City Council - Regular Meeting

It is now 06:00, and I will call the meeting to order. Clerk, please take the roll call.

Mayor, can we just hold on one moment? I'm pulling it up on YouTube.

Okay. Let me know when you're ready.

Okay. Mayor Frederick?

Here.

Deputy mayor Winkler?

Present.

Council member Elliott? Here. Council member Walton? Council member Gassick? Here. Council member Wargo? Councilmember Barrow

Here.

And councilmember Thakur. We have a quorum.

Please stand for the pledge of allegiance.

Allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

First tonight, before we get into the public comments, chief Gilly has a special presentation.

Mister mayor, thank you, council members, everybody in attendance. Tonight, I would like to invite somebody up. This person has hit a major milestone within our fire department. He knows that. He got a handshake, but he deserves more than a handshake. He deserves absolute recognition. So if I could pull up captain Tim Holland.

Alright.

Yeah. You didn't know I was doing this, did you?

That's all I saw the tank.

I hope you prepared

a speech. So tonight, we recognize captain Tim Cohen for twenty years of dedicated service to the DuPont fire department and the community that we proudly serve. Twenty years in the fire service is just more more than just time on the job. It represents missed holidays, represents long nights, difficult calls, training, leadership, and a commitment to taking care of others no matter the situation. Over those two decades, Tim has been a steady presence for the fire department, helping shape the culture, mentoring firefighters, and serving the community with professionalism and pride.

And after twenty years at DuPont, Tim has gone from the old station all the way to the new station. So he's seen a lot of changes, new rigs, new equipment, new firefighters. And, outside of you, I think there's only one other person that is still with DuPont fire department right now that you originally started with, if I remember correctly, outside of Mike. So Tim has, definitely put his time in. He knows these guys inside and out.

And, you know, a few of the things he probably, doesn't really care for is, you know, some of the policy updates he's pretended to read from our Lexapool manual, but, I'll forgive him for that. So outside of that, tonight, I'd like to present Tim on behalf of the city of DuPont and, DuPont fire department and everyone he worked alongside with over the years. Thank you for your dedication. Thank you for your loyalty and your service. We appreciate everything you've done for this department and the people who call DuPont home. So, Catherine or Catherine

Holden. Congratulations.

Thank you.

I'm gonna go ahead and read the plaque real quick. It says, DuPont Fire Department recognizes captain Tim Holland for twenty years of service, dedication, and leadership. Thank you for your commitment to protecting life, property, and for leading with integrity and for serving with pride. Your career reflects our mission to provide professional service with compassion and integrity, making a lasting difference within the department and our community with respect and gratitude 02/2026. Yeah. Tim.

I know that. Thank you. Oh, here it is. Thank you.

Have nothing. No.

Thank you. There's been a lot of changes in twenty years, and, it's kinda weird looking back, seeing where you started, where you think you thought you were gonna be twenty years later and where you actually end up and the changes, the good, the bad, the turnover, some of the guys that have been here for a while and some some of the new ones. So it's pretty neat. It's fun. Thank you. Thank you for staying with me. And now is the time for public comments. Clerk, did anyone call in?

No. We have no one online, and I have no written comments.

Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to make public comments? Okay. We'll move on. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. I would like to amend it slightly to add an item 10.2 to give the council an opportunity to vote on whether or not they wanna move forward with LTAC funds. So it would motion the motion would be approval as amended. Anyone wanna make that? Okay. Council member at the court.

I make a motion to approve the agenda with the amendment of 10.2.

Yeah. Council member Elliott.

I'll second that.

Okay. Any further discussion? Seeing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, aye. Oppose? Very good. Tonight, under presentations, the very first one, item 6.1 is the historical society annual report. And JR Holm will give that report for us tonight. Go ahead, sir.

Yeah.

Is the mic on, Jer?

There we go. Sorry about that. I'll start over again. Good evening, mayor, city council, and staff. I'm Jer Holm, president of the Dupont Historical Society. I'll be briefing you on our annual report. And my fellow board members, Robin Barrow and Robin Goldsby are here also. If I could draw your attention to the slides, please. We're happy to report that our museum visitor can I'm sorry. Next slide, please.

Happy to report that our museum visitor count is up from last year, 71 visitors. This is due to better advertising for our events, more aggressive approach on social media, and other other things. Our volunteer hours are also up quite a bit. I actually didn't calculate it, but it is up, I would say I think it was over two hundred hours from up from last year. While our board members provide many hours, we do have a lively core group that assists us with events and special projects.

A few major activities, digitized digitization of the 1966 to 1976 weekly newspaper, The Villager. We will provide online access for that soon. America's two America two fifties out of many won a project designed to engage local museums in collecting and showcasing stories that reflect the diverse American experience. We also, had a traveling Buffalo Soldier display. We have involved ourselves in this prior, but, we beefed it up and, in involved ourselves with the, coordinated with the Buffalo Soldier Museum in Tacoma, and the event was a huge success.

We look forward to doing that again. Next slide, please. Major Oh, fence. Yes. Alright. Boxcar ribbon cutting in February. More than 50 attended. It was really good really great to see all the time and effort and funding put into making this boxcar a a visual another visual for our museum that is going to, you know, draw draw certain visitors to us. The cherry blossom tea in April, one of our most popular events. Fourth of July, pancake breakfast, again, breaking records for attendance.

We cleared over $4,000. So that that event seems to be increasing attendance every year. The eighteen forty three Fortnite Squali tour and Speedy Stores events, we continue to have our local and regional talent holding those events that led by author Steve Anderson and YouTuber Chris Stodinger. I don't mean to demean Chris Stodinger by saying YouTuber, but that is out there. He is well known for that.

He is very talented in many other ways, but that is one reason why we asked him to come. It does draw. And by the way, we did it in the park, and we had drop ins as people were coming through the park that jumped in. So we had a pretty good crowd for that. The Hudson Bay Heritage Day, we made some changes with this event, holding it in conjunction with the fall farmers market. This worked well. We'll continue to do that this year. We'll continue to grow into event that attracts visitors from all over the region and even out of state. That is our goal to continue finding ways to grow this and and make it a nice attraction, a nice heritage heritage event. Next slide, please.

Alright. Sure everybody's aware of the American fifty, events, coming up this year. Ours, as I mentioned earlier, out of many one, it's not didn't include only museums, but for museums. The project was designed to challenge museums to engage their community in selecting an item or items that represent our American experience here in DuPont. The dynamite train won easily, and we'll continue to be central to our America two fifty messaging going forward.

Next slide, please.

Mhmm.

Alright. Here is grants and awards and other revenue. We appreciate the funding that we've received. Absolutely, the continued support received from the city. There were also another $2,172 in grant in other grants. I didn't have the list. I apologize for that. But we I'm going to I mentioned on, I think, the last or single last slide, I'm going to mention what we're doing with funding going forward. Okay. Next slide, please.

Alright. This year's priorities and goals. It's already May. Half the year is almost over, but did want to mention what we have had going on and going on presently and coming up in the next seven months of the year. Next slide, please.

Reaching out to community, obviously, that is something that's a huge goal for us, finding ways to to do that. We expect to increase museum traffic through volunteer coordinators that we'll be advertising for soon, something that we're gonna try. It would a a good asset. Matter of fact, the way that I came on to the historical society myself was through word-of-mouth, but there is an opportunity for us to advertise on Handshake, which university students are tied into specifically. Who's who Handshake is for.

It's in a website like Indeed where people can go on and find internships and volunteering and jobs. And I plan on advertising for a volunteer coordinator, a social media coordinator, and and also people for specific projects that we have at the museum, for the benefit of the museum. We'll also engage more with the public through new and, unique events throughout the year. So, you may see a lot of it looked a lot of the same. Of course, we're gonna continue doing things that are successful, but we're always gonna be looking for ways to tweak those events to make them more successful, get more foot track foot traffic, engage the community more, and but then add add some more we can, alright, without providing too much of a burden for our volunteers.

Alright? Next slide, please. Alright. I'm preparing for growth. We have a couple of new exhibits that are gonna be opening up soon, hopefully, within the next thirty days. And one is gonna be the America two fifty. We have a committee that includes a couple of our student board members and another student. And our museum employee, Zach Vaiday, is they are writing up what will be on the display right now. They're currently doing the research and write up for that, and then we'll have a we have a case already set aside for that. And so that will be a new exhibit.

In addition, I'm working on a expanding what we have for the Hudson's Bay Company steamship SS Beaver. I'll be expanding that and and bringing in the the fur trade display and that and and building a case there. And it's gonna be it's gonna be great. I'm gonna bring some digitization into the museum with a dis with an exhibit for the first time. So and it'll be touch display.

So that's, I'm in the middle of working on that, and I should have that done in the next, three or four weeks. We'll always advocate, for our historical sites and look to increase public access. We look forward to increased collaboration with local, regional, and state museums and associations. That's something that and the board would like to focus on making connections where we can benefit the benefit of of both parties in in our local area and region. Alright. Any questions?

Councilmember Gazzard? Good?

Yes. Thank you. I was curious that and you might not have the answer for me, and it's okay if you don't. If you've noticed any change or drop in the number of visitors since the change at the DuPont, Silicon Road, Barksteel construction? Have you had fewer visitors?

Great question. It would always be something we're concerned about in any changes in traffic. Yeah. I don't believe so. No. No. A lot of times, our our visitors are already aware. I mean, there is certain people that just happen by. Those are are definitely a group of people. But a lot of times, people have looked up our museum online and are coming here specifically for that.

Okay. Just curious. Thank you.

Great question. Thank you. Deputy mayor Winkler.

Sorry. Go ahead.

I just want to thank you for the presentation tonight. I wanna thank everyone on the board for the museum, what they do, and all the volunteers. It's great. You know? Preserving history is so important. And with all your work, you make DuPont a better place to live. And I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks to everyone here and all the volunteers out there who volunteer in support of this.

Thanks. Really appreciate that. Councilmember Walden?

Yeah. I was just wondering how how often do you have coordination with local elementary schools starting just the ones here, Chloe Clark, that kind of piece to it.

Yes. We've had one. Do we do one of that?

Yep. And I actually brought Okay.

Sorry. I'm I'm the I'm I'm new to the position, so I'm not I think I'm really aware with all of last year. So go ahead.

Yeah. I need Cool.

Thank you.

Just a second. I'll get you on there. Councilmember Barrow?

Thank you. So I just wanna say this past year, we were very successful. We did a full day at Pioneer Middle School with the Buffalo Soldier display. We were able to the whole school actually visited us during that day, and that was really great. And then we were in Chloe Clark just a few weeks ago, actually, as part of their STEAM night. So we brought in some museum pieces so they could be a part of that. So, yes, we have we're we're moving better than we were before. So

thank you.

Councilwoman Walton, you have a follow-up?

Yeah. I was just seeing third, fourth, and fifth grade per state requirements do Native Americans, westward expansion, and then fifth grade is US History. So how nice to literally have a museum that could support all three of those areas of content, not just one. So continue to reach out to those schools because I know kids actually love to go to museums. They learn a lot. They really do. So thank you for that.

Absolutely. Will do. Thank you.

Council member Elliott?

Yeah. I just wanna thank you also for for your slide on preparing for growth. I mean, I think that's really exciting that we are preparing for growth.

Yes.

And I know that that one area we're looking to to add a space for the fire engine, the old fire engine and the old police car and and some of the old tools. So, I look forward to some new funding opportunities too. So go get them. Thank you. Thank you. Council

member Thakur?

I just wanted to say thank you, and I think deputy mayor has done a good job of explaining thanks. So I'll just not repeat that, all the things. But I think history should be preserved and promoted. That is always my goal, and thank you for doing so. But I have a follow-up question because we have a next 6.2 presentation on the tourism and event center.

What are your thoughts about from the museum perspective? Do you think that if you move from there, it would be a great idea in a new location, or would you prefer to just stay there and renovate it? Or what are because there's a old Fort Lake site out here also, is there a facility you would think might help for next hundred years to continue to preserve all the artifacts we have? And if you can't answer, that's fine. I understand.

Yeah. So thanks, Harish. Appreciate the question. That is absolutely something that I would have to discuss with my fellow board members, but we would always look forward to any opportunities as they arose. I think we all with the board, if I may speak for them, it I would say that we're always looking to be a partner with the city rather than, I don't wanna say, burden, but instead of always asking for money, it's about, you know, what can we do to, join in with what you're doing to make, DuPont a better place.

And, we just happen to work on the historical side of it. So, we wanna be involved in anything, that comes up yesterday.

I just wanna add to that. The museum

It might come up to Mike so we can record it appropriately.

The the museum actually has a lot of items that we can't display because the museum simply isn't big enough for it. If there was while we love the building that we're in, it would be nice to have something else. I just really like having the museum in the in the village, though. That's that's all part of the history of it. But if there was ever an opportunity to get more room to actually display some of the many, many things that we also have, that would be wonderful. Thank you. Yeah.

Council member Thakur, go ahead.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. So just a follow-up question for you. So I know I what is the square footage right now? You can say about 1,700, 1,800, 2,000 square feet for the museum. I

have no idea. I'm not sure.

No. Something like that.

So oh, go ahead.

So my follow-up question to that question also is that when you say that you need a little bit more room to display the artifacts properly, what is that possible room size you will look for or square footage size you will look for? In addition, say you are 100% on your current square footage. Let's forget how many square footage you have. Would you need 20% more, 30% more square footage on it, or maybe double the size? Let's say

You probably know more of the collection.

I I would say maybe 40% more.

Yes. I would agree.

And that

that would still leave some stuff in storage. But

You can rotate it. Yeah.

Then it would we'd be able to rotate things easier that way too. You know? When stuff is in storage, you you kinda have to dig through to try and find all of it, and it's it's a big deal.

Yeah. I would say that I just graduated history, and I'm going into museumology. So it's I feel very appropriate for me to work at this museum, and I work look forward to helping in the future with any any changes. But I I look at what we have, and we do not have much room to do rotational exhibits. You know, temporary exhibits, we are are really short on space.

So when she mentions the stuff that's in storage, we would normally be bringing those things out and putting them up temporarily and rotating those things. So, yeah, you don't always have everything on display, but you wanna keep the museum fresh and exciting and new. Otherwise, you know, if no if everybody knows that when they come to the museum, it's the same old same old, then, you know, there's nothing new to see, then why are they coming? So we lack that space right now. And that does I feel personally feel that it hurts our foot traffic.

Yeah. I think I I think I agree with you. You know, the history is in a storage room really doesn't help anyone. So thank you for answering my question. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate your question. Any other questions for mister Holm? Algeria, thank you so much for the presentation. We appreciate it.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you for your time.

Next, we have item 6.2, the tourism event center feasibility study part two, and Amy Walker's here tonight to get us started. Go ahead.

Thank you, mayor. I will go ahead and kick that back to Keith.

Yeah. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, mayor. I I do wanna go ahead and and kick this off. You know, first of all, I I wanna say that that when we present to council, it's really important that that we, you know, present in a way that's clear and concise and that the information is given in such a way that that the council understands what our purpose and objectives are.

And and, ultimately, in looking back at last time, I I don't think we accomplished that, and I need to say that's that's that's on me. That's my responsibility to do that. So I want to acknowledge that and say, you know, the the purpose of this and to talk about why we're here and what the thought process was a little bit and then turn it over to the presentation. You know, bottom line up front, we're looking to get the council approval to move forward with phase two, which would be design and engineering of either option one or option two. And I wanna step back and say what the purpose of this was and and why we're going this way a little bit just to try to be clear.

What we looked at is we have a building that was built in 1935 that has been in a state of disrepair. Was there an opportunity to find resources that we could bring forward in such a way to renovate this space and to make it a community asset? And the opportunity was to use Pierce County LTAC funds. They are driven by something called beds and heads. So the idea would be a tourism and events center.

And could we justify through a study, and that's what we're we're here tonight, to show that there was a need and demand in our community to utilize these kind of spaces? And and what the study had shown was a couple things, that within 20 miles, there is a lack of similar spaces and that the hotels had said that they felt like they had lost opportunities for events here and had lost people coming to our community because they didn't have the event space that they needed. And when it's not being used in this event space, we could use it for other community type events as well. So the idea was, could we do something where we could benefit not only our residents but our our local businesses? And I think back to for some of you, you might remember this in December, the chamber of commerce put on its first big event, the the wear blue.

We were in a a local businesses lobby. That's the space that's available, and it was incredibly crowded. And the reality is in talking with chamber of commerce, it just really isn't many areas that are available to have a a gathering space of of that. So that was kind of part of the the drive behind all of this. There is a multiphase plan.

The first first phase is to do the the feasibility study. The second phase is to design as engineering, and the third phase would be to to do construction. And LTAC through Pierce County, showing that we could meet this these markers of the beds and heads and and provide this value would pay for this. One of the questions I would I was asked was, are we gonna have to have skin in the game as essence? And I've reached out to another community that's been following this whole process, and the answer is they have used some grants for some smaller things, but, really, the lion's share was a term of this has been paid for it.

And they didn't need to use the other grants, but they did do some partnerships with some other grants as well just to to tie in. So that's really the consideration of of this. I know parking was a concern, and I do wanna say part of the plans adds 30 parking places in here as well. So in my mind, when you look at this, if we have an event that is 45 to 60 people, assuming one and a half to two people per car, we're going to have less impact on the community because we're gonna have parking spaces. From that, it's gonna go back to having to park out in the streets.

So that's a consideration, I think, whether you wanted to go with option one or option two. But the idea was let's utilize this resource to see if we couldn't take a community I hate to say liability, but a liability and and make it an asset for a multiple use amongst different things. And with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions and turn over to to the rest of the presentation.

Councilmember Walton.

Thanks for that, Keith. I did have a follow-up question, and I I might have had this wrong in my notes last time. But was there a statement made that one of the local hotels in their, rental space, they only had 26% of it rented in a year. Did someone remember hearing that, or did I just get that wrong? Because I remember going, wow. That's interesting that a hotel's not renting out all their space, yet I'm also hearing they need more space. So I just that those little things, those little details matter to me when I try to put everything together.

Yeah. I don't have it in front of me. Maybe it pulled up. But the last time what the hotel had said is is that they felt like additional space would have been impactful and that they had lost business to other other areas. Now what the percentage was, I can't say, but what the the research had shown was them saying they they felt like more space would be beneficial to them in their business.

No. Clearly, I heard that too. But I I have I looked at my notes, and it was 26% only only rented, question mark, question mark. Like, I I was wondering why hotel space is not at full capacity yet they and I don't know. There's a good reason. I'm just trying to kind of wrap my brain around that. Doesn't seem to like, would be different if they're at 95% capacity. They've had to turn down. I I don't know. But 26%, if I am accurate, someone can dig that out, seems like not a lot of people for them to want to possibly use more space. So

I can look that up while

we're sitting. I

believe you may be referencing some of the community center numbers, and that comes to mind that that may be the Stellicum Community Center. But I will look that up while we're sitting here and try to find that answer for you.

Okay. Yeah. That'd be great. I'm just, you know, rapidly going fast writing. So thank you.

Okay. Any other questions before we turn it over to our presenters?

Council member at the core?

I think I'll do it after. My question will be after that. After they're done?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.

Okay. Thank you. So I would like to reintroduce you to Johnston Architects this evening. We have Mona Sellers and Jack Chapin here to give the final briefing on the feasibility study. So I will turn it over.

Thank you, Amy, and it's good to see everybody again. Over the past two weeks, we have finalized, hopefully, our, work on this project, to create a feasibility study for the DuPont Event and Tourism Center. Not a whole lot of the data has changed, but we have coalesced everything we've learned into rather thick document that should be presented to you. This presentation is in many ways similar to what we saw last time. We do have some math to go over, which we went over last time as well, and a few pretty renderings that we've added to the packet.

So next. Okay. So the purpose of the study, I think we went over this, and Keith did a good job of reminding us what the purpose is. What we were tasked with was evaluating sort of the constraints and the opportunities that present themselves for future events and tourism center. And that was from a design perspective, but also from a monetary perspective.

We were tasked with the looking at reusing the existing community center building. We also came up with options to reuse the existing community center with an addition and then, potentially a new build facility on a site, within DuPont. As part of the effort, we also assessed, sort of what was the environment for this, how were other communities or, event centers doing in the region that were similar. We had precedent facilities that we reached out to to see how their, facility was operating, what their costs were, and, what their, percentage of utilization was. We combine that with a cost estimate the three options that we, came up with for the potential event center, and then have sort of come to you with that information to help, hopefully, make an informed decision.

Next. Okay. So here's cost estimate for renovating the building. The the building as it exists today for use as an event center specifically would require some fairly significant renovation. In many ways, it would be akin to building a new facility.

Most of the structure will need to be replaced. The systems will need to be replaced. Foundation work work on the exterior of the building, would be rather substantial to make remediations, bring everything up to current energy code, and accessibility code would also add cost. There's also the cost of just changing a building that is community center into an event center that potentially could hold a 200 person banquet. That would be things like restroom upgrades, kitchen upgrades, providing spaces for free events like a green room or that me?

What's with me? Or a a bridal suite for weddings. So that came out to $3,200,000 in current dollars. We've also provided estimates for five and ten years out, as you can see on the slide, that take into account what we anticipate to be escalation. If we renovate the existing building, it doesn't quite get us to that 200 person target that seems to be the need in the community.

So we did option two, which would add an addition of 600 square feet onto the existing building, to get us up to that 200 person banquet facility, at a cost of 3,800,000 in today's dollars. And then if we just sort of started from scratch and said, okay. What if we could just build on a a new site? What would that end up costing for comparison's sake? With this new proposal, we also include a multipurpose room in addition to the 200 person banquet.

We saw in some of the, data that we were getting back that having the ability to hold multiple events at one time or different types of events, helped the utilization of, the event centers we looked at. The cost of that option, option three, new building on-site, was at 6,700,000 in today's dollars. Next. You wanna take this?

Thanks, Jack. So as we talked about a couple weeks ago, we did have three options, and this is a high level overview. And I just wanna echo what what Jack said previously. We have a 175 page document that we will also be sending. Is that right? It's a lot of pages. So there's a lot more detail that we can go into after this and during the question and answer. This is just a high level overview. So option one is to renovate the existing building. As Jack mentioned, there are many things we would need to do to bring this building up to what it would need to be to host a 200 person event in a banquet seating arrangement.

A banquet seating arrangement is the loosest arrangement of people that we could put in the space, and it's not very compact. And so that's what we used for our planning exercise. It's also the type of event that, through our interviews, we heard was most likely one of the most common types of events that would be with this larger group. So there's a diagram here that shows the the banquet seating, which actually in this diagram is a 144 people, the 200 people would be in a denser arrangement, so for instance, like a cocktail hour. There are many walls, existing walls inside the existing community center building that would need to be demolished to make this happen, and so there would also be some structural changes that would need to be made.

As you can see from the diagram, that banquet hall kind of opens up the left side of the floor plan right now. The right side has individual rooms, one for mechanical, one for a bridal suite, and one for restrooms. There's also storage and an outdoor terrace and a catering kitchen, but this is all within the existing footprint. We also have there would need to be 30 parking spots on an adjacent city property in order to meet code, which the code minimum for this area, as Jack mentioned, is 30 parking stalls for this use, for this capacity. We do have space on adjacent city property easily for 30 stalls.

It's a couple blocks away, couple blocks north. Okay. Option two, expand the existing building. So this option two proposal expands the building by about 15 feet on the west side, so on the left side of the plan and this increase the increases the size of the banquet space to be 200 people seated in a banquet arrangement. Before, it was 144 seated in a banquet arrangement.

We also just have the same support spaces that we would have in the other in the other version of the project, and we still are assuming 30 parking spots on the adjacent property. We would also need to do all of the same renovations that we would do with option one, but we would have the additional cost of the addition additional construction, the 15 extra feet on the left side of the plan. The the diagram that you're looking at shows the what our assumption is for a parking analysis in a 200 person banquet scenario. This is actually maybe a little bit underestimated. We are assuming that in a 200 banquet seating scenario, we would have, most people carpooling with at least one other person, and maybe some cars would have three people.

And so, you might have 90 cars or 80 cars. So 30 would fit on the city property, and then the rest would be on the streets. And those are rep those cars are represented and very well parked in this diagram by red dots. So you can see it would kind of fill up the neighborhood for the span of that event. Let's go to the next slide.

And this is what that could look like with that extra 15 feet on the side. Just a very conceptual rendering. I know that it looks real. It is not real. We did model it, but it's it's very conceptual at this point.

And this is a closer look at those remote parking options, so all of the parking on the street in addition to the the the 30 or maybe 31 stalls on the adjacent city property. Okay. Option three shows a brand new building. So this was just an exercise to understand if we were to build on a different site that didn't have the same complexity that the existing community center building has, how big would this building need to be to fulfill the needs that we perceive for a slightly larger event space, and what would be the cost? So we ended up with a a slightly larger building at 5,700 square feet.

It does include banquet seating for 200 with the addition of a dance floor, so this is maybe something that would be appropriate for weddings whereas it's hard to imagine weddings working really well existing community center building. We also have an additional multipurpose room in this space. So hypothetically, multiple events could be happening at one time. We imagine this central space in all schemes as a truly a multipurpose room. We're showing it as banquet seating as sort of a placeholder for planning purposes, but it could be designed to accommodate a number of different activities, particularly in the new build where you can have higher ceilings than you would in the existing building.

You could imagine it it might be used for some kind of sports if you made it big enough. So this also includes a bridal suite and all of the parts and pieces that we have in the other building as well as a catering kitchen, a bar, and restrooms, etcetera. So if we go to the next slide, and this is a rendering of what that space could look like. Again, not a real site and not a real building, just conceptual. But this gives you a good sense of the size that we're talking about.

I'll hand it back to Jack for the marketing analysis.

Great. Thank you. Sorry. We spent a good deal of time on this slide last time around, and I think the information is extremely valuable. It was whenever we do market analysis or feasibility studies on these types of civic projects, it's always interesting to see what the numbers end up being.

In essence, when we looked at four similar facilities in the region that this might either be aspirationally trying to achieve or either through the renovation addition or or the new build. What we found was, you know, cutting to the long story short, is that the percent cost recovery was somewhere in the fifties to 60% realistically. And I think that that was a big data point that we found that we thought was important that was help for the city to make a determination on just, how viable the project was. Obviously, I think through our study, and there's, lots of information in here about how a facility like this, might be very successful in this region even, you know, if it is very successful, still sixty sixty five percent cost recovery, maybe pushing 70 if we're really lucky, is about what you're looking at. So there are operation and maintenance costs that are associated with building a facility like this, that need to be taken into account when making the decision.

Next. Oh, question? Oh.

Council member Walden.

Yeah. I was looking I said this last time, but it's it's good, repeating information. When you looked at the battleground, Lacey committee center, the lodge, even still come, I noticed all of those are pretty they're pretty beautiful places. They all have picturesque water views. That's not gonna be the case with the existing site. I'm not talking about the building,

but the

site. And I noticed too that the first one is 400 capacity all the way down to three sections in Stillicum at 300, three sixty, two twenty. So these are considerably bigger than what option one would be for sure. And I just wanna be really clear. I recognize that this is a a service to the community. It's not meant to be a moneymaker as a business. I completely understand that. But if I heard you correctly, a good estimate would be 50 to 60% we would recoup in terms of any kind of profits. Is that correct? Did I hear that?

That's correct. In the information that we've gathered. Now it's not always apples to apples, and we can't get perfect data. But this is the information we gathered for like slash aspirational Right. Event centers Yeah. In the region.

And I guess for me, trying to visualize that particular site, again, talking building, just the site itself versus these places that, I mean, you can Google and look up night and day in terms of just the aesthetics and and things that, like you said, probably not weddings there, especially when the home course. I walk there every night in the summer hosting weddings, and they've got the beautiful sunsets, all of those kinds of things. So I'm just, you know, kinda concerned on the 50 to 60%. And that, I'm assuming when I looked at these places on the Internet, they have staffing. I mean, you gotta I mean, you have grounds, you have landscaping, you have I mean, a bunch of stuff that I mean, even our our school of 400 has a nighttime custodian because one person can't get it done.

So anyway, just wanted to make sure I'm super clear as we move forward on that. Thank you.

Thank you.

Next. Council member Barrow. Sorry.

Hi. I have a question about our community center now. I'd like to know what our current cost operating costs are for it so that we have something to compare. Because, obviously, we're using it, so I'd like to kinda get an idea what the what our current cost might be, if somebody could answer that.

Councilmember Barrow, I do not have numbers we could I could get that to you.

One thing my question is on cost recovery. If LTAC pays for the pays for everything, what cost are you recovering? It would only be cost of operations or something. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Not not the cost of building because it would be in the LTAC case. It's not like some of our other buildings where we had to finance, took loans, or paying it off. It would already be paid for. So it's only the operating expenses is what I assume. Councilmember Walton?

Along the lines with with Robin's question about operating costs, I'd also like to know numbers and perhaps how much we do make on the existing place. I mean, it's again like you were saying, it's apples to oranges, but it's still fruit. It would give me a little bit more balance. What's been really hard for me, I'll be very transparent, is looking at that site. And you guys did a great job, believe me. It's hard. It's apples to meatloaf, right? But these sites that were given here, I mean, they're very elaborate. They're stunningly beautiful. Several of them, if not all of them, had the lake died and the this piece, and one was two stories.

So it's kinda hard for me to gather information with that piece, but I do appreciate that effort. I'd just like to know what what do we have now? How much does it cost to operate? And how much does it bring in? That would help me as well. Thank you. And thanks, Robin, for getting that idea out there.

Councilmember Gassick?

According to what I've found on the Internet, it looks like the operating costs are just a little over 300,000 a year. I don't know if that could be accurate.

For the current community center? Correct. Yes. And, no, that's not accurate. Yeah. No.

Okay. It's saying it's coming from the city's website, so it might just be inaccurate information. I I did have a question, though. And I'm not sure if this is an Amy question or the feasibility study question. If we were to have a landowner in Historic Village that has a piece of property for sale that could accommodate perhaps 30 parking spaces. Is that something that we could include in the grant request? Like, to purchase that additional property for parking spaces, is that something that you can include in a grant request?

I'll I'll let Keith answer that.

Yeah. No. I think the answer is if we decided we wanted to try to get more parking, I think we could definitely look and see what options are and and include that as part of that that request.

There is someone that has property that would be willing to talk about that, And I think they would have about 30 parking spots. I can I'd be happy to pass that information on to you.

Yeah. Yes. I think we can. And and stepping back, I I know, Susan, you had councilman Roquel had asked in the past for information on on what the community center is, and and we had shared that. Happy to share it with the rest of the council. I I wanna be cautious, though, to say the condition of the space has limited what we could do there and how often it is used. So I I same thing with the cost. If we enhance this and bring more people in, I don't know if we're gonna be care compare you know, we keep asking apples to apples here. I I think we should anticipate whatever the costs are now if we are using it more. It's being used by savvy seniors in Dungeons and Dragons.

In the past, we've also used it for, it's been an incubator space for a karate studio and for a dance studio. One of the things these are popular with is churches that are looking for spaces. I know a lot of places rent these out on Sundays. So I think if the space were to increase, there might be not only some increased cost that we should anticipate increased cost within t increased uses because of limitations of the space now. Anything you wanna add?

I think I think that's well said. And in fact, we received a phone call today to have a wedding at the community center in its current state, which, you know, we chuckle, but not everybody can afford a view. Not everybody can afford the home course, and those need to be those folks need to be accommodated as well. And we have three or four weddings a year in the community center in its current state. So we are making the best of that facility in its current state. So there is there is a market out there for it.

I don't disagree with that. I I would say that there's definitely a market. It's you know, not not every person needs to have a view when they have a wedding. Sometimes you're looking at just a conference because not all of these hotels have huge conference rooms. So to be able to accommodate 200 people at a banquet seating for a conference would be ideal in a lot of scenarios. I don't really know that we have that even at the golf course. I think that's a 150, if I'm not mistaken.

A lot of it's outdoors.

Yeah. And it's so this would be you know, understandably, this would be an asset to the community, but it really would be to serve the community as well. So I'm not looking for it to make a profit. And someone might punch me that's sitting next to me, but I don't even think the museum supports itself financially. And don't hurt me.

Not at But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. I don't expect it to because it's here to serve the community and to serve the history of DuPont. And, you know, it's an it's still an asset to the community without necessarily making money for us. So, you know, after looking at this and the idea that this could be funded entirely, if I'm not mistaken, by grant monies if we were to get them, I would support option two. I do think the addition would be helpful.

My only concern would be the buy in from the community regarding the parking. And it's my understanding, I did talk to some people since we had our meeting, that they're okay with it and they're supportive of it. I'm not sure everybody is, but the people I talked to are. So I might stand corrected on this from a couple weeks ago.

Yeah. One one other thing that I thought about on the parking. I know that when I go to Fair and other places, they open up grassy areas for parking. We have a lot of space at IFREDY Park. I don't know if that could be something, but there's a lot of space there you could use for parking. So that's just the thought there.

And I think it's important to remember too when we talk about community asset. Generally speaking, your structures on these kind of places, and and I've had this in previous experiences, you you charge a lesser rate for your people who live in your community and a higher rate for people who live outside your community. So in terms of of providing that and that's that's also we talk about making money or not making money. You're looking at a community asset where someone maybe is looking for a a place to get married or has a tie to the community, has some sort of history here and and does that. So generally speaking, your rates are are conditioned on that or nonprofits or five zero one c threes get a different rate than for profit entities as well. So just generally, that's how that works and wanted to keep that in in mind too.

Councilmember Walton, you're next.

Yeah. Just to kinda respond back, Keith, I have asked for that information well before a feasibility study was was conducted. Think I'll just be really honest, would say for for well over a couple years, to be frank. And it just helps me way way before feasibility. Just to know my community, who's going, why, how many, frequency.

I'm a data geek when it comes to stuff like that. So correct, it's not going to be a comparison to what we may or may not potentially get, but it does help me understand where are we and perhaps show a need in one area that you might think, oh, wow. If we had more space, then we could double the capacity of that group that has doubled their own capacity in the last several years. So it it is valuable information. I would like it for all the council, not just me. I think it's valuable data to look at.

We have shared that with you, and we can share what we shared with you, which is the council.

With the whole council. I would appreciate that. Thank you.

Councilmember Barrow?

Yes. A couple of things. One, I wanna say I have hosted a couple of weddings that could not be in larger spaces because these people could not afford, and some of them even worse conditions than we have in our own community center today. So I do know that there will be people that will use it, no matter what condition it might be in. And the other thing is cost for operational costs.

I know I think we can pass on some of those additional costs, like cleaning services to our rental agreement when we rent it so that those costs aren't tossed back on us to cover. And lastly, I do know that many of the people in the historic community in the village, they do not want that building to go away. And they would love to see that building there. And I personally really enjoy utilizing that building for the many events that I've been in over there, and I'd hate to see that it go away. And I'm really glad that we have this opportunity through an LTAC grant to cover all of the costs to to make it work and make it you useful for the community.

So thank you.

Deputy Mayor Winkler. Thanks, Ron. I appreciate it. I wrote up some thoughts beforehand. Thanks for bringing up the idea about potential future parking because when I wrote these, I was very concerned about parking. So keep that in mind, and that's part of the good open discussion. I I was sure that all three options have advantages and disadvantages. The option of doing nothing has some advantages and disadvantages. I came into this meeting, and I think Jugo's gonna share something that I wanna hear too before I really say this is where I'm at. But I came into this meeting leaning forward option one, realizing there's certain conditions.

And I just think it's important that we remember these conditions, that we're not committed to go forward at all if we get this next grant, but we don't get any money following. I think the county needs to realize if we get the design and engineering money to go beyond that point, we're still going to need more money that that we need that additional funds. And I just wanna go on the record that citizens realize that we're not looking at doing this money unless the other money follows along. And some of the options with advantage one, option one, which option two would have two, I do believe in maintaining a building that many consider an important part of DuPont history has merit. I believe it has merit.

Option one keeps at least the exterior of the building as close to its original blueprint, which again, I believe has merit. I think that that's something as we try to maintain part of our history at least. Staying within the current blueprint will help reduce the risk of cost overruns. So even if we get all this money, having served eight years on the school board when we were building a lot of buildings, cost overruns happen. So I think we need to have a bit of a realistic thought that we try to maintain that.

So that's why I was leaning toward option one. Being the smaller the projects, option one would minimize the risk of cost overruns as far as percentage wise. And I also looked at if approved, the option one would eliminate the need to find internally the funds to either maintain the current community center and old fire station. The bottom line is even if we do no options, we still have a building there that's falling down. And, well, maybe not quite falling down, but it's an extreme need to repair.

So we either need to fund money to fix it or tear it down. This grant, if it went all the way through, we wouldn't have that problem. It also would take address the old fire station to my understanding. Keith, is that correct? That option one and option two takes in tearing down the old fire station and making it a parking lot?

That's that's correct.

Okay. And then and so we have two buildings that if we go in a different direction, we still have there and we still have to deal with. And that's my concern with option three, period. Option three is we do this whole other building, and then we still have two other buildings that we're not maintaining. Option one with the 30% soft cost comes in at about 4,160,000, and the other ones would be 4.94.

And the option three as percent would be about 8.7 using the soft cost previous given. And my hope in the condition that for me would be that when we put in the grant request, when we're going after the dollars to build, that we can also build in that grant the soft cost, not just the bottom line dollars, or we will be short. Okay? So I'm gonna go back to something that Shana talked about, which I didn't know about. I mean, I think it's very interesting.

Option one with a capacity of a 144 person banquet room would require less parking than option two, which is 200 person banquet room. So about 25% less parking in correlation. This would in it reduce the impact on the historic village. Now if there's another lot out there, you know, I I would be open minded to option two. I do believe option two would have more of a risk of cost overruns, but again, I I think my big concern with option two basically was parking.

Okay? I do believe that that we can still keep open the goal in the future of having a community center over here in a space that would provide recreational activities that are that are needed. I don't think this closes the book on that. I think it provides another service. And to it is done and to it is done, it's gonna have to do like it kinda already does, serve in both capacities.

That means provide an opportunity for someone to rent it out, whether it's for a wedding or for us to use it for our own events when we're doing it. So I think those those needs would still be there. So, you know, if we could go after grand money and maintain the building and still keep something available to us, you know, even if we don't do anything, we're still heeding it. We're still having to maintain it. We're still having to do some things.

So unless we tear it down, those costs don't go away. But to tear it down, that cost us money too. So I would lean my initial thought coming here tonight was lean toward option one. If you can find another parking lot, I'm I'm open minded to option two if that's where most people are comfortable, but thank you.

Council member Elliott.

Great discussion. You know, I've I was part of Savvy Seniors. I've been using that building for a couple of years, and it is awful. It looks awful, and I wouldn't wanna live next door to it. But I also don't think it's the place for a community for a an event center.

I would hate to be the person who's lives right across the street, and cars are parked all up and down the street, and maybe people are outside drinking and having a good time till who knows how long. To me, that's not a good fit for the neighborhood. But but as we were sitting here talking, I was thinking a little bit more, and I really like the the museum needs an expansion. So I think we're rushing this. I think we could take some time, go for another grant, and and go for maybe knock that building down and build a smaller footprint for the museum so that all of our history stuff is in one place.

We could put a house for the fire engine. We could put a house for a a building for the police car, a a building where we could have storage and we could have displays that changed frequently. I I I again, I feel like we're rushing into this without even thinking. And the study that we paid or somebody paid LTAC paid a $100,000 says that this this will not bring people into hotels. It says it's pretty DuPont centered.

People from the neighborhoods would use it, but it does not say that heads will be in beds. And, you know, we've got Eagles Pride, which has it can seat 210, and they have a new caterer there now. It's a beautiful building that overlooks the golf course. We've got the home course that can seat a 128. And then right up the road in UP is the Pierce County Environmental Center, which has stunning views over Puget Sound, and they can seat 200.

I just think we're being shortsighted with with with a good intention of doing something to that building, but I don't think an event center is the right thing for that space. But I do think we could go back to the drawing board, put some time into it, and and do something for the museum since it's practically right next door. That's just my thought.

Council member Gassick.

I have two items. First of all, I as I recall, and Amy, you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, there is no real historical value to the community center. The only historical value is I recall was the steeple thing on top and a transom window when we had it researched before. And so anything else can be salvaged. If there's, you know, any architectural pieces, they can be salvaged and rebuilt.

There are a lot of historical buildings that have been rebuilt better and, you know, incorporating some of the historical valuable materials. So I still think that we could do that. I'm not concerned about losing any historical value there because that building, in my mind, should be a burn and learn for the fire department. Second, the the idea of an event center, I don't know that I would call it an event center. I would I would still call it a community center.

I'm not giving up on the community center over here by any stretch of the imagination. But, you know, to turn this over to the museum at at this early stage, I think, is is not a service to the community because we need to have a place for, you know, the kind of the overflow for things from schools. And, you know, you do have income coming in, not a lot, but you've got, you know, gymnastics, dance classes, whatever classes you're having there, and meeting places still. So I don't think that we should be giving up on that idea. However, down the road, if we were to have a regular community center over here, I would support turning that over to the museum, but I don't think that it should be done upfront.

And I I don't think we're rushing into anything here. I thought we were rushing into the the parking situation. So I guess we have different different definitions of rushing into things. So, you know but it's, you know, it's all Yeah. Par for the course. But I I do think we should try to keep this as a community center for DuPont for now. And and I do support option two. I do think the if the citizens are supportive of the parking on the streets, I don't have a problem with that. But I do think that there's an opportunity for additional parking adjacent to the museum is where I think the lot is. And I'm happy to pass that information on.

Councilmember Walton?

Yeah. I just I guess I wanna be really clear. I'm I'm not anti one, two, or three. I I'm just not pro any one of them. I just feel a little bit kinda piggybacking my back a little bit. Just some other options. The museum, a little bit more details about this. So for me, this is pretty fast. And I've done, like, nothing but read this for the last week. It's kept me up at night because I don't like to be hesitant or indecisive.

But I know myself well enough that when I am, it's speaking pretty loudly to me because I'm usually pretty like, let's do it. My biggest thing, more than anything, is always money. Right? And our government, our national debt now is 100% more than our GPT, our GDP. The state of Washington, do we need to talk about budgets there? My own little tiny school lost a $3,000 grant. Gone. We've had it forever. So my I just want guarantees and maybe the answer is, guess what, Susan, there are none. And if someone can tell me that, that's fine.

That's honest. But when we say things like grants and another grant for this and we hope that, this is probably the most uncertain financial times we have ever had in our country and in our state. So it's almost like, yeah, we're pretty darn sure that if we do the engineering, they'll fall. What if there is something more catastrophic that happens? I don't know.

I just pay a lot of attention to those things. And I might be liberal in some areas, but I'm a super fiscal conservative when it's other people's money. And it just seems like not that solid source of funding. And maybe it is. But when you say grants, there's nothing in a grant that says if something doesn't happen down in Olympia or in Washington DC, that will not impact us. I mean, I have have families right now not able to put food on their tables, and there's no grants for them. So I just look at it from that place. It's such a responsibility when you're talking about other people's money. I love that Mike brought up, though, that it's kind of an albatross around our neck. We have to do something with it.

It needs some fixing. I get that too. But I just want to be really clear. I'm not I'm not saying one no, yes to. I'm just needing more information. And I might be in the minority on that and when we get to move it forward or not, that's fine. But just know grants are not in this time and particularly in this time, they are not solid. And we have had our little grant for years at my school. And it was snatched away. No problem. And we're laying off people in the school district of Puyallup. So reality is grants are not a full source of funding.

Council member of the corps.

I guess I've been patiently waiting to make a comment because I have a long list of comment to make, and I don't know. Should I go with that? And because there was a three options were presented initially, so now we are discussing option one and two. And I think it it created some kind of interest from the city and citizens. Hey. What are you what are you gonna do? So option three is also should be an option on the table. And I have some presentation made, and I I would like to present it. So rather than just talking, I will show you the drawings and some numbers if that's okay with everyone.

Well, I don't know if our folks are done with their presentation yet. For one thing, let's let's go to oh, you you Okay. Cancel that out. Or or where are we at on your presentation?

We have another slide.

There's one more slide. Okay. We've kind of gone over it, but we can just look at it for posterity. This is essentially the operations numbers that we came up with based on the facilities that we looked at based on historical data that you could be looking at depending on a very varying bits of information. So at the low end, so low booking frequency on the low end of what the annual revenues would be, you know, it would it's it's not a great number.

It's minus a $125 a year. On the high end, which is probably aspirational, with high bookings, higher annual revenue, and, the operating cost that we came up with, it's a $96,000, plus. In between, we also have a few negative numbers. I think taken as a whole, this is very representative of what we've seen out there when we've been looking at the data that exists in the area. So on the low end, you're probably not gonna hit that.

On the high end, we're probably not going to hit that. It's probably going to be somewhere in the middle if we're planning conservatively. So there is still based on this and on the on the numbers, there's going to be a deficit, you know, a yearly deficit depending on on just how successful the the project is. I would say that the high booking frequency, you know, it is probably dependent on options. You may get a high booking frequency in option one, but the bookings would be smaller.

So, obviously, the revenues would be smaller. One of the things that we found during the research is that the larger the event, typically, the more profitable it is. And so that's just something to take into consideration when you're making your decisions. But But that is the end of our presentation.

Yeah.

On Jugal. Before Jugal start. A minute. Yeah.

Before Jugal start, I just a follow-up, if I'm reading this correctly. The 125 negative, the 43 negative, is that let's say we we had option one, and I get the bigger you actually more more profit. Yeah. Is that what you're saying we would incur an operating cost total?

Yeah.

Okay. Got it.

Exactly.

So let let's just go with 43. Let's make it 50,000. So if I'm going back to to Ron, yours who pays for that? Does that come out of LTAC, or does that come out of our money, these operating costs?

Don't know. What what do you think, Keith? Amy?

Well and I think we talked about this. You know, I think part of this is right. One of the ways that other event centers do is that if you are renting, that you pay for additional staffing and and cleanup. Right? That's that's pretty typical as well. You know, if it's in a really popular, we we may have some additional. But I I think right now, a lot of this is still just kind of a generic it is per specific. I don't have specific answers. It's just here's the general information we have.

Well, again, just a very very direct question. If if we had operating costs, let's say, at 75,000 split the difference. Let's we got option one or two. Whatever. Mhmm. Operating costs at the end of the year turn out to be $75. Does LTAC pay for that, or does the city? I think it's the city.

This the city could the city could apply for city LTAC money as well.

But we

are responsible

for paying whether we get the LTAC or not.

Correct.

Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

And we have we have operating expenses right now.

Yeah. Yeah. But anymore, Councilmember Walton, could come out of our local lodging tax fund. Okay.

I get that one. Oh. I I get the I get the possibilities. I but words like potential, and it just I I just wanna know. Worst case scenario, I think when you're responsible for other people's money, you have to think best case and worst case. Worst case, we would be on the hook for operating costs should they be under at that level. That's all I wanna know. I'm hoping we can get LTACH, and it sounds like the system's very efficient to continue, but I just have to sometimes think in my own family. Worst case scenario, what if I lost my job? What if my husband lost my sister?

These are just things I think about in my own life and my own school building, and I just wanna think about it for DuPont, best and worst. So worst case, yes, we would be responsible for anything that was over that.

Yes. It's our building. We're responsible for it. And I use the word potential

Mhmm.

Because we would apply, and that would it's our local LTAC, and that would be up to the city council to accept or deny that. So that's why I use the word potential. It's not a guarantee.

Would be understand. I know grants and potential sources of money very well. I just wanted to make it clear that it's not a 100%.

Right. And and that would be a decision that would be made Yes. At your level.

Absolutely. Yes. Thank you.

Council Member Thakur?

Yeah. Can I have my presentation up, please?

Well, wait a second. Let's let's get councilmember Kasik here before you get on to that. Okay. Go ahead.

Oh, thank you. Just one last thought. Forgot to mention this. I I know that there was a concern about whether this facility would bring heads in beds. And I can tell you from my personal experience, a couple of weeks ago, I went to the General Federation of Women's Clubs conference that was at the Best Western on the corner of Wilmington And Palisade.

And there were 50 attendees, and I believe at least 30 of them stayed at the hotel for four nights. It was a three day event, and a lot of they're all in Washington. So some of them were in Eastern Washington, but even people that lived in Lakewood were staying at the hotel just so that they could be close to all of the events that were happening because they have, like, a full calendar of events. I think that you would find that it would bring people to the hotels. Because if you've got a conference that's going on for more than a day, people don't wanna drive back home late at night.

Even if it's just Tacoma or if they've been drinking, whatever, I do believe that it would bring heads and beds. And I think that you could apply for an ongoing LTAC grant, whether it's through DuPont LTAC or Pierce County LTAC for operating costs if you can prove that, you know, you're bringing heads and beds, there's going to be a benefit to the community and and tourism. So I while I understand that you can't count on it, you know, the fact that it's within our own community for our LTAC grants, I think that's saying something, and it's not, you know, our own LTECH grant money isn't gonna go to something necessarily, you know, instill a commitment if we've got something here that that we can put that money toward. I'm not on the board, but I'm just saying.

Council member Walton may make a comment as well. I you had asked me to look up your 26% that you were recalling. So what I found was the Best Western, their facility utilization is estimated at 20 to 30% annually, and that's their conference room that holds a 100 people. And that is theater style. So when somebody's coming in and wants to sit at roundtables and whatever else, it really only holds closer to 45, 60. So I think that's where you read.

Okay. You're

let's say it's 20%. So we so we had 20 to 30. So the the 26% is how much of that space is rented out? Did I hear that part right? Or conference room or not, was it still the rental space is only rented out 26% of time of the year?

It's 25 to 30.

Okay. Yes. That sounds right. And maybe they give a specific number. And, again, I I just think that's a kind of a low number for hotel people that want more space. But that's just my my opinion based on the numbers so far.

Yeah. And I and I will say as somebody that needs that type of space, I I am always looking for space

for 200.

And the reason for that is because the space is too small. That's theater style.

Right. Right. I get it. Yeah. Seats a 100.

Okay. Well, I'm glad I did have it.

Know you're Pretty accurate. Question. Thank you.

One more. Okay.

Go ahead, council member Gazzi.

My last comment, I swear. We were in that that room, and it supposedly has a 100 people, but there were 50 attendees. It was very crowded. We were at round tables. It was very crowded and, dare I say, not completely comfortable. The hotel was great, but they also had to have the catering set up behind curtains in the back of the room. And while the food was good, it wasn't hot when it was served. You didn't have a kitchen. So there is a huge benefit to having a facility with the kitchen. And, again, this this facility at Best Western, it doesn't hold that many people.

You know, I think having this this 200 person banquet environment would be great. My other question, and I don't know if you know the answer, when you say 25% occupancy, does that include nighttime hours, or is that just, like, nine to five Monday through Sunday? Yeah.

I'd be It doesn't say.

It just says Tuesdays.

By you. Yeah.

But, you know, they're open all night. So, I mean, are they looking to have it booked all night long? I don't know.

Okay.

So and just to put this in a little bit of perspective for you, the way that Pierce County lodging tax dollars work is you need to have on average. Now before you apply, you have to meet with Pierce County lodging tax to see if you're even a a valid candidate. So you we need to be able to have a thousand heads in beds annually. So think about that. That's 85 hotel rooms a month.

Pretty doable? I mean, you're talking to your tourism representative here. If I can't get 85 people into this town, you've got the wrong person in this seat. Okay? It's 85 hotel rooms a month, And we've already been vetted through Pierce County tourism that this is potentially a good project.

So we, as a city, have been giving Pierce County lodging tax up to 200,000 a year. I actually think it's probably a little more than that. And anybody that I know you've all done your homework. I know you've all been on the Pierce County lodging tax website, and you see project after project after project after project that's going to other cities.

732 of them.

That's right. That's right, mayor. And not every city within Pierce County pays into Pierce County lodging tax. Tacoma doesn't. Lakewood doesn't. But I'll be darned, DuPont does. $200,000 annually. And I did the math. Over the last ten years, it's over $6,000,000 we have given Pierce County lodging tax. I'm not okay with that as a citizen of DuPont.

I think it's time that we get our dollars back, whether it's this application or something else. The applications are due June 5. So, you know, it's up to you, counsel, to make whatever decision you you you make this evening. It's our job to give you good information and to give you the best information so you can make good decisions, but I'm not okay with the with with funding other cities' projects. We need to make some some decisions on what's best for our community, whether that's the community center or whatever else. And I'm here to support you in whatever that is, but we're giving our money away.

Okay. Any other questions other than Jugles? K. Council member at the core, you can give us your opinion. Oh, just just a second here. I'll get you. Are you on? Yeah.

Yeah. So this is my opinion, but it's a little bit longer. And I think everybody took time, and I'm I'm just compiling my time and opinion together. Can you make it a bigger one, Carrie, please? The full screen. Not it's okay. Alright. So just to let you know, I I only make $500 per month from city council to make this project and this presentation. Okay? 500. So Just repeat. It's no. No. After tax. Alright.

So I think that we should have a community and event center, and it should be right across the street from us, which is an open land with comprehensive recreational use and aquatic facilities. Can we go to the page two, please? So why did I thought of doing this is a reason, and the reason is that we have to always see the history to predict the future. We have a building which is here for ninety years, and thanks to our forefathers who has done a great job of building it, it's still standing. And we are using it, but nobody likes to use it anymore.

It's awful, somebody said, next to me. So now let's repeat that history. I would say that think hundred years from now for DuPont because DuPont is growing. You know? Currently, we have a 3,800 homes, and population is somewhere around 11,000 people.

With the Old Fort Lake expansion coming in next five years, there will be additional 300 3,000 homes will be built and 7,500 more residents will use it. Another possible future development is coming from Minepete, where we have a residential area has been proposed. It might happen in next twenty years or thirty years. I don't know. But we are talking a long term project here.

0.8 is a State Farm location was presented as a future homes by a nationally reputed builder, and the future cost is keep climbing. So if we can invest now and don't wait until recession or depression, I think this is a good time for us to work together just like Amy said. We paid $6,000,000. It's time for us to get that million 6,000,000 back. So let me show you some stat stats.

And so stat shows there's a 3,833 number of households, 2.6% per household. The average age in DuPont is thirty thirty four years, 0.3, median age, but 75 or 80% of the population is 60 years age. And our what is our income? It's an average. It's about the median household is 120,000.

Next, please. So initially, we were presented with the three options. I know now we are talking only option one and two. My question was that why did we got the presentation on option number three? I prefer to go with the option number three because it really represents the DuPont.

What's gonna happen in DuPont for next fifty years? So if you look at the picture I showed, and, like, we were talking about 80 parking lots, but before I get there, there's a total area. It's about 142,000 square feet. It goes 300 feet north to south and 400 feet to 600 feet east to west. Next, please.

So I asked to draw 80 parkings, and we can have a nice 4,700 square feet indoor basketball court, indoor swimming pool, which could be 30 feet by 15 feet, and outdoor tennis court. And there's also a recreational facility in the front, which is a white portion. That could be also one of the great addition of move or moving the our museum out there. So say right now we have a thousand visitors. Tomorrow, we can have a everybody who is walking in for the event center or people going in for recreation, all those people will have an access and curiosity to go in and explore our museum.

So there are 80 par parking spots. Now one thing I have to remind you, when we were talking about 200 people facility in the old historical village, right Mhmm. Can renovate to a 144 or we can expand to 200. So we need 80 parking spots. We have an issue. But here is the thing. Suppose, say, 200 is a sitting capacity, but the standing capacity is 400. I wanna do an event for 400. How many cars are we expecting? Maybe a 160.

Do we have a 160 car parking in Old Historical Village? I don't think so. So if we put the 80 parking spot in our this option number three, we have more parkings right across the street street, which is our City Hall parking lot. And majority of the events will take place either in the evening or on the weekend. So, definitely, we are not here working.

Staff is not here, and we can utilize those parking lot. That's my one of the additional benefit. I also have a drawing of a north side view, and this is just remember, it's a single story building. North side view, east side view, south and west. Next, please.

So it shows that we can have a aquatic center tennis I mean, we also have a event hall transformation. So the basketball court we have, we can literally have a transformation to consider as or convert into the event center. Next, please. And the next one. I'll go to the next one.

So this is what it shows. There is a 4,700 square feet central court x access in a facility's primary anchor for recreational use. We can have a maple hardwood floor. This is the what I came up with the pricing. The premium maple hardwood floor can cost $16 to $26 a square foot.

The outdoor tennis court will be 78 feet by 40 feet, professional tennis court, and single story building, which is made out of modern, pre engineered metal building, which is called PEMB construction for maximum clear span of space. So we are talking about the metal building, and it's a prefab building. Next, please. I'm trying to run through fast. Okay.

So the event capacity and configuration will give us somewhere around 650 people standing reception or 450 theaters sitting, or we can do 200 banquet sitting. Next, please. So the financial analysis the next, please. It shows what's the building shell will cost. So if we use the prefab metal and they build somewhere, they bring it over here and put it together, that can cost and the lower side is 1,800,000.

The higher side could be 3,100,000. Also, what is the we need a mechanical instruments for the pool and HVAC system, which is heating and air conditioning system. It can cost 300,000 to 550,000. Then we need an athletic surface, which is a basketball tennis court, which could be up to $265,000, and site infrastructure with 80 parking spot, drainage, and lightning could be up to half 1,000,000. So the total cost next, please.

The building shell can cost up to 65%. The HVAC can cost 15%. The site parking will be about 12%, and soft cost will be somewhere around 8%. Next, please. So what I came up with, the total project, what I just showed it to you, the upper side could be up to $4,700,000.

Now we can talk about we always have to keep 10% estimated, you know, plus or minus. So the next one I think I'm going to go to that next slide too. So the biggest challenges are, I call these as a three big elephants in the room. The operational cost, possibly what we are making. Any any new facility we're gonna make, we have a operational cost.

Even if you make in a downtown another $4,000,000 project, how are we going to keep it up? Right? So the operational cost, there is also a gap in possible LTAC grant. So suppose, say, we get a $4,000,000 in LTAC grant, then how are we going to fund the actual construction cost, suppose, say, it becomes a $6,000,000? And, also, I put the possibility of putting the cost to maintain and move the museum into the same facility.

So, like, I was asking the question, so we can talk about museum. Old structure needs maintenance or replacement. It also requires funding for ongoing maintenance after replacement. How city will pay? How much do we have in general funds? The options are integrate the museum into the same building. It will be the first scene on entry and before getting to the event or recreational options. So more visitors to the museum. In future, we will also have an old Fort Lake site developed and historic walk we are talking about right now for the our DuPont history. So it will be a perfect place to start and end our historic tour right from here to our city hall.

That's my thought. The revenue opportunity, how we can have operational cost. If we have a swimming sessions, people use the pool, people come for the basketball teams, they will leave out here, rent the rooms, create a monthly fees to use pools, tennis courts, or the event centers, which will take care of the maintenance cost for museum, event center, and recreational space. Now I would like to address the gap in a construction cost. Suppose, say, we don't get all the money sorry.

I'm reading through. Hopefully, you guys are catching up with me. So next, please. How how do we get the construction cost? So here, I will use my new council member card. You all are experienced. I'm throwing out something new which you might be thinking. Okay. Well, he's talking about something which failed five years ago. Okay.

So I'm new council member, so I can use this. So in a hypothetical situation, say CT needs $6,000,000 project in addition to LTAC money we get. This is how the math comes to me. $6,000,000, if you divide by 3,800 homes, suppose, say, all the homes wants to put in the money for the event center, community center, as well as the recreational center, then it will come out to be a $1,579 for a onetime cost. But we are not building the building tomorrow, So it's going to be five years down the road.

And if you divide the cost to the five five years, it's only $316 warehouse per year. Now if we add the old Fort Lake, which is going to happen in five years, another 3,000 house will be built, and we can also ask the developer to pitch in some money. Say we need to have them pitch in 1,500,000 in the beginning cost of while we are doing this construction. And if we divide that $6,000,000 by 6,800 household in total, it comes out to be $882 per home, onetime cost. Or if we divide in a five year plan starting, say, next year, it's only a $176 per year.

What it means, say, my family wants to use such a amazing tennis court, basketball court, swimming pool, museum, every single thing, and I'm paying only $176 per year for next five years, I am in. You know how much it cost to just drive up to Lakewood and Lacey to take our families. Okay. Next, please. So this is I have to give the credit where I got the pictures from and where I get the data from.

So there's a credit here. And last slide. Questions. So I made this presentation, so you can ask me. Or, also, my partner was Gemini, Google AI developers. So you can ask Google.

Mhmm. Okay. Here

here's a one question. Okay. Go ahead. It's council member Walton. Another question.

Yeah. Jugal boy. Just when my brain was saying I can't take anymore. Holy moly. Maybe it's Keith or Ron. I think in the past we've talked about this, maybe not that elaborate, but pretty big community center, Shana's dream world across the street. We would have to have a bond, correct? LTAC's not going to pay. So when you're talking about the $6,000,000 divided by Old Fort Lake comes in, of that, that would be a bond. Correct?

So a couple things. Who runs the bond? What if the bond fails? I mean, this, school districts are not passing bonds like they used to because of financial issues. So I just wanna confirm this would be a bond. Correct? Yes or no? To get something like that. My

answer is yes with an if and no with a but. So I think it would be a

definite be a combination.

Yeah. Be because

involve somewhat of a bond.

It would have to require somewhat of a bond. Right? Because Okay. The portion that we could ask for LTAC would be the part that that meets that Right. Embeds requirement. The other things we wouldn't necessarily be able to show or we would have to try to figure out and do another study to to do that.

So Right.

The answer is yes. You would probably need to go out for a bond for at least a portion of these costs.

Okay. That's that's what I was thinking. Just and is is a bond for cities, is it the same as schools? Schools have to have passed bonds at 60%. What is it in a community? Is it a fifth is it a civil majority, or is it 60% for a bond? I thought it was 60 for cities too. I think it's 60. So not only a bond, but pass it until proven otherwise 60%, which is, in these financial times, Pretty considerable to do, but more options. I love that. Thank you.

Councilmember Gazzic.

Thank you, Jugal, for all the work you did on this. This is good information. I do have I I do think this would require a bond, obviously, but my concern is the calculations that you have of the buy in from the community. I think that part of the way that we were supporting the operational costs and the maintenance of a community center was coming from the monthly membership fees or the annual membership fees that we were going to have to charge people to even though you're residents, you still have to pay to use the facility. So I I think that would conflict with what we're seeing here, but it's definitely something I think we could look into.

You know, I'm not opposed to doing something there now, but I do think you're gonna need community buy in on that. And, you know, I just know from past experience, it's not as easy as you think it might be. That's all I'm saying.

Deputy mayor Winkler.

Jugo, I too wanna thank you for all your work on this. You put a lot of time on this, and it's appreciated. I do have a couple concerns having worked some bonds in the past. I believe we're required to fair pay fair market labor, which means we pay union labor, and I'm making a statement for or against. And that's why schools and public buildings are sometimes higher. We don't have an attorney here at the moment to help us with that, but I think these costs will probably be higher. And then the second part, I see Keith wants to add some info on that.

I'm just ready to respond.

Okay. And and then I would also be concerned, although I have no personal problems with the metal ability, I'm not sure if that's gonna meet our design codes for here in the city. But I I I would really want to dig deeper into this. As I said, I think in the future, we need to have that conversation. I'm pointing something over there. And I think this is a good starting point, but I think these costs are low. I'm gonna defer to Keith. I think he wants to add to something on my thought.

Well, I can defer to the engineer, and I have the planner here as well. But the the answer is when you have a public space like that, the requirements for building codes are much higher, including ADA accessibility, but also you're including in for structural safety, dealing with earthquakes and and things of that nature. So you're right. The the cost of this for for cities are are generally significantly higher. And and, you know, general frame of mind, I would say $1,200 a square foot is a is a pretty good frame of reference.

Good evening. Just for a frame of reference, the new Public Works Building, which is right behind the Public Safety Building, it's not much. Right? It's, I wanna say, three, five garage bays plus an upper level admin building, essentially wood structure, and it essentially has a little bit of parking. That cost the city $8,000,000.

We put out a $10,000,000 bond. It was intending just to only cost 6, but we essentially had the impact of COVID, and it hasn't gone down. So, while there are cost estimates that that can be generated throughout for everything that are in here, what we can point to is what has actually been executed. So if you haven't visited the Public Works Building, I mean, it's it it is the newest building within the Civic Center. I would not say it's a Taj Mahal, but it's significantly better than where where the the team had departed, which is, unfortunately, we're now calling the old fire station.

Hasn't been the old fire station in a while. It's the old Public Works Admin Building from there. So keep to keep that in mind. So and the other aspect is is we we had a previous analysis in 2019 in this location, and that and that was for everything. That that had the indoor, athletic facility. It had an indoor running track. It had, aquatic center. We partnered up with the library, and a whole bunch of other community type functions. And that upper this is 2019, pre COVID. So so I had to look that up just before we started this council meeting.

That was 80,000 square feet at $48,000,000 at that point. But that was pre COVID, so we jacked it up by between 3040% to in today's cost from there. But, yes, I what I do recommend what I really do recommend is, hey. Let's let's not stab at cost. Right? If we really wanna pursue indoor and outdoor facilities, if we wanna pursue, things that are specific for this community center, we we can go after both. Right? We can't. We don't have to have one or the other. Right?

It it's not, you know, like, do you wanna eat breakfast or lunch, in this situation? We can go after both, and I I recommend we we go about it in a thoughtful process. It just so happens that what we're presenting here is specifically a specific type of funds that we can pursue, whereas the indoor outdoor facilities is another process we can pursue in a different type of funds that we haven't discussed here from that point, but they'll they'll take a longer process. So, Keith, I I don't know if that's more than probably what you'd probably bargained for with me.

Gus, I think that was actually perfect.

Okay.

Buzz kill. Thanks, Gus. Thanks.

Is there anything more? Any more presentations? Nothing for you, councilmember Barrow? No. Okay. Okay. I guess we can we can move on. We'll have a chance to vote for options down under 10.2. We'll get to that in a little bit. Okay. Right now, we've got 6.3, which is 2025 budget update. Keith, you've got this one.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor and council. You know, first of all, I I wanna say I I think there's some confusion. This is saying a final budget presentation. Really, what this is just a high level 2025 year end financial report.

I think as this year goes on and as we prepare to do our next year's budget, I do wanna have more conversations about some of the historical data and continue to share that as we move to a GFOA best practice budget. A lot of this information becomes more important and to get into a little more details and analysis and background and history becomes more important. So this is really just kind of a initial high level talking about some of these things. So I will give Carrie a chance to get my presentation up here. The initial ones are just as we're getting ready for this, we're just have some numbers on a sheet of paper.

And and coming forward, we'll continue to add more data to this. But this is just a general overview of of our main funds here, including the general fund. And I will go into a little more detail on some of these after we get through some of these initial things because, of course, on this screen, no matter what, it's a little hard to read. One of the things I did wanted to to say is that we need to make an adjustment to some of our numbers. Our actual beginning fund balance for 2025 was $574,620.

I've been working with Kelly Atkinson and and Kathy Trotter and if confirmed, that is the case. So going forward, we need to make that adjustment. There was some still some good news coming out of this, and we'll talk about that. We have seen our general fund numbers up with some caveats, so I do wanna talk about that. As you're going through these numbers, it's important to remember, I do wanna make this change going forward. If it has a bracket around it, that actually means it's good. If it if it doesn't have a bracket, that means it's it's negative. So brackets are positives. Non brackets are negatives. I always have to wrap my head around that.

We'll talk a little more about the the general fund, the revenue stabilization fund, and the contingency reserve and a little more detail coming up. There really is no big information, although we'll talk more about these in details at upcoming meetings for our special reserve funds and our internal service funds. Next slide, please.

Heath, can we ask questions

before we're

going? Yeah.

Okay. I appreciate it. Susan I was on here for Okay. Go ahead. Susan, go first.

Thanks. Walton, go ahead.

Thank you. I and this is not my forte. I I know I emailed you, Keith, and I'm I'm still sorry. I I'm a little confused. So the 574000, but then when the first line, 001 general, it's the 1,300,000.

Correct.

And

then when I take that across, I could be wrong, to the 1,900,000, I those are not, like, adding up for me. Because your your answer to me that we was that we ended 2024 and 2025 at 05/4620. Is so is that that's where we ended, but yet the the numbers here look a little more than that. So I'm trying to figure out. And I've used my calculator to the point I've gotten more confused.

Yeah. And I mean, I I think as we go forward, we do have another presentation just to really go over the specifics of the general fund and and where some of these funds landed and to talk about in a little more detail. But, I mean, to answer the question where we where we began 2025 was at $574,000.

So should the 1,300,000 be there?

No. That's what I'm saying.

We need to we need to adjust that number.

I did read it correct. Oh, I'm kinda, like, excited about that. Okay. So that is actually not 1,300,000. Then if you take that adding and subtracting, then the 1.9 would not be accurate either.

The 1.9 is is an accurate number, and and there might be some more detail we need to provide.

25 to 26.

You're Because No.

I know that. Yeah. I guess it. Okay.

This is sticking in in in revenues and expenditures and and some other funds as well.

So Okay.

Yes. The 1.9 number, and and you're going through this and working with the staff, is is correct.

But the 1.3 should be 5574?

It should be 574. Correct. But

when that

For the starting at 2025.

Then why would the 1.9 be accurate if the beginning number and you take it across is different?

I I without Okay. I can't

someone else sees it. I'm just okay. That I still struggled there. But okay. We'll keep going.

It's two different years we're talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. It's end and where we start at the beginning.

Deputy mayor Winckler? I'm gonna build on to Susan's question if she's okay with it. I have when you come back, that'd be my follow-up. Because if you take the beginning balance of 1,300,000, you add on the actual revenues at $13,500,000 and you subtract out the actuals, that's where you get a 1,900,000 So there are several numbers that would be wrong in there. If you put the $574,620 in that starting beginning balance, I come up with an ending fund balance of $1,245,670.

There's some there's some revenues in there that that we haven't accounted for in those difference that was added into what would became a quote unquote supplemental. So that's what the money we have to go through. And and I need I've asked for more time as we go through and put this all together. But what I can say is working is that we started with that, and this is what we ended with that. So some of the numbers we needed to work on, but where we're trying to figure is the number of the 1.3. So there is some more work we need to do on this.

Okay.

Oh,

council member Elliott?

Yeah. Just I know we bought some news or we were supposed to buy some new software this year. Did did we to up to upgrade our finance department? We we didn't?

No. There has there there hasn't been as we've gotten into those some of those expenses.

Okay. Because we did we did pass that, that we would

items in there as as well. Correct.

Okay. Because, you know, I have to say this is really frustrating to get this information when we're looking at it and it's incorrect. I I just I don't understand why we're even looking at this because it's it's it's incorrect. And that that to me is unacceptable when we're doing a trying to figure out where we were in 2025, and it's May, almost June. So, anyway, I just find this very confusing. And

I I I understand. I've understand the frustration. Yeah. So just the second items are are getting into the the general government nonoperational funds, service funds, capital improvement funds, and and fiduciary funds, and then just kind of a general overview to our enterprise funds. I I do wanna say we will be having more conversations and work on some of these as well. So as we go forward with this, we need to make some of those adjustments as well. Next slide, please.

Next slide, please.

So our actual ending fund balance is 1,976,372. That is where we started 2026 at. I understand there's some questions on that, and we are working through some of those as we make some of these adjustments. This is we said this is almost a million dollars above budget. What we're referring to is that our budgeted amount for 2026 to start was $997,102.

So we're seeing a little bit more. We collected more revenue than budgeted, and this was partly big due to taxes of the P and O, increase that was made, admissions and gambling, permits and plans examination fee, and investment interests. We have expenses of 8% unspent, but I wanna be clear that there is some concerns with this. There is a Teamsters contract which expired in 2020 funds. The Teamsters is our police union. They have been out of contract for all of 2025. So we know that we have this expense coming as we come into contract with them.

Oh, council member Walden.

Okay. Two things. And I appreciate the candor about this, Keith, and it'll be updated. But it's it's it is, I agree with Beth, hard to comp to comment on this when the numbers are gonna be changing. It's a little bit frustrating to say the least, especially when 1,300,000 is actually 574,000. That's a pretty significant difference to then carry the addition and then you subtract and then you get the total. So that's that's one piece. When we talk about our police, it's been about a year, I'm guessing, for that contract to be negotiated. How much money are we talking will come out to I know for teachers, you go back you have to retroactively, whenever that started, pay those people. That is fair. About how much money will that be out of our general fund to do that?

Yeah. I I really don't wanna comment specifically because we're in negotiations. I don't wanna look like we're trying to land on a number, but what I can say is that we they did not receive any COLA last year, and then whatever increase or pay increases or additional revenues that we would would do would be part of that. So I would anticipate this to be a larger amount, but I don't wanna discuss it in public. So we're not looking like we're defending any sort of bargaining interference or No.

I was gonna respect that. But I'm I'm just guessing that would be fairly substantial, and it'll eventually need to be reflected in here. Correct?

Correct. That's why I wanna be transparent as we're talking about this number that it is a number that's high because we know we have this outstanding

And then this twenty twenty six is firefighters. Are we gonna have to go back retroactively when that's settled as well?

So this we talked about this as well coming up, but, yes, at 2026, we are out with firefighters and we are out with police. So as we are getting our numbers for 2026, we need to keep in mind that it is reflecting a number that is lower than what we will actually get to when we settle. K.

Oh, councilmember Geswick. I understand you probably cannot comment on this, but as a citizen, taxpayer, and a council member, I'm very concerned that we are not in contract with the police department, that it's out of contract since all of 2025. And how much is this going to cost us when we don't have a city attorney to to wrap this up? I know you can't comment. I'm just I find it very concerning.

I I I have a concerning as well. And what I'll say is that part of this is I really, the big part of this has been and I don't think I'm giving anything away, and I don't think they would disagree. We've been working with Teamsters. They had a transition in their in their person that was doing that, and we won a six month period without any negotiations. They've had trouble finding someone else to take over for for their accounts.

So the challenge has been just finding a Teamsters representative to to be here. We have met three times in the last year. City is open and ready to negotiate. So that's just been the reality of of the struggle we've had with with the negotiation. So as we, yeah, as we go through just a general overview, there's 16 total funds.

One of the things that has been really important is we are keeping our money active. It's they're being spent or invested. We're drawing about $53,000 for all funds, not just our general fund in terms of our investment accounts. And this general fund position has been improving even with some of these concerns we've had in terms of of outgoing expenses. So we have seen some positivity in that.

So part of the difference in that and the revenue streams are the updated fee schedules, the one tenth of 1% sales tax for transportation, the lodging tax, and the rate adjustments that we did for our water and our storm waters. One of the things I wanted to talk about, I know there's some questions about this, was our 2,025 reserves. So our policy has a reserve policy in terms of our goals for our reserve funds. This was a council priority a few years ago. The budget talks about this as well.

But for our revenue stabilization, we are still 53% below our policy stated goal. And for our contingency fund, we are 35% below the goal. So we still have some more more work to do in terms of our reserve policy. And I think as we continue to talk about what we do in the future and be mindful of being good stewards that we need to work on getting these funds up as well as our general fund as well.

Oh, council member of the court?

So we like, we are still waiting for the negotiation with police and fire, and that's my question is that how much backdated we need to pay them? 2025? The year 2025 and almost 2026? Correct. So then the follow-up question is, do we have enough reserve to pay back the salaries what we owe them right now?

Yes. Yeah. We have plenty of reserves to do that.

Yes. Thank you.

But it I I would do wanna be mindful of just saying as you look at the number we have starting this year, we know that this is an expense that we need to account for.

Okay. Thank you.

Council mayor Walton?

Just move moving forward on this. I know we've asked this as a council quite a bit. It's just imperative that we as a council have monthly updates, money coming in, money going out. Because this is I'll be honest, this is pretty shocking to look at right now. And I'm not even an expert, but turns out I was adding and subtracting correctly. I just I don't know how to emphasize that enough. Maybe it's just me. I I know some of us would like that. But as we make decisions about other people again, and other people's money, man, I wanna know every month where we are at as a as a city. And honestly, this is not even really telling me where we are right now, to be frank.

But, you know, I'm always looking, how do you make it better? We I don't know what to do to make that happen. But and and there are other districts oh, sorry. There are other cities that that do that, that have a pretty, almost user friendly way of doing that. But we have to move forward in these tough economic times to get monthly updates that are really, really as detailed as possible. And I know there is never a perfect ending balance. You I I just spent a couple thousand bucks on my next year's budget. I get it. But something every month that gives us an idea of where we're at so that we are not surprised. Or we can start proactively addressing it. Those are my thoughts.

I I don't disagree with you on being more transparent. I know we have had presenting monthly information. I will be following up with counsel on some changes we need to make on that and and why, but I don't disagree with you that we need to be more transparent and open in our in our budgeting process and and and our budget. So I won't disagree with you.

Okay. Go ahead.

I I I'm I'm glad you agree with that. But I'll be, again, very frank. I've been told that probably since I started on city council four years now. I agree. We should. We will. We're we're not. And and we have to. So it's it's great to say we will. We're gonna meet. I I I when you're newer, Keith, heard that for quite a bit. It needs to actually be a part of our standard process. We need to have systems in place where that is just standard operating procedure. This I don't know what to say. I've I I'm starting to doubt.

Understood. So for the 2026 budget, and just for the future, just keep in mind, so we've talked about this already. Police and fire contracts will affect the 2026 expenses that may not be reflected in the current budget, so just wanna be open and transparent about that. Inflation impacting materials and contracts, we've talked a little bit about and, actually, quite a bit about our aging infrastructure needs. So just understanding that that's a cost that we have.

When we talked about our standard of course, this was one of the concerns that they had they had talked about as well. We're worried about a potential economic slowdown, which could affect our sales tax. It could affect development potentially in our community. We need to evaluate utility rate increases and and how they've been working in terms of our expectations, and we need to continue to work to close the gap on reserve funds. Another big portion of this is we keep seeing insurance costs go up significantly every year, which is a big part of of our cost overall.

And we need to continue to explore grants and revenue opportunities. So I'm aware that we need to make some changes, and and we're working on that. And we need to be more open and transparent on our on our budgeting, and we need to be better. And I I acknowledge that, and we'll work to do it. So I ask for patience and grace as we as we work through. But we also need to work through some some of our past numbers and make sure we get good data and numbers as we as we go forward and make sure that we're starting from a place we can all agree on.

Councilmember Elliott?

Yeah. So I wanna go back to that software. So I did think that the council did approve that the finance department would purchase new software. And why haven't we? And what software is out there that would make it streamlined, make it much easier for our finance department to do their to do their work and to publicize it to the to the community. And to me, that would help us do our monthly reports. Because I'm I'm with Susan. We need we need a monthly report, an accurate monthly report. So where are we with that software?

Yeah. I mean, the software changes were were things that we had talked about in terms of getting budgeting software, you know, because we're using Excel spreadsheets, which, you know, inherently have some challenges aren't aren't the best for that. So, you know, there was some initial work on doing that, but we really didn't go anywhere. But I agree that that needs to be a priority. Software needs to be a priority. We need to be more technology savvy and try to use economies of scale in terms of using resources that can make us more efficient. There's just there is just a long way to go. So this is going to be a long process. It's so I'm I understand the frustration today. My thing is to say to you, I I hear you.

I know what we need to do. I have a background in this, but I also know that this takes time, and this is gonna take some time to improve.

Council member Thakur? So, again, being new, I didn't know what we use for the accounting software. But while you are talking about Excel spreadsheets, I mean, those are the, I guess, olden days, but still people use it. It's very efficient. However, I think the new softwares, online softwares are available.

So sometime we don't have to have a downloaded software and work on a one computer. Actually, two, three people can work simultaneously online, like a QuickBooks or things. The benefit I know personally because I have a business and I know how to do accounting, and I have done used the QuickBooks for, like, last fifteen years. The QuickBooks will connect you directly to your account. So every penny comes into the our account and every penny goes out.

It's right there for you to identify what is your income and what is your expenses. Where did you spend the money? As soon as it's identified, you have that all the time available. So you can get that reports like we are talking about, monthly reports. It's pretty easy. Somebody can be just sitting down every day expenses and income and just be done with it. And on the thirtieth night, maybe another first or second, we will have the reports ready. Maybe I'm not right. I you can correct me. Well,

the yeah.

Council member Elliott, I believe what you're talking about was a module in our Springbrook accounting system because you referenced Burcrest, I believe. Don't they have reports that that you re you've referenced? I believe that's a module in Springbrook, and I believe it does what, council member Thakor is saying. It feeds from our Springbrook system. We put in the payments, and it and then I'm not accounting. So I'm but I what I remember is you could go online. Anybody could go online and track that in real time. Think I believe that's what that

software So part of the question too is is is SpringBrook still the best software for our finance system? Because what we're doing is taking SpringBrook data and putting it into an Excel spreadsheet. So, I mean, I think to answer your question, the the bigger question is, is Springbrook still the right financial software for us to use? And many cities have moved to different programs. So that's really one of the initial analysis in terms of trying to to do this. And then what or if not, what other budgeting software can you use that'd be better suited rather than Excel? There's there are online programs. YouGov is one and and others that you can do.

One of the benefit I have to tell everybody to go if you do it online software, if you use it, what happens is the data cannot be manipulated. So in a Excel spreadsheet, I have it. Somebody can just say delete, and it's gone. In online access, it stays every time. So even hundred years from now, if it's online data has been preserved, and those are connected with the bank.

So suppose, say, if your bank cannot give you the access to the data from seven years from now, your accounting software has the entire database from the bank is downloaded. So in my opinion, it's a very efficient way of dealing with accounting. I'm not an accountant, but I'm a business owner and know how to do the accounting.

Any other comments, questions for Keith? Okay. There's gonna be a lot more to come on this and of course, as you all know, we have a recruitment out for a finance and budget person. So hopefully, that'll come to help us as well. Okay.

We'll move on. We have an appointment of a member to the DuPont Planning Commission, mister James Jenner, recommended by council member Thakur. I've talked to James Jenner myself, and I will entertain a motion to accept his appointment. Council member Thakur? I make a motion to approve the planning commissioner, James Jenner. K. Council member Barrow?

I second that.

Any further discussion? Seeing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, say aye. Opposed? Okay.

Mister Jenner has been appointed. Next, I have a one proclamation tonight. As whereas Armed Forces Day is celebrated on third Saturday in May each year, whereas it falls during military appreciation month and joins Memorial Day and military spouse appreciation day, and whereas originally, there were single day celebrations for the army, navy, and air force, Whereas on 10/21/1949, secretary of defense Lewis Johnson announced the creation of Armed Forces Day to unify the armed forces under the Department of Defense, now commemorating all branches of the military during one solitary day. And whereas Armed Forces Day is a joint celebration of all six branches of the US military, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy, and the newly created Space Force. And whereas the day honors all people currently serving in the US Armed Forces, including the men and women who have served or are serving in the National Guard and Reserve components.

And whereas unlike Veterans Day, which honors those who served, and unlike Memorial Day, which honors those who died serving, Armed Forces Day is a day to honor all men and women currently serving as well as those who have served both active and former military. Now, therefore, I, Ronald j Frederick, mayor of the city of DuPont, Washington, do hereby proclaim Saturday, May as Armed Forces Day in the city of DuPont, and I encourage all citizens to join me in this observance Sign this May 2026. Next, we have the consent agenda items. I'd entertain a motion to approve those. Council member Elliott.

I make motion to approve the consent agenda.

Okay. Council member Wargo. Second the motion. Any further discussion? Seeing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, say aye. Opposed? Thank you. Item 10.1 is, unfinished business item, and it's, for ordinance number 26 dash eleven seventy regarding a utility franchise with LightCurve. This is the second reading. Is there any further information we have on this, Keith?

No, mister mayor. Attorney Clark presented this information last time and needed to go to a second reading. I think the council was ready to move forward. There is no additional information for consideration.

Okay. Well, in that case, we will entertain a motion. Council member Wargo? Mister mayor, I

move to approve ordinance number twenty six eleven seventy regarding utility franchise with LightCurve.

Deputy Mayor Winkler. I second the motion. Any further discussion? Seeing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor say aye. Oppose? That ordinance has been approved. Our newly added 10.2 item, which is a vote on on moving forward to request some LTAC funds for engineering plans.

Deputy mayor Winkler. Mister mayor, I make a motion to approve the staff submitting a county LTAC grant for design and engineering study for option two.

K. Do we have a second? Council member Barrow?

I'll second that.

Any further discussion? Council member Thakur.

I think I would like to see we present option number two and three as one of the things to move forward with. I would love to get it moved forward. We can get the LTAC money. And if we get the LTAC money as well as we get some more money from other sources like our city engineer just told us, and if we can create our event facility community center plus the recreational multipurpose use for City Of DuPont for next hundred years, I would love to see that happen. So I think we should pursue the two options, option number two and option number three. Mhmm. The two different

things are not mutually exclusive. I mean, over time, we can do both. Right?

Amy, would you like to do you think it's possible for us to apply for two options at the same time?

I I actually do not.

Yeah. We do one, then later on do the other.

The other, unfortunately, because they're two different sites. You're you're talking about two very different projects.

And one might require a bond as opposed to LTAC money, so there's different scenarios there. Anyway,

council member Wargo? Yes, mister Mary. I you know, I'm I'm happy that the council is gonna move this forward. You know, not every option that we discuss tonight is a slam dunk by any means, but I'm definitely not in the in the in favor of kicking the can down the the road. I think we go for the LTAC dollars from the county, provide something for our citizens as a service in the community and also help our businesses. So I think we've got to be bold and unafraid and just move forward. So I'll be voting yes.

Councilmember Elliott?

Well, I I do have some real concerns about this, And, I'm gonna point back to the $100,000 study that was just conducted that said it's highly it's highly probable that we will be having to pay costs out of this from our general fund. And having just listened to the 2026 budget, we've got some significant financial challenges coming up. So I'm wondering how much money we are gonna have in our general fund to to contribute to this. Even though it's four years down the road, I don't see things improving economically anytime soon. So I do have concerns about this, and I would vote I'm not gonna vote for this.

I think I would vote to go back to the drawing board and put something else out there.

Deputy Mayor Winkler? Just as a reclarification, I was leaning toward option one if I think the study for option two makes sense if there's a potential for more parking. Okay? That would need to be included in the study, and that cost would be need to be included in the study. So that's why I lean toward option two for this. If that parking doesn't become available, it just means less less of a cost, but less parking. But I wanna clarify, it only commits us to apply for a grant to do a study. That's all we're doing. We're not doing funds from anywhere. We're applying for a grant to do a study.

If approved, the grant will pay to do the study. We will then need to apply just so everyone following for another grant a year from now, in all likelihood, to do the actual construction. If that grant is denied, we don't do the construction. So we don't we are, I think in my mind, being very good stewards of our

own

dollars. The bottom line is this is the first step. If the grant is approved, the study's done. If we're not approved for the next grant, then we don't go forward. It's it's that simple. And I as I clarified before, we already have some costs into our current building that we're already paying, such as the seating and so forth. Structure size should be about the same. And and if we don't do anything, if we kick the can down the road, if I can steal Tom's line, then then we have two real rundown old buildings that we haven't done anything with. Okay?

Councilmember Walton.

I I'm just I don't I'm gonna vote no to move it forward. And and here's why. It's not that I'm kicking the can down the road. Certainly not. I understand all the financial pros and cons and so forth. I just would like to see more choices, more thoughtful ideas. And, I'm sorry there's a crunch deadline. But I want to make it really clear. I'm not against any, quite frankly, of those options. Even running a bond, I'm not against any of it.

I just don't feel, me personally, I'm at a place where I can make the most informed decision that I need. But certainly I don't think myself or Beth or anyone else, that matter, we're not kicking the can down the road. That's not at least what my vote is all about. My vote is about making the best fiscal decision that I think I can for other people's money. And given the budget concerns that are starting to really concern me, Maybe when those are addressed, I my my vote might have been different because I was going back and forth. But it kind of solidified to me that there are some pause buttons that I would prefer to be hit right now, but not against it as an as it even a partial or its entirety.

Council member Gassick.

I think part of the reason that we're in this financial position is because we have kicked the can down the road. And when I say we, I don't mean me. I'm talking about previous council decisions because slowing down city growth and, you know, rezoning property that's already been zoned and doing things over, and recreating the wheel because it's not what you wanted to see has stopped revenue for the city because we have not had any growth. There has not been any growth. Old Fort Lake is still sitting there with nothing happening, and, you know, it could have been further down the line than it is right now, and you could have had money coming in.

Kicking the can down the road is never a good idea. You you need to address things head on. I'm voting to support this because I have faith that we can get this these LTAC monies. We're leaving money on the table. This is like working for a company and not putting in for your four zero one k is the way that I would like it. It's it's it's money that should be coming back to us. We we are leaving money on the table if we don't put in for these grants. And I'm absolutely 100% in support of this of option two. I am tired of seeing this council kick the can down the road. Bart.

Council member of the

court? 11.

I think, like, I I will stick to what I was talking about. I would love to explore our city, look beyond just repairing or reconstructing the older building and not having more issues of having parking and so many and spending $4,000,000. I would love to get that money back to the city, but I think we should look forward, not the backwards. And, we have, some options. We are rushing to this, decision, and I think we should make a approach if would if we would like to make an approach, but having something new, something which Citi can use down the road for long term of the citizens.

So at this time, I'm not gonna vote on this Mhmm. Else upstream.

Councilmember Barrow?

I just wanna add, if this does move forward, that we also include some sort of information on how we can preserve the storage space that's currently in the community center for our historical artifacts. So if this does move forward, we need to make sure that we have something set aside for that storage space. So I just wanna make sure that if we're going forward, that's accounted for.

Any other comments? Okay. I'll call for the vote. I think since we're kind of divided here, you might wanna do a roll call vote on this one here, clerk.

You think?

Okay. So the motion on the table is to request for LTAC funds for an engineering study for option number two. Council member Thacker, how do you vote? Council member Elliot? I'm reading my notes, and they're not following.

Council member Wargo?

Yay.

Council member Winkler?

Yay.

Council member Gassig? Yay. Council member Barrow?

Yay.

And councilmember Walton? Yep. The yeals have it.

The motion passes. Next, we have the mayor's report. I don't know if anything further, so we'll move on to the council reports.

Deputy mayor Winkler? Yes, mister mayor. I do have a report for the council. I just want everyone to know on April 30, state representative Mari Levin met with the mayor and I to discuss future needs right here in the city. Part of that discussion included potential sources of fundings as we request grant options.

Some of the funds that she brought up were the recreation conservation office or RCO funds, which can be used for parks, the climate commitment act funds, and the Mottoxic Control Act funds. Hypothetically, if we needed a potential source for more funds for cleanups, we could reach out to these. And these ones are in addition to or separate of the capital budget where we've been able to get grants from before. So the goal this year is to actually go in there with more than one ask, to go in for two, maybe three ask and funding them to the right source. Representative Levitt sent us information on the recreation cons conservation office funds and some of the grants other cities have received.

It's quite amazing. I would love to get on that list. I will be asking Keith and Carrie if they can send that out to all the council members for information only, not for a meeting discussion. It's just so that you all have the same information that we got, and you can all be a little more educated about the RCO program and what

it

does. Then I'd like to establish our legislative priorities ad hoc committee earlier this year, and that we're not only focused on the legislative priorities, but expanding more into looking at grants. I kind of would like to vote on that at our first meeting in June with the understanding that we won't meet into probably late August because the staff have a very heavy workload this summer, and we need their input. I mean, we've got Memorial Day coming up. We have the July 4 coming up.

We have the canoe coming up. So but I would rather have us figure out who's going to be on that ad hoc committee now so that when the staff gets through their very busy summer, then we can start meeting. And with that shared, that's my report. Thank you.

Councilmember Elliott?

Yeah. I attended a fascinating and yet sobering event on Friday at Bonney Lake in Tahala. Mike Winkler was there. Sarah, our planner, was there. Our fire chief was there.

And it was really it was sobering, and it was all it was all about fire, smoke, and the drought that we're experiencing in Western Washington, the the heat, the the chance of wildfires is greatly enhanced. And so as a result of that, I spoke with Nancy Henderson, who's from Stilichem. She and I got together yesterday, and we've we've contacted James Moore, who is with the Pierce Conservation District, and he goes out and gives presentations on how home homeowners can help prepare their home against wildfire. And so we're looking to have a presentation here in DuPont and then one in Stilichem. And we're I've got a tentative date for for the June and then sometime in July.

But I'll get more information about that because he did a great job. He'll bring lots of handouts. He I got this great book. It's called fire resistant plants. It's how how much how many feet you need to have plantings away from your home. I mean, he it was fascinating. So I look forward to sharing more information about that when I have a date. Thank you.

Council member of the court?

So just to give you the report on the South Sound housing, I attended the meeting last time, and there is a they are hiking the fees for the cities. What exactly those fees are, and that's going to be for next five years. The fees are gonna go up. So we continue to participate. We don't.

Or how do we approach that? So once I have the numbers, I'll share with the council. That's number one. And number two, I would like to see, for the next time, when we have a proclamation, that becomes top on the agenda item. So if some people wants to just come and have a proclamation taken and go away and not wait here for all the meeting, I think that will be helpful. Thank you.