the public hearing oh i'm sorry my bad so if we i mean we could you could make that amendment to be put in there but to set the public hearing yeah sorry my bad

i withdraw my motion but that's the change i think that would go to fire marshal drones point and give um flexibility so with that i'll move to set a public hearing for the september 21st 2026 regular city council meeting to hear public testimony regarding importance 2026 just 16 storage of trailers and recreational vehicles in residential areas second we have a motion we have a second

Not seeing any further discussion on the screen here. We'll move to a vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. Can we get a roll call vote on that, please? Let's use our pats. I know she's been wanting to use them, so.

It better work.

Yeah, it better. Thank you, Chris.

Okay, here we go. Oh. All right. To clarify the vote, the clerk will name each seat. Seat one, Council Member McCoy votes aye. Seat two, Council Member Ferrer votes nay. Seat three, Council Member Munson votes nay. seat or the chair that would be mayor overholzer votes i see uh seat four is deputy mayor vale votes nay seat five council member kypers votes i and seat six council member bowman votes i motion carries four to three thank you clerk

All right, we will move on to the solid waste presentation. I'd like to introduce Public Works Director, Mark Herseg. Take it away, Mark.

Good evening again, Council. So I'm going to invite Joelle Loescher from Clark County Solid Waste Up. She's going to give, her and her team, and I'll let her introduce her team, are going to give a presentation on kind of everything going on in solid waste. And there is a lot going on, so it should be a good presentation.

Joel, before you do that, Madam Clerk, can you turn off the voting record? Yes.

Well, good evening, Council. I'm Joelle Loescher. I'm the Clark County Public Works Solid Waste Division Manager. I'm here with one of our project managers, Amanda Zadro, and also our Solid Waste and Education Outreach Manager. We're here today not to have you make any decisions, but just to make you aware of some of the many projects we have going on. And we're happy to come back for a work session if there's any of these topics that you'd like us to dive a little deeper on. were our goal today was just to kind of give you an overview of what we're working on. And this is my first time being here with the clicker. So let's see how I do. I know I'm like, all right. Oh, got too, too excited. All right. So the first Okay, perfect. So the first thing I wanted to bring up is that we recently had an organizational change. Last November, we were officially defined as a division. So previously, our team was housed in the public health department for about 10 years. And then last year, we moved from public health to the public works department in March of 2025. In November of 2025, the Clare County Council officially created the division. And I wanted to just make you aware of our organizational chart change. Another piece that I wanted to bring attention to with this slide is that we have two committees that are really influential on the decisions that we make. And Battleground and Mark represents battleground on that our regional solid waste system steering committee. And then also our solid waste Advisory Commission also has a representative from the battleground area. Next slide. So today is just an annual update of all the things that we're working on. Last year, one of our greatest achievements was getting our solid waste management plan completed. And the Clark County Council adopted it in 2025. You all adopted it previous to that via resolution. So the solid waste and recycling division continues to serve as the lead agency for solid waste planning. Everything that we do is contained in that solid waste management plan. It's available online. We've made it accessible. We're also happy to drop off printed copies if any new council members would like that. This update highlights the regional solid waste system, provides an overview of solid waste and recycling division activities, and also summarizes our ongoing initiatives and upcoming priorities. And with that, I'm going to pass it to Amanda Zadro, who's one of our project managers working on the capital improvement program.

Hello. All right, so capital, I'm going to do this so I can read it. Capital Improvement Programs for the CIP Transfersation Improvements. The CIP is an ongoing program to improve the solid waste system addressing aging infrastructure, rising service demands, and evolving waste streams. The oversight of the CIP is established through a collaborative master service agreement, the MSA, between Clark County, City of Vancouver, and Columbia Resource Company. CIP projects have been identified through the regional solid waste system study completed in 2023, triennial inspections completed in 2023 and 2024, and then the comprehensive solid waste management plan. And we've actually just completed our very first capital improvement. If you guys want to take a drive down to Central Transfer Station on 117th, inside their transfer building, they have new lights. So everyone can see it's safe for now. So we're excited about that. Next slide, thank you. The North County transfer station siting study. Right now we're currently in phase one, which is the broad area site screening. We've established the siting criteria, identified suitable properties and conducted a thorough evaluation of the potential sites. From that, we have a short list of feasible sites. So we went from 158 sites down to four now, and they're all along the I-5 corridor. And we will be moving into phase two, which is the focused site screening and refine that list to two and then do environmental reviews. We do have a work session with Clark County on August 26th that you guys are interested in listening in. And then if you want a work session, I can, of course, come back and answer any questions. And so can our consultant as well.

And on the solid waste education outreach updates, we have a Recycle Right app update that's coming soon. If you're not familiar, there's Recycle Right app as well as an online platform to learn more about service options, scheduled pickup days, and how to dispose of items safely and recycle properly. And one thing we're really excited about with this new update is that we will also have, if you're familiar with our A to Z directory, where you can search anything and everything that you can think of. And if you think of something that isn't on the directory, we'd love for you to contact us so we can make sure to add it. We're working on a directory for businesses specifically. There are different requirements in the state for handling some materials and there are some specialized waste streams that impact businesses. And we're really, really thrilled to offer that directory service to our business community throughout the county. And then in addition to some education and outreach and some games and quizzes that will hopefully help our residents better prepare their recycling and learn more about waste reduction. Next slide. Recently, our division completed a waste characterization study. The report from that study is available online on the county website. It will be used to help us make decisions about future system planning, about our effectiveness of our education and outreach programs and evaluate future opportunities to serve our communities. On organics management, we have a program called We Compost. The purpose of the program is to increase household access to composting. Often we don't have the availability of being able to place our food scraps in curbside carts, and also people who live in condos and apartments don't have that service option either. And so we'd like to make it convenient for those households who want to collect their food scraps to become a soil amendment to have that opportunity to compost. There are two sites in the battleground area. One is at the North County Community Food Bank and the other is located just outside the city combined. There have been over £20,000 collected last year through that program. So we are very pleased with the participation. Like I said, it's completely voluntary, but we're happy to offer the service and really pleased with the partnerships that we've developed in order to offer that here. In addition to the curbside option for households with recycling service, beginning in July, 2027, residents will have expanded access to safe battery disposal through drop-off sites throughout the county. This is related to a state law that was passed that will allow for these drop offs and we don't intend to make any changes at this time throughout the county to any other curbside service options. However, one of the materials that we're very eager to manage safely are those little lithium ion batteries and rechargeable batteries and so the drop off program will accept those whereas they will still be prohibited in our curbside programs. And there is more information about all different types of batteries just on that recycling a dash c.com website or in your recycle right out. And lastly, we have the recycling reform act just a quick legislative update. It's another new statewide program with the intention of offering recycling services to households with curbside garbage service, and then increasing drop-off access as well throughout the state of Washington, not just here locally. This will expand recycling options for people living in rural communities, as well as in apartments. And the additional benefit of this new law is that we'll have a single recycling list statewide. So as residents move in and out of our area, the recycling rules, so to speak, will stay the same to hopefully make it a lot easier and more convenient for residents to recycle. And the reduced cost of the program we're expecting some cost savings because producers will be paying for those recycling services that there will be a 50% reduction beginning in 2030 75% by 2031 and 90% reduction in costs by 2032.

And then moving on to the cost benefit analysis, I'm going to dive into this more deeply in a few slides, but I just wanted to touch on one of, one of the big projects that we're working on is evaluating public ownership. So I was here in 2023 to talk about our regional solid waste system study and the option that was presented in our disposal contract that we can purchase. The County could purchase each transfer station for a dollar each. And so we, uh, We did interlocal agreements when we did the solid waste management plan. In those interlocal agreements, there's a statement that says that the county prefers that all the municipalities would own together. So similar to how the discovery clean water alliance is structured. So we are going through that analysis. The cost benefit analysis that I'll talk about in a few slides really touched on what the feedback I got from Battlegrounds Council in 2023 which was we really want to see numbers and we want to see that there's going to be a benefit in terms of cost before we go any further. So we'll talk about that in a second. Next slide. Something else I wanted to mention is there in 2027, there was $1.43 tipping fee that was added by the public health department to help supplement some grants that were lost at that time. The grant money came back and I just wanted, this is sort of an administrative update. So we're updating county code. We have a work session and then a public hearing that are happening in September. that will follow up removing this $1.43. So public health stopped receiving that as of January of this year. There's not gonna be any impact to residents. This is not a tipping fee that was reflected on customer receipts, but there won't be an impact in terms of us losing that and the residents won't see an increase at all. And we're doing a further analysis through our consultant to see what those fees should be looking like in the future. And I'm happy to present on that later. So before we get into questions, I just want to go to our next presentation on the cost benefit analysis. We'll fly through this one and then we'll give you questions at the end. So again, based on that feedback I got from the council in 2023, we decided to move into a cost benefit analysis of owning the transfer station and creating sort of a regional structure. We engaged a consultant and that consultant came up, Parametrics was the consultant that worked on this, and that consultant had three options that they looked at. So next slide, please. The three options were first the status quo option, which is private ownership, private operation. The second would be publicly owned the transfer station, but contract out the services. And then the third option was full public ownership. Next slide. And again, this is just a little bit of background to get, this was coming to all the city councils in 2023. Your city council was not the only council that gave us that feedback about wanting to evaluate costs. So a few of our other cities had that same feedback. So that led us to doing this analysis. The master service agreement we frequently refer to as the MSA, that's our transfer and disposal agreement that we manage with the city of Vancouver and also Columbia Resource Company, which is a subsidiary of Waste Connections. So it's a very interesting three-party agreement. And that agreement is what gives us this option to evaluate ownership. The interlocal agreement that we established with all of the cities through solid waste planning was that we needed to make a decision by 2029. And our FCS group and parametrics consultants are who helped us develop this analysis. Next slide. Yeah. So included in the cost-benefit analysis, we looked at We looked at staffing levels and staffing costs. We looked at maintenance levels and staffing and costs. We looked at public administration, management and labor costs. We also looked at contract administration and management costs, and then also contractor profit. So these varied across all three of those options. we had non-financial considerations that we also looked at. So we wanted to look at things that we might want to consider in terms of ownership that we couldn't really quantify solely based on price or cost, like customer satisfaction, system stakeholder satisfaction and expectations, system planning and control, system flexibility and responsiveness, enterprise management experience, and risk and liabilities. Another one of the key non financial considerations was just the ability to be able to control pricing and control rates and really to also control the types of materials that could run through the system. So our key takeaways from the study, and we did a work session with the county council for about an hour. I'm happy to send that along, but I thought I'd spare you tonight and just give you the key takeaways, which was that there weren't really huge differences between the three options. There wasn't an aha moment where we're like, oh, this is the one that we should go with. And so we really want to continue to evaluate more than just the cost benefit, but look at take a deeper dive in some of those non financial considerations. Our ownership cost differences between the options were relatively small. So there was about a 10% margin. If you looked at it in terms of what it would cost to fully replace the transfer station, the public ownership scenarios did appear to be more cost effective, also because it didn't require profit and having to have that overhead. Some non-financial factors, including transparency, operational control, customer service, and system flexibility would be key considerations that we're going to look at moving forward. And we do have a facilitator consultant that's going to work with us and all of our city representatives on the Regional Solid Waste System Steering Committee. So Mark is part of that work. And we will be looking at what does the governance structure look like if we did proceed in owning? So yeah, looking ahead, we're gonna be beginning that work with a consultant. We had our first meeting this morning. We have the consultant contract going to the County Council tomorrow. The Regional Solid Waste System Steering Committee is gonna evaluate the governance options. And we're looking to really make this decision between that 2029, 2030 window. And the next steps I just shared, these were the next steps that were sent to our council when we brought this information for a work session, just so you know what we asked our county council to review. And with that, we're happy to answer any questions on any of these topics.

Madam Clerk, can you engage your panels again, please? Yeah. Oh. Oh, actually, I just go ahead and chime in here, since we're while we're waiting.

Council Member Munson, go ahead.

Thank you for this presentation. One of your options that you talked about earlier was public ownership of facilities but private ownership for operation. Is that program being dived? Are you diving deeper into that?

Yeah.

The reason why I ask is if it's private ownership for services, it allows businesses to compete for a competitive bid for service, which would essentially lower the cost for the consumer.

Absolutely. So that is one of the options that we're going to continue to pursue. The decision hasn't been made whether we keep the status quo option of private operations, private ownership. The second option was that public ownership with like you're talking about that private operation. So the ability to own the facilities, but then put out an RFP or put out a bid procurement to get competitive pricing.

Okay, and then one last quick thing is the CEO and financial director of my house informed me that our cardboard that does not fit into the bins that currently get serviced is an extra charge over the last year, I believe that started. So when you talked about drop off locations, they're going to be increasing in 2030. So between now and then, do you have recycling drop off centers that and forgive me for not looking at your website, but are there current drop off sites besides just the transfer stations?

So I'm going to let Sarah speak to that specifically as our outreach person, but then also the city has their own, you have your own collection contract. So the curbside contracts, I don't have, I'm not as sure everything that's in that contract, I think Mark and Rob have that one, but as far as the drop-off location.

No, unfortunately for items like cardboard, there is no alternative at this moment for drop-off in the area besides central transfer. However, that is one of what the state is saying is a benefit of this new recycling reform act and some of the changes that we'll be seeing.

Okay. Thank you. I will say that if you're going to recycle at the central transfer, the line's usually empty and you can just cruise right through there compared to the solid waste line. We recycle. Yeah. Brianne, we can. Liz, our pads are still disabled. I have a question. So the battery disposal program, it said small lithium ion. Does that also include, say, like, yeah, does that also include, say, like, my DeWalt or Milwaukee Makita drill batteries that are lithium ion?

I am not our subject matter expert on batteries. However, I will say that it is based on sizing of the batteries, and some of those do meet the requirements. I'm also not that handy around the house, so I'm not sure.

OK. I'll look it up on the agency. Thank you. Any other questions? Go ahead, Troy.

i don't know if i imagine this but is there a compost requirement coming or is that just for cities of a certain size uh curbside compost there is a state law organics management law that is in effect now and it is for cities of a certain size and that's do we know what

We can, I do know if the 25,000, I think it was that 25,000.

I didn't want to, I didn't want to be the one to break the news. So thank you for breaking.

And, and we've been happy to assist the cities that meet the threshold that need to do a compost procurement ordinance, or we've been helping, you know, assisting the center and other cities.

So yeah, we're on the coast. Any further questions? Um, thank you guys, Joel and gang and thank you ladies. Appreciate your time here. Look forward to working with you in the future. All right. We will move on to administrative reports. Are there any administrative reports from staff this evening?

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, just a couple of really quick items. First off, as I mentioned earlier, thanks to Hilary Evans for joining this evening from Kenyon Dyson. Glad to have her on board with us. I'd also like to mention that national night out that had been scheduled to occur on the 4th It had been canceled because of the smoke that was affecting much of Clark County that day. We weren't the only community to have their National United Council. I think almost all of them did, if I'm not mistaken. We rescheduled here in Battleground, and it's going to occur on August 25th, which is two weeks, one week, next week. Next Tuesday. Next week. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., same time, same place, over at Chief on Tech. I can tell you that our folks at BGPD have worked very hard to make sure that all our vendors and participants are going to be there. And thanks to the folks in the community, as well as some members of council who have graciously agreed to volunteer again to help dole out the hot dogs. They're going to go hot and quick, and so be there or be square. Rob Leibowitz, And the last thing i'd like to mention is we've invited mark to give us a brief. Rob Leibowitz, update on some some of the projects that are happening around town specifically during the bi weekly some of the Council members were asking the status. Rob Leibowitz, Of some of our road projects and so i'll go ahead and turn over to mark and he'll make you a brief presentation on that, thank you, thank you rob.

Mark Warren, Good evening again give me a second i'll share presentation. All right. So I'm going to focus tonight just under projects that are under construction or about to be under construction. I won't do anything for design. So first project, Northeast Grace. So on that one, the contractors completed the sewer work. They're working on finishing up the water replacement. There was a delay there. The system's very old, and so the records for that weren't very good. We hit a spot where there were some conflicts. And so staff was able to figure out a design to move around that. And that work's continuing right there. You can see in a picture they're installing some of the new water services. They're expecting paving in late August. And then with all of that, that project will actually come in about 15 working days early. And so just as a reminder what a working day is. It's a day tracked of when they can actually do work. So if you have a weather day or something conflicting, it doesn't get counted as a day. So it's not a calendar day, but whenever we do a bit of a project, we have a working day that they have to finish in. And so that they will be early to that. This project had a robust communication with it. It was on the project website. We had onsite project info. There were road closure signs and reader boards posted. Direct mailers were sent to the area property owners, and then there was plenty of social media announcements. So again, on a big project like that, that kind of gets the full meal deal for communication. Northwest 20th Avenue. I'm sure you've heard, but we had the culvert that got rusted out, so. Ever since I've been here, and even before that, we eliminated corrugated metal pipe from what we allow. This is an older pipe, so it was before that. But the issue, and it happened here, is that corrugated metal rust. There's no protectant on it, anything like that. We have soils that tend to be corrosive. And so this pipe actually rusted through on the top and collapsed as they were working. With our luck, the culvert happened to be in an area that Fish and Wildlife considers to be a creek. And so after having the issue, we had to get a permit from Fish and Wildlife. It's called a HPA. It's a hydraulic permit approval, I believe. um from them thankfully they have an emergency process so that was fairly quick um and that was issued um however there will be long-term uh issues with that being considered a creek so you'll hear from me in the future about those issues but it allows But at least that allows the work to continue forward with the short delay that it had with all of that pavings expected and mid September and there'll be about five working days early based on their current schedule and very similar communication for this one, based on the size of project that it was. A Southwest 20th pathway. I'm sure you've all seen that the path was paved and I've seen several people using it. There's still some final things to close out they need to seed either waiting till it gets to the rainy season just because if they see now it won't take and other cleanup items but in my picture you can see that's a view of the path from the bridge but good project to get done. So Southwest 20th Avenue. So as you may know, in our recent state legislator request, we received a million dollars to look at phase two of the 92nd Avenue pump station. So there's a couple of components of that phase two. One is to build a gravity line that connects over to the new pump station. The other is to actually separate the two force mains. So right now you have Louisville Pump Station, which is up on 29th, just north of Main Street. That force main goes across 502 and then down 20th, and it connects here at 6th Street to the Winchester force main. So those two force mains actually combine there at that location and then go down and across the Remy Park property, the wetland part of it. In order to provide maximum capacity for that new pump station, that actually has to be separated. So based on all of that, we've actually been working on getting that pipe designed. We're going to provide that to the contractor. So it would be actually part of the, before they do the road project, getting that done. Um, the other thing is the contractor has been holding off on this project to allow the path work to continue rather than having battling excavators out there. It made sense to let the one finish and have them. Um, so all that should be in place this week. Um, they'll be able to then start and they're proposing a late October paving based on that. Scott and Wei, so this one plays a little bit into what John talked about. So depending on the option that is selected, we may need to continue bringing sewage back to the operations center. There is a force main from our Gardner pump station in Scotton that will be both undersized based on the future connection or future condition. And there's some conditioning issues, especially as you get to Parkway. You may be familiar. We've had a couple force main breaks in that area. So we've been working on a design for that. And so that should go out to bid shortly and that shouldn't coincide with council making a final decision on what we want to do with the, whether we upgrade the EQ or that sort of decision. So you'll also have the information about awarding a bid on this. And then once that gets done, the contractor will follow up with the road work, but that's why that one's been waiting. Tewks Mountain Reservoir. So all the testing passed about a week ago and that was put into service. You can see kind of a picture from the inside of it there. It's all coated and everything. Talk to our operations crew. It sounds like it's working great. So contractors just finishing up the remaining site items. This is the rock mesh wall, site paving, site fencing, and they expect to have all that done in early September. Cherry Grove or 92nd Avenue pump station that was completed earlier this year. All the contractors working on us finishing up some paperwork and the pump station will be operational once it's tied into by development, but it's all set to go. Other city projects. I don't have pictures for these, but first street sidewalk that construction is well underway and they're scheduled to be completed by the end of September. Parkway in Maine. They've got all the long lead items ordered and that's expected to buy about the end of the year. So you'll see work starting early next year. The 20th and 9th intersection improvements over by Florence Robeson Park, that is the compact roundabout. So we've got the agreement to wash out local programs. So that is ready to be signed. The plans and specs are to them. They're reviewing it. Once both of those are completed, the project can go to bid. And that's expected about mid-September. And then the 15th Avenue and Main Street local programs has sent that on to headquarters for signatures. That agreement's good. They're reviewing the plans and specs for that one as well. And once similar to the one above, once all of that is done, we can go to bed. And that will probably be a little bit before the first one I mentioned. Village at Cherry Grove. So this is the work on 92nd. Again, you're all aware of it, not actually a city project, but being completed as part of a private development. The sewer rework should be done by the end of next week. So as part of our inspection process, we do several tests of any new either water or sewer lines. For sewer lines in particular, we look at several things. We do a pressure test to make sure that the pipe holds air, which would show that it's sealed correctly. Another one, and what you can see in my picture, is a TV test. And so we have the contractor run a TV through there. the TV camera has a little ball on the end. And if it disappears, we know we have a problem. So you can see in this picture, there was a gap in the sewer pipe. The ball, I don't know how good my picture is, but the ball's completely disappeared. in a sewer pipe that should be shoved together and should not have a gap. And so based on all of that, the contractors had to redo quite a bit of rework to fix all that. We don't want that to fall on our rate payers. And so again, part of that process is doing all that testing. So once that sewer rework is done, they'll start their reconstruction of the roadway and they expect paving to start in mid to late September. That is everything I have, so I'm happy to answer any questions.

I have Council Member Munson.

Thank you. On that culvert, my voice is loud anyways, but you said that you're going to do a temporary repair for that culvert now. Long-term on roads like that where we see some of the heavier trucks drive down them, we can't blame them for collapsing it, but just as an example. Are you looking at when you're going to redo these culverts? Are you looking at doing box culverts as well that can handle capacity so that we long-term don't have culvert failures?

Yeah, the culverts that we have in our specifications now can handle that kind of stuff. So the plastic material ones, those sorts of things, they can actually have trap only need about a foot of cover and they can carry truck traffic on top. So again, it's these older places where we have this corrugated metal that causes us the biggest issue. The specific issue we'll have at this particular one is, again, with fish and wildlife where they're ultimately going to expect fish passage. And so that turns almost into a, I'll call it a bridge. It still can be a culvert, but kind of a bridge-like structure for the culvert. And so we'll have to kind of address that working forward because of this issue.

Yeah, so the whole thing that triggered my thought process on the box core is because you brought up the fish and wildlife issue. I mean, those I think the state finds more friendly for those kinds of projects. And I'm just thinking long term, it's a better cost return because you'll have a lot less issues with those.

Yeah. And so we have fish and wildlife has gone through and kind of mapped everything where, you know, they're what they consider creeks. And so in our stormwater plan, we have all of those laid out. So yeah, where you have this situation, um, a good example is one of the new subdivisions that will being built. It will have one of those kind of box culverts in it to, um,

essentially keep the creek open for or fish and so yeah you won't you won't have similar issues to this all right thanks mark all right mark thank you yeah you uh gave us the good news the bad news and everything else uh i appreciate the heck out of you and your department I also got to throw out a little thank you to our communications and public information officer. That information was going out awfully quick out on the website and social media. I heard about it from people before I even heard about it. So thank you guys for the coordinated effort. And it's really good to see that we're getting some things done. I'm particularly excited about the 20th. avenue pathway i personally have seen kids riding up and down that pathway already we saw some elderly individuals on their little scooters on their way to walmart the other day that i just that just made my heart happy because that was the whole reason we put that thing in there was allow the that just made my heart happy because that was the whole reason we put that thing in there was allow the Robin Wood and those neighborhoods to transition over to Walmart and things like that. I have a question on the Southwest 20th with that sewer main, the forest. Are we looking to tie in when we go through Remy, are we looking to tie that in as part of the beginning phases of the Remy Park project or how's the timing on that?

Um, at this point, we haven't connected those two together. So we do have the million dollars for the phase two. And again, it, it, it's like a two part. So you've got the gravity that will be up on Main Street, and you've got the rest of that force made through Remy. So depending on what we determine that 1 million won't cover both of those projects so it's going to be a portion of it so depending on you know what we think we can do for the money we have it may be the pipe and then maybe based on timing it can be connected with the park we'll figure those kind of details they they haven't been worked out yet though i trust that you will handle that better than i could

Any other questions or comments for staff? All right. Thanks, Mark. Bob, did you have anything else or was that it? No, sir. That's it. Thank you, sir. All right. We will go to council communications. Are there any council member communications this evening? Oh, we're firing in. Okay, let's start with Councilmember Kuipers. You're up first. Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to pose to the Council that we move forward with having staff look at hiring an outside firm to consult and guide us through the process of hiring a new city manager a couple reasons behind that i think that i think workload wise i don't think that it's appropriate to add that on the staff at this time and i think an independent who does not have any ties one way or another can provide objectivity to the process, guide us in appropriate timing. I don't think that this is a process that we should be rushing into. I think that we have some opportunities to improve a few things. Before we bring somebody new on. I think that's important, I think. Some healing time is important when there's a transition like this, I also think we need to be clear that we are not currently hiring you're not in. a hiring position right now, and that we need to be clear about that and be sure that our expectations for what we're looking for in a new city manager can get outlined and agreed upon by the whole council. And that we can move forward and that in a year or two, we will be in a good position and we will have moved through this difficult period. There's nothing more I can say about that. It is what it is. But I think that's important and I'd like to see the council move forward with that.

Okay, I'm hearing you ask for direction from council for staff, correct? So if we could thumbs up, thumbs down. Are we looking to have a consultant hired currently for that direction for the city manager?

It's the only way to do a nationwide search, right?

I mean, so we'd have to I mean, part of the process is we have to agree on which consultant we're gonna go with.

Absolutely, yeah, yep. So having sat through one of these already, we- RFP. Yeah, we do an RFP and we look at the variable aspects of that and look at the different consultants that have submitted their RFP to us and then we look at those firms and decide one. Rob, I feel like you want to say something. I do, yeah.

I was going to say, if council's amenable, maybe staff could come back at a future presentation and give you some options to consider in terms of how that looks, what it looks like, and then seek some specific direction from council at that time, if that's all right.

Yeah, so thumbs up, thumbs down. Do we want to give that direction for them to start looking at different firms? I think it's good. I'm good with it.

I'm good with us looking at it. But again, I think, you know, not rushing into this. So Rob, you and your staff, take the time you need to be very thorough and vetted in who you're going to present to us.

Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, I don't remember the exact process we have with the last city manager, but I think it was done outside firm and we can, we came and shared some ideas with the city council options for you to consider. And that shouldn't be that difficult for us to do, quite frankly, but you are 100% correct. It's important that you be deliberate in your selection. And that means you kind of take your time and be thorough. Yep.

I don't think we're in a hurry for that one. We want to make sure we're doing our diligence on that.

There's very few that do this. So you're going to get the same ones that, you know, there's probably two that I know of, probably a third one out there that do this kind of work. So it's just whether you want to trust somebody that has the expertise and does this every day, or if we think we have the expertise and we want to do it on our own.

Yeah, I was asking. You're correct. I was asking tomorrow, and I think the last time we did this, there were six firms that submitted proposals. Eventually, five of them actually went through with it. So you're right. There's a number of firms that do this. This is their bread and butter operation. And so I'm not surprised. We'll probably get a few people that are interested in doing the work for the city. Thank you, Rob.

Council Member McCoy.

Well, I think most council is aware of the tragedy that happened in the Hawkinson Park. I know council member Bowman and I do sticks for the football team. So Trent was quite a bright light in the community. I know we had a couple of CCYF football coaches. And I'm wondering what the process is and if council would be open to doing a flag at half staff on the 18th, which was his number. And then delivering said flag to the family. And I'd be happy to purchase the flag. Yeah. I don't know what the process is. Do we have the authority to set a half staff flag in our city? Or is that something that has to come from the governor? And if not, I mean, we should go lower the dang thing. I don't care.

If I might jump in here, I appreciate the sentiment. I agree with where you want to go with this. What I would ask is set the date. We do it anyways, regardless of the state. But what I would say is don't burden that cost. Let's share that cost equally because it's not that much. And if you want to be at charge of purchasing it, then just shoot us an email. We'll all write you a check.

happy to do that but yeah maybe his number was 18 so i was thinking september 18th

If I may, it does say that in Washington, mayor, city council members, or other local officials can order U.S. flags flown at half-staff on municipal buildings.

No, on the 18th. I like that. That was history.

You could do it tomorrow, but I was worried about timing. I don't know if the family... We can get the flag after.

Could we also, once the flag is done and we're ready to present it,

Rob and the mayor deliver it on behalf of the council and the city. We'd be happy to do that.

And if September 18th is a better date, it works better, then like I said, we'd be happy to facilitate that.

I'm fine letting the mayor and Rob figure out what works best. That's just an idea.

I 100% agree, Troy. Trent was a good kid, knew him personally. Yeah, and his family is in a tough spot right now. We were at the candlelight vigil last night and yeah, it's hard to see, but tragic loss for our community. Council Member Bowman.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I agree 100% with that, Mr. McCoy. I wanted to, on a little bit of a happier note, I wanted to congratulate Senator Cortez. I got married yesterday. I had the opportunity to go with Councilmember McCoy to his wedding and he definitely married up. So he won't deny that, but it was a wonderful wedding and just wanted to publicly congratulate him and his wife, Gahlia, on their marriage.

All right, not seeing any other additional council communications. Couple things. Manufactured home, park zoning. I know that's something that we kind of had in the works about a month ago. I'm not sure if we need to pick that back up and look at that as a consideration to have here soon.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, the direction at the last council meeting was for us to start working on that. So planning supervisor Sam Crummett and myself will be doing some additional work.

I just wanted to address it publicly because of some of the concerns.

Absolutely.

And then when we can bring up the presentation from Mr. Peterson and our considerations of those options and have some consensus from council. Go ahead.

so the scotton project's waiting on a decision on the dcwa thing so is that a decision we need to make pretty soon so we still have to go to bid for the scotton project so there's some time to make that decision because when we after we have the bid we'll have a price for you too

Well, and with that, that piece of pipe, we've had a lot of backups on it, so it's going to have to be replaced regardless. And since we were tearing up the road, we didn't want to have to then tear it up in five years if it fully breaks. And so getting it from there to there should be cheaper based on the fact that some of the concrete will be gone, but that's theoretical, right?

Yeah, very good.

But yes, we'll work on getting that scheduled so we can

Thank you, Mark. All right. The next regular city council meeting will be held on Tuesday, September 8th, 2026 at 7 p.m. The new study session is currently scheduled. Thank you. And I will adjourn the meeting at 9.05 p.m.