City Council Regular - Regular Meeting

Follow the meeting to order. Can we have roll call, please?

Council member Eschke? Here. Senescu? Here. Noor?

Here.

Spilarich?

Here.

Elsin Gray?

Here.

Burke?

Present.

And council member Hein?

He looks frozen.

He doesn't see him

in Alaska. He's in Hawaii. I'm gonna be frozen. Hey, Tim.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you. This is the public's opportunity to provide comments to council. You may supplement your comments with credit handouts. Electronic or digital aids will not be permitted during public comments. Please state your name and your city of residence. You'll have three minutes to speak. Please direct your comments to the council as a whole instead of individual members, staff, or audience members. Please come forward, if you're in the chamber, to the chairs at the end of the table, or raise your hand in the Zoom app. Please remember that public comments are not a discussion. The public comments are to inform the council of your views.

Is there anyone in the chamber that would like to step up and make three minutes worth of comments? Seeing none, do we have anyone on the Zoom app with their hand raised?

Here, we have no hands raised via Zoom.

Okay. With that, we'll move on to the first item on the agenda. Clark County assessors office property tax exemption presentation. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.

Alright. Well, thank you for having us here. Those that I haven't met, I am p Peter Van North, Clark County Assessor. And this evening, we're going to talk to you about the property tax exemption program for seniors and people with disabilities. So we're gonna give you kinda overview of the program, high level qualifications, income thresholds, and we'll talk about what just passed the legislature, little bit about the deductions, documents we require, and what we also do for outreach for your your citizens here in Canvas and the other cities in Clark County.

So the purpose of the program is to reduce property taxes for senior citizens and people with disabilities, aligned and rain in their home despite the taxes and worsen. As you know, counsel, that's important is because it's cheaper to keep people in their place and aligned to age in their home than to deal with the other issues that that come up. People have to transition in that age. So it is a Washington state program. It is asked by the state legislature and senate and signed by the governor into law.

And on the property tax exemption, it is a total exemption. There is no repayment. What it does is it frees the assessed value of the property, and then there's there's, like, three different income levels as you go down the income level, what it does is then part of your property value that's frozen is taken off, and so that there's just regular taxes that were exempt from. So slide here. Well, the qualifications are you have to own the home, you have to live in it for six months, and you have to be over 61 years of age or have a disability.

Right now, the current income threshold is 62,000 a year, but there are also we look at income, and we also look at deductions in the programs. So a few changes that have happened in the last few years is it used to be ADUs had to be exempt. The legislature added in the ADUs. If you're in zoning where it's, like, acreage. Right?

If it's, let's say, like, a five acre zone and people have five acres, then all the lands included. If it's a five acre if it's a one acre zone and they have five acres, then only the one acre's excluded. So there's different things in the program that, you know, makes it a little bit different for everyone. And you have to turn 61 in the assessment year. And I know some of you in this, you may not be familiar with assessment year and tax year.

Right? So tax year for 2026, for example, right now, 2026 taxes are based upon the assessments of 2025. And then those the 2025 assessments are based upon sales that are in 2024. And so every time when we're looking at a senior exemption program, we're looking at what their age was and how long they lived in that assessment year, and then it's the taxes for the the next year. So people will be coming in now as they finish their taxes, applying based upon last year's income, but getting the the benefit on this year's taxes.

Slide. So right now, the income thresholds, the highest level is 62,000. And if it's 62,000, what you're exempt from is voter approved levies and state schools part two. And then your home values are frozen in the qualifying year. As you move down the income level, what happens is a portion of the regular taxes, that frozen value, I think it's between 50 and 70,000 is taken off in order to over the amount that they're paying in the regular taxes in addition to the taxes already exempt.

And then as you go to the lower tier, and even more of that home value is taken off and exempt. So what counts as income? I'm sure you can ask one.

Sorry. Thank you.

The previous slide? What's the

difference between three two and one? The verbiage look is that I missed something.

Okay. So if you're on three, you're just

Understand three.

Three, your value is just frozen. If you're on tier two, it's your frozen value minus I think it's between 50 and 75,000 in, assessed value. And then as you go to tier one, it's up to 60% of the value is done. So what you're doing is they're just lowering the assessed value based upon the tier and

the income level you are. It doesn't say that. Okay.

It doesn't say that, but that that's basically Alright.

How it works. Good clarification.

So what counts as income? And one of the important things is to understand is that a slate legislature is what determines what income is counting, and it's not necessarily the same thing that's on your taxes. Right? There's things that people can write off on their taxes and tax income that the state legislature doesn't allow because this is an income based program, and it's designed to help people that are low income, not people that are able to have write off on their taxes and have low income on their actual income taxes, if that makes sense. So it's really based upon what the income they have.

And so we include, you know, the wages or pensions, their IRA distributions, disability, those types of things are exempt. And you can just you can see up there the different things that are included and what's, excluded from the income level that we count. Okay. It's fine. So we also then have a number of deductions, that people can take.

And so if people have medical bills, right, that are really add up, we can go and we can deduct those medical bills. All equipment looks like their, you know, insurance is that they have, you know, Medicare Part b and stuff. Those can be taken out to lower those those levels of deductions. Required documents. And first one is is we require a driver's license or state ID card, and it's not as much of an issue now as it used to be.

Right? It used to be a lot of people would have Oregon driver's licenses so they can avoid paying sales tax. If anyone does move into the state of Washington within thirty days, they're supposed to get a Washington driver's license. And so when we would manage the program, we say, if you don't have a Washington driver's license or Washington ID, I don't care if you've lived there, how many years, you don't qualify because your driver's license is what says this is where my place of residency is. And so we always make sure that they do have, you know, a Washington driver's license, and this is to where they say their residency is because you can only get it if you are a resident of the state of Washington.

You know, if there's disabilities, any of those type of things, if people have a trust, we ask for those documentations. One of the things that's important to understand is the reason we're asking for this documentation is the program is because it's a it's a tax exemption. It's actually a tax shift. Right? It's when you come together and you pass your budget.

Right? You pass your budget, and in your budget is the exact dollar amount that you're asking my office to collect in property taxes. Right? Correct? So when that sent to us, if we're not collecting it from taxpayer a, right, that means all the rest of the taxpayers have to make it up.

And so that's why it's very important just to make sure that the only people that are on the program are those people that are qualified because it's not money that's going away from each of the different tax districts. Your budget still has to balance out. What it is is it's taking those taxes and shifting it to the other taxpayer. We don't want those other taxpayers paying the taxes to people that shouldn't be on the program and don't qualify. So we have done a number of exemption outreaches already.

We've actually already been here to the city campus, and I came over here for that day. We helped a number of your your citizens out. As you can see, we're going to watch Google Battleground, city of Vancouver, they hit two of them, city of Richfield. We'll probably add add more on. But what we've really found when we got out and talked to seniors, actually, it's hard to believe, but some seniors do not like driving down to Downtown Vancouver, finding parking, going into the Public Service Building, and then up to the 2nd Floor where our offices are located.

And so what we did a few years ago is we said we would go out to different jurisdictions, set out days where people can come in to an area where they're closer to them, where they're more comfortable driving. It's really also important this year because right now our joint lobby is closed. We're going through a remodel. When the joint lobby is done, it will look fresh and clean and be more secure. Sec when the joint lobby was first built, we didn't have the same security issues that, you know, we face in society today. So when it's all done, you know, the joint lobby and our employees will be a lot more secure. Apply. You can go into our office. People can make appointments. You can apply online.

We have we set it up in 2020, and thankful as COVID came about, we had set it up to where people can apply online. A lot of seniors, their children take care of the finances, and a lot of times they live out of state. Right? And so we wanted to do it and set it up so that maybe your kids live in California or Arizona and you live here, but they do your finances for you, that they could just go online, fill out all the forms, and attach all that documentation. So, that's pretty much an overview of the program.

This testimony from a woman and just good to she can tell you about how it did how how the program announces. So I wanted to briefly talk about what has just happened in the legislature, because, it is really a a big impact on seniors. One of the challenges that we always had before was the senior exemption was at 70% of the median income of accounting. And those of you that are familiar with, like, low income, by definition federal definition is 80% of the median income county. And so we this year with the state legislature, we got it moved to from being 70% to 80% of the median income.

So that was one change that happened in in the state legislature. So based upon income this year, the income levels are gonna change because it's gonna be at 80%. The other thing that we that was part of that legislation is that standard deductions are gonna be put into place per person in the household. So if you have a single person, they will get standard deduction. And if you have two people, then they get double the standard deduction.

And so we're hoping that that will allow us to process applications faster and make it easier on taxpayers coming in. The third thing that happened in the, legislation is the state schools in part one and two for this next year are go is going to be a rate. And what they're doing is they're combining state schools one and two, and then the seniors will be exempt from the state school portions of those taxes completely when it's done. The bottom line of that is we don't have the exact numbers, but based upon what the median income is of the county and the new 80% or people that have the income this year, it's going to be about 82, 83, maybe $84,000, for income this year is what people are gonna need to be able to qualify for the senior exemption program. And then, of course, there's the, deductions on top of that.

So, I say it's it's important to remember as a a city, it doesn't take money from you. It's just shifted on to, you know, the rest of the taxpayers in the district. And so that's why I say, again, we take it serious that people don't cheat to get on. And I always like to tell people, if you do cheat and get on, which we have people that do, it is extremely expensive to be caught cheating, you know, on senior exemption program. There's a 100% penalty.

And I'll just give you an example of someone that we caught that cheated to get on the program. We have refunded to him $9,000 in property taxes. By the time he was done I should say his widow was done paying back the taxes with interest and penalty that were implied was about $30,000 that they they had to pay back. And so it's a great program for seniors, but only if you if you qualify for it. So we'll take any questions we have. If anyone wants to also ask about assessment questions since I'm here, we

can That's interesting.

Answer those too also.

Yay. Council member Nelson Grange.

Couple of questions, and thanks for the presentation and providing it in advance. That was helpful. How so have you guys do you know the total amount of forgiveness that you guys have done? So like, they were supposed to pay 9,000 or they're 10 people, a 100 people. And what's the total amount that the other the slack that other taxpayers have to take up?

I don't I say I don't have that as an exact dollar amount. But in this studies that we've kind of done, it's a few dollars for each taxpayer. Terms that. Right? Because we have about 10,000 people currently on the program, a little bit less than 10,000 people on the program, and there's, like, 200,000.

So then next question is with Kathy. Take this into account. You know, we have a $16,000,000 budget. We know the total value numerator divided by denominator. Do we adjust the denominator of that for this?

What we're made whole.

So you so you have a pie, and so we have the pie. It just the assessed value shrinks a little bit because of the the the the program. But that means just you and I are helping the the our elderly neighbor.

But it's taken into account. Okay.

Thanks very much.

So maybe just yep. There's a easy formula for property tax and property tax rates. That is you take the budget that's passed by the tax district divided by the total assessed value in that tax district, and that's how we get the tax rate. So when the assessed values go down,

the compensation the demand.

It just causes the rate to go up maybe, you know, a couple cents here or there. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments?

We have Tim.

Oh, Tim Hine.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for the presentation and, coming to Canvas on February 27. A few questions. How do you communicate the events that you're gonna have?

Well, we do have an outreach coordinator. We put it out on next door. We also do ask, you know, the cities that, you know, help help inform public. It's really getting out the word is kind of the hardest thing to do. But but we'll also go to, like, senior breakfasts or senior lunch.

We've got her to watch Eagle senior breakfast to tell people, hey. We have this coming outreach. And so we try to do other outreach organizations to also get the word out that we're going to be doing these outreach events. And if someone calls into our office and they say, hey. We wanna meet with you, but I don't like to drive in and say, oh, you're in Canvas, and we'll tell them at the the time and they can get an appointment for that day. And, so we'll have appointments on the day that we're in each each of the different cities, but we will also take walk ins at the same time.

Okay. Thanks. And then, second, how many, Camas citizens out of the 10,000, people you say are on for Clark County, how many are from Camas mask?

We can get

that information.

We can get that information for you. It's not something that we necessarily track, but we could fig we could figure out which who's in the jurisdiction. Yeah.

Well, and the and the the reason I ask is is just to understand the impact of the program to our our our residents. You you know? That that's really why. So thank you.

Okay. Anybody else have a council member?

Thanks for the information. A follow-up on the asset value we always receive every year. Is that gonna be a separate line item for those that they are eligible so it shows or how much I guess, they don't have reduction. They just pay pay the fake fixed fee. But for other people that they have to pay for the makeup, is a separate line item? Or

Okay. So that that's a great question. So when you send out the assessment notice and you have what the market value is. Right? That's what we send out all the time. But if you're on the senior exemption program, there's a separate line that says, here's what your frozen assessed value is. So we have land. We have improvements. And then on the notice, they'll have this is the the separate senior, assessed value. The other thing that we do is when we send out to the seniors, we also do it in a separate mailing.

And so they have an insert that if it says, if you don't qualify for the program, there are penalties for not doing it, so call and and give us a call. So so that's kinda that's how you can tell if if someone if someone's on the senior exemption program is because you can look at their their tax statement and will say, here's what the value is for the senior exemption program on it. And, typically, where you kinda figure out where people went to and how much money is being shifted per year. Right? Because we don't really track what the total amount is, but every year, right, you get administrative refunds.

And so when, someone is taken into the senior exemption program, right, that portion of the taxes that was going to the city of Camas that's not being paid, you get it next year in your administrative refund. So that'd be kind of a cheap way you could do is go and look and say, well, how much is the the what's the rate really on the administrative refund, and how much is that adding to people's taxes? So that's but that is really only showing you about of the people that are going on this year.

But what about other groups that they have to pay for the program has to be funded by others. Right? So is there gonna be a separate line item in the asset value of the addition?

No. Because it just because what it does is the the formula, you have the budget of the city of Camas for property tax collections. You then have the total assessed value. When someone goes on the senior exemption program, their total assessed value decreases, and that causes the rate to increase. And so yeah. No. We don't keep track. It's not something we keep track of and saying, oh, well, if we didn't have it, the total assessed value would be this, but because they're on the senior exemption program total. So it's not something that we we track.

Council member nor.

So if an agency or an entity was near their highest lawful rate Mhmm. This would not be captured then. Correct? Say, for example, the the library district outside of Canvas just

Yes.

Just did a levy lid lift.

Yes.

Right? So if the they It does impact them.

It's one area where it does impact. Same thing too when the fire districts, when they go to they lift wanna lift to their a buck 50 maximum because the it's levy limited to the rate, but it's yes. The assessed value. But most most tax districts are not running at their, you know, levy limits at the at this point. But like he says is when the library when they went out that led after when the higher districts go out there, it does impact up in a little bit in terms of the money they can

bring in. The reason I bring it up is the voters recently approved regional fire authority, which would be a new district that it's and the voters authorized a dollar per thousand. Yes. But because I think the legal limit's $1.50, if if they could still in this situation, could they go a buck above a dollar per thousand if there were other things like this hitting it?

If no. They approved it to a rate of dollar per thousand. The first year, it's going to be the total assessed value and the dollar. And then after that, it's gonna the 1% and the new construction and everything. But, yeah, no. It's just the one dollar plus the by the, you know, total assessed value. And people like being on the senior exemption program, and those people that are in current use are already taken into account because that's part of the property tax system that's been set up by the legislature in the state of law.

Any more questions or comments? Council member Senescu.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, guys. I just wanna say you're doing an excellent job. I I love that you still have the walk ins because there are a lot of seniors that don't know how to get online, and I know that some of their children help them. So I love seeing all these sign up events. I know several people that are on them, and I liked your comment about this is the best option is to keep them where they're at, and they wanna stay where they're at, and it's best for all of us and them for them to stay in their homes. So thank you for what you do.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions? Okay. With that, thank you very much.

Appreciate it. Well, thank you for having us out here.

Yeah. It's good to meet

See you

next year, I

hope. Alright. That's right. Yeah.

Just on the agenda is the professional services agreement task order number nine for the national pollutant discharge elimination system permit support outfall and sediment study. Scott Collins and Rob Charles.

Thanks for your evening, counsel. I am joined here tonight. Like you said, you know, brought up, but we are joined by Andrew Staples. He's with HDR who put together the scope. So I know you guys aren't familiar with this topic yet. So, hopefully, this time around, we'll probably take you through and and really get into kind of that task too. So quick agenda for today. We'll do a quick background just for reference, some of the ecology requirements as well as their overall scope. And we're really gonna dive into task 200. I think that's the biggest discrepancy that we wanted to just make sure we're clear with counsel,

do a little

bit more detailed cost breakdown of what's kind of, incorporated in those costs, and then just some additional items to consider at the end. So our wastewater treatment plan was issued an NPDS permit. That's National Pollute Discharge Elimination System. We discharge it to a surface water, so it's a permit that's required by the state. We got a new permit issued in August. Part of that requirement, we were required to do an outfall and sediment study. HDR currently has a contract with the city for all wastewater plant planning project upgrades. They were issued an on call task order nine for this work. Ecology requirements come out of the scum manual. So that's the sediment cleanup user's manual.

And so there's a variety of requirements with that. Sediment sampling plan, number of samples, sample of patient's depth. There's also sampling procedures. So as far as how you're taking those samples, grabbing them as far as handling. And then there's a laboratory analysis as well, so ecology has to have an approved laboratory and approved analytical methods as well as QAQC procedures.

There's also a biological toxicity testing. So I think I'm saying this right, Andrew. I think it's bioassays. And so I had to ask Andrew what that was as well. But, ultimately, it's looking at sediment and whether there's contaminants, and so they take organisms that can live in the sediment, put them in the grab samples that we have, and just see if they can survive, basically.

And then there's a data analysis and sediment report. So that goes into the sampling reports, the quality standards, and ultimately evaluating the discharge onto the river. So knowing that scope, HDR put together four kind of task items. After the discussion, it seems like task order 200 was the primary one that we need need to go into more detail on because there was a little confusion on cost as well as contractors. So now we'll kind of break two this task 200 down into subsections as well.

It

has three subsections in task 200.

The

first is the fieldwork. So that's actually grabbing the samples and field. So these are all materials, the prep work, the two days of the fieldwork, as well as lab coordination to get the samples made. And there's the data analysis and recordkeeping. That's actually the labs performing the analysis as well as, QAQC. That's happened on both the lab and our HDR consultants requirement. There is additional coordination, and that's just if it's needed. So if the lab results come back and there's questions on HDR as far as, hey. This looks off or how'd you do this, and it's just a coordination effort. Not necessarily a cost that will incur, but it's there if needed.

They'll also do the sentiment report, and then part of that sentiment report is a meeting with the city, meeting with ecology, and then ultimately a finalized report that gets submitted to them. Last is a health and safety plan. Subconsultants, I just wanna make sure we were clear on the subconsultants. I think there was a slight confusion at the last one. So in task 200, there's three subconsultants. Ballard Marine, they're providing the boat and the crew for the actual sampling. Then they also have to do a bathymetric survey. And so this is separate this is separate boat that comes out. Andrew indicated that it's kinda they go along the river in a grid like system. And, basically, they're just evaluating whether there's obstructions, debris, what the general topography is, and they need that before we can do any of the sampling.

And there's analytical resources. They're actually doing the chemical analysis of the sampling, and then eco analysis, which is doing that bioassay testing. Their quotes at the time were for 10 samples. As you know, we have to do nine, so their costs will come in slightly less than what's in the scope right now. So the actual sediment report, it's 20 pages that is provided that's assumed from HDR.

The hours going to that, it ranges typically anywhere from forty eight hours for a for a technical report per page. It tends to ramp up with data review, and I'll get into the the reasons why shortly in the appendices. But one of the major components too is ecology comments. When you submit this, it's really unknown of what ecology is gonna come back with. Obviously, I've never done one for wastewater, but I can assure you on stormwater, it varies quite a bit when you submit it in.

And so it's really unknown with HDR, the the the type of comments we're gonna get back. The appendices can be up to thousands of pages. There's tons of lab data in there, and there's QAQC that needs to happen on the lab part as well as HDR and documented in that as well as field like side photos, all of that. So that's why the the forty eight hours and I'll get into the cost of what we assumed for that. Why we're kind of relatively a little bit high is just there's an unknown of the exact pages that will come in and the exact amount of data that's gonna be required from the lab analysis pieces of it.

So from a cost breakdown on it, the the first piece is the fieldwork. That's a little over 66,000. That includes Ballard, which is 14,000. And then the largest cars from HDR is that two day sampling. It's a little under 20,000. That's assuming three people sampling. That's the required. I think one's taking the samples, one's grabbing them, and one's documenting. There is a PM that's associated with that. They have to be out there as well as an additional tech if needed. The PM may not use all those hours. He's he's the hours are listed in there in case he has to stay out there. But if everything's going smooth, they may not have to be out there for the full time. And there's also expenses. That's typical with any consultant contract.

The expenses have to get submitted to us with each invoice as documented backup. That's for the grab samples, things like that, everything they need for the field. The data analysis portion is a little over 148,000. Wanna keep in mind, that's both subconsultants for the testing and analysis. And if you look at it, that's roughly a little less than half of this cost.

The the AR, which is analytical resources, the chemical testing, and eco analysis, you can see their cost there. And then the largest cost from HDR is the actual sediment report itself. So as we just determined earlier, right now, they're assuming seven hours per page with I I believe, which is about a hundred and forty hours, which is what they're assuming in there. We may not need all of that depending on what the report is. They only get billed, which I'll touch on right after this, just for the hours needed to do the work. And then all both of these items come together. It's a little less than three quarters of the cost. It's about 64% of the budget just with those items itself.

And then

we have the health and safety.

It's memory else in

credit. Thank you. I I just wanna stay on this page. I didn't wanna go forward. So you feel work, you have 67530 66537, but the items below it add up to 50. So are you just leaving a little headroom in there?

So I only put the largest HDR cost in each of these. And so if we go back to these, there's other fieldwork items, and these are just general ones. And Andrew can probably speak to the additional items if you want specifics on what those additional ones were. In this slide, I only put the largest cost just to show a subtotal of what's making up the majority of the cost, not every detail.

Yeah. But, I mean, on the second one, you have a 150 k, but these items you have here don't even add up to a 100 k. So there's 53 k that's not broken out in the second item.

Correct. Yeah. I just wonder again, it was more just to show the the highlight of the largest cost in HDR. That other costs are coming in from QAQC reports, the meetings with both the city, with ecology. I don't have those costs highlighted,

but they are included in that overall 150. Let's just go back again. So first of all, thanks. I mean, I'm I'm beginning to really understand this better. But coming from a finance background, when you only outline a 100 k of a 150 k expense, it looks inexact.

Yep.

And so for me in business, if I would have seen this, it's, like, it's really incomplete. Like, where's the extra 50 k? Where's you know, it's it's it's real money.

Yeah.

So just another line item that would have said these 12 other things add up

to Oh, just a separate 3%.

Okay. Because you've only outlined 66% of the 100. Right?

So you thought about putting in, like, the full detail, like, of One. Yeah. And I I see what you're saying. Just a catch all that says okay. Yeah. Thanks. Yes. I I'm sorry.

I'm the finance guy. Get capture on the axle on numbers.

And then some additional items to consider. So HDR, again, they can only invoice the hours that are done with their billing rates. Those invoices come into us. We review them and pay them, and then they can only be authorized up for what we're authorizing here from their agreement. I know it's a not to exceed. They can do an amendment, right, to come in if if additional scope scope comes comes up, up, whatever those items are. But, typically, from what HDR says on their on all their task orders, they have majority come in under, and that's a good thing because if there's additional work or complexities, we have room for budget in there. So with that, we can answer any questions.

Any questions? Counsel.

Already put in.

Yeah. It's a quick

Go ahead. There's a

question about divers in the water. Which divers are going in the water?

Yeah. That's for the outfall. Yeah. And this item will be a 100% tonight just because we've covered it. I just wanna make sure you guys are saw that.

Yeah. Thank you for this. It's really helpful. Okay.

That's good.

Thanks, Scott.

Add some Remember Tim.

And the Tim? Yeah. Tim Hine. Okay. Tim Hine, you there?

Yep. I I am here, mayor. Thank you. Can you hear me?

Yep.

I don't have a question. I just have a comment, Scott. I had questions, but your presentation, this this go around addressed it. So thank you for the details on this. It helped a lot.

Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the council?

I thank Andrew for coming.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks for a

Thank you

for coming. You,

Andrew. Thanks for coming.

Yeah. Think of a hard enough question for you, but see you later.

Okay. With that, I guess we will end this session. Thank you, everyone. Yeah. Next on the agenda will be the twenty twenty six Spring Omnibus budget amendment presentation. Presenters, Kathy Hubert Houston, finance director, and Deborah Brooks, financial analyst. Fifteen minutes.

Thank you, Mayor. Evening, Huntsville. I'm gonna hand this over to Deborah. She did been following this together in a relatively short period of time this time around. So thanks, Deborah, and then adults. Alright.

Let me get this screen shared. Alright. Does that come through alright for y'all?

Yep.

Perfect. Okay. Good evening, and thank you for having me in. Just wanna preface by saying I'm hoping we can get our way through these slides and then just do a q and a at the end. But I just wanna be sure we get an opportunity to go through all of these.

So I wanna start off with just a quick revisit of the strategic plan priorities. This time around, we will have, packages that touch on all five of these items, but we will skew more heavily towards, the first three, which is the economic prosperity, safe and accessible community, and, stewardship of city assets. But we do have a couple, one each for vibrant community amenities and engaged workforce. So, that'll be the first for that, which is exciting. And we will get into the detail, breakdown of that in our later slides.

To start, we're gonna do what is our traditional view, which is showing you the breakdown of, items, by package type. So we do generally have our packages split into three different, types. The first would be carry forward items, and that would be items that were budgeted in a prior year but did not complete or did not start for some reason, and the activity for those items has carried into the current year. Generally, that is going to be capital items that are ongoing. And so there are seven of those items this time around, and the net of those together is $56,000.

Next, we have administrative type packages, and those are items that are net neutral to the budget, and that is because they are either technical in nature or they have a dedicated funding source, such as grants, for instance. We do have eight of those, and, of course, by nature, they, they are natural they are net neutral, so they are a zero impact on the budget. And then lastly would be supplemental items, and those would be items that when we were budgeting, for this current year, we did not know about these items. It may be that new legislation came up or new opportunities arose. And so these are items that we are, that are new, completely new asks.

And so we do have seven of those, and they are a net $1,600,000. Altogether, these 22 items are a total net of 1,710,000 in requested budget appropriations. Just a little more information about how these kind of break down either by priority or by department. Did wanna note that I do have, in both of these pie charts, a negative value just to kinda show you activity. Obviously, I can't show you a a negative pie wedge, but just to kinda give you an idea of the activity in each of these.

So it's kind of more of a pie chart with sort of absolute values in a way. So

and

this kind of shows you that heavy emphasis on the in the strategic plan side of the stewardship of assets, the economic prosperity, and the safe and accessible community, being the bulk of the activity. And then as far as the packages by department, that always is heavily utility based, actually to about 90%, and then the remaining three for general government streets and parks, kind of equally split there. And then we get into how these items, split out across those strategic plan, priorities. So we'll start with that economic prosperity, and the bulk of these are administrative packages. And, again, those have those dedicated funding sources.

The first three of these are really just internal. They're technical in nature. It's just some cleanup work to some indirect funding model, the indirect funding model and cost recovery on the facility R and R model and some funding for a capital IT project, and this is just to ensure equity between funds and ensure that those models are functioning as we would like. Next, we have two grant funding items for components of the comp plan. Those are fully full cost recovery on those two items.

Two more, that are technical in nature, and that's, repurposing some unused, resources from the thirty eighth Avenue project, which is complete, and redirecting those to the S R 500 project as well as moving, the Hathaway waterline where that project resides within our, chart of accounts, to ensure that that is captured with bond funding. And then lastly, is the utility portion, the underground utility lines portion of the North Shore Boulevard, and that's kind of a if you build it, they will come idea. And so we look at that as delivering on financial stability for the city with that. So, Tim, did you wanna was it about the slide specifically? Or

Yeah. Yes, Deborah. I didn't wanna interrupt you, but it but my question dealt with this side slide specifically, if I could ask a question. Okay. And thanks for the info. I I don't understand. If you could explain insure cost recovery and equity across funds. I I just don't really understand what that means.

So those models are intended to, to capture the cost of the indirect services that, are provided by the city. So, those are the services that we provide internally, such as human resources or the finance department, where our customers are other departments. And so there's a model that ensures that, those costs are spread out fairly across the other departments that use those services. And so we just took a look at that and made sure that we were fully recovering those costs, and that that equity was still there across all the service, across all the other funds that benefit from those services. So the general fund is where all of those indirect departments are housed, so it's revenue back into the general fund for the expenses incurred.

Is that answer?

And now I do understand now. Yeah. I do understand now. Thank you. Because you and Kathy have mentioned this before. Is it one of the cost cost accounting benefits of Tyler. Correct?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Councilmember Sunescu?

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Deborah. So so we're $1,600,000 over budget for the spring, and it it appears that the North Shore is the the major 1,000,000. Did we not account for that in our budgeting, a, and, b, are some of these costs being absorbed by development once that

comes out?

Everything that's on here is funded. So we wouldn't bring forth anything that wasn't funded. And this this otherwise, we would have said, no. Let's pause, not address it with the annual budget process. For then, we do come and see. Here's what what we suggest you fund this with and Okay. And how it's done. But this one is funded because it's it's when you're building out a new area, you know, the developers put in some resources and and they get easy credits. Or homeowner comes in, and they buy a home and pay STCs for the water and sewer lines. So it's growth pays for its growth, but sometimes you have to build it first. Okay. I get it. And then we get reimbursed.

I get it. Thank you so much. Yes. I get it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? I have a question. Okay. Deborah, ready to move on? Yep.

So the next strategic plan priority, safe and accessible community. So here we are looking at two pedestrian projects that are almost completely grant funded. We would be picking up, $6,000 on the 3rd Avenue, pedestrian and bicycle improvements, and a 100,000 on the citywide pedestrian crossing improvements. It's also a actual, budget reduction for the Lake Road safety improvements for Ledbetter to Everett, and that is, simply to push construction into 2027. The reason being, that that will coordinate better with some other lake road efforts, and minimize impacts and disruption on that roadway.

So we're just re retaining, the portion of the budget on that project to cover design this year, and then the construction you'll see, when it comes time to adopt the 2728 capital. And then lastly, we have, just a small carry forward for, the parklet between City Hall and the future Fire Station 41. As that fire station has progressed in its design, they're getting closer to dialing in what is necessary for that, that park that would go between the two buildings, and so, just rolling forward a little bit of unspent resources from '25, to support that design effort.

Council member Eskieski.

Thanks, Debbie, Deborah, for information. I wanna know when we have the reduction into our forecast cost, like line item number three for the Lake Road. Sounds like we spent 600 k less than our forecast.

What what happened here on this one is that we had originally planned it for this this year, 2026. And then but when we decided to move back the the roadway improve where they're gonna tear up the Lake Road for roundabout as well as some water and sewer lines, we decided, why don't we do it all once so that we're not closing Lake Road for two years. It'll just be closed for part of one year.

Oh, that's why. But that means we reserve that for next year. Okay.

You'll see it again.

Next. Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Okay. Forward.

And then the other kinda heavy area here is stewardship of city assets. This is gonna skew heavy towards utilities. Although we do have, kicking off on this slide, the replacement of a traffic controller cabinet that was hit on 38 several years ago. It turned out the replacement of that required quite a bit more design work to replace than was anticipated, so that is finally moving forward and hope to be completed this year. And then with the utilities, we have the continuation of the Angelo booster station design, the Crown Road transmission main, and the Lake Road booster station and waterline upgrade, as well as a small increase to, water r and r, to decommission some unused test wells that were, drilled quite a way quite a while back.

We have not used those since I've worked here. And then lastly for utilities, were some upgrades to the slow sand plant that were identified during the updates that are being done for the water system plan currently. And very last are two IT items. One is to replace the city's aging virtual server hardware, and then another to renew the city's service with our cybersecurity provider. Our last two, and these are each each have one, for vibrant community amenities.

This is to cover some planning efforts and grant matching, funding for the Ledbetter boat launch improvements. That's 100 k. And then, for the engaged workforce, this is to cover some of the estimated expenses for, the, labor contract that is currently under negotiation, but is expected to, be nearing settlement. And I believe you all have been briefed on that by our admin services director. Sorry.

So that is a look kind of a high level look at, the items, covers the, obviously, March 16 item. Next steps, April 6, we would bring you, the detailed exhibits, and we would, then look at requesting an the hearing to be opened, and that would then remain open, until April 20. And then we would request to close that hearing and consider adoption. So if there's any questions we didn't get to, would be happy to answer those now.

Any questions or comments from the council?

Nice job, Deborah. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Deborah. Thank you, Kathy. Okay. We will move on to the next topic. It's the downtown parking revisions phase one, and this is Kerley.

Thank you, mayor. Good afternoon, council. Just looking for my notes here. Sorry. I just lost them.

Alright. So at the February 2 council workshop, staff presented to council some recommended parking revisions in portions of the downtown. These are these these revisions are to address the loss of on street and off street parking due to the relocation of Station 41. Staff is now ready to present to council the next steps in implementing some of the recommended revisions. Demolition of the city annex building at the Southwest corner of Northeast 4th and Everett Street is scheduled to commence in May to make way for the new fire station four one facility.

This stimulation will necessitate the closure of the city parking lots to the south of the annex building as well as current parallel parking spaces on Everett Street. Staff has split the proposed revisions into two phases. The first phase may occur after council adopts the two resolutions at an upcoming council meeting. Drafts of these resolutions are in your packets. Phase two revisions must await the rehousing of the fire apparatuses to the new facility.

This relocation will likely occur in 2027. And I'll share my screen here. Okay. Can you see that alright?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. So phase one includes the following revisions. And in the middle of the page there, that's Dallas Street. We're looking to stripe a diagonal parking spaces on Dallas Street between 3rd And 4th Avenues and also 5th And 6th Avenues. As motorized vehicles will now be backing out into the travel lane, 6th And Dallas will need to be changed to an all way stop intersection. I'll pause there. Any questions about those revisions?

Any questions? Councilmember Senescu.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Kerley. I I know that there was a business person who had a comment about the diagonal parking there. Has that been resolved?

I have not heard about that. I'd be happy to hear about that. We've tried to reach out to everybody

Okay. Stakeholders,

and we will be doing a a more thorough outreach here, but would like to hear the concern.

Okay. Thank you.

Uh-huh. Follow us.

Okay. Any other questions, counsel? K.

Okay. I will scroll down now. We'll look at the next revisions here. So up at the, upper left hand corner there, that's Northeast 5th Avenue up by the community garden. We're looking to stripe the diagonal parking along the block between Franklin And Garfield Street that is basically just an extension of the diagonal spaces that are spaced in front of the library.

And, these changes proposed here, none of these changes require a resolution adoption. The next, change I'll bring up I'll scroll down just a little bit because we're gonna look at Everett Street. Pardon the, typo there. So we have Everett Street between 4th And 5th Avenue. We're looking to, change that to a one way, only in the northbound direction.

That will take a resolution to make that change. That will allow us to add spaces by way of doing the diagonal spaces as shown there on the west side of Everett Street. And, of course, to the south there, by City Hall, Everett Street, that will be closed down. That will be It actually is vacated now, but, still open to traffic, but, will be closed down at some point here as we move forward with the Station 41 project. And I'll pause once again for any comments you might have.

Council member Esky.

You. Thanks, Kerley. Just one thing came to me now. We have one way from, 5th to 3rd on Frank Lane, but the one way, the other way on Everett, it goes only from 4th to 5th. Would that be confusing? Should it be I don't know. I guess I'm saying have we look at if we should have both consistent, from 3rd to 5th?

Yeah. So Everett Street from 3rd to 4th will be it's vacated. It will be gone. There will be no

Oh, that's

right. Access through there.

Alright. Thanks for reminding me.

Yes. You bet.

That's the reason we are doing all of this. Alright. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments? Okay. Go ahead.

So then, the other, change we're looking at, and you'll see phase two, and I'll talk about phase two here in a moment. But on the west on the East Side of Franklin Street between 3rd And 4th, thereby the the fire base there, the opposite side of the street by Riverview. That's currently two hour parking. We'd like to be able to have the, staff parked there during the day without continually moving their vehicles. We're recommending that that be changed to unrestricted parking, which by code is a seventy two hour limit. That would also take a resolution. And I'll pause once again for any discussion on that.

Council member Senescu.

Thank you, mayor. Thanks again, Curly. So I I'm hesitant to think that that's a good idea to have this unrestricted because these parking spaces then are not meant for people who are visiting downtown. They're for employees. So why wouldn't we have an employee parking lot? I mean, why are we designating on street parking for employees? And I I think I'm I'm sorry. I'm gonna keep talking for two seconds. Okay. That's fine.

So, also, you know, if you have people who live in the downtown core, if I lived in one of the apartments above one of these buildings down here, I'd be like, oh, I can park there for seventy two hours. So maybe we wouldn't have spaces for the employees because people would start using them for their own purposes with where they live. Just sorry. That was a lot to throw up.

So I with the city, we've been prepared of of restricting the parking to you know, no parking except Bob. Right? That's not Yeah. Don't I I I don't like that. We weren't we certainly weren't recommending that. We were leaving it open. And, yes, you're correct. Anybody would be able to park there, but it would provide a means for, staff to park. Let me give you an example. So the Franklin Street between 4th And 5th on the East side is currently unrestricted parking.

So I don't know if you knew that or not. It seems to work okay right now. We will have more staff looking for parking out on the street. I know there's we're also looking for potential parking lots where we can lease for staff parking, but I don't know that we've landed anywhere on that. But this the thought was that this would be more suited as unrestricted for anyone to park there, any time of day.

Jim has his hand up, but I'd like to follow-up too.

Go ahead.

I'll follow-up with you.

Hey, Jamere. So my concern is, you know, if these parking spots are taken, where where are staff gonna park? So we need to have a spot for them to go. I would say the free parking up on what 7th? But that's quite a little haul, especially when it's, you know, cold and rainy. I would really love to see a designated staff parking area. I don't know, you know, Straub's Funeral Home has the parking lot across the way. Maybe that's something to look into. But I'd really like to see a different solution for staff parking. If I and I know you're working on it, so I'm just throwing out the out there. Thank you, Curly.

You're welcome.

Council member Hine.

Thank you, mayor. Thanks for the presentation, Kerley. And I share council member Suneski's concerns. And and in particular, the unrestricted seventy two hour limit, if if we end up having to go that way because alternative parking lots can't be found, can we reduce that more so that it's, you know, potentially just an eight to five or something smaller or or something in in shorter duration? My concern is that that parking is gonna get consumed, and then it will not be available for whom it's intended, the city staff.

So I don't I don't wanna speak for police, but we have certain time limits downtown that we have used. My suggestion is we start off to see how it works initially before we start coming up with kind of odd times for downtown. It makes it diff more difficult for enforcement. So that and and I as I say, I'm not trying to speak for police, but typically, if you're if you're going we tried six hour parking downtown for a while. I don't know if there's any six hour parking left or not.

But if you do six hour parking, basically, you if you park you know, if it's from nine to six give you an example. If you park there at noon, you can stay till I don't know. You might stay till the next day sometime. But so there's the limitations you put on parking, they don't always yield the results you're looking for, I don't think. So I've I've just my recommendation is we we try the unrestricted initially if the if it's a problem, we look at what we might do to to solve a a problem, but I don't know that we have a problem.

We had the same thing in front of the the there at city at the city hall by the building department there on the West Side. We talked about putting different time limits on that parking there and finally landed on its unrestricted on the on the West Side between 3rd And 4th. So that seems to work okay. I don't know I don't know if anybody's camping out there for seventy two hours. Okay. Just just my thoughts.

Yeah. Thank you. I I I can appreciate your your experience and perspective on that. And and then follow-up, have we received or what is the plan, or have we received, feedback from the downtown community on on these proposed options?

So we have, and I don't know that we've gone out. We'll have to I'll have to see. I haven't heard a whole lot. We have talked with the the adjacent stakeholders, I'll put it that way, businesses that have that are in the area. So we will do a a more exhaustive outreach here, soon. So

Okay. Thank you.

Mhmm.

Any other questions or comments from the council? Council Member Helske.

Yeah. I think I mentioned it last time. Maybe one option to consider is to have employee parking, card, similar to what we have that then it would provide, unrestricted hours for employee, but, maybe two hours restriction for anyone outside of, city employment. Just some idea to share.

Thank you.

Okay. Council member Senescu.

Thank you, ma'am. I see this is a five minute presentation. My apologies. I'm making this go on longer. So with the new stopping or stop signs with the new changes, so one of the things I hear a lot about and I see it firsthand daily, people roll through the stop signs. So if and I'm I'm not saying that's not gonna happen. But with the new stop signs, is there any way, and I don't know how expensive it is, to get, like, flashing? Because when we change them, people aren't gonna know that a lot of folks don't follow what we have now. So maybe I don't know the cost, but if it's possible to, you know, illuminate the fact that there's a a new stop sign here. That's a thought. Thank you.

Thank you.

Where are those ones that they roll through that you see?

Every day on Dallas between on 4th Avenue, no one stops at it and on 5th as well. It's just it really just rolls through. And I remember off law law enforcement was out for something, and this truck just rolled through. And they're like, hey. I mean, it's just it's blatant. So we can't stop that. But is you know, if there's any way that we can make it more apparent that this is a stop sign because maybe some people don't realize it. And and especially if we're changing it, you know, they're gonna think they can still go. So, anyway, I I just for safety concerns, I've I'd like to see if it's, you know, a possibility to get them more illuminated.

And there are provisions that were required to, put in place for signage. Basically, let's, traffic let's motors know that there's a traffic revision ahead. We try to flag those really well. We're putting, we're actually planning on putting stop ahead on the street, having a stop actually on the roadway as well as the sign. So there's it should be flagged fairly well, but I I certainly appreciate what you're saying because you'll still have somebody roll the sign through the stop sign.

Okay. I

thought I know that's an option.

Marilyn, don't you take

Hey, Curly. You just gonna continue on?

Yes. So I have just one more that and just phase two, of course, as I mentioned before, would be Franklin Street one way, southbound that would get all the diagonal parking on the east side of the street. That, as I mentioned before, is likely to come before you in 2027 after the fire apparatuses have moved have been housed in the new station. Yep. And so then we're also looking to bring these two resolutions back for your consideration on the April 6 regular meeting.

Okay.

And that's it.

That's it. Okay. Well, thank you. Do we have any more questions or comments? Thank you, Caroline. We'll move on to the next item. Next item is the, oops, staff updates. No updates, mayor. Well, that was quick. Okay. Good. Thank you. I

Moving too fast.

Mayor, have a question for Steph.

Yes.

I've received a couple emails about a Zoom sign up for a Zoom phone.

Those are legit. Is that And

that also? Yes. To the degree that you are using the phone systems of the city, yes, that is our new platform upon which will be managing calls and meetings. So if we do group calls, you're going to be Zooming into those much as we're doing right now. Okay. But we're also using them for calls.

And so if council wanted any

a voice mailbox for them to send them? I assume. I would love to have Michelle's online. I would like to defer to

her to describe it. Clearly, at a staff level,

that is the new platform that we'll be working.

She told me we would be assigned voice mailboxes. Okay.

Sorry. Yes. This is Michelle. Yeah. You'll each of the council, I'm working on a couple things. I'm working with Jesse to get you guys laptops so you'll have better functionality with the spreadsheets and things like that. Then we're getting you guys Zoom clients on those laptops so you'll be able to answer your phone through your desktop, and you'll have voice mailboxes as well so people can call in to that number and leave you guys a voice mail. You can either have a custom message, or you can just have the standard Zoom. You've reached this number. Please leave a message. You can choose to have it ring through. You can forward it on the fly. I mean, really, it's endless. It's beyond years where we're at now.

Thank you.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Okay. With that, we will go back to public comments. So this is the opportune this is the public's opportunity to provide comments to the council. While you may supplement your comments with printed handouts, electronic or digital aids will not be permitted during public comments. Please state your name and your city of residence. You'll have thirty minutes. Please direct your comments to the council as a whole instead of individual members, staff, or audience members. Please come forward if you're in the chamber or raise your hand in the Zoom app. Please remember that the public comments are not a discussion. The public comments are to inform the council of your views.

Is there anyone within the chamber that would like to step up to the chairs at the end of the table and make three minutes worth of comments? No. Do we have anyone on the Zoom app?

Mayor, we have no hands raised via Zoom.

Okay. Next item on the list is council comments. First up will be John Swartz. No comments, mayor. Okay. Council member John Noor.

I just went the TCA meeting last week. They continue to be impressed with what TCA is doing downtown. But the thing that really caught my eye while at that meeting was a stop a crosswalk sign put in at 3rd In Birch and the number of times it was utilized just in the one hour that I sat there and the fact that, you know, it it's giving marking to it's a very rainy day, of darker than is right now, and it was just nice to see, something there to assist our pedestrians. I know that council member Senesky has had a long long period of statements trying to get it safe there, so I think that nice nice addition. And at risk of sounding like a broken record, Crown Park is extremely popular.

The street is very crowded every day. The sounds of kids having fun that goes through the neighborhood, and it is obvious to me that there was pent up demand for a park in that area. There's tremendous amount of use.

Thank you. Council member Burke.

I attended the echo meeting ending community homelessness organization on Tuesday, March 10. And we looked at some draft questions for, the next meeting, which is April 14, at which law enforcement people will be present. It's very exciting to to hear from law enforcement about, for example, what are some of the barriers to providing service to the homeless in our in our, communities? What are some misconceptions of the public about what law enforcement can actually do? You know, some really, you know, meaty questions.

We have, like, eight questions. There's really only time for four questions, and so now we're in the process of, marrying those down based on priority. An ad for honorariums for some recently unhoused people has, been placed or two applicants. So the idea there is that they would get a tiny honorary of $1,000 to provide us with information about their recently lived unhoused experience in our community. So, you know, we can say all we want about it.

We can think it's it's one thing, and it might not be that thing. So that's exciting also. And then, I mentioned before the systems analyst position had been created, someone who would work with all the organizations within Clark County and law enforcement and what's available and what's happening. So we so Canvas' portion of that is, oh, man, 4.53%, I think. It's about $9,000. Does that sound right from my email?

Yeah. Yeah.

So very small amount and and a huge benefit to come from once that systems analyst completes that work and provides that information to info, then, of course, I'll share it with you, and it'll be shared broadly throughout the community. An idea to there's so many resources. I had no idea, truthfully. Well, I always

say the truth. I don't know

why I say that, but I had no idea all these resources and but they're just everywhere. Right? And so gathering that and putting it into one place will be fantastic. Well worth the thousand dollars. K. Thank you.

Thank you. And I will be giving you the exact numbers at the next meeting behind me, in other words.

Okay. That one.

Tim Hine.

Thank you, mayor. Three things. Once several citizens contacted me regarding homeless individuals in the city of Camas. Those reported to Camas police. To Crown Park, completely echo council member Nora's comments regarding the popularity of that park every time I go buy, it's packed.

And then third, I've got a comprehensive update for all of you regarding last week's C TRAN BCRC meeting that was followed then by the regular monthly C TRAN meeting. So there's the BCRC had to reconvene last Tuesday because the the composition has not yet been defined. That still has that has caused the maintenance of the lawsuit with all of with within C TRAN and WSDOT until that is till composition is resolved in a manner in which WSDOT deems acceptable based on proportionality. And so Canvas' objectives have been really the following. Maintain, support for interstate bridge replacement, not pay for light rail, maintain current C TRAN services, maintain the current C TRAN board configuration, and then resolve the wash dot and C TRAN legal issue.

So last week's meeting, Matt Cole, who chairs the BCRC, had proposed that he opened the meeting, proposed it recessed until C TRAN could come up with a resolution or proposal on board configuration. And so, ultimately, what was decided by the C TRAN what was proposed by the C TRAN board and accepted by the BCRC was to provide the following motions that were both approved. Amend section a of the current modified locally preferred alternative and ultimately resolve in that composition of the C TRAN board would cons would would change, and this is the compromise. It would change and consist now of four directors from the city of Vancouver, three for Clark County, and two combined total of two directors representing the cities of Battleground, Camas, Lisenor, Ridgefield, Washoeghel, and Yakult. Request that the lawsuit, between C TRAN and WashDOT be dismissed without prejudice, And that the small and that if there was additional funding for light rail, and this is the key part, if there was additional funding for light rail, that the funding for light rail would have to come from a voter approved increase in sales tax within the city of Vancouver or the Vancouver UGA.

Small cities will not pay for that. So the board composition changed, but there's a protection to ensure that small cities aren't paying for light rail. It also ensures the citizens maintain use of ridership with C TRAN, which is continuing to increase, especially as we all know on the current. And it also request dismissal of the lawsuit. So that's what was decided last week.

And with that, the composition can be reviewed. That's reviewed on a on a ten year basis. And with that, does anybody have any questions?

Council member Solarij. Thank you, mayor. Councilor Hine, you said that the lawsuit was dismissed. You said without prejudice. Was it with or without prejudice? Do you know for sure?

It was dismissed. Well, it's being the the the request is that it, it be dismissed with prejudice.

Okay. That's what I thought. I've read it. I just wanna be clear. With prejudice. Right. Thank you.

That's correct. Yep. No problem. Thank you.

Any other questions? Any other comments, Tim?

Nope. That's all. Hope well, one. Thank you, Mayor. Hopefully, now with these things behind us, we can move forward and really address, you know, improve business at hand. But these are These major major issues that have been resolved. So thanks.

Thank you. Council member, Allison Gray.

Thank you, mayor. Wanna echo the comments about Crown Park. I've never seen it. The parking is insane. Ride your bicycle there. And then just a little plug for the little art canvas. Friday night, the stampede begins. So get there get there early, try to find my wife's paintings,

And we compensate. Thank you. Okay. Council member Senesky.

Thank you, mayor. I attended the design review committee meeting last week, and it was about the fire department. And I would encourage everybody to watch the meeting. I know maybe you don't as find it as exciting as I do, but to look at the, you know, the brick color and the layout, and they have drought and fire tolerant resistant plants. And then they're gonna have plaques of info around on how to plant because I know I think it was chief free who's like, please stay away from arborvitae. Don't have our provider at your house. It lights up. So it's it's gonna be an educational it's it's so and it's just really exciting. So please take a look at it if you're interested. I was concerned about no parking off-site, and we kinda talked about that a little bit today with Curly.

Also, we went from five truck bays to four. So we will have four truck bays instead of five, and they will be glass. So it's it's really quite amazing. So I encourage everybody to take a look at that. I did the one, two, three because I tend to ramble, so now I'm staying on track. So two, Brian Ruchall puts out a weekly update, and I love the team building that's happening for Saint Patrick's Day. Right? I mean, if we keep it placed, happy they stay. Right? So I love team building, activity.

So thank you, Brian, for your weekly updates. And third, state of the cities, presentation will be next Wednesday, March 25, and mayor Hogan and mayor Stevie will be there presenting at Washoegal Times on Wednesday, March 25. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Eschke.

Sure. Couple updates, and if I may have a recognition at the end. The first one is Port Of Kemess Washougal. I attended their meeting two weeks ago, and exciting that they are working on grant funding application to bring aviation grant to start airport airport master planning. So that was exciting news.

The other one, RTC, I attended the board meeting on March 2. As we saw, the received $1,000,000 of grant funding for S R 500, which was exciting. And, I'm just, hoping that, I learn more how I can take our voice, to that board meeting so we bring more grant funding opportunities for our projects. Oh, the other thing they mentioned about, SLU Bridge over S R 14 as a very high priority for future grant funding. So that was great.

So maybe we follow-up with them on that, would be great. I also attended the downtown associate, that meeting. That was great to meet everyone and hear about our business owners that how much happy they are with the associate downtown associate and all, great events we have in our downtown. At the end, it might just take a minute to do a recognition, which is personal for me. It's It's the Persian New Year.

It's around the corner, which falls on the first day of spring and happened this Friday. This tradition is celebrated by millions of people around the world, including people in Iran who have been facing challenges for many decades to gain their basic human rights. I'm grateful for the democracy we all cherish in this beautiful country, And that's why I stand with people in Iran who are hopeful that the regime, the corrupt regime, ends soon, and they can regain their freedom. May this Norus be a true symbol of renewal, bringing hope and unity ahead for all of us. Happy spring.

Happy Norils. Thank you. Thank

you. Okay. I will move my comments to the next meeting. Are there any other things that somebody wants to ignore?

I was gonna mention that council member asking mentioned work on. I was caught today in a rolling slowdown that begins at 1 64th, and they keep traffic miles an hour all the way to the Camas exit, and that's so they can do the periodic really quick pieces of work on the bridge and then some inspections in that. And it's the second time I've seen it done before. I was actually right behind the trucks today.

I would've been a little faster.

But so I'm just looking online to see

if they're posting these rolling slowdowns, and

I don't see it anywhere. But if you see the trucks

all staged at one sixty four,

So we exit there

and find another Yeah.

Get off.

Yeah. It's a long ways from one sixty cut

to canvas at five miles an hour.

Yep. It was five

I just looked. There was five between five and six.

And one other thing, I don't remember if we've told council or not, but the repaving of the Slough Bridge will start on August.

In August right after Canvas then. Yes. So what we're doing is repaving those repairs, and so there'll be closures, One lane each direction, but there will be closures that'll transition traffic through downtown. But we've been working with DCA on the events, and they have strict time frames for the contractor, especially the first Fridays and things like that. And so we'll send an update to council once it's finalized. We're working through the traffic control plan.

And they're identifying the potential end of that repaving to be just at the beginning of this campus school district.

In that month of School year. Night nighttime shutdowns is what their target is.

So they will be diverting traffic through downtown campus.

There's two weekend closures because when they're doing the bridge deck, the has to set. So only two weekends. Perfect.

Okay. I don't know if you guys knew that before, but that's I just follow-up on John's comment. Okay. Thank you.

Well,

with that, I think we will close the meeting. Thank you.