Board of County Council - Regular Meeting

Webinar is being recorded and summarized.

We're going to start off the meeting with several proclamations starting with councilor, Little will be reading court employees appreciation week, and judge Vanderwood, I think, or judge Schneider will be accepting, or Pam will be accepting. Great. Please come forward.

Okay. Thank you for this opportunity. Whereas the Clark County Council is proud to join Clark County Superior Court in honoring the dedicated individuals who serve as court employees in Clark County. And whereas the council extends our sincere appreciation to all court employees for their unwavering commitments to upholding the justice system and ensuring its accessibility to the public. Their dedication, professionalism, and integrity are integral to the fair and effective administration of justice.

And whereas Clark County recognizes the outstanding service of court employees and strives to reinforce public confidence in the justice system, foster a culture of appreciation, and acknowledge the critical role these individuals play in maintaining the rule of law. And now, therefore, the Clark County Council hereby proclaims the week of May 2026 as Court Employee Appreciation Week in Clark County, Washington and encourages the community to join in recognizing and thanking court employees for their invaluable contributions. Signed this May 2026 by the entire Clark County Council.

I'm sorry that our judges couldn't be here, unfortunately. They're all in court with our employees who are working really hard right now. But this is just a thank you to all the work they do day in and day out. So thank you.

We appreciate it. Okay. The next proclamation will be, National Correctional Officers Week and David Shook. And if any members of your team would like to come forward too, I'll be reading this one. Okay.

Okay. Here we go. Whereas in 1984, President Ronald Reagan issued Proclamation 5187 and declared the week of 05/06/1984 as National Correctional Officer Week. This May has been recognized as National Correctional Officer Week for the past forty two years. And whereas corrections detention officers are essential to the safety and well-being of the Clark County community, ensuring safety, secure, humane environments in the jail and juvenile detention centers.

And whereas these dedicated professionals face complex and challenging responsibility every day, around the clock, all year long, and carry out their duties with professionalism, integrity, and courage. And whereas we recognize corrections officers and juvenile detention officers are protectors of public safety through the facilitation of incarceration, rehabilitation, and contributing to positive outcomes, and whereas corrections officers and juvenile detention officers provide a critical role in the local law and justice ecosystem. Now, therefore, the Clark County Council proclaims the week of 05/03/2026 as National Correctional Officers Week in Clark County, Washington, and we ask all residents to join us in thanking corrections officers in Clark County Department of Jail Services and Detention Officers of the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center and those who support them for their ongoing service to our community signed this May 2026 by the entire council. So There you go. Yeah, you bet.

Would you like to say a You few can say here. Well, you have your choice of microphones.

Well, you very much. My name's Dave Shook. I'm the director of jail services. Brought some of the teammates here, and you might recognize some of them, but you probably don't, because most of us are behind the scenes. We have partners in the main jail, which is our adult system, and then, of course, our juvenile detention center. Manager Mimzik, who after thirty years is actually retiring in August, so congratulations on moving on to that next chapter. And I believe Sarah is going to be taking over the management of that facility. It's a really difficult job finding the right people. This council and this community have really supported us over the last three years specifically. We've hired 80 individuals.

We're growing our ranks. And we're actually adding to the efforts that we can do here in our community. This system is a very critical piece to law and justice. So we appreciate your support. We appreciate the council's support. And we're going to continue to do the hard work that's necessary. So, thank you very much.

Okay. On to the next one, Fair Housing Month, read by councilor Little and justice Justin Wood, government affairs director of Clark County Association of Realtors. And if there's someone else that would like to come forward with your group oh, I can see that person now. Please come forward.

Awesome. Thank you for being here. Whereas the Fair Housing Act affirms the principle that access to housing is a fundamental right and prohibits discrimination in housing related transactions based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, and familial status. And whereas the Fair Housing Act reflects our nation's enduring commitment to equity, dignity, and opportunity and serves as a cornerstone in the continued effort to eliminate barriers to housing choice and promote inclusive thriving communities. And whereas the fiftieth and fifty eighth anniversary of the Fair Housing Act provides provides an opportunity to reaffirm our shared responsibility to uphold the law, advance fair housing practices, and ensure that everyone has equal access to safe and affordable housing.

And whereas real estate professionals play a critical role in advancing the goals of fair housing by adhering to ethical standards, complying with fair housing laws, and fostering inclusive practices within the communities they serve. And whereas fair housing can be achieved with a commitment to education, ethics, and advocacy for fair housing to promote equal opportunity, taking action to combat discrimination, and by strengthening trust and fairness in the housing market. Now, therefore, we, the Clark County Council, hereby recognize April 2026 as the 50 of the Fair Housing Act. We encourage all residents to join in reaffirming their commitment to fair housing, to learning about their rights and responsibilities under the law, and to working collaboratively to build communities that are inclusive, equitable, and welcoming to all, signed this fifth day of May twenty twenty six, Clark County Council. And sorry we're a few days late.

It looks like it's April, but thank you very much.

Good morning, chairman Marshall and fellow members of the Clark County Council. My name is Anthony Stroud. I'm managing broker with Professional Realty Services International and serve as the president of the Clark County Association of Realtors. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning. While April is recognized as fair housing month, my message is simple. Fair housing is not limited to a single month. It is a year round responsibility. We often reflect on the progress that has been made since the passage of the Fair Housing Act, now over five decades. That progress matters,

but so does the work that continues today. The purpose of fair housing remains just as relevant now as it was then. As a realtor, fair housing is not just a concept. It is a professional obligation. It shows up in every client interaction. It means providing equal consistent service to all. It means ensuring that every buyer and seller has access to the same opportunities. It requires intention, staying educated, holding ourselves accountable, and advocating for practices that promote inclusion across our community. Fair housing protects sorry. Fair housing protections exist to ensure access to housing is not determined by personal characteristics.

Federally, those protections include race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability.

In Washington state, they extend further to include marital status, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran or military status, and certain health conditions. At its core, fair housing is about fairness. It is about making sure that every It is making sure everyone has a real opportunity to find a place to call home every day, not just during one month on the calendar. I am proud to stand in support of this proclamation, and I remain committed to advancing fair housing throughout the year in our community. Thank you.

Thank you very much, and thanks for bringing this one forward. It's, we've made progress, but there's still work to be done. So I appreciate your work on that front. So the next one is the Sikh Heritage Month and that will be accepted by counselor

No, not accepted by any

No, but who is the person? I'll Kareet Sathi. Kareet Sathi.

Okay.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for

being here. I wanna shout out to the Bain brothers who I see in the audience. Welcome. I do some work with them at the other jobs, so I know these guys pretty well. Alright.

I have the honor of delivering this year's proclamation for the sick sick community, and thank you for being here. Well, Clark County celebrates the cultural diversity that strengthens our community and recognizes the important contributions of the sick Americans to the social, cultural, and economic fabric of our county and nation. And whereas Sikhism founded over five hundred and fifty years ago is one of the world's major faiths rooted in the principles of equality, selfless service, compassion, and faith in the creator. And whereas April is recognized as Sikh heritage month, a time to honor the Sikh community's vibrant traditions, spiritual heritage, and ongoing contributions, as well as to acknowledge their resilience and dedication to advancing equity, justice, and inclusion. And whereas this month also includes the celebration of and I don't know how to pronounce this.

I'm gonna try it. Vaisakhi? Alright. Commemorating the founding of a in 1699, marking the time of renewal, unity, and service to humanity. And whereas Sikh Heritage Month provides an opportunity to reflect on the Sikh community's pursuit of truth, justice, and service to others, values that align with Clark County's vision of being a welcoming and inclusive community, And whereas Clark County is home to a growing Sikh community whose faith, civic engagement, and volunteerism volunteerism enrich the life of our county and reflect the enduring values of service and humanity.

Now, therefore, we, the Clark County Council, hereby proclaim April 2026 and the rest of the year as Sikh Heritage Month in Clark County, Washington, and encourage all residents to join in celebrating the history, faith, and contributions of the Sikh community while continuing to build a community rooted in respect and understanding for all. I would sign this May 2026 by the entire council.

Alrighty. Hello, council and community members. My name is Kyret Korseti, and I'm a senior at Camas High School as well as a running start student at Clark College. On behalf of the Sikh community in Clark County, we extend our sincere gratitude to the Clark County Council for proclaiming April as Sikh Heritage Month. We are honored by this recognition of our history, faith, and contributions.

At the heart of Sikhi is the belief in the one divine. The teachings of Guru Nanak shared three foundational principles. Living in constant remembrance of the divine, earning with honesty and integrity, and sharing the fruits of one's labor. They emphasize equality, justice, and service to all humanity. Sikh teachings uphold the fundamental belief that all people are equal regardless of race, gender, religion, or background.

This commitment to egalitarian values continues to shape how we engage with and contribute to society. Rooted in these values, Sikhs are engaged in a wide range of social service efforts. In Clark County, these include organizing disaster relief initiatives, providing meals and essential supplies to those in need, supporting local nonprofits, and fostering strong partnerships with organizations and local law enforcement. Through volunteerism and civic engagement, we strive to support a more compassionate, safe, and inconclusive society for all. This spirit of social service extends into civic life as well.

Sikh communities have long been involved in political advocacy, including movements such as the revolutionary party that took place here in the Pacific Northwest in the nineteen hundreds. The party was organized to fight the colonial oppression of the British rule in India. Its legacy displays the traditions of a deep commitment to justice and equality, values that align closely with the work of this council in shaping policies that impact the lives of residents across Clark County. These principles continue to guide efforts towards fairness, inclusiveness, and the protection of human rights. This recognition also welcomes reflection on our history.

Just over a century ago, sick immigrants faced exclusion and discrimination, including being turned away from Canada's shores during the Komagata Maru incident in 1914. Today, I wanna use this opportunity to reflect on how far we have come from moments of adversity to establishing roots in areas like Clark County. Economically, Sikhs have contributed to the Columbia River Basin for over a century. Early Sikh immigrants were among those laying down railroads railroads and working in lumber mills, helping build the Pacific Northwest. Today, we can continue to see the impact on the region's economic fabric through entrepreneurship, small business ownership, and participation across industries such as transportation, agriculture, healthcare, and professional services, the spirit of honest work and self reliance continues to drive economic growth while promoting opportunities for others.

We are proud to be part of the social and economic fabric here, and we remain committed to growing, contributing, and standing alongside our neighbors for generations to come. We are especially grateful for the opportunity this proclamation provides to raise awareness about Sikh heritage and to build a deeper understanding. Sikh heritage month is not only a time of celebration, but a time to reaffirm our shared values of justice, liberty, and mutual respect, values that continue to guide how we engage with one another today. The relationship that has been built between Clark County and the Sikh community is one of mutual growth and a shared purpose. We thank the council for recognizing our ongoing contributions and for its commitment to aiding a welcoming and inclusive environment for all residents.

Thank you once again for your time and the honor. We look forward to continuing to build and strengthen this relationship together. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. And thanks to everyone who joined us this morning. Okay. Our final, proclamation is Therapeutic Court Month, and Angie Hutton, Therapeutic Specialty Court Program Coordinator, will be accepting. Yes.

Think it was on all the time. Okay. Whereas the lives of thousands of Clark County residents are strengthened each year through our therapeutic courts, which provide structure, accountability, and supportive guidance. These programs help individuals and families face significant challenges and move toward greater stability, healing, and hope. And whereas therapeutic court offers a meaningful alternative to incarceration by directing individuals toward treatment and support.

And they help preserve family unity by reducing the loss of parental rights within the child welfare system. And whereas therapeutic court provides treatment, medication support, case management, peer services, resources, and accountability that promote long term recovery and whereas therapeutic court strengthens education, employment, housing and financial stability, promotes family reunification and reduce foster care placement. And whereas therapeutic court reduced overdose deaths, decrease homelessness, reunite families, improve parenting skills, and foster safer, healthier communities that benefit all. And whereas therapeutic court improves treatment outcomes, reduce addiction related crime, support mental health and veterans reintegration, and do so at lower cost and whereas therapeutic court inspires stronger, healthier communities by fostering meaningful partnerships that unite public safety and public health professionals and whereas therapeutic court demonstrates that when one individual rises from the challenges of substance use, mental health conditions, and criminal behavior, we all rise. And now, therefore, we, the Clark County Council, hereby proclaims the month of May 2026 as Therapeutic Court Month in Clark County, Washington, and recognizes the vital role our therapeutic courts play in addressing substance use, mental health needs, veterans' reintegration, and family stability while reducing crime, recidivism, and overall system costs signed this fifth day, May twenty twenty six, by the entire council.

So Here you go. Thank you, to everyone. Yeah.

Thank you, counselors. Try to make this short here. It is truly an honor to accept this proclamation on behalf of Clark County District Court and our therapeutic specialty courts throughout district and superior court. Therapeutic courts exist because we believe people can change, often in remarkable ways when they're met with structure, support, accountability, and an opportunity to heal. Here in Clark County, we've seen that belief come to life over and over again.

So far, 2,017 individuals have graduated from our therapeutic court programs. Among them are 95 veterans who allowed us the honor of walking beside them as they work to rebuild stability, dignity, and hope. And within our programs, a 171 families have been reunited, families who found their way back to one another because someone they love chose recovery, showed courage, and did the incredibly hard work of rebuilding their lives. And it's important to acknowledge something more. Those 171 families reflect only the participants formerly involved in our therapeutic courts.

They do not include the many others who, through their own progress, have quietly repaired relationships with parents, children, partners, and loved ones. The impact of this work reaches far beyond what we can track on paper. Every number represents a story. A parent walking into a visit sober for the first time in years. A child sleeping through the night knowing their mom or dad is finally safe.

A veteran rediscovering purpose. A participant finding their voice, their strength, and their future. These aren't statistics, their lives reclaimed, relationships restored, and futures rewritten. And when our graduates return to the community, they return as healthier parents, committed employees, steady partners, and neighbors who strengthen the fabric of Clark County. Their success ripples outwards into homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and generations that will benefit from the changes they've made.

This work is possible only because of people who show up day after day, our judges, our case managers, defense and prosecution teams, coordinators, treatment providers, community organizations, and so many others who bring consistency, compassion, and a shared belief in what's possible. But above all, it is possible because of our participants, their willingness to face difficult truths, to try again, and to choose a different path. Your recognition today tells them that their efforts matter. It tells our teams that this community believes in second chances, in recovery, and the extraordinary resilience of the people we serve. Thank you for honoring Therapeutic Court Month and for supporting a system that helps people rebuild their lives, reunite with their families, and strengthen the heart of Clark County.

We're truly grateful. Thank you.

Thank you very much. I had the opportunity to attend a, graduation, and it was very inspiring, the level of support that they're giving and the very hard work that the individuals who participate. It was a joyful experience, so thanks a lot. Okay. Now moving on to the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will stand and join me, and if you could remain standing for the invocation that will be provided by Mark Lyons from Lighthouse Church.

Got the button right. Thank you. Thank you for this honor of being able to pray for you. Please bow your heads with me in prayer. Heavenly father, thank you for this day. Thank you for another chance to help others. I ask that you bless those in the chamber and those who were given the opportunity to serve. Please, Lord, give us wisdom to make decisions that glorify your will for us. Let us be good stewards of what has been given to us and remind us to be humble and selfless as we act as servants of the people. We ask that you protect those in attendance and give us ears to hear and eyes to see what needs to be said and done.

Thank you again, mighty God, for our lives and the prosperity given to us to be able to serve you and our neighbors. We are blessed, and so let us please bless others in love. I humbly ask all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, Lord and savior of all. Amen. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you for that. Moving on with the agenda, we'll start with the roll call.

Councilor Young.

Here.

Councilor Fuentes. Here. Councilor Little. Here. Chair Marshall.

Here. I just know. And councilor Belcaut is absent. Excused.

Thank you.

Okay. Then, bid award, $28.14.

Amendments.

Oh, amendments. I'm sorry. Are there any amendments?

There's, no amendments to the agenda, but I believe one of the public hearings will have an amendment to a resolution that will be before you.

Okay. Thank Thank you for that. Okay. Then let's move on to the bid award, $28.14, annual legal advertising. So Priscilla Receive? Oh, Michelle.

Sorry. Priscilla's unavailable this morning, so I'll be reading this.

We're happy to see you.

Yep. Good morning, Clark count counsel Clark County counselors. Michelle Shuster, director of internal services, And I'll be reading the award of invitation to bid number 2814 for annual legal advertising. In accordance with Washington State statute RCW 36.72.075, the legal advertising bid shall be awarded to the best and lowest responsible bidder, giving consideration to the question of circulation in awarding the contract with a view to giving publication notices the widest publicity. The bid was sent to seven vendors and three plan centers, of which two responses were received for BID 2,814, annual legal advertising.

The bid responses were as follows: The Columbian had $1.7 for their Line Cost I insertion, 1.4 for their Line Cost II insertion, 17,241 paid circulations, four eighty four unpaid circulations, and 17,725 total circulations. And then the second one was the Latin American Times. They had $2.25 for their line cost one insertion, two twenty five for their line cost two insertion, 1,800 paid circulations, 23,200 unpaid circulations, and a total circulation of $25,000 The bid responses were checked for accuracy, content, and compliance with specifications that satisfied the legal newspaper requirements as defined in RCW 36.72.075 and 65.16.020 Qualifications a Legal Newspaper. Upon review of the bid responses, the following was determined. The Latin American Times LLC submitted a bid response but they are not a legal paper of record as required in RCW sixty five point one six point zero two zero.

The Columbian is a six day per week publication and is a responsive and responsible bidder with a large paid circulation. They use the United States Postal Service to deliver their papers directly to the subscribers within the Vancouver urban boundary and to subscribers outside the boundary. They also maintain an online website with a dedicated legal ad section and access through a smartphone tablet application. Therefore, Purchasing recommends that Invitation to Bid 2814 be awarded to the Columbian, making them the newspaper record for all legal notifications. In addition, Clark County will continue to use area specific newspapers such as The Reflector, the Camus Washougal Post Record, and the Vancouver Business Journal.

These papers should be used in addition to The Columbian when the legal notice pertains to a specific locale within the general circulation area of the newspaper.

Okay. Thank you. If maybe we could close the doors. There's noise coming from the

hallway. We actually need to keep the doors open according to law, but we can ask the the folks out

there in the hallway. Thank you. Okay. Are there any clarifying questions from counsel? The doors have to remain open. Thanks. Okay. And, for not necessarily the legal notices, but public you know, when there's public hearings or there's public awareness, we like, we would use, the Latin American Times and other so we have a derp be able to

reach that we should

oh.

Is who's speaking?

It was a staff member. They're muted now.

Oh, okay. I was just curious about reaching a diverse community. And and when and if if they're not the legal notices, they still get noticed about other things.

Yes. Like, we use the Latina American Times a lot for a lot of our bids that go out on the streets. We publish not only in the Colombian, but the Latina American Times. And so they are used for a lot of different notifications throughout the county.

Great. Thank you. And, so if there aren't any further questions, I'll open it up for the, public comment. And just to remind folks, this is public comment just on the award of invitation to bid on 02/08/2014 annual legal advertising, and you are limited. There's no public oh, this is the bid. There's plenty of time to get to public hearing. Sorry about that. So we're looking for a motion.

So moved.

Okay. Is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded. Thank you very much. All those in favor, aye.

Aye.

Okey doke. Well, I was a little premature on, explaining our public hearings, but I think that, I think we're ready to move on. So thank you, Michelle. So public hearing on capital technical budget supplemental, and I think first we'll hear from Emily. Is she online now? Oh, there she is. She's the front row. Good to see you.

Good morning, counsel. I'll provide, the update today. And, of course, Emily is here as well as our partners in the audience if there's specific questions. Just as a kind reminder, pursuant to RCW 3,640, that does provide the county the ability to do supplemental budgets throughout the year. These are mainly due to unforeseen circumstances that present a risk of safety or welfare, conditions in which impair the department or office ability to meet their obligations, labor agreements, legal settlements, and unanticipated revenues and expenses such as grants.

There are 20 requests in front of counsel today, 15 carry forward, two previously approved by counsel, and three technical adjustments. I'm going to summarize what they are. I'm not going to go line by line, but the 15 carry forward, all of these have been previously approved. This is simply carrying forward the unspent funding from 2025 to 2026 so that the project can continue. Most of these are capital projects such as the elections backup generator, public health, elevator repairs, fairground projects that council approved, replacing neighborhood signs, finishing up the HPOD, renovations in the jail, the eDefender public defense case management system, and supplies for the sheriff's office that were ordered last year, but have not received those yet, such as gas masks.

The second, piece on here is the previously approved by council. There are two of these. This is the parks and capital improvement plan and the transportation improvement plan. We start our budget process very early. So this is really truing up the budget to actuals to get as lined as we can be.

And I'm sure there'll be some more updates in the fall supplemental in November. So this really just allows them to continue the work that council's already approved and just getting a little closer to the alignment. And then finally, there are three technical adjustments. Technical adjustments are simply coding changes, reallocating budgets to align the coding to the correct place. There were just a couple of these with the district court projects, the cybersecurity contract to correct the the funds and the ledgers that were assigned to this. So again, all of these have been previously approved by counsel. There is no new request. It's really just aligning our master plans and our capital plans more aligned with the budget. Happy to answer any questions council may have.

Are there any questions? Hearing none, I think we're ready to, move on to the public comment. And just, this public hearing is on the capital technical budget supplemental as described. And so if anyone has signed up, you're limited to three minutes, and please come forward.

Carmen de Leon.

Yeah, it's me Carmen De Leon and I hope this is the right topic because it says right here, adjustment supplemental income. Okay, so I guess you guys have extra income because of that, what was it, psychiatric hospital that you all built and couldn't save the money to pay for the employees, so the building has been empty all year. Maybe we can look into filling the hospital that's already been built with all the money and you didn't save maybe the extra money can go towards a staff for the hospital that I know has already been built, the mental hospital out there by Wazoo. Right? Anyways, that's one thing.

And then she said something about advertisement. Excuse me, but the Colombian circulation 40,000? We have a population of 400 That's

the easiest topic. That's not this topic.

See, that's why that I'm just saying I thought this was together. I I'm confused. I'm just saying if you have extra money, the Colombian can't be trusted, but if that's off topic, okay. Okay. So you have other extra money. Are you even talking about the supplemental income from 800 thou or is it a 100,000 or 8,000,000, 80,000,000, and the fairs, trust fund that the fair has money? I don't see why they're putting more money into the fairgrounds, millions at Clark County Fairgrounds, but we want the we want dirt. We don't want more, cars out there. We like the wheelbarrow, where we would park and get on the wheel, though, and it would take you in there. It was fun having a dirt road.

So if they wanna put millions into Clark County Fairgrounds, it shouldn't be on making everything a sidewalk. Because like you see, it automatically heats up the earth. We don't need that. We need more trees. We need more grass.

We need those kids out there playing in the fields, not parking their car on a hard, you know, pavement and keep going. So anyways, that threw me off. So she's talking about transportation. So for transportation, how do you justify 16,000,000 billion with a b for light rail and a new bridge when we already have a train bridge? We don't need another, and we have two cities that want bridges for less than 1,000,000,000 each.

So maybe the Clark County ought to consider two new bridges, one in Camas, one in St. Helens, because we don't need ten years of construction mess. They're gonna close I 5 southbound for a month this September. What is my son gonna do? He works in Portland. Go all the way around to 2 05? Thanks. Wow. Thanks. And ten years of this. I think we need to reconsider the I 5 Bridge expense because we don't need it. The engineers have stood right here in front of you saying, it was good. And like the one woman said, if you wanna fix this bridge because of earthquakes, why don't you fix the 20 others in all over Portland with a billion dollars?

K. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the room?

Chair, we don't anybody signed up in the room, but we do have one online.

Okay.

Caller, you've been sent a request to unmute. Please go ahead and do so. State your name for the record, and go ahead with your comment.

Good morning, Kimberly Goheen Elbon. Thank you so much for the prayer this morning ending in Jesus' name. So you are going to be using our hard earned tax dollars. Use them wisely as we're gonna hold you accountable. I'll also mention that on this agenda or, excuse me, this public hearing that this is recommended by the unelected county manager and must be held accountable.

We've we've gotta watch where our monies are going, and, frankly, there's not a lot of people there doing so, but good job, Mello. Risk and welfare was mentioned. You guys need to put public safety first. I'll tell you that right now. I hope that, this budget has, that in in mind.

But also neighborhood signs, were mentioned also. In my opinion, those signs only target those who you harbor as a sanctuary council. Now relating to this public hearing, you made two proclamations this morning pertaining to courts and corrections. So I'll where are the funds allotted for an adequate jail building? Maybe that's somewhere, maybe that's coming in the future.

I'd like to know as you are doing my business. I'd like maybe a reply from, the county manager. But we need a new jail building, and I don't know have a clue where that's going. But we need update updates to modernize or even, efforts to rid the existing jail of lead pipes. I brought this up numerous times.

I consider it, this matter a public safety issue, a serious one that has not been addressed. I see no budget for the jail, and there's funds for the event center. I'm changing the subject here from the jail, but that's mostly in my main thrust of life right now is our jail system, the corrections, law and justice here in Clark County. There's funds for the event center. And, again, I'll hope that the new lighting will not cause eye strain or any eye eye harm to children, the elderly, and anybody in involved.

So I hope you've looked into that after I mentioned it at my public speaking a week or two ago about this, that when we do speak, you guys are to listen. And you don't just pass it off and you're your three minutes are up. County roads are mentioned, and I'll mention that the road from Tri Mountain Golf Course headed north to Timmins Road is a hazard and needs serious repair. That's about all I have, but we do want you to listen to us. Make note.

Do something about it, and don't just swift and stop as well, your time's up, and that's all there is to it. Because that's what I've been noticing. You don't you don't actually hear it. You might be listening, but you don't hear it. You.

You're time is up. Is there anyone else online?

That concludes public comment for this hearing, Joe.

Okay. Thank you very much. And just a reminder that this, budget is the capital technical budget supplemental. Many of the things we've already approved, Some are carrying forward projects underway, and technical code changes. So not as broad, an application has some of the testifiers mentioned. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to approve the capital technical budget supplemental. Sure. Yes.

Move to pass resolution number 2026Dash5Dash1.

Thank you.

Second. It's

been moved and seconded. Are there any other comments? Hearing none, all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries. Okay, moving on to the next public hearing, the 2026 annual action plan for the community development block grant. Chair.

Yes. Just really quick, wanna, for the record, I will recuse myself from this conversation since one of the recipients of the community development block grant is the organization that I work for.

Okay. Thank you for that. Let's go ahead, Michael.

Thank you. Good morning, chair, council, county manager. The record, I'm Michael Torres, program manager three with Clark County Community Services. I am accompanied by Rebecca Royce, program program coordinator two, who oversees and works on the community development block grant fund and the home investment partnership programs. We are here to request a public hearing to receive comment on the 2026 community development block grant and the home investment partnership program annual action plan.

And also to the 2025 amendments to 2025 annual plan prior to their submission to US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Also to request authorization from you to submit those plans to HUD. And finally, authorization from the county manager to sign any grants and agreements that are coming from this action plan and the 2025 amendment that we are submitting to them. And I will pass it to Rebecca Royce to do the presentation for the hearing.

Thank you, Michael. Thank you, County Council. To receive CDBG and home funding, HUD requires the completion of a five year planning document along with annual action plans. The five year planning document identifies the needs of our community along with goals to address those needs. The annual action plan will describe the types of projects we anticipate completing to meet the goals identified in the consolidated plan.

We have been working with a consultant, and last year you adopted our consolidated plan for the 2025 through 2029 programs years. I apologize. So next one. So I'm going to go over the annual action plan for you, all the information that isn't included. It is a very long plan and it is very heavily federally regulated on what information is involved.

So this is just a brief overview of the annual action plan. As you can see here, this is a template for all of the jurisdictions to use when developing the one year action plan. This slide reflects the sections of the plan. The full 2026 draft plan and the amendments to our 2025 plan are available for review on our website. Much of the plans for each year build upon the previous year's reporting.

Because of this, and in the interest of time, I'll focus today on the funding expected from HUD, the activities being recommended for funding, and the changes to the previous action plan. Next slide please. So HUD requires the public be notified and have a chance to provide feedback about the activities we undertake with the CDBG and Home Program funds. Notification about the availability of each of these documents was published in the Columbian, sent out through a news release, posted on the county social media platforms, and sent to over four fifty people on our distribution list. We announced the public hearing in the Columbians both on April 9 and on April 17.

The news release and social media posts, the publishing to our website and the email distribution was all conducted on April 9. Next slide. The amount of funding available through our 2026 request for application process comes from our anticipated annual allocation of funds from HUD, program income that is generated through the payment of loans for previous projects and prior year resources, which are typically from projects that completed under budget, unused contingency funding, or projects that failed to move forward. The annual allocation of funding is just over $1,900,000 for CDBG and $1,500,000 for HOME. This includes entitlement funds determined through a formula at the federal level, anticipated program income to be earned over the program year, our finance staff estimated about $24,000 for CDBG and $27,000 for the HOME program, And also prior year resources.

As you can see the HOME program received significant prior year resources due to unanticipated loan payoffs. Before the Urban County Policy Board makes their funding recommendations, finance staff determine funds from prior years that need to be reallocated. As mentioned previously, this can be from projects that completed under budget, unused contingency funds, income from loan repayments, or projects that failed to move forward. Can see on the slide I'm sorry, please go back. No, you're fine.

We also indicate the description of how the funds will be used, a brief description. And we indicate the amount of funding we anticipate having throughout the remainder of the consolidated plan. I also want to highlight that this is our second year of funding awards for the twenty twenty five to twenty twenty nine five year consolidated plan, which is why you see a rather high number expected amount remainder of consolidated plan column. Finally on the slide is that brief description I mentioned about how we will be using this slide, the funds. Next slide.

Before we discuss the specific activities that will be funded, quick overview of the goals we are working towards in our consolidated plan. We have five goal categories, public services, public facilities and neighborhood improvements, asset and economic development, housing and administration. Under these goals, staff had have estimated that over the life of the consolidated plan, we will make improvements to community and recreational spaces that will benefit 20,000 people, provide technical assistance to 160 low income micro enterprise businesses, provide safety net services for 900 people including dental assistance, childcare, transportation assistance, and healthcare navigation, Help 60 low income families either purchase a home or make much needed repairs to their home. And move three twenty households out of homelessness and into housing by providing rent assistance and case management services. Next slide, please.

The next several slides, we will go over the funding recommendations by the Urban County Policy Board. Under public services, the battleground health care dental services and Lutheran Community Services Northwest health care navigation programs have each been recommended for funding. These both of these programs will offer services related to health care. Battleground will focus on dental services. Lutheran Community Services will focus on navigation of our health care system.

Under public facilities and neighborhood improvements, we have the city of Battleground with a North Parkway Avenue sidewalks. This project is receiving a total of $303,000 including funds for county staff implementation. This project is being funded in part with reprogrammed funds as part of the program year 2025 annual action plan amendment, which we will discuss later in this presentation. Next slide. Under our asset and economic development category, we are supporting four business assistance programs.

The support for early learning and families or self, Upwards Care, Fourth Plane Forward, and Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber. All of these programs will be helping low income micro enterprise businesses. SELF and Upwards Care will be focusing on of childcare businesses or increase their capacity. And the Fourth Plain Forward and Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber will be focusing on other businesses that want to expand or start a new business. Next slide.

Under our housing goal, we have broken this out in a couple of different areas. For preservation and development, we will recommend funding Clark County's housing preservation program, which provides essential housing repairs to low income homeowners to maintain their housing safety and affordability. To Proud Ground for their home buyer assistance program, will help three home buyers purchase their first home. To Columbia Nonprofit Housing for their River and Main project, which is new construction of a 40 unit fully affordable housing complex serving low income seniors, ages 62 and older located in Ouachugal. And to the foundation for the challenge for a new purchase of two homes for persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities who are low income.

Next slide. Also under housing we have stability services. These are through our tenant based rental assistance programs. We are recommending to fund Janice Youth Programs and Share. These programs provide tenant based rental assistance and case management services to, households experiencing homelessness throughout Clark County.

And finally, our last category on next slide is under administration. And this covers the cost of administering both of the CDBG and the home programs. The CDBG program by regulation allows up to 20% of our annual entitlement to go towards administration. For the HOME program, it's by regulation up to 10% of the entitlement amount that can go towards administration. Next slide.

I wanted to touch on a couple of different things that are part of the planning process for our annual action plan. We have a CHOTO set aside or a community housing development organization required, set aside amounts for the home program, for the amount of $84,718. We did not have an eligible project or entity apply for funding under this category. So we will be holding those funds until next year. And hopefully, that we'll get an application to be able to allocate those funds.

We also set aside the opportunity for contingency projects. If funding comes becomes available, the following activities will be awarded. If we receive CDBG funds, we would award up to $75,000 to the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce Business Assistance Program. If we receive additional home funding, we would provide up to $300,000 to Evergreen Habitat for Humanity for their home buyer assistance. Next slide.

And this just provides a quick funding snapshot of the funds that we have available. This gives a breakdown between the application categories and administration. This includes all applications recommended for funding regardless of the funds coming from our 2026 annual action plan or from prior year allocations. Overall, there's about 5% going to public services in the dark teal slice, 9% going to public facilities and neighborhood improvements in the light green slice, 18% going to asset and economic development activities in the orange slice, 57 going to housing activities including stability and development of new housing, And the purple slice is the total administration about 11% total for both programs. Next slide.

So this is a quick overview of the amendment to our 2025 action plan. As mentioned previously, we have an amendment to the 2025 action plan. We had originally awarded $200,000 last year for renovations at a building owned by the county in Battleground located at 701 East Main Street. This project is no longer moving forward. The funds are now being allocated to the Battleground North Parkway's sidewalks project as discussed earlier.

Next slide. Public comment is being accepted on the two documents presented today. Public comments are being accepted through Monday, May 11 to adhere to the thirty day public comment period required by HUD. If we will be accepting public comments today during this hearing, or people can call Nareen Ebrahim at (564) 397-7834 or email nareenebrahimclark. Wa dot gov.

She's our program assistant and will be accepting all public comments for this public comment process. All public comments accepted today and through phone call or email will be included in our annual action plan submissions to HUD. At this time, we are seeking public input through this public hearing for the 2026 action plan and amendment to the 2025 action plan. This concludes staff's presentation, and we're happy to answer questions by counsel before opening up for public comment.

Thank you very much. Are there any questions from counsel? Sure. Yes. Go ahead, please.

Just curious. I didn't see any in my inbox. Did we receive any comments, any public comments?

We did not. Okay.

Not done.

Chair. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Thank you for this information. It looks like there's great resources going out to our community. I had just just wanna learn a little bit more about the proud ground home buyer assistance where 250,000 is allocated for three first time home buyers. And I was wondering if that was related the strategy is related to the 300,000 in potential contingency funds for Evergreen Habitat for Humanity homebuyer assistance. Just wanna learn a little bit more about the strategy and criteria for choosing who gets that assistance and how it works as best you know.

So the staff put out a request for application with all of the categories in mind. And different agencies can apply under the specific category. For the home buyer program, it's actually under our asset and economic development category. There's several questions. Some of them are scored. Some of them are not. The scoring questions, some of them are subjective. Some of them are objective. The subjective scoring is scored by the Urban County Policy Board, which is made up of mayor or their designated alternates from each of the small cities outside the city of Vancouver, including the city of Woodland, and is chaired by a county council person, currently Councilor Young. They score all of the applications, and then they are ranked.

Based on the amount of funding we have in each category, we fund the top applications until we run out of funding. This year, we were able to fund several categories, including Proud Ground. Evergreen Habitat for Humanity was just under the scoring where we had enough funding available, which is why they are considered a contingency project through this application process. The home buyer program is a land trust model, where Proud Ground will own the land under the home and first time home buyers will purchase the house that sits on the property, and it will be affordable for ninety nine years that they get a land lease. And this makes it to where that project can be permanently affordable.

So if that home buyer sells the home, it gets sold back to another low income household in the future. So it's perpetually affordable moving forward. Would you like to add something?

No. I thought you were looking at me to go over Habitat.

Go ahead.

Okay. So Habitat works very similar. It's a it's a land bank model as well. So they both organizations, they're similar programs. Both organizations work to identify eligible low income households that are first time home buyers.

And when I say low income households, mean, in this case, 80 AMI or below. Usually, it's around 60% AMI or below for these first time homebuyer households. And they help them afford the mortgage and own the, you know, own the house and the land is banked and the house itself becomes permanently affordable. When I say permanently, as Rebecca indicated, it's ninety nine years. So very very similar programs.

Proud Ground has been working with the county in this model longer than Evergreen Habitat for Humanity has, And I would expect that Evergreen will continue in the future. It's a it's a contingency program this time around. I'm sure they will continue to apply for more funds and and more activities.

I'll also add that both of those programs look at the income or the amount of funding needed for each household, and then subsidizes the payment, so it buys down the mortgage, the private mortgage that they need to have for the home. So not only is it making it affordable using a land trust model, but also helping buy down the mortgage for the household to be able to afford their first home.

One last thing I'll say about both of these programs, although we have more historical data on Proud Ground, we often get questions of if you are if if the program is targeting a low income household to become a home buyer, what does that look like in terms of defaults to the mortgages and losing the home? And we haven't had that experience through this program in Clark County. It's been very very successful and even through the two thousand eight great recession, I don't think they had a single default. So the they're doing a very good job in terms of identifying the households, making sure that they are ready to be homeowners and can afford the financial commitments they're making.

Great. Thank you so much for that, JFO.

Don't they have an I think part of their program is in education, so budgeting and and, you know, all those kinds of things. So it really gets them in a in a great place to be able to be successful.

Correct. All of our homebuyer programs are required to go through, housing counseling services, which go through all of the in information that you would need to be a good homebuyer.

The the last piece of information I'll I'll pass to the council, and I I apologize. We get these questions occasionally. For Proud Ground, during that ninety nine year period of land trust, they're expecting to serve about three households total for each of those properties.

Okay. Any other questions? Hearing none, let's open it up for the public. And again, this will be comments on the 2026 annual action plan for the community development block grant.

Carmen De Leon?

Yeah. I'm Carmen De Leon, Melo De Leon, and she talked about now about the advertising. Right? That's okay now? Because no? Oh, okay. Not the advertising. Okay. So your home's plan has a bilingual thing. Why do you wanna handicap people? Because this is America. We speak English. And if people don't wanna speak English, then maybe they don't belong here. It's a safety issue, realistically. When I went to Guatemala and lived there, my parents paid for private lessons to learn to speak and read Spanish efficiently so I wouldn't be vulnerable.

So how are you letting people be vulnerable by giving them Spanish or I'm against translating Russian or anything, because if you're in my country, speak my language. When I've gone across sea overseas whatever, they didn't provide me with translation or bilingual this and bilingual that. You came here. You're screwed. Get your own translator.

But nowadays, you can just Google your own translator on the phone. So why are you financing something that could be gotten free? B, you say you're helping people with lower income, then why aren't you mandating fireplaces, wood stoves, and etcetera? Because every winter, we know that the heating bill is going to go up about $600. So you need to annually increase winter by $600 if you don't have a fireplace or a wood stove or another way to keep yourself or a generator, bike generator.

In case you weren't looking at the news, millions of people across The United States lost power because of the the rain and the snow, and they were weeks with no lights. Jeez. If they'd had a generator, maybe they'd have made it. If they'd had a fireplace, maybe they could have cooked and stayed warm instead of freezing all through the winter. And I don't see anything on that in here.

So, like I said, the hemp, burns at 2,000 degrees, so you can actually offer fireproof housing, but I guess the followers in this crowd would rather just do what everybody else does instead of being, you know, spectacular inventing something new like a fireproof establishment building houses or whatever. Another thing let's see. Businesses have been leaving, so if you want people to buy houses, about a billion dollars worth of people have moved to Idaho because they don't want to pay the millionaires tax. So the more they're, they're losing housing, they're losing people from this state to other states because of the misspending and over taxation of our population. So, yeah, over 1,000,000,000 went to Idaho people moving out.

What's the last one to see? Oh, yeah. Oh, that you said it wasn't on the TV thing that we're we're still not talking about, Colombian newspaper not being efficient. Is that still

No.

Is that the next one?

It would be the open public comment that you can comment on the Colombian.

Alright. Okay. Yeah. So I talked about

Sorry. Caller.

That's all that's signed up in the room chair, but we do have two callers online.

Okay.

Caller, you've been sent a request to unmute. Please go ahead and do so. State your name for the record, and go ahead with your comment.

Good morning, counselors. My name is Melanie For. I'm the community impact manager at Upwards, and I'm just here to express our gratitude for the Urban County Policies Board's recommendation to fund our Boost program as an investment in Clark County's child care providers and the working families who depend on them. The Boost program equips low to moderate income in home family child care providers with one on one business coaching and digital tools to strengthen their operations and grow their revenue. Providers work individually with these experienced mentors to build a custom business action plan, which covers marketing, enrollment, finances, programming.

We help with staffing, and more. They also refree receive free access to our child care management system, which streamlines all the day to day operations and improves the program quality. So the result of the program is providers will grow their small businesses, create local jobs, and expand access to not only affordable but very quality care for working families across the County. As you know, Clark County's child care shortage doesn't just impact families. It impacts the local economy.

Seventy percent of children under six lack access to licensed care, which leaves thousands of families, especially moms, single parents, and shift workers unable to fully participate in the workforce. At the same time, child care workers earn on average just under $20 an hour, far below the wages of elementary school teachers and in the bottom 3% of wage earners statewide. That wage gap drives high turnover and deepens the shortage. These providers love caring for children but need help with marketing, managing enrollment, and billing, which fortunately is the exact pain points that Boost is designed to address. Across 30 cities and counties, we've mentored over 500 family child care providers, created a 180 new jobs, and helped providers increase revenue by an average of 25% and child care slots by over 30% all within the first year.

So with counselors' approvals of the annual action plan, Boost will support 13 family child care providers across the county, create four new teaching assistant jobs, and improve the quality of care for 180 children. Again, and this is in the first year alone. Finally, I just wanted to give a shout out and thank Rebecca and Noreen for being so communicative throughout this process. And I always welcome any questions both as a representative of UPWARDS, but first as a parent who'll forever be grateful for the teachers who cared for my little ones, which allow me to be with you here today. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller, you've been sent a request to unmute. Please go ahead and do so. State your name for the record and go ahead with your comment.

Kimberly Goheen Elvin again. I'll I'll state this that when Melo asked a question about advertisement, you directed her in a in a lie. It this did mention advertisement, and she could've spoke on that. I also so I want council member Fuentes put on record today, after I'm done speaking, which entity does he work for as he did recuse himself. This is our meeting, and I want it put onto the record today.

It is important for the public who vote to know who he works for outside this council, and it does relate as he did recuse himself. So I expect transparency after I speak and have him answer that question, who he works for, we the people wanna know, and I appreciate the recusal. So I'll ask, how well did advertisement work? Well, there was no public response. And, again, you target advertisement to and what I consider, the illegal communities.

There was 450 contacts using different languages besides English, and it's a it's a cost to the hard earned taxpayer. I'll add that this program, as far as I see it, is mostly an agenda to use hard earned tax dollars, those that are legally here and vote, for administration for the administration that delegates through the county manager this agenda and also are aiding illegal immigrants to get housing. Yet my daughter has never been contacted, and she's applied as a low income legal citizen with two children yet receives no help. I'd like to know why. I suggest it's because she doesn't fit into your sanctuary agenda.

Businesses, dental, purchases of homes, management for case services. Most, if not all, are aiding again illegal immigrants using hard earned tax dollars of American citizens working hard to pay for others not legally here. ForcePlaying Forward is a hub using hard earned tax dollars to harbor these illegal people. You will award it was mentioned that you will award Vancouver funding. Vancouver is a self proclaimed sanctuary city, does not follow the constitution or the will of its people, and they openly harbor illegal immigrant people here in Clark County.

The legal voting hardworking taxpayer must hold you and these sanctuary agendas accountable. I do intend on calling Noreen. I'm gonna ask her about work.

We do. Your time is up.

That concludes public comment, chair.

Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Then are there any questions or follow-up on this item? Sure. Yes. Please go ahead.

Just wanted to say this is these funds are doing a lot of good in our community, and, it just dawned on me that this is my fourth year chairing the Urban County Policy Board, and it's been a pleasure to do that. Hopefully, I'll be able to continue on doing that in the future. But I did wanna just say it for the moment here that our staff are doing a a wonderful job on this. We've this has come before the council a couple of times, but

I know we deal with

a lot. But timeliness is a challenge that we're experiencing in with our CDBG and funding. And what that means is it comes from from HUD, and they require us to spend it within a certain amount of time or they think we don't really need it. And, we've had issues, and, you know, just today, we had one more project that was canceled. And and so, you know, when we award funding and if and a project is canceled, it it hurts.

It affects that timeliness issue. But I will say that, you know, between Noreen and Rebecca and Michael, they have been working tirelessly to get us in a point where we're back into timeliness so we don't risk having those funds available in our community. So great work. I appreciate it, and, look forward to the future. So

Great. Thank you. Thank you for your service all these years. So I'm not a 100% clear on what we're, taking action on, because the public hearing occurred and will then be closed on Monday. Is it to request authorization for the county manager to sign? Okay.

To sign the grant agreements. Yes.

Okay. Alright. Thank you for that.

So I'd also add. So this is kind of to do multiple things just that are participate are are regarding the grant agreement. So it authorizes us to submit our annual action plan to HUD. It will authorize the county manager to sign the certifications that need to go along with that submission of the annual action plan, and it'll also authorize the county manager to sign all the contracts that come based on the projects that are being funded through the funding available.

Great. Thanks for that clarification. So with that, I'll entertain a motion to do just that.

So moved.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded. All those in favor?

Oh, just real quick.

Oh, yeah.

Please go ahead. One comment. I forgot to thank the small cities and and the folks that are members of the board. So they all do great work. It's been a pleasure to work

with them

also. It's a great collaboration. Okay. And without any other comments, all those in favor, aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Thank you, chair counsel.

Thank you. Okay. Now we're moving on to, approval of three open space applications for current use assessment. So Kevin and Hunter, please tell us all about this.

Good morning, counselors. For the record, Kevin Tyler, division manager for, the lands management division in Clark County Public Works. With me today is Hunter Decker, our county forester. And today, we will present to you the 2025 to 2026 current use open space applications. Late in 2025, we received three applications, two for historic sites and one for stream protection.

The application for a stream protection needs to be pulled. This application is associated with a planned unit development known as Snell Farms. And between the time that these applications went to the Planning Commission work session and hearing and now the plat was recorded for that Snell's Farm PUD. And the portion of the property subject to the open space application was split into two separate tracks, and each of those tracks are less than 10 acres, which does not meet one of the county code criteria for approval of an open space application. And so we are working with the developer to see what other options there might be, so we're pulling that application today.

So you will see references to three applications and information in the hearing packet regarding the Stream Protection application. But again, that application has been pulled. And so we have provided revised materials for the presentation and a resolution to just address the two historic open space applications. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Hunter to run through the presentation and we'll do our best to answer any questions that you may have.

Thanks. Good morning, counselors. Again, my name is Hunter Decker, the Clark County Forester for Public Works. And today, I'm gonna present to you the twenty twenty five current use assessment request for classification. So what is open space?

Open space program originates from the Open Space Taxation Act, which was created by the Washington State Legislature to maintain, preserve, and conserve open space lands for the benefit of natural resources, scenic beauty, and the overall well-being of the public. So the program is governed by state law RCW 84 dot 34 and WAC four five eight dash 30, along with Clark County code chapter 3.08. The state program includes three classifications, open space land, farm and agriculture land, and Timberland. And Timberland was merged with our designated forest land program in 2024. So tonight's presentation only addresses the open space land classifications, not farm or timber.

Next slide, please. So the current use applications are revert are reviewed jointly by the assessor's office and public works. The applications are typically submitted toward the end of the calendar year preceding the assessment year. And then the requests are processed in the same manner as the comprehensive plan amendment as required by RCW eighty four point three four point zero three seven. This means the request must be reviewed by the Planning Commission before being forwarded to the Clark County Council for final approval.

And so this year makes the thirty fifth year that the county has reviewed these applications for the assessment. Next slide, please. The current use program has been in place since 1970 and is intended to help preserve open space lands, the natural resources, and scenic values that relate to the public benefit. Historically, Clark County has enrolled thousands of acres in open space. And so for example here, since I've been on, I got a couple numbers for 2019.

We've had 8,796 acres enrolled over 582 owners. And then as of this year, with some updated numbers, we have sorry, it looks like this slide didn't get updated. So the 2026 numbers are 8,171 acres and 584 owners, not four thousand six twenty five and two forty five. That was a

Thanks for that correction.

Was Correction there.

Yeah. Question. It was alarming me. So thank you.

Yeah. So with the right numbers here, it's only about a 7% difference where the acreage has decreased about 625 acres. And then the next slide, that number might also be incorrect as well just because of the last number, but the market value for open space land of April 28 is $2,008,809 $289,448,317 and current use values, 2,821,280. And we could give you those updated numbers after this presentation. And next slide, please.

So our open space categories versus the counties in the state, we've adopted most all of the program requirements that the state offers, but there are some that we haven't. And so what we have is included conservation enhancement of natural resources, stream protection, soil conservation, the enhancement of recreational opportunities, and historical sites. Next slide, please. And so for this review cycle, we have the we had three cases, the one being pulled. So we have tonight for you two open space applications for the historical site application review is the fee was updated, is now $2,282 for the processing and review.

Next slide, please. We also have some approval criteria related to every application, although some, like historical sites, can be, tracks less than five acres. And the second would be an effective noxious weed program, which the, County Noxious Weed Management Program offers the applicants the ability to, abide by the program. Next slide, please. So historical sites in Clark County Code, it means applications for open space are based on the preservation of historical sites, and they'll only be limited to historical sites and land containing such structures.

So as long as they are listed on the local, state, or national historical register and protected as such. And again, these could be less than five acres. Next slide. So our first application is the William Frederick Kaufman House. The applicant requested 0.52 acres located at 8104 Northeast 10 7th Avenue.

The on-site review confirmed the presence of the Frederick Building Kaufman House, which was built in 1912 and is listed on our Clark County Heritage Register. So based on the structure and meeting the code, we recommend approval of the 0.52 acres. Next slide, please. Here's kind of a overview slide that shows where the property is within the county, outlined there in yellow. Next slide.

Has a couple photos of the house where it's still intact and on the register. Next slide, please. Last application is OPS202602, the bakery building located at 506 Washington Street. This applicant requested 0.9 acres and historically was a blacksmith shop machinist in the late eighteen hundreds and then later became the Royal Bakery Building Company in 1911. And so this is also listed on our Clark County Heritage Register and meets the open space criteria.

And we recommend to prove the 0.09 acres on that. Next slide shows an overview of where it's at located, and the next slide, please, shows a couple historical picture and a current picture. And next slide, that'll conclude staff's presentation and happy to answer any questions.

Are there any questions from council? Sure. Go ahead.

Yeah. Thank you for this. I'm just trying to learn a little bit more about what the advantages of to the landowner are of switching to open spaces or different taxation rate, and what would be the difference overall on impact to the county revenue? Or do yeah.

Sure. Depending on which program and really, it's kind of like, looking towards the future. So if, you know, surrounding areas, going to, say, expand in urban growth. And then the now the current use on those properties, the market rate is higher because homes could be built versus, you know, farming or such, or protecting trees, or with this program with the different qualifications of historical property, your land would then be taxed the same as that use currently. So and Kevin could explain more.

So it

and I

so what

it does is it taxes it at the current use rather than its highest and best use. So like the example that Hunter gave, residential development versus agriculture, residential development would be a higher and better use, and so it would have a higher higher tax rate. And so that's the benefit to the owner of the property is they get a much lower tax rate. The the assessor would have to answer the specifics about what that means, but it's generally a pretty substantial decrease, 70 to 80%. And that that doesn't mean that there's an impact to the county. It means that that tax is redistributed throughout the taxing district. So the the county still takes in the same amount of tax. It's just that that owner gets a lower rate.

Makes sense. Thank you.

And also for reference, this RCW eighty four thirty four that Hunter mentioned is the same same RCW where we've been talking about public benefit rating system. So and conservation futures.

Okay. Go ahead.

Chair, just a really quick question. Now these, can be any historic sites in the county, so not, only an unincorporated Clark County. Correct?

Anywhere in the county.

Anywhere in the county.

Anywhere in the county. And they have to be listed on the local, state, or national historic register. Right. Thank you.

Go ahead. Yes. I have quite a few comments and questions on this one. You know, some of the nuance of this, was not able to read through the RCW in its entirety, but it's it's open space. Right?

But this one location is point zero nine acres, which I think is around 4,000 square foot of which the entire site is building. There is no open space. So, yeah, you know, the other thing in the early your earlier question, I actually asked our county assessor to see what the the impact is of all of the values that have been reduced to, you know, conform with the program. And the overall impact to the county is the median home pays about $10 a year to, subsidize the this this program, essentially. So there is a public cost to it.

Public benefit. I I fully believe in historic preservation. The program has a penalty if you, basically, if you pull it out or if it you know? One of the things I'm concerned with is historic preservation, the ultimate concern is demolition. You know?

And somebody could own a property for twenty five years, essentially pay very, very little taxes for ten years. The other folks in the county cover that for them, and then they could demolish the building and only have to pay back seven years of the forgiven tax on that. And you have to I I have to ask myself at this point, what what was the public benefit? I mean, if the building's gone, we didn't really preserve anything. You know?

So I'm I'm supportive of going ahead and improving these at these tie this time because it does meet the criteria, but I'm I'm hoping that the council would be willing to have a work session to look into this, look into the the the local code County code, and look at public benefits versus the the cost and probably involve the historic preservation commission, any other staff that would have input on that. But I would like to take a look at this program.

I think it would be good to look at this program if we, looked a little more deeply into public benefit rating system. We could actually prioritize what the public benefit is. And that's we were on the track to do that a few years ago, and a lot of really good work was involved with that. And, Hunter, I know you were involved with that. So I see this as part of that, examination to really look at this, just for the historic sites, but all of the potential public benefits.

And the total number, I think you had it in here somewhere, total number of properties at this time are, I think five hundred and eighty eighty four was the corrected number. So that's the that's the total and, and around 8,000 acres.

Yeah. 8,171 acres.

Great. Any other questions? Okay. Hearing none, we'll open this up for public comment. Thanks for clarifying some things for us. So and again, this public hearing is on the current use, applications, really the two for those, historic, buildings. Okay.

Carmen De Leon.

Yeah. So, I'm Carmen de Leon, go by Melo de Leon, and I just read this. And it says that the bridge is on the National Historic Site. So when you think about demolishing the bridge, look at your picture over there. It says that the Ipai Bridge is a historic bridge preserved in what he just named cannot be touched. So maybe you should even look at your own walls and discover that tearing down the bridge is a bad idea. Adding others is a better idea. That's your I didn't write that. That's been there for years. So anyways, that distracted me.

So anyways, what you're talking about is farmland. So just so you know, there is a chocolate shortage in Africa, and your 500 people who you're so caring about their money seems to outweigh the needs of 500,000 people who live in Clark County. Because we have just about 500,000 residents who do not want our farmland desecrated anymore. And I do recommend finding people who will make toilet paper out of bamboo because it grows like crazy. And they can make hemp ropes, they can make houses, and actually, like I've said before, in the whole country, where can you go and make a fireproof house?

Start growing hemp, start making hemp blocks, and you can offer the first place in the whole country a fireproof ex establishment, whether that be a home or a firework stand that can't catch fire. So maybe we should have the farmlands that you say need to make more money have make them make hemp.

Carmen And bamboo. Is not related to farms.

Said farmland and that his people wanna make more money. Okay. You want more houses on the farmland. Right?

The two applications are for historic buildings.

I'm not a professional. Okay? I'm not a hired hand like everybody else. I'm going off what he just said. He said about the farmland, I'm telling you how to make more money off farmland because there's a chocolate shortage, and they're they can make money off other things.

Is these two historic buildings.

Okay.

If you wanna comment on those two historic buildings.

So this is this this is doesn't apply that he just talked about these things about the farmland. He just said the farmland, and the 500 people wanna make money, and they wanna help those 500 people make money and screw the 500 other citizens of Clark County. That's my understanding then. The layperson, like 500,000 other people in this country. Oh, are you calling security on me? Am I not allowed to say I'm a layperson that doesn't understand? Because you talk about farms. State to the topic,

which is the two historic buildings.

Okay. Well, the two historic buildings should be left alone. K? And if they wanna mess with them, they should consider looking at the walls because we don't tear down historic things as he just said. We preserve them, and IFi bridge counts.

Thank you. Is there anyone else?

Chair, we don't have anybody signed up, but we do have one online.

Great.

Caller, you've been sent a request to unmute. Please go ahead and do so. State your name for the record, and go ahead with your comment.

Kimberly Goheen Elbon. So when you speak about all this stuff, it does bring into other things. I I get that. We certainly want this open space. I'd like to see these applications, passed, of course. I mentioned that mister Fuentes did not, mention where he works. I'll say on that record. I'm gonna say that as past chair mister Medvedji stated a few years ago, there will be another pandemic. I call it a plan demic to gain control over the people. But these open spaces that has been said, are for the public's benefit must not be closed when the, pandemic occurs.

So we don't want any open spaces closed should that happen. I suggest to start now to educate the people how to take care of our open spaces. Involve the people here with all these decisions that you are doing with our business. They need to be educated to clean up after themselves and not pollute and all that stuff. So and I get that.

But historical sites were mentioned. And I'm gonna bring up Kimmins Landing in La Center. It is a historical site. This is the time to talk about this. This is an open public comment hearing about historical sites, and it was voted by the well, the center of citizens for decades to have Timmins Landing remain a historical land with that have trees that eagles have homes in.

But left center deemed the eagle as not essential at one time, and I caught that. And then on their for their legal application to develop Timmins Landing, they changed it to that and then became important again. So they they wanna destroy the historical side of Timmins Landing and did it against the will of the people on their agenda last year. I want this council to hold the center accountable as they did not legally inform the people that there was a way that we could legally refute their finding, their vote, and they did not do that. So in all aspect, we want open spaces.

We wanna keep our historical farm, and we wanna keep our historical Himmons Landing here in La Center because the view is beautiful. There's eagles all day long, let alone other bird and habitat. So educate people on how we can stop the development there at Timmins Landing, possibly open up the I 5 Corridor for us, and, so we can build up there and leave Tim

Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else?

That concludes public comment, sir.

Okay. Then moving back to the topic, are there any questions that came up for anyone? Are we ready to, make a motion to approve these two open space applications?

Sure. I move to approve resolution number 2026Dash05Dash02.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded. All in favor, aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thanks very much.

Okay. Let me check with counsel. Do you wanna we go into open public comment or keep moving ahead?

Yeah. We'll two we'll take a five.

Five? Okay. Thank you. We'll be back in five minutes. Quarter tail.

Corded and summarized.

Okay. Thanks for everyone's patience. We've returned from our break, and now it's open public comment and public comment on the consent and separate business items. Is anyone signed up?

John Polos? I'm sorry.

He's coming up with his, diorama.

And I am going to be solving a problem for you, and that's the one that's been dumped on you, the PPNL high voltage power line problem. I'm involved in this for one and only one reason, I'm trained to do it. A, I'm one of only seven people in the state that is a registered civil and registered electrical engineer. B, I spent twenty eight years running high voltage power operations at BPA. So I'm gonna present to you the solution to the problem and then I'll cover why I believe those facts are right to support it.

If you remember two months ago, I gave you a presentation where I said do not tear down the I 5 Bridge based on engineering reasons, not based on anything else. Okay. Thank you. PP and L has proposed a power line through Clark County Eastern, it goes near the city of Battle Ground and a lot of people came in and complained to you a month ago and I was in that group, I said nothing. The solution to the problem is you can't stop a train and you can't stop eminent domain.

If they wanna build it, they're gonna build it. So what we're gonna do is modify what they're doing to be something more acceptable to the people of Clark County. PP and L wants to put in a two pole hundred two hundred and thirty thousand volt line, I'll explain that in a minute and it has some EMF, electric and magnetic field and a few other things instead of building the 230 kV two pole line, we build a 120, 115, 120,000 volt single pole line and we can double string it and carry the same amount of power. So that's the solution, that we came up with and all the people that were in here complaining are buying in on it and we're trying to get PP and L to buy in on it. Now, what is voltage?

Voltage is the water pressure of electricity. It produces an electric field. Current produces a magnetic field and the two combined are called EMF and two thirty is a little high, 500 kV is higher. There's only four voltages, 502, 345,000 not shown and a 120 or a 115 k v. The way you tell is you count the insulators multiplied by 20,000, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Oh, I get a 120,000 volts, it must be a 115 kV line, count the insulators. So again, voltage is the water pressure of electricity and it produces current flow in amps. You multiply the two together, 10 volts producing 10 amps of current is 100 watts of power. Thank you very much. And I appreciate you listening.

Thank you.

Carmen de Leon.

Nice job, man. I'm Carmen Carmen De Leon. I go by Melo. Just to reiterate, Idaho gained 1,000,000,000 and Montana Montana added 500,000,000 in wealth as Washington lost half 1,000,000,000 according to IRS immigration figures cited by Mountain States Policy Service. Hamas commander, our issue is not with Palestine.

Our issue is killing every non Muslim. We will pursue Jews, Christians all over the world, either they convert to Islam or we kill them. I would say our president is protecting us by not allowing these types into the country. Here's one more. As Islamic teacher, when Muslims become the majority in the West in the next forty years, non Muslims will have to convert, pay jitsa, or be killed because of Sharia law rule.

Now let me make this clear. We've lost over a 100 five hundred million babies to abortion while these people marry their first cousin and have 10 kids. So when they say in the next twenty, forty years, they're gonna outbreed us. So when you tell people, oh, you breed? Yes. I do very proudly. I have kids. You should have some too and stop murdering babies because we obviously need them. These people are being trained, and I have seen the videos of them training their kids to, say, five years old, you must kill every Christian. Really?

Because my God says respect life. My God gives you a chance to converge. He doesn't say, if you don't do do what I say, I'm gonna kill you. And here are some more Koran quotes. Just a couple here. Hold on. I got it right here. This is from the Koran. Slay all infidels. That's me. What is it? Oh, gosh. Show on crucify infidels criticizing Islam. That's me. Unbelievers are stupid Muslims need to fight them.

They do not bring peace, they bring war if we don't do as they say. That's called titarian titilitarianism, when they you better do what they say or they kill you. Muslims must not take the infidels as friends, and by the way, they are allowed to lie to your face, And and if it means that either they convert you or they have to kill you, and like I said before, don't give me 40 virgins. Give me 40 professionals. That's no price.

And they're lying to these little boys that women are going to be their servants in eternity. So where's all the the women's saying, where's women's rights? Here's another one, Quran 9.5, when the opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them. Did you just give those types of proclamation? I don't know what their religion was, but Koran twenty two nineteen says, punish the infidels with garments and hook and irons and boiling water Okay. Your time is up. Until their skins melt.

Your time is up.

That's all we have signed up in the room. We do have three online, chair. K. Caller, you've been sent a request to unmute. Please go ahead and do so. State your name for the record, and go ahead with your comment.

My name is Heidi Pozzo. In 1999, after the first Salmon Creek development paused, WSU Vancouver became concerned about their ability to grow given the lack of infrastructure. So they entered into a development agreement with the county to ensure they would have transportation capacity available as the area grew. That agreement expired in December 2025 and appears to have fallen through the cracks due to significant leadership turnover at WSU. Staff is advised that because the agreement expired, WSU's reserve trips will no longer be included when evaluating new developments in the area, effectively giving those trips away and capping WSU's ability to grow.

This is not how to treat a valued partner. Clark County and WSU Vancouver have a deep partnership spanning decades, workforce development, public health, education, not to mention a number of infrastructure improvements. The council should not allow a lapsed agreement to foreclose WSU's future without a deliberate conversation about the disposition of those trips. WSU deserves the chance to negotiate a renewed agreement not to discover after the fact that their capacity was given away. Separately, you have the right of way acquisition on your docket related to the 1 79th Corridor.

Before committing to that investment, consider whether the design assumptions still hold up. Developer commissioned traffic studies for projects along this corridor have been showing volume to capacity and intersection failures for years. The volume to volume of traffic being improved will overwhelm the capacity of the road you are building. This is not my opinion. It is what the traffic studies commissioned for each development shows.

Every recent concurrency staff report for this corridor includes the same language that volume to capacity ratios should be used as an indicator that these roadway segments should be subjected to site specific study with a more detailed operational analysis before any major design, reconstruction, or investment decisions are made. The right of way acquisition before you is a major design and investment decision. Your own staff is telling you that the analysis has not been done. Council should direct staff to complete that analysis before committing to the current design and additional land acquisition or stop approving developments that add traffic to a corridor your own reports say cannot handle it. I'm asking that council do two things.

First, before allowing WSU's trips to be absorbed by other development, ensure the county and WSU agree on the disposition of that capacity. A partnership this important should not be ended by overs by oversight. Second, direct staff to complete the operational analysis their own reports say as needed before committing to additional right of way acquisition and corridor design. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller, you've been sent to request to unmute. Please go ahead and, do so. State your name for the record, and go ahead with your comment.

Good morning, counsel. This is Jackie Lane. I would like to comment on consent agenda number two, appointments, specifically the reappointment of James Housley to Deed. I believe it is important that people who serve on advisory boards for the county should be people who live in Clark County. They should be a part of the community that they are impacting. Mister Housley represents clients who stand to benefit from recommendations that Deeb has made, but he is not a part of our Clark County community. He lives in Portland, I believe. Thank you.

Thank you.

Caller, you've been sent a request to unmute. Please go ahead and do so. State your name for the record, and go ahead with your comment.

Kimberly Goheen Elvin. We need the name of the first speaker, that man, to be put put to the record. I did we didn't introduce himself. Well, there's nothing like having a 10AM council meeting of the people's business with a total of 26 consent and separate business items you will pass, and most of your bosses, we the people, are struggling to pay high gas prices to keep their jobs and food on the table and the constant inhumane pressure to vaccinate slash jab their school children. Put the effort into actually teaching our children instead of dumbing them down.

The proclamation for court employees is greatly appreciated. Yet as I'm involved with bringing awareness to the public about our broken law and justice judicial system. Many of these hard workers, dedicated backbone of the broken system have a clean conscience, and it's only a matter of time before they speak up about the injustice happenings that occurred daily in the superior district and juvenile court system. This sanctuary socialist form of government must get back on track of serving the people with constitutional true justice. Again, I'm doing my best to bring awareness and welcome all who can help.

The proclamation of national corrections officers is also warranted, yet our system here, thanks to the unelected county manager, has deemed our correction services unaccountable to We The People, and this system is also broken. I know of bad correction officers that do not treat inmates humanely. No accountability as I make weekly complaints as I support and advocate for not only my son, Cleve Gohin Rengo, but all others who suffer unjust circumstances. The mention of bringing back trust in our judicial and correction systems is and will happen as I serve the will of the people to correct a broken system as I inform the people of services, excuse me, of serious issues. My son is held not as presumed innocent, but punished as guilty.

I also question why lead criminal prosecutor Dan Gasparino and lead Clark County public defender Christopher Swaby have both stated to me that they listen to every word I say. I think they want to entrap me or find that I say something wrong. But as I speak, what I consider the truth in bringing awareness, I fear not. When my son, Cleve, is found not guilty, among other actions we will take to rectify the illegal injustice he has endured. I will also have him take a blood test to get the levels of toxic fluoride and heavy metals such as lead as I put on record to this council and you as the board of health of inmates drinking daily fluoridated water through lead pipes, and nothing is being done.

I'll tell the people that I hear the judges

Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else?

That concludes public comment, chair.

Okay. Great. Then let's move on to the consent agenda. Are there any items that anyone would like to pull? Chair? Yes. Go ahead.

I'd like to pull items four, six, and 13.

Four, six, and 13. I'd like to pull two. I just have a brief comment. Any other items? Okay. Then I'll entertain a motion to approve consent agenda items one through 20 with the exception of two, four, six, and thirteen. Is there a motion? So moved. Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. You. Now, item two, county council appointments and letter letters of acceptance. Just to respond to the commenter, I have, mentioned in the past the need to really look at all of our boards and commissions. They we've added some over the years. Their bylaws have changed. There's different, requirements for some as far as duration.

There's just I think it's important to add some continuity to all our boards and commissions and to really look at their scope, to see if it is what we want them to be advising us on. It's one of those in part housekeeping chores that we've just needed to keep up with. I think resolving conflicts, it's not clear to me how any of the boards and commissions may address that. But this is just to say I appreciate the commenters' comment. And with Deebe in particular, it is allowed that someone can live they need to live or work in Clark County.

So and so that's the case with DEEP. I don't know if that's the case with other with other boards and commissions, but I'd just like to express that need. K. Is there a motion?

Motion to approve consent agenda item number two.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

There there's a second. Okay. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Motion carries. Thank you. Then moving on to item four. Councilor Young, you pulled that one.

Yes, chair. Just wanted to pull it out and highlight that this is the work of our accessible community advisory committee. They have gone through. They were able to secure a grant to pay for some brochures that are that they're able to give out and disperse into the community to increase awareness of their their what their their goals and what they're able to accomplish. So that was all I wanted to do is just pull it out and recognize their work.

Great. Thank you for that. It's been a very active, committee. Appreciate their work. Any other comments on this one?

I'll move approval of consent agenda item number four. Second.

Moved and seconded. All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Okay. Moving on to item six.

Six, I just felt like it was worthy of pulling out. This has it almost kinda came up a little bit in our previous discussion with the CDBG funding. But this is the building that is in Battleground that is currently used by CEMAR for for WIC, if you recall. I just wanted to give a quick report that the board had extensive conversations on this property, and ultimately, I believe it was unanimous recommendation that the county do sell the building and and gave staff some instructions on timing to ensure that we don't because when that fund those funds go back into the pool, it starts messing with our timeliness issue that I've mentioned earlier. So there are ways that we have looked to, mitigate that, but just wanted to pull it for if there was any questions that the council had.

I do have a question. I was wondering about Seamar is currently located there, and I think there have been concerns expressed as we've talked about this where they will be located. Next, is there any update on that?

Well, they we had invited them multiple times, and they did come at least one, maybe two meetings. The last one they were not there to be able to answer our questions but they had said and indicated that they had abilities, the ability in other facilities that they're operating to move the services to those places.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved. Second.

Moved and seconded. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay. That brings us to 13.

Yes. Item 13, I just wanted to pull because it's Camp Bonneville, which there's a significant interest in all those issues. So staff would just give a real brief, explanation of what we're what we're doing here.

Thank you, counselor. For the record, Jennifer Coker, deputy director of public works here with Bonneville compliance manager, Betsy Wing, and I'll turn this over to lands division manager, Kevin Tyler.

Good morning, counsel. For the record, Kevin Tyler, lands management division manager with the Clark County Public Works. And today, we're asking for you to approve a resolution, that essentially approves an agreement with Department of Natural Resources to house their forward operating base for helicopter operations at Camp Bonneville. We've been doing this since 2019. So every year from essentially May through October, a DNR helicopter forward operating base will be established at Camp Bonneville, and they're allowed to stay there and use the site for their helicopter operations, which help fight fire in the region.

And I think the major highlight from this year is that we upped the the rent about $500 a month. So that's the the one big difference.

Okay. Has there been any improvements to their, because they spent do they stay overnight?

They do stay overnight. We have not made any improvements, but we have, facilities coming out to do a walk with us, actually. Is that this week or next week, to look at how we reinvest that money into these structures, both for public works benefit and for DNR's benefit.

Great. Thank you. Is there a motion to approve?

So moved.

Thank you.

Second.

Second. Yeah. And I would just say this is really important to have a forward site so there could be rapid response. I think the DNR has had success over the years in being able to do that, that rapid response. So it's very good that we can accommodate that. Okay. With that, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries. Thank you.

12346.

Okay. Here we are clipping along. We're on to separate business item one, internal services. Michelle is here to talk about our garage.

Good morning again, counsel. Michelle Shuster, director of internal services. And I'm here today to request that we increase our public parking spots rates. And there's a number of factors that's driving this. One is the City of Vancouver has recently implemented a new tax on downtown visitor parking that applies to public and private lots not owned by the city also.

And so for each transaction we do in our parking meters, we have to pay them 15¢ to that parking tax to the city. So, each month we run a report to determine how many people have parked in our lots and pay them $0.15 of each transaction. And that started as of January 1. Also, we haven't raised our rates since 2018 in those parking meters. It's been $1.25 per hour with a three hour maximum.

And so our cost of repairing machines, the upkeep on the machines, our credit card fees, our fees that we have to pay to the company that we purchased the machines from, from the software, it all continues to increase. And so what we're looking for is to do a $0.20 per transaction increase for 2026. So, bring it up from $1.25 per hour to $1.45 per hour. And then also an annual increase after this of $05 per year and $02 of that $05 would go to the City of Vancouver because they have a built in annual increase into the tax of 2¢. And then the other 3¢ would go to other annual increases for things to cover the parking meter repairs.

Great. Thank you. Are there any questions?

Yeah. So the twenty cents is a per transaction. So it's not per hour. It's just the minimum amount you pay to park there is going up by 20¢.

Correct.

Okay.

Mhmm.

Yeah. Yeah. So people can plug the meter for one hour, two hours, or three hours. And so we'd want the $0.20 to be per that transaction. So if they did a one hour transaction, it's $0.20 because I'm giving $0.15 of that to the City of Vancouver. If it's a two hour plug meter, then it's still the $0.20 $0.15 of that going to the City of Vancouver.

SPEAKER Okay. And we definitely do need to collect for repair of that machine because I think it's broken more than it works.

SPEAKER Yeah. And we have the part that was actually under warranty for that one. And we have the part we're just waiting for their warranty support to come out and actually install the part now.

Great. Okay. Any go ahead. Sure.

Has there been thought put into having it be an annual increase by percentage versus a straight $0.5 amount? Because the percentage would change over time base if it was a set number.

So the city's increase is the $02 for a year. So we know that. We could look at something different for the other $03 and do that portion as a percentage. But we do need to collect at least $02 to give the city raises to $17 next year, then $19 the year after. So we would need at least a commitment at the $02 So we just figured the

Yeah.

Don't know what others think. Just Yeah. Having us set amount of the excess based on like inflation would be a little bit more equitable, I think, than having a set $0.03 every year.

Yeah. We just need something that's easy for

the

machines to calculate too. And so raising it by $05 as opposed to a percentage that may not equal a nice rounded to plug into the parking meters.

I get that. I guess if you did that, you'd have to add up.

Yeah. Add up or down.

Up or down. Round it. Yeah. What do others think?

Other thoughts?

No. It sounds like we're just what we also wanna stay in lockstep with the increases that the city of Vancouver has applied.

Mhmm.

Right? And so just kinda makes sense for us to kinda kinda stay in lockstep with them.

Other comments? If not, I'll entertain a motion to approve.

Motion to approve separate business item number

one. Thank you. Any

I'll second.

Okay. Moved and seconded. All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Aye. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Moving on to public works. Jeff Snobel. Hi there. So bioretention facility. Tell us all about it. Okay. Who's starting here?

I'll I'll start.

Okay. Alright. Good afternoon, chair. Good afternoon, council. I had to check the clock.

There it is afternoon. So for the record, Jeff Schnabel, Clean Water Division, infrastructure and assessment services manager. Item number two on separate business here for you today is to authorize the county manager to sign a professional services contract and any future amendments with Environmental Incentives Incorporated for our bioretention facility community based public private partnership development. When last we talked with you about this this topic, we were here back in August 2025 asking counsel to approve a grant for about $360,000 from the Department of Ecology to fund this work to develop a possible CBP3 program. Specifically, we're looking to use this program to help us maintain our large fleet of bio retention facilities within the county.

We have about 600 of those style of facilities. They are vegetated treatment and flow control facilities. You'll see them oftentimes along roadways, Highway 99th, 119th places like that. And we have a lot of them in our subdivision areas as well. So they are a thing that requires some fairly specialized maintenance, maintenance that it's a little more difficult for us to provide with our internal forces.

And so this looked like a good opportunity for us to sort of explore this possibility of a CBP3, more of a performance based contracting model. So we've been participating in Clean Water in Ecology's Learning Network for CBP3 for a couple of years now. And they've been generous enough to offer us grant funding to support this work. So the last time we were here, you all encouraged us to proceed by accepting that grant. This is the next step to now implement the Phase one program development.

So this is to sign a contract with environmental incentives to begin developing that CBP three. So it's a $270,000 contract. Again, this is a fully funded 100% no match required grant. So this month, this this work will be funded under that existing grant as well as some internal work by staff to support the process.

Can I interject for the record real quick? The acronym CBP three stands for Community Based Public Private Partnership.

Why the three?

Three piece.

Public private partnership. Yeah. You

had to spell it out

for Just to make difficult, counselor.

That's what they do.

Great. Thank you. Does that conclude your presentation? Yeah.

I I'm happy to answer some questions.

Okay. Are there any Well, I think maintenance is a critical component, monitoring and maintenance. You can spend a lot of money on these things and but unless you're monitoring and maintaining them, it's not gonna work as well. So I think this is a great step forward. Everyone, no more questions? I'll entertain a motion to approve.

I move separate business item number two. Second.

Moved and seconded. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Thank you very much.

Thank you, counsel. Thank you, counsel.

Okay. Item three. Oh, this is to, approval for to purchase full electric equipment and trucks utilizing the state of Washington's, transportation was ZIP incentive program. I just felt like I needed to say was ZIP here. So please go ahead, Tyler.

Had to read the instructions. I apologize. Thank you, counselors, chair. For the record, my name is Tyler Bennett. I am the fleet services division manager within public works for Clark County.

The Washington State Zero Emissions Vehicle Incentive Program, WASIP, was launched in 2025 to help more businesses switch to commercial medium and heavy duty zero emissions vehicles and equipment. Funded by the Climate Commitment Act and managed by the Washington State Department of Transportation administered by CalSTART, the program provides point of sale discounts to make cleaner vehicles more affordable, while Zip is a new point of sale voucher program that lowers the cost of zero emissions vehicles and commercial equipment right at purchase so buyers don't have to wait for rebates or file extra paperwork. Dealers handle the paperwork, and customers see the savings immediately, making it easier and faster to transition to zero emissions technology. Over $112,000,000 is available for Wazip vouchers for fiscal years 'twenty five to 'twenty seven. The 2026 incentives became available 04/28/2026, and funds are available until they're exhausted.

To align with the county's green transition, Fleet has identified t ninety zero five ninety and t ninety nineteen seventy four for our jail services division that are ideal candidates to be replaced with battery electric vehicles that qualify for the WADSUP incentives. These trucks regularly experience emissions related issues due to the short regular duty cycle of the Jill's logistics operations. Fleet is requesting a onetime budget increase in the amount of $129,932 and approval for the purchase of two battery electric vehicle trucks to replace the current trucks. In the staff report, you'll see that the base price for these trucks are roughly $386,254 apiece. WASIIP incentive covers a $135,000, which gives us a remainder of $251,254 These vehicles are a part of our ER and R program and already have capital collections in the ER and R fund.

So the delta for that difference, BEVs being significantly more expensive than their diesel comparative vehicles, we need the additional $129,000 for both of them to cover that delta difference. In addition to those two battery electric trucks, Fleet and Public Works operations and maintenance has identified asset x 300418, a cat loader that was retired or was replaced a few years ago and is scheduled to be retired in 2027 as a candidate to be replaced with a battery electric backhoe loader that also qualifies for the WOSSIP incentive program. The fleet is requesting onetime budgeting in the amount of $108,700 and approval for the acquisition of the Case CE580EV battery electric backhoe loader. This piece of equipment is significantly more attractive to us as Wazip covers of the $400,000 initial acquisition, covers $333,500 The county's required input is only $108,700

Are there questions?

Sure. Really quick Yes.

Go ahead.

I know you mentioned that the fleet identified as a T90-five 90 and T90-nineteen 74. Will you just briefly describe what that I don't know what that

So

vehicle those are Freightliner m two business class box trucks. So they are gross vehicle weight of 26,000 pounds, and they're used to transport stuff for our jail services department.

Thank you.

Other questions? Go ahead.

This is great. Are are we maxing out our Wazip incentive possibilities here?

To the extent that we can currently. We've went through the so the state of Washington Department of Transportation has a preapproved list that dealers have to go to the state and say, we have a battery electric vehicle that we believe is acceptable to due to the program guidelines. The state of Washington then takes that vehicle purchase price and will preassign all of the vehicle incentives. So the dealer has no input. It's all through the state of Washington.

We've reviewed every available vehicle that is on the Wozip. It it gets updated all the time. And at this time, we believe that these are our three prime candidates, that we, could try verify that they do work for the county's operating cycle before we make larger purchases in the future.

K. Thanks for doing this.

Thank you. Other questions? Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you for bringing this forward. I'm super interested in in the the backhoe. I mean, that's gotta have a massive battery pack on that thing. Does it is it rated for, like, a certain number of hours per day, or how do they do that?

Well, depending on your actual use cycle of that vehicle, they they estimated about an eight hour work cycle with a forty five minute charge, midday, so roughly a break, a lunch break. So we're we're hoping that the area that this piece of equipment is lower duty cycle. But because it's lower duty cycle, we'll actually be able to take it and move it around the county to verify whether it's not gonna work in some of our more rural areas that have a higher duty cycle than our centralized 78th Street location where this will be housed.

Okay. And I I completely appreciate that we're we're moving forward with this because it's only a matter of time until we're required anyway, and this allows us to to dabble into it and understand what the implications are gonna be and start building the infrastructure around it while doing so with minimal local fund investment. Obviously, we're paying more for these now because the technology is so new. As time progresses, the prices will decrease. But one of the things that I would hope that you would be willing to do is compare these pieces of equipment side by side to standard diesel equipment that we normally would purchase and so we can really get a a hard number in terms of savings on maintenance, fuel and such.

It can be a little tricky because you plug it in, you don't really know how many kilowatt hours go into it. But if we can try to figure out what the cost savings is and how much of that additional $100,000 we might get back, I probably doubt at this point that we'll get the whole thing, but you never know. And I was interested in, like, with the backhoe, what is our our typical policy for, like, number of hours before we retire the equipment?

Right now, we're at a fifteen year life life cycle for

So we go by years as opposed to hours?

We we do have in the, replacement, policy, a hour equivalent. But right now, we're focused on year based acquisitions. It's easier for us to plan and strategically spend money equitably instead of having unexpected expenses come and hit us where we might use a piece of equipment a lot in one year because of snowstorm or a FEMA rated event, where a year based allows us to take that planning effort and actually be able to go out twenty years. So we kind of know from a financial aspect where we're at at a much more reasonable state.

Okay. I just have a very high level of interest in this. So as it rolls out, you could just update me on how the equipment is working, I'd love to have that.

Absolutely. And with the, telematics that electric vehicles have, we will be actually be able to tell you how many kilowatts went into that vehicle, and and it'll be a part of our, in the the policy that we met with one on ones, when we start coming up yearly, with that yearly annual report, what some of our fuel cost savings might have been compared to the internal combustion equivalents.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Fuentes, are you excited about backhoes two?

Probably not as excited as councilor Young,

but I do have a

couple of more questions. I just heard the the excitement in his voice. Comparatively, what is the cost of a similar diesel vehicle?

I printed it out just in case you asked. So on the backhoe, for example, the diesel equivalent of the unit that we're purchasing, its purchase price is $135,000 We're purchasing one at $400,000 So quite a significant increase. And on our box trucks, still a significant increase. But in the staff report, we did call that out because these are replacements. We would expect about a 100 anywhere from 173 to a $190,000 per unit. Mhmm. And we're spending 380,000 per unit.

May May is the incentive. Right? Yeah. Yeah. When do we expect to have these vehicles delivered?

Right now, it is up in the air. So what after if council approves, we will then reach out to the dealers with our intent to purchase. Then they will submit all the paperwork to the state. The state will then rubber stamp our application Mhmm. That says we are gonna meet the product or the program guidelines. We will keep it for at least three years. 75% of its use has to be in the state of Washington state. And we do have to allow for that telematics data to be interpreted by Wazip for, their program. Once we've, done all of that, we're looking at anywhere from twelve to eighteen months. Okay.

Just kinda depends on when our our application gets approved and when the manufacturer can fit us in.

And will you have a welcome ceremony? Because I think councilor Young would be very excited to cut the ribbon if that was the case. Actually, I'd be interested in being there as well. Yeah.

Twelve to eighteen months. So Twelve to eighteen see where I'm at, at least.

Oh, I'll jot that one down so that we can remember that.

Okay. Thank you. Let's see. So as I'm I'm, wondering, it looks as I just did a little bit of math here that the re funding request is $238,000 of which we'll save $270,000 because of the Wazip program. And so I'm wondering what the funding source is.

So there's three separate funding sources. One is the $15.91 ER and R fund. A portion of it is the county roads fund, which is the 101,000, dollar purchase for the backhoe loader. And then for the general fund is the $129,000.

Is it also, the 108,700?

The 108 is the, county road fund.

Oh oh, so that's that's a outfunding source. Okay. Great. Thank you. And, there's a budget note here. And, Kathleen, I don't know if you wanna summarize what, the budget note says as far as when we're going to this will come back to us in the fall.

Yes, any staff report that council considers during the year that has a budget impact that was not part of the budget process comes back during the fall supplemental to true up, excuse me, true up the technical financial allocation.

Okay. Just a reminder that we'll be looking at this again in the fall.

Yes. It'll come back as previously approved by council.

Previously approved. Okay. Great. Alright. Is there any other questions? And if not, I'll entertain a motion to approve.

Motion to approve separate business item number three.

Second.

Thank you. Moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you very much.

Thank you, councilmember. Oh,

you know, I just have another thought, because we're doing our comp plan update. And if this sort of thing can be included in our climate chain part of our climate change, response. I don't know if it this is too small of a, item, but that seems to me that it would be an important thing to include.

In a generalized sense, it is as the the comprehensive plan does have a commitment to transition. Okay. These vehicles in particular wouldn't be, but they are covered under the larger Larger. Right. Requirement to transition to, greener technology.

Great. Thank you. Okay. Councilor Fuentes, did you have anything?

I do not. I just well, I turned this off.

Okay. Then moving on to, we're on item four. County manager to execute a cooperative agreement with Washington State Department of Transportation for the vast traffic signal software and ATM as replacement project. Is someone gonna come forward and talk to us?

Have, Laura

Oh, Laura. Hey. Online. People were pointing at you, but I was looking at them. So, Laura, please, welcome.

Thank you so much. Good afternoon. For the record, I am Laura Hogut, transportation capital programming specialist. I have with me today transportation division manager, Steve Gallup, and transportation capital programming section manager, Chris Carl. They'll be here to help answer any questions you might have on this agenda item.

There are a couple of acronyms in the opening paragraph of our staff report that I just wanted to clarify. VaST stands for Vancouver Area SmartTrek, and ATMS stands for Advanced Traffic Management System. I'll go ahead and jump in. Clark County has been awarded 1,750,000 in federal grant funding from the congestion mitigation and air quality program for the vast trap traffic signal software and ATMS replacement project. 150,000 of that is for preliminary engineering, our first phase also called PE, and 1,600,000 for the construction phase work.

This project will evaluate the feasibility of transitioning to a unified vendor for signal controller hardware and software for the Washington State Department of Transportation, Clark County, and several small cities. The selected system will be implemented with support from the construction funding award if a new fan a new vendor is recommended through this work. The total project is estimated to cost 2,495,000, of which 740,000 of the grant funding match requirement will be prorated between Clark County and the Washington State department of transportation. This cooperative agreement authorizes monetary exchange and provides details of Washington State Department of transport transportation's portion of the project. And I will mention that the prorate is according to the number of signals that each jurisdiction operates.

So we're here and, welcome your questions as we, request that you authorize the county manager to execute this, this cooperative agreement.

Great. Thank you. Are there any questions from council? Go ahead, councilor Young.

Couple questions here. I I'm first of all, I'm curious. Is this something that is, like, kind of a pilot with Clark County, or is this happening all throughout the state?

So it's my understanding You might be familiar with our Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council, and they sponsor the the VAST network, which, again, is the Vancouver Area SmartTrek. And, within that group, it's my understanding that the city of Vancouver has switched to another provider, and, the larger group, including, state of Washington, Clark County, and five smaller cities, wanted to look at the feasibility of also switching so there was a a unified program throughout the region. And I welcome Steve to jump in and share any more that you might have.

Here he comes.

Steve Gallup, for the record, transportation division manager. The main reason for this project is because we're starting to get our controllers, traffic signal controllers, and our central kind of command traffic signal center is starting to get old. So we the first part of this project is to initiate basically an engineering study to look at our system, to look at the system that City of Vancouver is using, look at the system that WashDOT's using, and then make a recommendation off of that. And I think, eventually, the goal is for all three big agencies to to try to have the same system so we're all talking to each other. So that's kind of the main reason for this project.

Okay. So this is really something that needed to take place anyway, and we're able to take advantage of the grant funding to fund most of it?

That's correct.

Yes. Yep. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions? Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion.

Motion to approve separate business item number four.

Okay. Is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded. All in favor, aye. Aye. Aye. Carries. Thank you very much. All you. Thank you. K. Item five.

Request for approval authorizing the county manager to sign agreement, amendment number one on any future amendments to professional services with Windsor engineers for Philbrook Farms track d stormwater facility design. There we go. So we've heard about Philbrook Farm before, and it's good to see this moving forward. So please go ahead.

Yeah. Thank you, chair. Again, for the record, Jeff Schnabel with Public Works Clean Water Division, infrastructure and assessment services manager. I have Jenny Coker, deputy public works director with me to help answer any questions. So this item, an extension and an increase to a contract that we have with Windsor engineers.

They are currently working with us to try to sleuth out a solution and design that solution for the Filbrook Farms Track D stormwater facility. So I think most of you are familiar with this facility. It is the one where we have ponding within a park area occurring at a much more frequent rate than what was intended by the original design. And so we're trying to trying to get a handle on what's causing that issue and design a solution. So we're currently scoped and and currently planning to construct a solution out there next summer in 2027.

We are still under that schedule, even with this increase in cost and this in extension and the contract. So the contract that we're under with Windsor, what we've got is we've run into some more complicating factors on-site there than we had hoped when we first scoped this contract. And so what we needed to do in order to try to fix the problem is figure out what the underground layout looks like of this system. Not well documented. There were several different as built versions that came to light.

Nobody really knew which one we had. So we did have to do some underground exploration to figure that out, as well as figure out exactly what's wrong with the system, whether that's an infiltration rate problem or some sort of other issue, construction issue or otherwise. So the lower cost hoped for solutions that we scoped for didn't pan out. Things like ground penetrating radar and a few other things like that, that were helpful, but couldn't allow us to get the good look at what we had underground. So we ended up doing a little bit more excavation on-site to get ourselves into the system.

We brought in the folks from the manufacturer as well as local geotech firm that we've worked with quite a bit to kind of help us with that exploration. So what we've got now is we figured out what's wrong with the system. We know what the configuration is. We know that it is clogged, unfortunately, with sediment. We also know that, unfortunately, these types of systems don't lend themselves to being cleaned.

And so our options going forward are limited to tearing it out and replacing it entirely or leaving what we have under there, getting the level of function that we can out of it and then adding some additional functionality around the edges. And that's the goal of what we're heading for. That's our kind of our preferred alternative. So what this extension and increase of 140,000 for the contract will allow us to do is to finalize some of the modeling, looking at what the original anticipated configuration could do versus what the actual configuration can do versus what it can do in this in this sort of encumbered, clogged state. And so based on that, we can then design a solution that will get us out of this recurring flooding.

So again, we we think we're on schedule for a for a 2027 construct. But, unfortunately, we did we did see the need to sort of extend this budget a little bit to cover those unknowns. So but happy to answer any questions or discuss further.

Are there any questions? Go ahead. Councilor Young.

Yes. Do you know how many units, housing units this supports?

Offhand, no, but it is in the hundreds.

Mhmm.

It's a large development, multiple phases. There are four storm water facilities serving the entire community. So not all of those go to track d, but I think it's, you know, it's up up in the close to 100.

Yeah. And I'd just say that just to elevate something that I know very well is that clean water is very expensive. It's expensive for us to repair in this case. It's an expensive, and it is a large contributor to housing costs, unfortunately. I mean, it's something you have to do, but it is very expensive. I mean, you 400,000 for a couple 100 units probably, and that's just the design. I mean, just, you know, figuring out what we're gonna do is not actually the action. Yeah. But, yeah, that that's that that was all I had.

So what I wonder about this project is what we can learn from it. You know, as I I feel I feel like in the past, we heard that this is something the county inherited, And it was and so I I don't know what the process was to get this permitted. I think that's where you need to if we could understand, if we could learn from this, what what what are the takeaways that we don't wanna have happen again? Because the expense magnifies when you have to go back well, not you personally or the county, but whoever has to come back and and repair what's happened. And I know a lot of times with stormwater facilities, they go in during the construction phase, and a lot of sediment is generated during the construction phase, and maintenance, you know, is always an issue.

So I wonder with your preferred alternative, because I think we definitely need to move forward in correcting this, but how will the maintenance will we be able to do the maintenance? Because as you mentioned, this was constructed in a way that is very difficult to maintain. So if you could talk to the future maintenance.

Great question on the future maintenance. And and I don't know, Jenny or Regent, do you wanna talk at all or and then I can follow on with this

I wanted to

say specific. That Yeah.

We agree with you and division manager Devin as well as Jeff. It's always what are the lessons learned? How can we prevent this? And how do we look at our process going forward? And we are actively looking at that and tightening up these systems, especially because it it is expensive. And and many of these go in, and this is one of a handful that has been problematic and we're fixing and you're right, it is expensive. So Jeff, do you want to talk a little bit more about the planned maintenance?

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so you're absolutely right, Chair. These systems are vulnerable during construction and during build out, for sure. And also if there's not routine maintenance taking place to make sure that the water going into the system is already cleaned, right? So we looking at what we see underground there with the camera systems and the incursions that we made last fall, this system is plugged up pretty significantly, right?

And so question number one is where where do we get all that sediment from? And what we do know is that since construction, you know, the the water that's going in post construction is coming from the road surfaces, goes through a huge treatment vault that is maintained and inspected annually. So we believe that once we have this system sort of increased enough to take care of the overage, we'll be able to keep that because there's no, you know, additional large amounts of sediment source out there. Right? So we've got the the cartridges in place and we'll be able to kind of continually do that.

You're right that the system that's out there is not accessible. There were some access ports that were intended in the design that unfortunately did not ever get put in. This new system that we we add on is certainly going to have those access ports, those view ports. Although, we are still gonna be constrained by the overall design of these chamber systems and that is that the entire system is never actually designed to be accessed. Right?

So you may have multiple, you know, underground chambers, but only typically one row of a multi row system is designed to be accessed. They call it a sacrifice row. And that's where any additional sedimentation that might make it through your treatment BMP is supposed to settle out. And then you can get a, you know, piece of machinery or a vac in there. That you can clean out that one thing, but you can't get to the rest of the system. So if those get messed up, you're kind of stuck with it. And that's what we have in this situation. So we'll want to make sure that we have, you know, a really good handle on our treatment BMPs there going forward. So does that make sense?

It does make sense, but it makes me wonder if in the future, if this is a design that we want to be approving in the future, if it's if it is proven to be problematic?

That's a fair question, counselor. Yeah. Sure.

Well, I I have a couple more things. And I think it's a point of vulnerability because most, a lot of these are, supposed to be maintained by the HOA. And sometimes people who live in these communities aren't aware of that. And so are we going to be maintaining this facility going forward?

Yes. Yeah. Chair, we will definitely be doing that. And we and we're responsible for the one that's there already. Right? So k. This is that weird kind of multipurpose facility parcel. So Clean Water owns the parcel and we own all the underground stormwater facility infrastructure. The homeowners association owns all the surface amenities. So the playground equipment, basketball court, picnic tables, all that stuff, that's owned and maintained by the HOA.

So it'll stay with that arrangement that was set by the development when it came in as a planned unit development. So that will be the way we do it going forward. But yes, we'll continue to be taking care of that. And typically speaking, really big systems like this usually don't go to the HOA. They typically stick with with the county because they're really not something that a typical HOA is gonna be Good. Very able to take care of.

Good. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for that. And just keep us posted. And if you have any revelations of how we can do things differently, that'd be good to hear. Okay. Go ahead, councilor Young.

Yes. Thank you. And your your point is well taken in learning from this. One of the things that I would say is probably the building industry is probably cringing with this thing right now because they see well, first of all, the county shouldn't have to bear an expense like this, and so it's our duty to make sure that something like this doesn't happen in the future. You're looking at potential for more regulations, more rules, more inspections, things like that, exactly the things that the building industry does not want to add expense to their projects for sure, but there's a a public need here that does have to be addressed somehow.

I don't know how it ends up being addressed, but I definitely encourage you to to work with folks in the industry to see how it can be done to ensure that this does not happen again, but at the least impactful way possible in doing it.

So Yeah. I I can actually respond a little bit to that, counselor. So a couple things that that are in the works right now. So the stormwater code and manual currently in the process of being updated. We do that about every five years as the as the ecology cycle goes.

And we haven't introduced some language in there, partly because of this particular project as a kind of a poster child for some of the issues that we can have. So there are some changes coming through in that new document that are aimed at making sure that some additional pre study is done on these and a little more modeling to see if we're gonna have mounding of stormwater and also to make sure that the separation between the groundwater level and the bottom of these systems is sufficient to make sure that we've got room for that water to go, don't get that mounding effect. So that's kind of ongoing and a direct outcome of the situation that we're in. A couple of other things. You all were or many of you were involved in the rate study work that we did back in 2024.

There were a couple of items within that discussion that we are also moving forward as these next couple of years pan out. One of those is to take a hard look at some of the maintenance bond warranty process that the county has, kind of the levels of those, how they're enforced, what's the leverage there that can be utilized to make sure we get better outcomes. And then also some additional resources for additional inspections, maybe beyond just the minimum required by the the permitting agencies and things like that. So hopefully, all of those things together, I mean, like Jenny said, we have a pretty good success rate really with the number of systems that are built and the number of the amount of development going on. Our inspector folks, the folks in community development who are approving these and examining these plans that go in.

There's a lot of work there and most of the time it works quite well. But there are those one offs sometimes when we we get something that wasn't expected and then we gotta kinda figure out the the best way to go forward.