City Council - Regular Meeting

It is now six o'clock and I will call the meeting to order. Clerk, please take the roll call.

Mayor Frederick?

Here.

Deputy Mayor Winkler? Here. Councilmember Elliott? Here. Councilmember Walton? Here. Councilmember Gassick? Here. Councilmember Wargo? Here. Councilmember Burrow? Here. Councilmember Thakur? Here. We have a quorum.

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Now we have a time for public comments, excluding new business and public hearings with a three-minute time limit. Clerk, did anyone call in or email?

No, we haven't. Oops. We have no one online either.

is there anywhere in the audience that wishes to speak okay seeing none i'll move on over you

green means on okay uh yeah my name is uh daniel carter i just moved to dupont a couple months ago so i uh part of a network of churches where we start churches outside of like military communities and so i've been in san diego for the past 10 years and so we moved here to to start a church and we want to come alongside what the other churches are doing here in dupont and be a blessing to the city and get to know as many of you guys as possible. So yeah, that's who I am and excited to meet you guys afterward.

So welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We need blessings. That's for sure.

Is there anyone else that wishes to speak? Okay. We'll move on to the approval of the agenda.

I'd like to make a motion to amend the agenda by moving, establishing a youth program in the city of DuPont to the next meeting, September 8th.

Is there a second for that?

I'll second that.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded. We'll have a discussion now. Do you want to address that on discussion?

Well, I'm going to share a couple of thoughts that I would have shared later, but I'm fine. I understand that it's a full schedule and everything. But I do want to thank Jugo for the opportunity, for exploring this potential student opportunity. I think it's good research and a lot of cities have it. I just think before we know or do it, whether it's this meeting or the next meeting, that people realize other cities have it. And there's a lot of templates out there. We've had it before. It died. I think we all should know that before we go into a study session. But as part of that process, I just wanted to make sure the council members understand what this is. And most importantly, Tom, I want to make sure you're in the loop because you're at least onto the still historical school district. Okay. So, um, I would suggest maybe before we have a study session that the two of you touch basis and look at it. And I'm not saying you have to be involved in it or not. That's your, your call, but I just want to make sure liaison's in the loop on since it deals with high school. Um, and maybe part of that, when it does come up, we might need to explore an ad hoc committee because these are neat packets, but they're kind of in depth and you guys might want to meet in some fashion. And then mayor, I think you should consider being on part of that ad hoc committee if there is one. But with that shared, I just want to make sure everyone knows that this is being looked at. And if it comes up at the high school, then you know about it. And then the two of you can touch bases and talk and maybe come up with a when we do that study session.

Okay. Any other comments from council members?

Yeah, I just have one more. So I also thought that we have a really full agenda tonight. And so I think in order for us to really do our due diligence, it would be best to move it to the next meeting so that we've got time to think about things and prepare. So I'm in favor of this. I want to add that. But I think it would be better to move it.

Any other comments? Okay. I'll call for the vote on that request to amend that agenda item. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose?

Okay.

Well, now we can entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended.

I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as amended.

Second. It's been seconded. Any further discussion?

I had a quick question. It'll still be a study session, right? Oh, yeah. Great. I don't know much about it, so I'll look forward to that. Thank you.

Any other discussion? Okay. I'll call for the vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose? Okay. The approval of the agenda as amended is passed. We'll move on to the next agenda item, which is 6.1, which is volunteer liability training. Director Kearney, do you want to introduce your guests here to talk about this?

Sure. Yes. Hi. Thank you, Mayor. Our MSA is here to go through some information for us and will be available to answer questions about it.

Thank you, Sabrina. Yep, so as she said, my name is Henry Dietz. I'm the risk manager for the AWC RMSA, which is the Association of Washington City's Risk Management Service Agency, hence the acronym. It's a bit of a mouthful. Essentially, today I'll be talking about just volunteer risk safety, so the risks, and why, you know, having a safe and sustainable program is important for our communities. And then who should I look to to man the slides? Is it Sabrina? Oh, perfect. Thank you so much. I will just kind of look your way or say on the next slide to go through these. So on the next slide is just a quick touch on who we are because I visit members pretty often and they might not know exactly who I am or what's going on. So you guys are part of the RMSA Risk Force. So you guys pay a contribution as all of our other 116 cities, towns and special purpose districts pooling money together to have property and liability coverage because the private market can be quite expensive. With that, we have a board of directors, which is, they're elected to their position on the board from our elected officials amongst the board and then we have, or of the pool. And then we have an operating committee, which is an elected position from our city town staff, from our pool. We're part of AWC. With that, that's just down in Olympia. They do legislative advocacy on the Hill, a lot of local control when it comes to policies and bills. We also work with the other AWC programs. So that's the member pooling program, such as the retro workers' compensation pool, the health benefit trust, the drug and alcohol consortium. And with that, we also have access to the National League of Cities. That's the pool of pools. So as Washington, we are one of those where we get reinsurance, which is a competitive reinsurance rate, which is essentially, I don't have a slide on this. You know, for example, we have $250 million in coverage for the entire pool when it comes to our property. We don't necessarily hold all that. We have a mosaic wall of different insurance companies and reinsurance companies that we purchase from that we, in the event of a, you know, once in 200 year disaster, we have the funds to make sure everyone can get back to where they were in terms of our public property. So that's where NLC comes in. They also have risk services and training, more professional development for us, where in October I talked to other pools in the country being like, what are you guys dealing with? Auto losses is the big one, every year it seems. On the next slide, it's just a quick review of what I've slightly talked about. So we provide not only that property and liability coverage, but a host of other resources as well. But we provide earthquake, flood, cybersecurity, pollution, general liability, aviation or drone, if you have them. All these different coverages we have for our members. But on top of that, we are not an insurance company. We're a risk pool, so we provide in-house claims handling. No 800 number, no call center. It's two people. You might reach the front desk first, and then they'll transfer you over to Ashley or Anthony. Ashley handles our pre-litigation assistance. So that's where, you know, which employment practices, land use decisions, things of those natures that where there might be liability in terms of litigation, where we will help and kind of give guidance and in more complex situations, provide defense attorney hours to just guide our members through whatever situation they may be in. We do training and scholarships. An example of one, I had a certified arborist come in last year and this year to do tree risk assessment training for our public works and park staff. I do risk management. Consider this risk management. I am our risk manager. do consulting and inquiries and contract reviews. We also do grants. We have loss prevention grants every year. And then we have the member standards. These I won't touch on much during this training. We've got a lot to cover, but essentially these are policies, practices, and training that we require of our members to maintain their $0 deductible coverage. I do believe I'll be coming around again in two weeks to talk about other trainings. In that, I will also lightly go over the member standards. I do think that they're important and they have changed over the years, especially for 2026. So it's just a teaser for next time. Next is just a disclaimer. Basically, I say I'm not an attorney. I didn't go to law school. So this is risk management advice, educational purposes. This should not be considered in any way legal advice. Should you need specific legal advice, please consult with your city attorney or other legal counsel. All right, now, next slide is, why am I here? Why building volunteer programs? So for most of our members, our small to medium-sized cities, you guys are a little bit on the larger side for our pool. We have, I'm trying to think of our tiniest one, Lamont. Over on the east side, 80 people, total population. So we range. Our biggest one being Port Orchard, Gig Harbor, Airway Heights. That's as big as we get. You guys are right along there. It's a little bit smaller. So with that, volunteers are a huge asset to cities and towns. They can easily extend your service capacity without becoming a burden on the budget, on payroll, on benefits, all those things. But from a risk management perspective, an unmanaged volunteer program is a real exposure that we've seen. And that can be an injury claims both to the public and to that volunteer, auto liability claims if they're using city vehicles, reputational risk, event injury, all sorts of different liabilities depending on the type of volunteer program or volunteer task is at hand. um this can be damaging costly especially if something goes wrong during an event or involving children that's where a lot of our events especially in the summer come about where we're giving the kids something fun to do in the summer and we're utilizing volunteers so the goal of this training is not necessarily to discourage volunteer programs or scare you guys i sometimes when i do these trainings or talk about stuff it's it's all doom and gloom but i'm going to try to talk about you know, giving you guys the knowledge and the tools to run your program well, rather than no volunteers ever. So the next slide, you know, who's a volunteer? Before we get into anything else, which is pretty simple, a volunteer giving their time freely, essentially, but that's different from an intern or school work study program, which is also different from community service participants, court-ordered or not. So all of those people are essentially giving their service usually for no compensation or at least not monetarily compensated. Each of these classifications have different aspects of requirements, supervision, workers' compensation, We'll touch on them. But the broad swath of what I'll be talking about is probably just our general volunteers, because that's the one that you guys have the most control over between, you know, because the courts talk about, you know, health dictation on on a court ordered community service and schools usually have an agreement of their own for work study. Next is volunteer policy. This is probably the biggest thing I could ever say, the cornerstone of the whole training is just like having a volunteer policy is really important. As you guys probably know, if it's not written down, it didn't happen. If you don't have a policy to lean on, you actually don't have anything to lean on if you're trying to implement or enforce anything. So without this, you might be relying on just an informal understanding between the city and volunteers. And that's what I've seen a lot, just kind of, we've always done it this way. They just come, they help and they want to help and we want them to be able to do what they want with the city. And I think that while that is great, it does become a risk for the city. That's something that we really want to at least make sure that we're talking about and have some words around so that way you guys can be protected. Your policy should clearly spell out who is eligible to be a volunteer, what kind of work they can or cannot do, who supervises them, safety expectations, how incidents get reported, and then also giving yourself grounds to remove a volunteer. That's also important. You're putting the City of DuPont right on their shirt when they're volunteering. whether it's informal or not, if they're volunteering, they're kind of underneath the city's name. So as elected officials, your your role isn't to basically, you know, write and manage the day to day operations of the volunteer program, but to help create the policy, make sure it's adopted and followed. So I will talk about all these different pieces throughout the training. But first, on the next slide, just touching on compensation and benefits, because that's one slight risk on the side. Cities often want to thank volunteers for their service in the form of compensation or benefit. This is very nice and common to do, but there's obviously legal limits that we want to talk about. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, someone only qualifies as a volunteer if they're providing service without promise, expectation, or receipt of compensation. That said, there is some flexibility you guys do have. For these, I want to just say that they're available. Whether you guys choose to use them is up to you. But you can reimburse expenses. You can provide reasonable benefits, which we'll touch on. And then also, you can do pay without a nominal fee. That is just a it's a legal term, a nominal fee. I couldn't tell you where the number really hits because it's kind of a gray area. But essentially, you don't want to go too much where they become an employee, where they are entitled to overtime, entitled to benefits. And that's what we're trying to avoid by having volunteers, because that's not necessarily what the budget calls for. So on this is also with that benefit side is workers compensation. So Washington law lets cities, you guys can choose to elect to cover volunteers for medical aid benefits. So that is an option in terms of this compensation and benefits. One reason someone might do that is because if a volunteer is injured while volunteering on behalf of the city, That coverage covers it. If not, there would be potential liability against the city from the volunteer. They could file a tort claim form that maybe the city did not reasonably provide personal protective equipment, what have you. And that is where there's this balance you must have between volunteers without um the medical aid benefits and with with that with medical benefits and what i would say is this is where that train what the policy comes in having proper training proper equipment proper supervision and all those pieces come in to have a strong volunteer policy to reduce those risks. One thing of note is if you did provide volunteers with medical aid benefits, you would then need to report those hours to Labor and Industries, which would then come back to us in the form of your contribution to the pool. Part of our main contributions are labor hours, claims history, and property values. So if we do see volunteer hours that would potentially raise your rates by whatever that class rate may be, So that's one reason to maybe not elect coverage. Again, it's up to you guys.

The other benefit is the... Are you okay with questions as you're going? Absolutely. This is very interesting. And without discussing whether we should or not, but I'm curious why I think it's built into what we're paying if we did do medical aid benefits. And you're talking about injuries related to their volunteer work only. Is that correct?

Right. So the medical... The medical aid benefits is to the volunteer when they're volunteering on behalf of the city. That is not currently built into what you guys are paying annually.

OK. I'm just wondering what we're doing.

Right. And if you did elect that, then you would report to LNI, and then we would get that. And it's like five quarters after. We pull quarters in a very weird way from you guys to do all this rate review. But essentially, if you had volunteers like now, you would not see that reflected until 2028. um so it's uh but it would have an impact 2028 yes the cost in terms of um of of your because so because you're giving the medical benefits it's reported labor hours to labor and industries and that is part of how we um calculate your contribution to the pool every year which is your labor hours so like all of your city staff if you hire more you might have to pay more okay um so that's just serious yeah absolutely looking you know what we're doing and yeah how it works

I had a question. So what do we have right now? Because we have volunteers like 4th of July, events, activities. Remember we did the great picture of Robin chopping down things on our parks looking great. So obviously we have volunteers. So it would be nice maybe moving forward to have what do we have now Cause it's not prevented us from having volunteers. We have them and I've volunteered. My husband's son had volunteered. So I guess like kind of why would we need more just kind of the back of your head, right? Cause clearly we have a lot of volunteers in DuPont. So whatever we have, I'd like to be able to compare that to what maybe is something a more improved version.

Absolutely. And what I would say is more often than not, we do when we do our rate reviews for every member, We don't see volunteer hours coming in. Most people are not necessarily paying medical benefits to volunteers. The reason being is the risk is relatively low. And this will talk about like, hey, don't have them operating operating a chainsaw. Please do not like that's like one of the one things we wouldn't want to do things like that. And in turn, having a good policy and having all the pieces that we'll talk about here to help reduce the risk of having different types of liability with volunteers, but also reduce the risk of, yeah, internal liability with the volunteer being injured and then filing a tort claim form against the city. So that's where kind of I was hitting recommendation. And just from what I've seen more commonly amongst members on the next slide is just the tricky part here is federal law is clear in the sense that an employee for the city cannot volunteer without pay to perform the same type of work they're already doing so your local firefighter cannot volunteer more for the fire fire department that would just be overtime similarly i've seen it where a city employee a city can't ask an employee to volunteer to offset them being disciplinary action of like not being able to work being like oh yeah you're like you know um unpaid leave but why don't you just come volunteer can't do that um where this does work though is you know you can have a different totally different task someone from the police department can definitely supervise you know a rec league and um you know they can work at the events and whatnot just can't do the exact same job that they're being paid to do On the next slide is more about unions. I was going to say something else, but not that. So when it comes to volunteers and unionized employees, I just want to touch on this, is many collective bargaining agreements include language protecting bargaining work. So volunteers can help, but not in a way that would displace staff. that is unionized and their hours and overtime opportunities. If a volunteer is doing the same work an employee from a union would normally do, this could trigger a grievance or unfair labor practice complaint. Best practices as you figure out what volunteers we're looking for, for what tasks, if it overlaps with already assigned bargaining job duties. I'm no HR professional, so I'd recommend checking with your city attorney, your your HR director, any certain from labor relations can help better answer that. But in my instance, it's usually, you know, volunteers should be doing very simple tasks rather than anything in this that would be this type of level is my is my kind of stance.

We have a park appreciation day.

Go ahead and leave your mic. Go ahead and leave it on.

Okay. We have a park appreciation day where people all go out and work. Is that not part of public works job as well? Are we running, are we crossing a line on that day, that public, you know, day?

it depends it depends on the work but i would say because i'm imagining it's like a a cleanup right kind of like that that part is i think it's different on that level where it's you know they're not necessarily taking away it's how many hours or you know you know they're not taking away all the public works in parks duties um that is more you know when you think about it there's more of those general labor maintenance um type of work and tasks, those don't necessarily hit the grievance level as compared to, oh yeah, we're just going to have volunteers do the treatment plant. They're going to do meter reading. That's where it's like very blatant. So I think that you're fine. You know, those types of things are what volunteers like to do, or that's what volunteers can do in terms of, you know, risk mitigation on it. So I would say you're pretty okay, but I would definitely like, when you get to those, it depends on, if it's just general cleanup, you should be fine, but I would check with your city attorney as well. Next slide is just assigning appropriate work, which we've kind of talked about a little bit here already. So basically, cities can get in trouble and by trouble having a claim in assigning volunteers tasks that are maybe beyond their skill level or training, like a chainsaw, like a like meter reading if they don't necessarily know how to use the software. I might use meter reading a lot. I've been doing a lot of utility questions from another member, so it's just hot on the brain. So a good rule of thumb is if a task requires basic safety gear, it might not be appropriate. Now, there's other reasons why you might have safety gear to be overprotective or good proactiveness. But if it's kind of a requirement, maybe that's not necessarily the task we want volunteers to be doing. this can include things like heavy equipment handling chemicals working in confined spaces at heights i understand the instinct of especially for our small members being short staffed and volunteers want to help we don't want to like send them away but this is kind of a very big liability exposure if we had someone at the park on a ladder you know with a chainsaw worst case scenario trying to trim tree branches um that is a really big risk even with training it's still a big risk and that is why we would have you know staff with directed you know as they're under um the umbrella of the city one they're doing stuff within the scope of their employment their liability they're covered by us for liability like if they cut a branch and it fell on somebody But also in terms of themselves, they have workers' compensation if they were to fall. And with that, they should have proper retraining equipment. And that's something that our retro work comp pool that you guys are a part of can tell you all about. When it comes to, I am more people in property or liability in property, and retro is more people. So that's, you guys are part of that pool, employee safety people, that's them. And I do more of how to reduce the risk of a claim for liability in property. So let's see, where was I? Oh yeah, so if we allow volunteers to use equipment like a lawn, like I think a lawnmower, like a push one, pretty low risk. A lawn rider, like an actual like big machinery thing that we have for big fields, that is where we should at least, I recommend not having a volunteer do that. That may tow more into that collective bargaining aspect. But that, if we were then having proper training, giving them proper equipment, to handle that safely for sure. There's something to be said also about children, which we'll touch on more here. Children should be doing even more basic of work and we'll get to the minors and hours of those things. Ask a quick question.

Speaking of children, I was waiting for a good time. I know for schools, you get fingerprinted to be a volunteer in school. So are you all going to speak about what if someone was brought in in a volunteer capacity and harmed a child or? did something of that nature. Will that be part of what you discuss? Yes, there is a slide on background checks.

Okay. Yes. Okay. And I will give you a little bit on that as well. So yeah, I would say for most interns in work studies from high school or something, we, you know, more administrative work, more general labor, those types of things, general maintenance and cleaning rather than anything with, you know, heavy duty machinery, even I would refrain from giving a 15-year-old gardening shears. That's me. I'm paid to be a risk manager, so that's where I rest, regardless of the character of the teenager. Next here is on volunteer project coordination. So when we have the cleanup day, when we have different events, larger projects like that are going to need someone from city staff to be a coordinator. having a volunteer project coordinator, someone to own the project, and not just, you know, where, you know, let's say if the school comes out and they want to do a park cleanup for the day or, you know, as part of maybe a biology, ecology lesson, having just one public work staff kind of just be around in case something happens. We need a little bit more than that for these bigger events. This would mean scoping the project to identify what tasks are we looking for from volunteers, how we're navigating our CBAs and things of that nature, the dates of the volunteer, tasks involved, how long would it take, coordinating with other departments, that way nothing falls through the cracks if it goes from city hall to public works to parks. You need to just communicate clearly with all of those departments and then Everything, you know, you've got to document the hours worked, who was responsible from each department in supervising, what worked, what didn't work, a process improvement I recommend having when we do these big events. If we're in our volunteer aspect, like, hey, did it work when we have 30 people volunteering and only one staff member supervising them? I would think maybe it didn't just because it's 30 versus one. So having a proper ratio to supervisors, especially when children are involved, having adequate supervision. And then so having these just helps you build a stronger volunteer program. Do you have a question?

So regarding the coordination, some volunteers just do it by themselves. I have seen in our city, there are people who just go out with the weed eater and just go on the exit and clean the exit or pick up trash and stuff. and they call them they are doing for city and they don't really work with any of the city staff. They don't tell us and just do it. So is that how do we manage that as a risk?

One just quick clarifying question.

When you say exit is like the I-5 exit. Yeah. Some people go up on the exit and they pick up the Yeah, they pick up all the bottles and the trash and yeah, they clean the right and which is really great.

Yeah.

Um, but they don't tell they don't talk to city. I mean, and then we see the pictures on the Facebook, I clean this and I clean that and I'm like, Okay, So now when you're talking about coordination, suppose if somebody goes out in the parks and just starts put out on the Facebook and say, hey, okay, let's clean this park and 20 people shows up and city has no idea or they are not informing the city. Neither they are taking the consent of the city. Then how does it work?

Yeah, absolutely. That is where it does get tricky. And so first thing for sure is I would really, I think that part of it is outreach from the city to the public being like, hey, we have this robust volunteer program. We'd rather know about it and help you do these things and you go out on your own. That would be my first step because they really would not want them to be doing that. It's risky. It's dangerous, especially off the interstate exits. But that is where if they're not necessarily an authorized volunteer, if they're not, you know, they didn't say anything with the city, they aren't a volunteer for the city. But if they're doing work and like if they're injured and let's say someone's out there and they prick themselves on a needle and want to claim something against the city, like, ah, I was cleaning up your mess, what have you, we would have a pretty decent defense of, well, we didn't ask you to do it. You're not an authorized volunteer. People could file a lawsuit for anything at any time. But it would be more, in my view, a frivolous end lawsuit. But we'd have a proper defense, at least. But one of the scarier things on this is if they're Try and think of an example of how this would happen. Let's say they're cleaning garbage on the interstate exit, and they are moving. There was like a debris that fell off of something, and they throw it, trying to throw it somewhere, and they hit a car and damage it. And then we have liability of property damage to someone's vehicle. if that person with the vehicle owner thinks that it's a city volunteer they can come our way and that's where it gets tricky and dicey where I don't know where that would end up that would probably go to a court and that would be like what preponderance of evidence do we have and in turn that's where we would say they're not a volunteer. We would have our same defenses. I just don't know how strong we would be in that instance because then the question could become, well, why weren't our crew out there taking care of these things? And that's kind of where we're on the back foot. But my thought is, And I don't know this part of infrastructure is where state duty ends and city duty begins on an interstate. And I don't know if you guys know that, but that's one I would question as well. But it is a big liability in my view, and that's something that we would want to try to reduce. People doing volunteerism for the city without working with you guys, without communicating with you guys is a risk because it can be seen as if that they're working for the city through other people's eyes, especially if those other people are injured or damaged in any way.

So here is the follow-up question. So this is what you just explained on my question is more of a risk management to me as a city. But they don't inform the city at all, and they are just doing it. So if we come to know somebody is doing it and putting on a social media, are we going to, as a city, just go and stop them doing it and say, you're not supposed to do it? Or you must coordinate with city? That's where I am kind of... We need to have that guideline, or we should know what city should know and the council should know.

And so you guys can't clear out 100% of risk. It's impossible. If it was, I wouldn't have a job. But I would say this is where due diligence comes in, where we have a program, we're doing outreach, whether that's just actual people or on our bulletin boards, on our Facebook and things, being like, we have a program. Please do not do this. Come work with us. I don't think I would go so far as to have our public works guys drive out there and be like, hey, you got to get out of here. That's up to you guys. It doesn't present the biggest risk. It's not the best idea, but it's not the worst idea. But what I would say is, in the event, let's say if a claim comes up because we reduce the amount of people that are doing this, hopefully, through all this other work. But it still happens. Someone does still go out there on their own. and they get hurt or they damage somebody else's property or injure them. In that claim, we'd be like, hey, we have actually implemented this policy. We've done this outreach telling people not to do this. We've made it very clear. We've talked about it in council meetings or what other ways of communicating. We've done a lot of work to make sure we try to reduce this because we know the risk. And that would be a good defense of being like, then how did this person ignore all these other signs, these obvious things that the city was trying to do to prevent it? And that was where I think that we would prevail in that case. So it's not always 100% foolproof, but that's where I would say that having a good policy and outreach would help you guys in that defense. okay next is supervision training and ppe so um every volunteer uh that for the city should have a designated supervisor um someone accountable for their day-to-day to make sure they show up to make sure they head out um this can be you know it can be like if it's something small and simple where they come in check in and maybe they're you know a grown adult, and they're doing very simple tasks like, oh, they're going to volunteer to take the garbage out of the bins in the front. And they don't necessarily need someone to watch them the whole time. It's like, hey, if you're watching me, why don't you just do it? It would be my thought. So having some sort of supervision and oversight, typically, the person supervising them would be someone who is trained in that. So if we're having someone maybe not have something from our accounting department supervising someone doing parks, park cleanup. someone from Public Works instead doing park cleanup volunteer supervision. We should just make sure that, you know, every volunteer when they start that they have an orientation process covering relevant city policies that apply to what they're doing, safety procedures, any required training. All of this should be documented and not verbally covered. And you want to make sure volunteers know exactly how to report any injury or hazard or incident. Yes.

When you talk about training, can that be online nowadays?

Absolutely.

What we do with volunteers, they go online, they fill it out. They say they've read and watched the short little video on how to volunteer in a kid's classroom, blah, blah, blah. And they have to sign that they've seen it. So it doesn't mean that we have to free up someone from parks or public works to stand out there and watch someone put things in a dumpster.

Absolutely.

It could be very streamlined in terms of being online.

Correct. Thank you. And I'll touch a little bit on this here where we will require you guys to do certain training with your volunteers. Okay. Thanks. But yes, so make sure they know how to report injuries, hazard incidences, and make sure that they have appropriate personal protective equipment, or at least giving them notice ahead of time of certain stuff that they'll need, like closed-toed shoes, long sleeves, pants, you know, things like that. It would be good for cities to provide water, sunscreen, insect repellent as necessary, given the type of task as well. And then when we talk about training, yes, it can be online. Obviously, certain types of training might need to be in person, like how to use certain equipment. I don't recommend this, but if volunteers are driving city vehicles, they would need to do a defensive driving training. We require every single city person amongst elected officials, staff, volunteers, if they're driving a city vehicle, they need to do a defensive driving course every three years. That's one of our requirements. So if a volunteer is doing that, they would need to do that too, online course, not like practical, you know, in the parking lot training. I know it'd be fun. Another task like that is if we have someone working in city hall, if they have access to, you know, if there's a volunteer email and if they're working with the city's information data systems, they would need to do a cybersecurity awareness training, which is another online course. Basically, if they have access where they can get hacked and become a victim of a cyber attack, they should be doing the same training that anyone else that has a computer or data access. So those are different types of trainings that we would require. Those ones are ones that we require.

And before you go, earlier in your presentation, I heard the things that maybe kind of would be very careful is if you have to do a task as a volunteer and you're given protective equipment, kind of not so great, but yet Here, you're actually saying we would provide the, I mean, we had during COVID and all that. So it seems like kind of a mixed message. Is that true? It's a true gray line, right? Very gray.

Yes, it's a very gray line of like, where I'm saying, yeah, one part is if we're needing like, fully protective eyewear for a task if we need it, then it's maybe not a task for a volunteer. But if we provide it as a precaution for a task that probably doesn't usually need it, like between, you know, an example, gardening, you can get dirt in your eye and scratch your cornea. It's possible, it's low, but that's, you know, a little pair of glasses is, you know, even like safety goggles. Versus, yeah, I am doing something crazy here and there's like sparks flying, you know, the welder helmet, things like that. So, you know, that's a clearer line. But yeah, there's a great area between the two. And that's where I was like, if it's a little more obvious, like, maybe I shouldn't have them do this type of work. Um, but other, other PPE like that is like water, sunscreen. Um, you know, if it is like a, if they, if for some reason, you know, long sleeves, if we have like a closet full of, um, DuPont, uh, apparel and it's like, oh, I really would like, when do we have any, you can just give them like an oversized, you know, a long sleeve to wear for that. That's okay to do as PPE as well. But that is where we would maybe do more of a, before volunteering, be like, Hey, make sure like for this thing, you should bring your own clothes that fit that.

Yeah.

So those requirements of that CSIRO training, driving, those are just a hint of the member standards, which we'll touch on in another training in the future. Next is background checks. So background checks aren't required for every volunteer, depends on the task. This is definitely with children, vulnerable populations, like our elderly, if they're volunteering at a nursing home. or access to sensitive financial information or city systems. If they're working with like our city systems that work with our finances or sensitive data, that's where we would want maybe a background check. Those are usually the common triggers for it. The risk management principle I would say here is consistency, is if you require a background check for one youth program volunteer, you have to apply that same standard across all of your roles, not just selectively. Depending on the nature of the position or any of the following, you know, these screening techniques are what we recommend. It can be application forms, contacting personal employment references, criminal background checks through the National Crime Information Center, the State Patrol, or the state and local sex offender registries. verification of education, training, certifications, licenses, if that applies to the task at hand. Personal interviews with the applicant and motor vehicle record checks. One thing to note that you had touched on is if a volunteer has a background check, passes a background check, but still does something of liability. And for example, the one that I think of is sexual abuse and molestation. That is actually, just in general, that is generally not covered. in and of itself under our coverage. So that would be something to think about of getting extra coverages for in that. But in turn, usually a background check should cover most of these, but that's also where proper supervision and training comes in anyway as well.

Does a city get to determine what lets someone volunteer and what doesn't based on a criminal background check? Is it like a set protocol? I mean, I know in school districts, you have anything not coming. So because it sounds like we talk to the person, we interview them. I'm like, if there's a red flag, do we have the ability to say no?

Yes, you do have the ability to say no. I should have just went not to. But yes, you have the ability to say no. Volunteering is not a right. It's a privilege. So yeah, you guys definitely get the opportunity, and you guys get to make that call. I do believe that there are definitely standards of which you should be like, yeah, definitely not. But let's say if someone's, so for example, what we do is like, so for the driving one, we do have a driving criteria. which is essentially how many driving infractions in our driving record or another form of a background check can we allow? And I'm sure all of us may have had a background or a traffic violation or something, and we're still able to volunteer and things like that and drive our vehicles. Next is agreement and waivers. This is a big one here. Depending on the on the next slide is, oh, thank you. Depending on the type of program you want a volunteer agreement, I would say you should always want a volunteer agreement. This either this or You know, the internship agreement, there'll be one from the school most likely that you would sign off on, or a community service participation agreement from the courts. Those are different agreements that come with the different type of volunteering. But for general volunteers, you go through to want your own agreement. This should clearly document expectations of that volunteer, responsibility, supervision, arrangements, and how that relationship between volunteer and city could be terminated. Pretty much kind of touching on all the policy pieces. And they would acknowledge it. Part of that would also include a waiver of liability saying, hey, I know that, you know, there is an assumption of inherent risk of volunteering and I waive my rights to hold the city harmless if I, you know, scrape myself. Things that, you know, working in the park, things of that nature. Waivers can offer that limited liability protection, but they should not be like a a fail safe substitute for a full solid agreement, a documented process and policy. And just like any other city staff member, volunteers should have their own personnel file with their application, their agreement, training records, hours logged, all of those pieces. On the next slide is touching now going into minors as volunteers. So when it comes to volunteers, the state does not set a single minimum age like it does for employment. Having an adult sponsor or supervisor can definitely lower the age of appropriate volunteers for certain activities. I recommend having a policy floor to just be consistent across programs. I would stick with kind of a lot of this stuff, like we don't have this state law on it. So they kind of just lean on L&I on actual employment labor laws. So I'm like, lean on that. I say 14 is the floor. I would keep 14 and up for volunteering unless we're doing like I think about the park cleanup. If families are doing it together, then you can plan Yes, and that's where we can have small children because you know what, their parents are there. That's another layer of supervision and responsibility of the parent. That's where you can play a little bit, but I would refrain obviously higher risk activities for 10 year olds. An important clarification is that the state doesn't have a law that specifically limits the hours for minors like it does for paid employment. But there's also the federal child labor laws, which essentially require that volunteering cannot interfere with the child's schooling. So what I recommend is just kind of a defensible practice is just following on LNI's requirements of labor, which essentially I will talk to right here. For 14 to 15-year-olds during the school week, no more than three hours per day, no more than 16 hours a week, and no more than six days per week between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. During the summer for this age group, you can go to eight hours a day, 40 hours a week for six days in a week from 7 to 7 p.m., sometimes 9 p.m. from June 1st to Labor Day. So that's... Oh, sorry, on the next slide. I just went through all of that and you weren't able to see it. I'm so sorry. There we go. There you go. That's between 14 and 15-year-olds between school and summer. So obviously, as you can see, in summer, you can greatly increase labor hours of children. Definitely want to be more conscientious of that during the school year. But on the next slide, you'll also see for 16 to 17-year-olds, there's even some more play. So for the school week, four hours a day, 20 hours a week, volunteering up to six days a week from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. And you can go to midnight on Friday and Saturday. I think it may be a football game. I don't know. Maybe those go late. I haven't been to a high school football game in 25 years. So maybe they end at 9. Is that accurate? I'm not sure. It's probably not. For summer, they get eight hours a week, 48 hours, or eight hours a day, 48 hours a week, up to six days a week from 7 AM to midnight is the realm of time that they can work. So that's what I would follow. I would obviously try to just be more conservative than this too, especially when it comes to children. Having a kid working on something late at night, that could be more for risk to them of getting hurt or risk from just kids horse playing at night and bringing their friends over, hey, I'm working with the city. Come look at this. And then we have a claim on our hands, things like that. Next is groups as volunteers. For example, if we have a Boy Scout troop willing to clean up the park, that can be really good news. And that's really lovely to have. One thing that's great here is that you don't have to treat every single participant of that Boy Scout troop as an individual volunteer. You can onboard them together. You can designate a point of contact, whether that's the troop leader, their group sponsor, their main adult, that would be the person you work with. You could have one volunteer agreement for the entire event itself. But if minors are involved, we do still want to get individual waivers and parental consent forms for all of those. Supervision ratios with groups and with children should scale to their risk and size. So if we have a group of 30 Boy Scouts and they have one troop leader, we should consider probably having maybe three at least supervisors for that, always being in the area. A good 10 to 1 isn't too bad if it's a relatively low risk task, like a park cleanup. You only need to do one safety briefing or training for that group rather than doing what I will say in the member standards hint is we actually require a number of trainings for the council, like a fiduciary cyber employment training. One way to do it is as a group with one TV or one computer. That's what I would do for a volunteer group as well. And then for tracking of hours, you still wanna track hours even if you're not sending them to LNI, if you're not doing that medical coverage, because they might ask, they might still come ask for it regardless, so it's good to track it anyway. But you can log the hours of a group in aggregate, but I always just still have a written down roster of the names of everyone who's there, and then just general hours.

So what is considered as a group? What amount of people, like 3, 5, 10, is it considered as a group or more than one person is a group? And another question is, Sorry, I forgot my question. Go ahead and answer it. I'll answer the first one. Yeah.

The group number is up to your policy that you want to make. I would say I feel like three people is not a group just yet. I'd say five. That could be considered a group. And I think groups more so might just be affiliation. if it's the Boys and Girls Club, if it's the Chamber of Commerce, if it's, you know, another, if they have a group name, you can do that. That kind of helps with a lot of paperwork too. So I would say if it's like a group of friends, that's like there's seven of them, I would say you can do, I would say still do individual agreements, but if they're all doing it together, you could do the training, the safety briefing as a group, but I would still maybe do the other documentation of agreements and logging of hours individually.

So does those groups has to be a registered nonprofit or for-profit or it can be anybody just, I can say, Hey, I have five people going in as a group and this is what we're going to do. Right.

And that, so yeah, I would say, I say if it's a group, yeah, I would, let's say I would imagine if there's a group of individuals that is like running 25 people deep. I don't even know if I know 25 people that I would volunteer with. So I would imagine that they would be some sort of affiliation, whether that's nonprofit or not. As long as they, if they have a name for themselves and maybe some sort of affiliation or things, that's fine. But yeah, they don't need to be a nonprofit. But let's say that there's a group of seven people and they're like, yeah, we're not a nonprofit, we're not an organization, but we call ourselves this. I'm like, you're just all individuals, but we can do the training together. that's where you know it's it is it has to be some sort of acknowledgement of a group it doesn't need to be a 501c3 or anything all right and then next is interns and work study so touching on these pretty lightly because a lot of this is out of our control interns coming through a school work study program we still want to get parental consent typically that's required and then the school affiliation agreement usually comes from the school that we just kind of sign onto rather than a city agreement. This will often address a lot of things that we've talked about, like supervision, training, whatnot. It also touched upon how liability is shared or assigned between the school and the city in those events. So that's one piece to look at and discuss and even negotiate with the school district if you get those. It's just important for the city to coordinate directly with the school on these rather than assuming that your standard agreement would cover it similarly for next one which is fire department fire departments are very special i think you guys have your own internal fire department or is okay so a lot of this might not count because you guys have it but we have a lot of other volunteer like strictly almost full volunteer districts in our smaller cities and towns but fire departments are worth calling out because they're often treated differently because we do have a lot of volunteer firefighters, but they are usually given a different status. You know, they're almost on city staff level. Basically, in many cases, they're closer to that employee relationship. There's different implications for workers' compensation under L&I because of the nature of the task that they're doing. For this, I would say volunteers generally need to be 18 years old to be a volunteer firefighter. And with this, this is a whole different piece of training on volunteer or on firefighters. So if you guys do want to have that, we're happy to do that. But I probably just leave it at that and touch on just junior firefighter cadet. I've seen this kind of pop up, these junior ambassadors, cadet groups. This is a layering. maybe a fire service. Basically, these programs would need enhanced supervision and definitely want to have clearer limits on age appropriateness for those types of tasks. It's a high, obviously a high, high, high risk thing, firefighting. Hours would still be reflected for the minor hours we talked about a few tables ago. Those would still apply. And tasks for junior cadets or fire volunteers would be severely limited. I would say like junior cadets and a fire volunteer should be doing educational training, community outreach, maybe some administrative support, equipment cleaning, rather than fighting fires. Don't have them fight fires. They can ride in the truck, ride along only, should not be driving. I would say more often than not, no one should be doing anything driving a fire truck and above without being strictly part of the fire department, whether that's career staff or volunteers. Next is driving and vehicle use. So we kind of touched on needed defensive driving training if they're driving for the city in a city-owned vehicle. We would also want to have, if they're driving as part of their volunteer tasks, we want to check their driving records, license verification. and then we want to check that they have a good driving record that they know how to drive safely and defensively with that training again let's say in this if we had a volunteer driving for the uh for the city and they did the defensive driving training and they rear-ended somebody we cover that liability zero dollar deductible if they didn't do the training it's a 2500 deductible I'm just touching on the member standards. I would also recommend that we limit volunteer vehicle use kind of in general. I would just say that if we are trying to transport volunteers somewhere, either we have them meet us there as their own commute or we have a city staff drive them. I would just kind of limit it as best we can. Obviously, that's not always available, but that's my recommendation. Another thing is definitely would want to limit their personal use vehicle for driving. So commuting is different, but once they're actively volunteering, I would refrain from them doing tasks that involve them transporting or driving things for the city. Save that for city staff, just because for anybody, actually, for the city of DuPont, if you're driving for the city in your own personal vehicle, if you're in an accident, our coverage does not come first. Your coverage follows your vehicle. So your personal auto would come in and be like, well, what were you doing? You know, I was driving some things off to the bank for the city. Well, coverage denied because you're doing something for work. so you would not you could potentially not have coverage for your own vehicle but liability then we would come jump in and be like okay show us your your denial of lie of coverage from your carrier now we'll step in as a secondary one for the for the pool for the city um but then we would be like okay where's the training where's the policy you know how do we how do we get here um so just things to think about i would also um uh what i would do is uh on top of that i would be remiss to say not say that um city staff should maybe refrain from having family members in city vehicles while driving city vehicles um using city vehicles for personal use vice versa that's a whole other training thing so i'll skip i'll keep moving on um on the next slide is workers compensation um again uh we you guys are part of a whole other pool called the retro workers compensation pool They know L&I back and forth. I rarely deal with them. But essentially, what I'll touch on here is that workers' compensation for volunteers is not a one-size-fits-all. It depends on the classification or what organization they're from, like a school or corrections agency. So with those, I would just check with the Retro Work Comp Pool.

Sorry for the last slide, I wanted to ask this question. So, um, like me and other, uh, you know, our council member went to the AWC conferences. So we drive, uh, we drove our city vehicle. So how does that work? You give an example of say, you know, personal vehicle, then the personal comes first insurance and then comes in. So, um, what I'm hearing is it's better to drive the city vehicle while we are going on a city business.

Absolutely. Yes. Because let's say... What did you say I suggest? Yes. So let's say you guys are driving to our annual conference. Thank you guys for going. Love that. And let's say you guys get into an accident. The vehicle coverage, covered under us. The liability, covered under us. We would check in with you guys and be like, okay, tell us what happened. Now, if you were the driver and you didn't do your defensive driving training, or let's say you were backing out of a parking spot and backed into somebody, and we don't have a backing policy as part of our driving policy, a deductible would apply. But otherwise, if all those are met, $0 deductible. So yes, I recommend that if you guys are doing stuff as a council, if you're putting your council member hat and you're doing something for the city, city-owned vehicle. And don't back up. Or back up cameras. Back up cameras are great. I can talk for another hour on the member standards and all those things, but I am already running low on time.

We'll have people sign a waiver. You're not allowed.

yes or well yes i think that you could do or only backing into parking spots um next is court order community service you know these are either coming from the municipal court the district court superior court juvenile court or the department of corrections so each of these different courts or agencies are going to have a different agreement or responsibilities duties on supervision reporting i couldn't begin to tell you what those are that those will just be a fun surprise when if you work with them they'll tell you what they're looking for. So those change between the courts. I'm not sure what they would be, but usually they have an agreement for the city to sign. So review those with your city attorney. And if you guys do end up doing that, I can review those two and give you my risk management two cents. But yeah, I just am not sure what they would be giving you. Next is documentation and hours tracking. So like we talked about, they should have personnel files with signed agreements, orientation, safety training completions, any risk management trainings like defensive driving, cybersecurity we talked about. So all of that should be recorded. And for hours, they should be signing in and out, whether that's on paper, a digital tool, a software that you guys use, basically just a general, it could be like an Excel spreadsheet table of here's my name, here's the date, I'm in and out at this time, and this is what I did. or someone on the volunteer project coordinator could do all that for them, something to that nature. Just having that, making sure it's all documented. Hours matter for L&I reporting if we're giving medical aid coverage, but also just generally good to track hours just because if something does happen, if someone claims that they were hurt volunteering and we're like, well, we don't have record of it, but if we keep really stellar records and they're trying to claim an injury against the city, but we don't have record of it, but we have a really good documentation policy, that's a pretty good defense. Next is RMSA. Basically, how do we play into all of this? Which we've actually touched on a lot is our liability coverage for volunteers only extends to authorized volunteers. So if someone was cleaning up something on the interstate exit without an agreement, we would not cover them. You'd be like, they're not an authorized volunteer. DuPont did not authorize them. So that means you definitely want to have a volunteer policy in place, that signed agreement. That way, because if you do want to protect, one, the city, as we talked about, and that volunteer, having that agreement is definitely something that we want to have in place. Then let's see. I feel we talked a lot about this. I might just kind of skip. I feel like does anyone have a question on how we as an RMSA and liability coverage come into play here? I feel like we kind of beat that horse. all right next is just general review tying us all together because we're wrapping up here is um cities that manage volunteer programs successfully can do these things consistently having your clear policies using written agreements having appropriate supervision training protective equipment and assigning work that manage that matches that volunteers experience and training And then just carefully evaluating your higher risk activities before employing volunteers into that situation. So these are the big ones. These are like my take home recommendations, but I know we've touched on a lot of different things. Last thing is on the last slide here is just these are links that Sabrina can hand out as well. She has the slides, but these are all different links to we have a volunteer guide, a volunteer manual. I have a sample agreement waiver. a kind of acknowledgement form liability waiver for the volunteers to sign. So you guys can review that if you'd like and update yours and I can review that as well as you update it. I'm happy to also review your volunteer policy if you guys would like and kind of maybe nitpick and see here's things that I would change. Driver selection criteria. And we touched on the member standards. That's a link here. And then MRSC, the Municipal Research Service Center, has a lot of information too. They've got a lot of people in the back end. You can ask them a lot of questions too. But those are some resources on volunteering. And then also at the bottom is Retro's email. That's the work comp pool that you guys are a part of. They're a great resource on all the L&I stuff that I don't know about. And that's it. Any other questions?

I have a question. Yes.

Go ahead.

How many volunteer related incidents have we had in DuPont in the last 10 years? Five years, two years, right? Don't we think that's relevant information for this conversation?

As far as I've seen from our claims thing, we have not received any claims from DuPont in relation to volunteers. Thank you.

I would like to expand on that question, similar question. How many cities has actually seen this kind of claims and that also with the coordination and without coordination?

I will say, this is a pretty low risk. It's not very common that we see volunteer claims. But where I see it more so, like I couldn't tell you the number off the top between coordinated or not. What I do see though is the big risk I see is when cities and towns don't have a structured program on volunteers, and then one thing does happen. And then I come in and talk about all these things. And then it's like, oh, we're trying to cancel all of our events. No more. no more um do you guys are you guys the hudson day barbecue yeah yes i was like i remember all these contracts from you guys um things like that you know i'm not trying to do any of that when i come in but having that proper policy does help reduce the risk but yeah it's still a low risk but i'd rather know of these things to have these in place to reduce it because it does take one and it just involves one incident with, and I would say a lot of our members do use volunteers and use a lot of children volunteers for maybe the more simple labor tasks. I've seen near misses a lot where something could have happened. Luckily we caught it, but we're like, hey, what do we do here? Or a lot of questions about volunteers. We got a lot of questions from a lot of members this year about volunteers. So that is what's prompted me to kind of go on and create this training to talk to elected officials about because I'm getting more questions. And this might become even a webinar that we can just kind of press play for. But this is you guys are a little bit of a guinea pig on it. So we're just kind of starting it. But we get a lot of questions. And I think it's important to discuss because we just don't want to have any of those incidences, especially when it I don't want to put a damper on our on our events and when we're involving children. Oh, good.

Do we have a current policy, Keith?

We do. We do?

We don't.

Can't hear you. Sorry.

So we do have a volunteer policy. We have a background check process, a new system that was implemented recently. So that's a new online process we can go through. And we have a waiver, a general waiver form. Our MSA has reviewed those in the past for us. It's been many years. So I like the idea of sending it back to you. But what we probably could improve on is our process for volunteers. And that could be something that this group could discuss at another time. How do we want to go about volunteer programs? Do we have a specific committee or a form that's filled out or a contact person if somebody has a volunteer project they want to do? Do we have a list of city projects that we want to put out there for people to do? Those are the kind of things that we could consider.

Can I follow up on that? So here's where I'm confused because I'm not with the one that Robin did, but I think there was a year or two before that. We, three of my family members went down and did some like cleanup of a park kind of stuff, right? Bag of garbage. I do not remember filling out a form. at all. So we might have a policy, but are we, I'm just being really blunt. This seems great for liability. No one wants to put people liable. But you're saying that we do have this process, but as a volunteer, I've never, When you volunteer for 4th of July, do you fill out anything? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, to clarify, we have a policy, but I don't think we have a good solid process or we have procedures like that.

We might have the documents, but we're not implementing them.

Or we don't have an SOP or standard operating procedure that we're following, and I think that's what we...

Okay, so what this is is to take policy, make it better, because I have volunteered on stuff, and I've never filled out anything ever.

Yeah. So I think we've grown as a city so much and we've had great volunteer programs in place then we've had here that we want to coordinate. Okay.

So this is kind of like new in terms of like, what are you starting to talk about? Kind of.

Improving, I would say.

Go back up. Improving. It sounds like to me, it's ground. It's kind of like starting from the ground up in many ways. I think we're talking waivers and filling out things and signing things and doing trainings. Okay.

I think we have a policy and procedure in place as I'm hearing Susan's question and your answer. So it's just awareness. I think we need to build that. Hey, we have a Yeah, a city can make people aware that, yes, you can volunteer, but this is what you need to do. And I think that might solve a lot of- Almost like a flow chart would help too.

I think Tom's right with his question. Real quick, just not that we would ever do it, but can volunteers actually be in supervisory capacity over paid employees if we chose to do so?

I would, that's a good question. I would say no. I don't think that that's the best interest of one, just general employee morale. I think that could be an issue with that. But also too, yeah, I don't think that, because, you know, the disciplinary employment practices avenue that the city has with a volunteer is not as strong as you can have with an employee. So someone in that kind of high risk of a role or high responsibility as a supervisor, we'd want to probably stick with city staff just to be safe.

got it and then um our commissions that are volunteer we don't do we actually need to have a program for our commission our commissioners that that question i don't know should we have one that covers our commissions and they're not elected no they're appointed appointed um

and commission on planning commission parks and red commission those kind of things i would say it wouldn't hurt it's a little bit different when they're appointed like that it's just a slight it's a slight different jump but i would say a lot of it still applies um there's still training like if we're doing a planning commission they should be doing land use training that is just another member standard of ours that we require um department of commerce does a really fun um short course on local planning um but yeah i would say that there should be and you could do it as a group like um the commission the planning commission you know here's the volunteer agreement um because if if they're able to freely you know leave that that commission um then yeah, I would say that it would make sense to do it as well. But that's a good question. I hadn't quite thought about that. So that's where I stand now, but I will do a little bit of research and get back and let Sabrina relay some to you if I find anything further. And Sabrina, if you don't hear from me, I didn't find anything, but I'll give you an email either way.

Keep going.

i think one one thing that would help i think some cities have is a volunteer coordinator that tracks all this stuff uh and that's something we just should discuss for the future we have uh you know we have a police volunteers one time and parks and rec or other things we don't have a central type of process with a volunteer coordinator

I would agree. I, when I I've seen your guys's like the scope of the Hudson, Hudson bay Hudson days, Hudson days, barbecue, it's big. That's a big event. Um, from what I see, I think that even just having, having one thing like that is worth a volunteer coordinator. Um, whether that's like a split duty, part-time position or, you know, part-time or like two duties, you know, what have you. Um, I would agree like at the size of your city, um, with growing with growth and, um, the amount of events that you guys want to hold, it might, especially with different departments. Like some of our small members, they have like, you know, a staff of five and there's everything else is like police and fire are outsourced with like the county. So I'm like, oh yeah, you guys don't necessarily need one. That's pretty small, easily manageable. But at this size, it would be something to consider. Absolutely.

I got three quick questions. You mentioned really early on, we're right on the very upper end. We will grow. Do we simply move to a different location? Our MSA, AWC, risk management group, you said are city-wise. What happens when we go over that magic mark? We've got some growth coming up.

I would say you would not need to change pools because that's why we want to keep our business with you guys. But what I would say is we have been that for a long time. We actually just finished our strategic planning retreat because we've actually been inquired by other larger cities of joining our membership. But it's trying to balance, hey, we have this small risk of a small town. If we were to add a huge city, the balance of this whole pool would be out of whack. But I think that you'd have to be the size of Tacoma for that to be.

I'm talking five to 6,000 over a 10 year period. Yeah. I'm not worried about that. Okay. That's, that's cool.

We're also growing and trying to plan for, for our members to be growing too.

Okay. And then the other question more for the team over here, uh, build off of your question, your thought and your comments, Sabrina, um, you have the slides could you send out the slides to all of us so we have them so we can go back and review them it's greatly appreciated could you also when you send it out send that new policy you said we have a new yeah yeah yes um and i understand that those slides will be on the website as well but i can send them out to this group by email um and it's not a new policy it's a policy that's been in place for a very long time i will send that out as well so you can okay you said something was new

Oh, yeah, we have a new background check process, a new program for that. It's an online cloud-based system where we can run background checks through that rather than the very minimal system we had in the past.

And who, building off of Ron's question or thought, who is right now, since we don't have a volunteer coordinator, if we have people who want to volunteer, if you could let us know who we should refer them to.

Yeah, so Amy Walker manages most of our volunteers for the city. Most of our projects have been in the parks and rec kind of area. We have had city hall volunteers in the past. It's been a little bit of time. Kathy Trotter has been volunteering for the city for quite a few years in the finance side. So anything that's more city hall side, they can contact HR directly. They could also reach out. Keith, I'm going to put you on the spot. They can reach out to Keith if they'd like to. um but what i would like us to do as a city is to have a formal process or point person even if it's not a hired position yet because i think we do have community members that have good ideas for projects and there should be a way to submit those ideas or express that they want to do it right now it would just be email contact or reach out by phone to let us know and don't let me put words in your mouth but i think you suggested maybe in the near future we go over more internally in detail what that looks like in dupont I would recommend so, yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions for Mr. Deet?

Yes. I have a question. I'm coordinating right now a volunteer program at the museum. And so I need to know city-wide because the museum is, and all of its contents are city property, then we would, go through the process of the city volunteer program. We already know we're doing the background check on people, but as far as the rest of a policy and what to do, we would need to go through the city directly and make that part of it.

Yeah, yes, I think that would be the appropriate action. Amy probably would be your best contact to initiate that or to kind of work with. And then Amy and I would work on the back end, and if there's something I can be involved in from the HR side. But most of that would go through Amy, and then Keith would advise on it as well.

Because part of that program is going to involve training by city staff. to our volunteers so that's going to you know that's part of the the coordination that's going to have to take place it'll also um fall under other volunteers to work with them but yeah the the city employee would have to do some of the training involved

And I think that's where having a process laid out on how this functions and how staff work is reviewed to make sure that we're getting the right people in place, the right training for member standards. There's a lot of things to assess when we have volunteers and volunteer projects. So I think if we just get a good system together, it doesn't have to be overly complicated. And I would prefer it wasn't. But I think if we have a good system in place, then we can just every time we have a project or something going on, this is just the way that it happens. And we can communicate that out to everybody. So everyone is aware to Jugal's point.

Right. And then lastly, we do use the Key Club has been working with Parks and Rec a lot for like our our puzzle competitions and things like that. And they do come in. And I'm pretty sure through the Key Club, they have the records and the parent permission slip. But I don't know that we as a city have that you might want to check with Amy to see if she's getting that from Key Club.

Yeah, I'm not aware of that. So thank you.

This fall, Key Club from the school, correct? That's that would usually fall under the school would have their own piece of that as well. their own volunteer program to allow kids to go serve the community.

Correct, but the city needs to have the copy of the parental, right? Am I right? The city should have a copy of the parental release allowing them to do that, right?

Yeah, of the release. I would say on terms of all the other records, if the schools are already holding on to it, as long as they're cooperative and would give you guys copies if needed, we don't need to do... um so yeah i do think having um a parental agreement or at least a copy like obviously i think the school would probably grab a parental agreement and as long as we have a copy and maybe we ask them if it's partnering with the city that we just tack the city of dupont on that agreement too that's what we do yeah that's a good idea then you're perfect thank you anything else well thank you sir we appreciate the presentation thank you all for your time thank you so much A lot of information, just one risk. So if you guys have other risks you want to talk about, I can come back and we'll talk. I think we'll be here in two weeks as well. We'll have more training on open public meetings, public records, and member standards. We'll touch on all of those. And I will hopefully be, actually, this was probably the more fun topic. So the other one will be drier. I'm sorry. Thank you guys so much.

will do yeah okay just just making sure oh yes oh yeah this would be more for you yeah so i never even made it to lake city yeah well it would be less practice right now thank you guys okay next bye

Next, we have item 6.2, which is our fire utility fee. And Chief Gilley is going to be on the seat now and give us a presentation.

Mr. Mayor, would it be OK? I just want to recognize one of our DuPont's finest. We have one of our law enforcement officers here. Thank you for being here. Just so you know, when you're here, we want to make sure that people know that. And you guys are the best. So yeah, and I'm not biased at all. Thank you.

okay just in case uh anybody forgot my name okay well uh mr mayor deputy mayor uh council members again thank you for allowing me to come back and take a look at what we're Going through as far as an ambulance utility fee. Before I begin, just on a side note, for those of you that attended the barbecue competition and my fellow brothers that are in the American Legion with us, we had a fantastic time. There was tons of great barbecue. My daughter loves this event. It drives me crazy because when I cook barbecue, she won't eat it, but she will eat everything at this place. But an incredible amount of help across the city. I really appreciate it. And it was my first time selling barbecue bucks and using Squarespace. So as a Legion member, I was incredibly proud to participate in that event. And we're hoping that thing just keeps going. And I've learned that when you get into the American Legion, they will assign you tasks very quickly. And I had a great time with the Deputy Mayor's wife as we were going around tallying barbecue bucks and spending time with everybody.

May I add one thing? Yes, sir, please. Thank you for being there volunteering. It was greatly appreciated.

Sir, I'll let you know I found my people in the American Legion. So, okay. So tonight, again, this is something that we've discussed in the past, and this is something that I'm thankful for council members coming forward and asking for some more information in regards to long-term funding for ambulance and medical services. Next slide, please. Okay. So obviously, as you can see, the purpose of tonight's discussion, we're going to review DuPont's current fire and EMS service model. I know council members and everybody's fairly familiar with it, but those of you that are not familiar with it, I'm just going to do a quick rundown I saw Gus counting the slides over there and he was like, oh my gosh. So don't think I'm going to take that long. If I'm going too quick, please stop me so I can explain things. And on top of that, please fire questions at me as we go through and I'll do my best to try to answer them with information that I have. Again, we're going to review ambulance EMS, call demand, community growth. I'm sure everybody's aware of that. Review fire EMS costs and all existing revenues and sources that are coming in. Discuss that current and future financial pressure that we've seen been taking place over a number of years at the fire department and mainly on the EMS side. and introduce ambulance utility concept authorized, which is under Washington law, the RCW, and we'll get into that and discuss whether or not we should commission a professional cost of service study. Next slide, please. So a fairly easy slide, you know, what is our fire department about? We're 24 seven fire and emergency medical response. We provide ALS ambulance services, fire suppression, EMS and transport. We do rescue hazardous materials, fire prevention, fire, of course is gonna cut it off with the, um actual subtitles there but uh that's okay uh for emergency preparedness and then things we look at is public education mutual aid response so on and so forth next slide please and yes I stole that picture Just to remind everybody, this is what the fire department looks like as far as our organizational structure. We have the fire chief myself, Assistant Chief Creekmore, our part-time fire marshal Mike Turner, which is a godsend. We love Mike. He does fantastic work. We have A, B, and C shift. Again, these are the people that I lean on. They are the people on the ground. They are the people that really save lives when it comes down to it. As you can see, we have four people across each shift. We have a captain assigned at each shift. We have two paramedics currently assigned at each shift. We do have one firefighter paramedic opening, and then the other one is firefighter EMTs. As we look down at the bottom, we see the rover position and the rover position fills that overtime slot that is open and sort of hopefully offset some of that overtime that we see as time goes on to help save money because firefighters do have vacation, they have Kelly days, they take FMLA, comp time, so on and so forth. That rover position has been incredibly important in plugging those holes, not only number one for safety, but for overtime and making sure that we're doing our absolute best to staff fire engines as well as ambulances appropriately. So if we look to the right hand column, some of the things that a few council members have asked me about in the past, how often do we have so many members on duty, and this is always a cause for concern. And in the second bullet there, you can see that 27% of the time, we have staffing of four people, which is good. And that provides for two in, two out safety if there's fire. but 73% of the time that staffing is with three people. It's very rare that we go down to two, but if we do go down to two, I'd take it upon myself as well as Chief Creekmore to try to come in and do our best to try to backfill. Overtime is overtime, and then sometimes guys get burned out working overtime, and that's okay. They've always put their best foot forward, and they've always done everything that they could do to make sure that they're taking care of this community. It's not always about the overtime. It's about making sure that not only they're taking care of this community, but they're taking care of one another. They just hate to go down to that two-person minimum. Like I said, it's very, very rare. We are mutually independent, as a lot of people can see. JBLM, one of our greatest mutual aid partners, along with our friends at West Pierce Fire and Rescue, as well as Lacey. Occasionally, not this year, we haven't seen Lacey. but you just never know. And one thing I wanted to point out, and you can see at the very bottom, is when personnel transport a patient to a hospital outside DuPont, those resources remain committed until they return and are ready for service again. My guys do a brilliant job of uh treating patients transporting patients but it's the turnaround time that i'm concerned about and it depends on where they're going are they going to thurston county the st pete's are they going to madigan are they going to st claire's are they going all the way to tacoma and then that's where we worry about those double taps of the greatest concern next slide please Okay, I know this one looks like a mess, but it's gonna make sense when I explain it. This is our emergency calls. The top one is from 2022 and the bottom is 2023. Please do not look at the squiggly lines. No, that's not a heart monitor by any means. And if it is a heart monitor, you've got some serious problems. But what this is is a snapshot of 2022 that you can see above. And on the left-hand column, you can see the percentage breakdown of calls. Now you can see in 2022, we ran 908 calls and just above that 908, you'll see 69% is EMS and 31% is FHIR. Now I tend to disagree with the nearest system and on how they go through the reporting process because what we look at is lift assists as a service call. So that gets dumped into the fire category. I exactly. And that's, that's where I kind of disagree again. You know, I'm not the powers that be at the federal level. Uh, we'll let them, uh, categorize it however they want but technically speaking when we see that 69% I would dare say that's more 75 if not 80% potentially higher but that's what we really have to drill down into the nuts and bolts of these calls and figure out what it is and then sometimes those list of cysts actually do turn into EMS calls So, from 22 to 23, you can see it's about the same makeup, you know, that percentage drops to or increases at 32 on the fireside 68%. And we did see an increase of close to 100 calls from 908 to 1005. And I do believe correct me, sir, if I'm wrong, that that was when we implemented ALS transport in the community. And that's when we were starting to bring in more paramedics and we were getting more reliance on our ambulances and our personnel and then taking patients out of our area where they used to rely in the past on private ambulances coming in. Not always, they did transport. in those necessary emergencies, but we really lead into the ALS.

Next slide, please. Just a general question. When you say St. Pete's, Madigan, all these different hospitals, how do you determine where you go? Is it on the severity trauma center, Mary Bridge for children? Is it just that simple? Because those are different places to go. I'm just curious. It's a quick decision I would make.

Ma'am, I think you answered your own question. You're well informed, and I appreciate that. It depends on the severity of the call, the nature of the medical call, the trauma call. It could depend on whose trauma that day. Sometimes the hospitals will switch. Sometimes there's specialty care that they provide, and there's different levels of trauma. The level one trauma center that we actually have in the state of Washington is guess where? seattle exactly harvard yeah exactly now we we do have hospitals at different levels and that's all outlined per pierce county ems protocols and that's the reason we study our protocols to know what designated hospital we need to go but we always reach out to medical control to ask them you know what's the most appropriate facility to go because you just never know when services aren't being offered a doctor is out machines are down ct scans and whatnot so yes absolutely uh next slide please thank you And again, here we go, we see 2024 and 2025. And we see that call volume slowly start to increase that 67% to 33% in 2024. And now we're just creeping up over that 1000 call mark, 1028. And then as we look down at the very bottom one, We see that again, 31% versus 69%. And we ran 1,047 calls, which is the most we've ever ran in DuPont history. Again, we're seeing more use of our ambulance. And as everybody's aware, and I know we've had these conversations before, that private ambulance is getting less and less. And we saw a lot of private ambulances leave early in 2023. they're still here olympic ambulance and occasionally we'll see northwest ambulance but the time for those uh private ambulances to get to our location could be detrimental in an emergency and i'm not saying anything about the private ambulance themselves it's just the time that i'm concerned with

They're all dispatched out of Tacoma, correct?

I'm sorry, sir.

They're all dispatched out of Tacoma.

They are. And they could be roaming, you know, out in the ether of Pierce County. And I'll give them credit for that. But for the most part, those private ambulance companies are going to stay where the money's at. and you know again i know that sounds a little harsh but why would they hang out in dupont when they can be in the tacoma area where the hospitals are there and they can have inner facility transfers to take patients out of those facilities to a higher level facility and then that's where you know most of the money is you can't get guaranteed revenue coming in from emergency services because if you run a call and you're on that call and you don't transport unless you have a different fee structure specifically for your district, that ambulance, you may not get reimbursed for that. And every fire department, every EMS system is a little bit different. So any questions as far as call volume? OK, next slide. Thank you. So what we're looking at is just, again, the quick breakdown, 22 to 25. We see 908, 1005, 1028, and 1047. As of this morning, I updated this slide and calls through August 2025. As compared to last year, comparing to this year, you could see we are down calls. And I remember it was we were discussing this with the deputy mayor and he goes, that's a good thing. And I'm like, yes, sir, it is a good thing. And in a lot of ways, you know, and it's not necessarily just EMS. It could be fire. We've been taking care of some nuisance alarms, issues that maybe we have in some of the warehouses, hotels. we have you know as we refer in the fire service as frequent flyers you know people that call all the time and we will always respond we will always attend to the care of their needs but what we need to do is be advocates for our patients and for our community and do the best that we can so we don't have to keep running those unnecessary calls sometimes Sometimes they are necessary, but sometimes they just need help. And we, as a fire department, my firefighters, and I don't take credit for this, my firefighters have done a wonderful job making sure that they're giving the information and getting the help that these people need. I'm actually really proud of that. Now, I wanna see that call volume start to skyrocket, because maybe that'll help pad the calls. I look at it as a positive light that that call volume is down 10.3%. So optimistically, we're looking at that. Sir.

Quick question from the last slide. What are the reasons for some of those huge spikes? That's- So cardiologist has to explain those spikes.

Yes, sir. So the spikes are the number of calls in that day. So some days you'll see it'll just look two calls, three calls, four or five. And then we'll have that one day where we just run amok through the city and we'll see 12, 13, 14 calls. And that is in a 24 hour period. Again, fire and EMS. So, and I didn't want to confuse anybody by that. That's the reason I said this isn't a heart monitor, but yeah, thank you for clarifying.

No, but actually that explains that some of those days, how busy you are and some of the days you are, majority of the days are not like that. So I see in the entire year, there's a one day or... one spike going up. I don't want to say one day, but it's only a few days where the spikes are very, very high.

And sir, I'll let you know, maybe they're listening to the I do believe most of that is on Captain Kelly Reynolds' shift because she feels like she gets all those calls. She goes, I can't believe we ran 13 calls, Chief. I go, it always seems to be you, Captain Reynolds. But you know what? Again, they do a beautiful job. And then we have fantastic mutual aid assistance from our mutual aid partners at West Pearson, J.B. Lundman. We're incredibly thankful for them. Next slide, please.

When is Affinity opening for residents this fall? So what are we doing to prepare for those additional calls? Because I think you'll be there every day.

And I'm going to agree with you. So I do want to clarify affinity is different than some of the other places that we have in different communities. Such as when I came from Sunnyside, we had everything from a mental health facility. We had a true nursing home, 24 hour care where the patients were unable to get out on their own. We have retirement homes where they do need assistance. And Affinity is a 55 and up community independent living. A bit like Patriot's Landing, but Patriot's Landing does have a memory care wing to it. I do anticipate a call volume increase if we have 170 units going in, you know, and I'm going to shoot for the moon here. If we had two residents in all 170 units, obviously somebody help. I'm firefighter math 344. 344. Okay. She knows her math. Perfect. If we had 344 people, the way I look at DuPont, and again, this is just kind of dirty firefighter math. We have just a tad over 10,000 people in this community. If we're running a thousand calls, you know, a hundred calls for every thousand people here, I would probably see an increase of about 30 to 50 calls. And again, this isn't a living facility. This isn't a nursing home. This isn't a memory care facility. But again, you know, I could be wrong. You know, we could probably see an increase of calls. I would dare to say 50 additional calls a year happening there. But again, you know, maybe we get more calls there because they're opening and that fire alarm goes off about 15 times a night and we'll see that call volume going up. not always ems but it could be other related issues i'm optimistic that you know once we get in and we spend some time in the staff and we've all been through the facility hopefully we'll be able to kind of mitigate any issues that we have there and probably provide some public education As we look at this next slide, we see just a breakdown of the 2025 year. So again, 1,047 calls. Of those 1,047, we had 724 EMS medical responses. Again, that's 69% of all calls. Of the 724, 404 patients were transported to the hospital. And again, area hospitals. We are heavy military community, so we see a lot of people go to Madigan. We do take people to Saint Clair's most of the time. But again, it depends on their condition. If they're having heart issues, if there's a stroke, if there's a trauma of some sort, that's where they deviate and they go to Tacoma. And with that 24 hours, uh, we're averaging about three, just a tad over three calls in a 24 hour period. And over the span of a year, you'll see that 1.1 transport per day. Uh, again, it's a, uh, it's a fantastic community where we do our absolute best to take care of the people in this community. And we're lucky that we usually just take that ambulance out of the area once a day. But then tomorrow, they'll have five ambulance transports. But again, we just want to make sure that we're looking at this as an average over the year. Next slide, please.

Sorry, just a quick question. Yes, sir. What is your average time for transport with the 1.1?

A transport from scene to the hospital?

Yeah, and back.

And back. So the turn and burn is what you're concerned with. Okay. And sir, I'm sorry, I didn't prepare those numbers tonight. I'd be happy to give you those numbers. We can pull those out of the annual report that Chief Creekmore puts out. That is on our website currently. Chief Creekmore has been putting together quarterly reports and I can find those averages for you. But again, it's all dependent on what medical facility that we're going to. You know, if I gave you an average number right off the top of my head, I would apologize because I would probably be way off.

It's just a general number, because what I'm thinking is that you have at least one transport per day and we have four people working and there's two people has to transport, then they are out of the town for two hours, three hours. That's my thought process. So the second set of the people are ready, the fire engine and the ambulance is ready, but there is a gap of two hours of having the second call to take. And that's why I ask you, is it an hour or is it two hours? I think that will help us quite a bit when you give us the next time report.

OK. And I will say it's not two hours. The only time it would be two hours is something significant was happening at the medical facilities in what we call hang the wall. Hang the wall, meaning sitting at the hospital because they are so busy that they cannot accept patients and they weren't able to deviate to anybody else. And they can't pass care off to a nurse and or a doctor. So they have to maintain that care as they sit in the hospital. So that's the only time we would really see that two hour turnaround. We're extended time on calls for whatever reason if it was something fairly traumatic or really in-depth medical But sir, I can get you those numbers. It'd be that'd be great.

I have a couple of questions When they are gone, the ambulance is gone and we have another call. Who do we call who comes?

I was told Ghostbusters, but Okay, just check it. Did that joke doesn't that didn't land very well. I apologize so what we do is again we do lean on our mutual aid partners uh so if we're looking at uh an ems call which i'm assuming that you're the way that you're going we do call private ambulance and that's normally going to be olympic ambulance olympic ambulance is in and around the tacoma area a lot of the time they could potentially be in fife and or at allen moore hospital which is for a few people that know it's in tacoma My concern is always, you know, yeah, can they make it here in 15, 20 minutes? Potentially. But we all know what the I-5 looks at. What time is that call coming in? Is it coming in during traffic? Right. And that's the biggest concern.

So no other fire department, EMS, or, you know, they would have an ambulance to come our way and a mutual thing? Or is it just a private ambulance that we call?

And I knew you were going that route, ma'am. so what we do is uh depending on the severity of the call and the availability of the ambulance what we can see occasionally is medic 101 come off of jblm sometimes the low acuity low severity you know i got a stub toe they're more than likely not going to come off the base again you know that's something that we would probably have to take up with dr waffle our mpd as well as you know the The fire department and EMS agencies at JBLM. There is a little bit of a time delay, so sometimes that's an issue. But again, it goes probably private ambulance. You know, in those severe circumstances, we can get Medic 101 coming off JBLM. and we can call wes pierce and that was a discussion we actually had this morning you know what are we doing these situations and like you call and get the most available ambulance based on that situation now if we can wait for a private ambulance to come from allen moore 5 tacoma area so be it you know unfortunately we do have to sit there on scene and that when you sit on scene and normally if that other ambulance is gone it's usually just my one captain and that's going to be over 75 percent of the time and there's only so much they can do with a fire engine a heart monitor and a med kit and again that's my concern is my firefighters Uh, namely my captains, my acting captains are alone, but they get, they know to call for mutual aid and JBLM has always been an incredible assist. They do a bring an engine. They do bring a paramedics. So.

Just from a little bit of personal experience, had a former neighbor about three or four homes down, found herself in that situation. I won't talk to medical terms and everything. It was JBLM that came, but it was about 25 minutes after the call. So there is some factors there and there's some risk there that we need to be aware of when we don't have anyone available. I was sitting there in that house with that individual. So, you know, from person, it was at least 20, probably 25 minutes. They had their other things. We just need to know. And in this particular case, it came out fine. But 20 to 25 minutes for somebody else in a different situation could be a problem that we need to be aware of.

And sir, you know, I commend anybody that has to deal with friends or loved ones in an emergency situation like that to even just try to keep your head on straight is amazing. But even though we have seasoned professionals, you know, we're trying to do our absolute best to try to keep everything inside. But most of the time we're going, oh, man, I'm by myself. What do I do in this situation? And, you know, I've been in that situation many times. And it is it's absolutely scary, even when you have the knowledge, skills, the abilities and the experience to take care of those calls. to be alone on those calls is, it's maddening. And it's an emotional undertaking, not only you, but the person that's going through that emergency.

Okay, one thing, on some of those calls too, going into a potentially, not just taking care of someone, but surrounding that could be some issues of safety for one of your firefighters, do we have our DuPont police go? Because calls nowadays can be drug-related, people aren't in their right minds. So how does that work if you did have one firefighter? Would we kind of want police to go with them in that? I mean, how does that work? Or do we just send the one person?

So I provide my firefighters a credible amount of flexibility and justification on why they do that they want to do. I always tell them, if you feel uncomfortable, contact DuPont PD. Get JBLM going quick. And as a matter of fact, we had that conversation this morning because we do get worried about Nisqually Road. Nisqually Road, there is a dead zone down there, and it's hard for us to talk out of portable radios. And this is something that we were concerned with. One of my captains came to me and said, Sometimes we are out there by ourselves and we are so scared that somebody is going to get clipped by a car and or, you know, go into somebody's home alone. And then, you know, there be an issue that you don't see coming. So, yes, I always 100 percent advocate for my firefighters to call. And, you know, if if I told them for any reason whatsoever, if it feels uneasy, if you have that gut instinct, something doesn't sit right with you. please sit and wait. We do have a duty act, absolutely. And use your best justification because if we don't respond accordingly, we could be held liable for that. But again, try to make the best judgment with the information that dispatch has given us and hope the Calvary is coming to assist as quickly as possible. We all know that DuPont is an island and it's an incredible island. And we're not technically an island, But when we look at these wait times, we are, we absolutely are.

A question. How, if you're talking about one firefighter responding to a call, I know that you and Chief Assistant Chief Creekmore have city vehicles. So how often are you responding to those calls after hours to assist if you only have one person available?

As in us being on duty individually?

Not necessarily during the day, but like if you are on call because you're taking city vehicles home so that you can respond to calls, how often do you and Assistant Chief Creekmore actually use the vehicles to come in and respond to calls?

It depends on the severity of the call. And it's a difficult situation. So yes, it was something that I noticed and I'll backtrack a little bit. And again, I don't want to take away too much as we're looking at the ambulance utility fee, but I'm happy to explain that when Chief Creekmore and I are on duty, we respond to the more severe calls. If there's a wildland fire, structure fire, obviously we're coming in. If there is a cardiac arrest, we'll come in. But sometimes that cat information doesn't get out to us. For example, we did have an incident Saturday night and my acting captain requested me Didn't go through and that's an issue looks like with dispatchers. It could be an issue with How we have the call? System set in place, but I didn't get a phone call until my paramedic was already Transporting down the road that they could have potentially needed me. However, we do lean on uh, very heavily on JBLM in those situations. When they see a severe accident, like what happened on Saturday night, JBLM immediately dispatched a engine and a battalion chief. So by the time I got the phone call from my acting captain, the scene had already been taken care of. They were waiting for ambulances for, low acuity patients and they handled the call the best they absolutely could. Now we do take those vehicles home and when I came in there was no duty chief rotation. Chief Creekmore, I felt incredibly bad for him. Chief Creekmore had been on call pretty much the past few years of his career and that guy couldn't take a day off. After about a year of being here, I was thinking to myself, what are we doing? How are we helping our firefighters? And then that's when I implemented early in 2025, we will do a duty chief rotation. I take one week, Larry takes one week and we try to keep ourselves within that 30 minute range. I do tell my firefighters, we cannot always get there as quick as possible because we do have lives outside of that. But we do have the response time anywhere from 30 minutes. I'm 15 minutes from my home to the door. But sometimes JBLM, their BCs can get there a lot quicker than what we can. You know, I never know. I could be in the backyard, play with my daughter. You know, I could be on the other side of town at her jujitsu class. And that's just one of the hardest things is to deviate. go to my vehicle and then them expect me to respond in those critical first minutes you know 10 15 20 minutes sometimes it could take me up to 30 minutes and depending on traffic at musqually it could be even longer especially if there's a significant incident out on the interstate so it's i wish i could give you a straight answer on exactly it's just dependent on the situation mickey for everyone who doesn't know what is a cad A computer automated dispatch. And what the dispatchers do is they enter in the information as it comes across through the 911 call. And that gives them the information they need, such as the, they give us the best information possible. They give us the best information possible as well as updated information from dispatch via the radio.

Okay.

Next slide, please. This will be a fairly quick one. I believe everybody here is aware of the growth in service demand. You know, we've got residential growth happening. Again, we talked about affinity coming in. Old Fort Lake, you know, if it happens tomorrow or if it happens after I retire, you know, there's still a plan in place. We do have potentially senior housing, and I hate to say senior housing because that is an active 55 up community. multifamily developments way out in the distance. I've even heard things about expansion of hotels and other commercial development, but again, all rumors. But we do have to be prepared when we see things start to spread and we start to see that growth. And we also need to take in consideration the increased daytime population as we have employees come in to the larger warehouses, FedEx, Kimberly-Clark, so on and so forth, a lot of the businesses. And like I've wrote right here at the bottom, we have an opportunity to evaluate sustainable ambulance funding before future demand really places additional pressure on the system. And in my honest opinion, we're there. But I can't prove that wholeheartedly because what I want to do is I want to drill down to the actual facts. I can say that as a chief, I feel that way. But again, we need to look at the facts. Next slide, please. oh i'm so sorry i put way too much on this one so uh we're gonna go really quick again um a lot of uh council members may understand how we're funded a lot of that comes from the general fund we do have ems property tax levy and we are due for the next levy in 2029 As it sits right now, EMS property tax rate is at 47 cents per 1000 assessed property value. And those EMS levies do get renewed every six years. We renewed it in 2023 with a lot of help from the people in the room. And what we're seeing is as we move forward, we'll have to push for support. If it was not for the EMS levy, it would be very difficult to operate this ambulance. It would be very, very difficult. And I think everybody understands that in this room. We do receive some money from ambulance transport revenue, and I don't have those numbers, I apologize. GEMT revenue, and this was something that is a Medicaid-related reimbursement. It is federal, so it does fluctuate, and we are genuinely worried that this could potentially go away with the cuts that are taking place at the federal level. If this goes away, this could sting our department significantly. We are happy this happens. We are happy to receive this money. I've seen it go from $50,000 up to about a little over $150,000. But it's all just dependent on what's going on and how many calls we run and then what the federal government decides to reimburse us. We did talk about fire and EMS fee schedules. We've made some changes thanks to the city administrator coming forward and talking about looking at revenue for all departments across the city. And then we have grants. And I am happy to report tonight that Chief Creekmore did a fantastic job with the L&I program, the fire program that we have. And as a few people know that we just received another $25,000 grant to buy wildland PPE. So that gives us enough money to take that, roll that into other needed items in our ER and R as we look at other potential things like radios and other equipment that we need to outfit for our fire trucks and ambulances. And the very last one we'll get into a little bit more, but fire impact fees, very specific. And it is it can be difficult to spend that money and justify where that money goes. But we have to use that specifically for expansion. I can't go out and just buy myself a brand new truck because I want one. Otherwise, they're going to claw that money back. There is money there. And it's something that we're looking into right now to make sure we can utilize those fees appropriately. Next slide, please. And again, just kind of a breakdown, where does that money go? We see that general fund, EMS, transport revenue, GMT, fees and others, that goes directly to fire and EMS administration. And again, we talked about the fire impact fees, that's for eligible growth related capital improvements. And they're very important, but they have to address that growth related capital needs and we have to justify that at the end of the day. Next slide, please. Okay. And I, and I, if I go too quick, please slow me down. But what I wanted to show council is exactly how the fire department budget is split. And as you can see, it's split in three sections, administrative support, which I will just say it like this to make it simplistic administrative support. It would be including me, Chief Creekmore and my fire marshal, Mike Turner, along with a number of other things, insurance, gas, oil, professional services. And I don't want to go down through everything, but this is where our wages come from. Administrative staff, again, Chief Creekmore, myself, and it's more complicated than that, but just for simplicity's sake. And then what I want everybody to look at is fire operations and emergency medical services. And just to make the math as easy as possible, look at fire operations and one firefighter. If you looked at their paycheck, 30% would come from fire operations. 70% comes from EMS. And that just goes to show how important EMS is, EMS levy, general fund money that comes our direction. And you can see the breakdown. And these were the actuals from 2025 that we spent for that year. Next slide, please. this is something that i looked at very closely and again the city administrator and i along with the mayor have talked about this and this is really kind of my biggest concern my department has done very well doing their absolute best to work within the confines of the money that is given to us to operate efficiently and serve this community to the best of our ability But what we've seen over these past few years, and again, I only took a five-year snapshot. This actually goes back even further. You can see how the fire department has been operating. Now, this is the administrative side. Again, look at it myself, Chief Creekmore, and the fire marshal. You can see what was adopted, what was the actual. And again, we don't get OT. Mike does get OT if he goes to training. You'll see that in a couple of little spots in 22 and 23 and then you'll see the combined adopted and the combined actuals a little over in 21 when you look at the difference in the far right hand column a little bit over and again. for different reasons. And then you start to see that number come down a little bit. And we've been really good about trying to manage the administrative side the best we can to make sure that we're staying in line with the budget. Next slide, please. Now we're getting into the fire operations personnel cost. So what we're going to see is we're going to see the same general pattern from fire operations and EMS operations. So you're going to see that 70-30 split, but it's going to be pretty close to the same if you really broke it down on a percentage basis. In 2021, you can see salary wages adopted. It was $300,000. The salary wages actual was $369,000. And if you look straight down the, and again, I'm looking at the first two columns, salary wages adopted, actual, you can see that we were over by a pretty substantial amount, $319,000. adopted, 419 actual, 359, 449, 394, 368, so on and so forth. And then you can see that total at the bottom. What was adopted in that five-year span was $1.8 million. We actually spent $2.1 million.

Whose soundaries are these? I'm sorry.

So this is for firefighters. That's that 30% I was referring to. And all we're looking at is salary wages and overtime. I didn't put benefits in here because I wanted to make the math as easy as possible.

So you're telling me that 12 firefighters make $439,000? Is that what I'm seeing?

No, what I could do is I could put it together and I did provide some of the sheets here of the actuals from 2025. And again, I'd hate to get really into the details. What I'm just trying to show is what we adopted and then what the actual was and what it should make sense to me.

If you've got 12 firefighters, I mean, we actually have 13 firefighters, including the rover. That salary is that for the year?

That's only 30 percent.

That's what I'm asking.

Yeah, exactly. I apologize. I should have probably put a big 30 percent up there just for- The math wasn't mathing. Yeah. I apologize for the confusion. and then as we go through we can see this pattern of overtime that was adopted 21 23 000 overtime actual 81 000 24 000 on the next line 64 was actual and so on and so forth and when you get to overtime adopted at the very bottom for that five year total overtime was adopted at 143 000 we spent the over double that the actual was three hundred thousand And then then again, the combined adopted with the actual and you can see the difference is over that five year span, we went over $510,000. Again, we're looking at 30%. Next slide, please. And this is almost the exact same thing, but this is the 70% personnel, 2021 through 2025. And again, what was adopted, what was actual? And I know that there were difficult times as we talk about 2020, 2021, so on and so forth, because COVID hit, a lot of people were out of work and my firefighters were forced to perform a a lot of overtime and there was a lot of mandatory shifts. And my heart goes out to him because I was in that same situation myself as a firefighter paramedic during the COVID times. It was difficult for everybody. But what I want to show is that same pattern over and over again, what we adopted for salary and wages versus what the actual was. And we can see that from 2021, 22, 23, 24. And when you look at the five year total, That's $4.2 million. We spent $5 million in salary and wages. So the forecasting, unfortunately, was off. You can start to see it gets closer as we get to the 24 and 25. Same thing with overtime. Overtime adopted. Overtime actual. We'll skip right to the bottom. The actual adopted $335,000 versus what is that? $698,000. My firefighters have been working a tremendous amount of overtime to make sure that they provide for safety for this community. And again, the combined actual, there it is, you know, staring us right in the face. We see the combined actual at that. I'm sorry, I probably should have made these a little bit bigger, but the combined actual of those five years, you know, 5.7 million. And then we were over $1.181 million in overtime. uh next slide please so when we look at this what does it actually cost to operate and provide ambulance service now when we look at 2025 you'll see that 1.81 million 2025 ems program actual expenditures personnel related again that is 1.7 so you can see that 95 of what we have in ems goes strictly to personnel related costs next slide So this is where we get into the meat and potatoes. What's an ambulance utility? And we've talked about this before. I believe everybody was here when we discussed this. I won't take too much longer. But as we look at RCW 3521, 796. Okay, thanks. Thank you. I got to go back to my optometrist.

I can't read it either.

And I do. I apologize for making it so small. I just wanted to make sure our ambulance looked really good in this picture. So Washington State does allow us as a city and town to establish an ambulance services public utility. But as you can tell, we all need to go through and take a really good look at doing a cost of service study. Now, you can go about that study however you want. However, I have seen fire chiefs sit down and do cost of service studies and That's not my recommendation because firefighter math isn't always the best math. What we would like to see is a consultant, somebody that deals with this, really drill down to the nuts and bolts and get into the facts of everything that need to because then we have a document that's legally dispensable and gives counsel the opportunity to make an informed decision based off of what they come up with. And when we look at RCW 3521, you can see that there's a cost breakdown. Now there's availability costs and there's demand costs. So look at availability costs as the infrastructure that is needed. So everything that we need to make this ambulance run, but it's not going anywhere. Okay, so we need the equipment, we need an ambulance, we need a heart monitor, we need medications, supplies, you know, we need everything to make this work. But the demand costs are when we actually put it to use. And again, that can include a lot of things such as labor, dispatch fees, so on and so forth. And I can give a better example if I take a look at my notes here. And I do have copies of RCW 3521, but you can easily find it online if you'd like to read through it. For those of you that like to read through RCWs or WACs. Quick question. Sir.

On the availability cost, is the Ambulance Service ready to respond? We have two fully equipped ambulances, don't we? So am I assuming wrong that The availability costs would be lower than starting from scratch. would it be that the availability is cost as far as from a utility fee perspective, but we have a lot of, we have a lot of the equipment already. We have two fully equipped ambulances, don't we?

That is correct, sir. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Minus maybe a couple of small things that are technically on order right now. So, but yes, you're absolutely right, sir. The demand costs, you know, the availability costs, most of it's in place. I, I, I, I dare say 99%, but don't quote me on that.

I just think that's an important thing for us to all be aware of as if we should look at a utility fee that some of these things are in place that may help keep that utility fee or whatever other method we use lower. Precisely, sir. Precisely. Next slide, please.

And again, as we talk about that, sir, ambulance does have a readiness cost. And then again, that's included everything, personnel, ambulance, medical equipment, all the things that we've talked about that we do have in place. But again, in place, readiness costs, availability, then we get into the demand cost. As you can see right here, Washington law actually recognizes the concept by distinguishing availability costs from demand costs. And that is outlined in the RCW specifically what we can use that funding for if an ambulance utility fee is put in place. And you can see some of the examples right there at the bottom that include labor, training, dispatch, equipment, patient care supplies, maintenance. Next slide, please.

So, oh.

maybe you answered this right here so how much money are you asking for how much money do we need what would be what would make us hold you know ma'am um we will kind of cross that bridge but here's what here's what i'm afraid to do i'm afraid to give an estimate to counsel i'm afraid to say this is the hard and fast number uh because if i'm wrong it could be less than that it could be more than that When I look at the expense sheets, that doesn't always tell me and give me an informed decision because sometimes there's things in the background that I'm not factoring in. And what I don't want to be is I don't want to be wrong about that. And that's the reason it probably is crucial to bring in experts to get that 30,000 foot view and to really start to zone in.

But you should know, I would think, how many firefighters we need to make this whole. To me, that's the money that we're looking for is so that we can make sure that we've got four people on at all time. So there's got to be a number associated with that. Do we need three more firefighters? Do we need to hire two? And it's just an estimate. I mean, yeah.

Ma'am, I honestly, I wish I could give one. And here's the problem that we see sometimes. So I can have a clean year. So for example, let's say that all my firefighters are at top step. They have all their longevity. They have all their incentives in place. And then I could project a clean year. No firefighters gone, very little vacation taken. This is what it costs. However, that could be thrown, you know, we could throw a monkey wrench into that. If I have a firefighter go out on LNI, if I have a firefighter going on FMLA, if I have a firefighter take paid family medical leave, that throws it into a whole different ballgame. And then what I do get worried about is that's where the overtime comes in. And then, you know, when do I make that decision to bring in a temporary firefighter? And then that's an additional cost. And what we've seen over the past handful of years is exactly that. We've seen a lot of temporary firefighters coming in. And I'm assuming what you're getting at is maybe there's a crossover point, correct? Maybe there is, hey, we've spent X amount of dollars and we should, it would behoove us to hire a firefighter to offset that. Not every year is the same and that's unfortunate. I wish I had my crystal ball. I wish I could estimate that. gave you a number if i said you know we could use 150 000 and i was wrong and we took on too much money when i realized oh we only need forty thousand dollars what happens with that extra money You know, what can I do with that money? Because specifically, if we put in an ambulance utility bill, it has to be drilled down to the exact cost to operate that ambulance. But it does fluctuate. And that's my genuine concern. I really wish I had that crystal ball. And, ma'am, I wish I could give you a...

I can say previous studies that were done came back with 16 total. So you've got five per shift because there's three shifts, and then you have a rover position. So ideally, based on our population and probably call volume, and that's without knowing this affinity situation because my mother lived at affinity. They were there every day when it was fully open. So I think the call volume will go up significantly. But I would say just based on previous studies, if you're looking for a guess, I'm thinking 16.

Is that what we have that last day? I'll ask Libby and Mike. How many do we have planned on that?

Well, it's 2017. Close, similar. We're thinking the same. I think that for me, I just want to share. Please do. Chief, I don't want to take away from your presentation.

Oh, no, please.

If I don't have information, please let me know. I agree with you. There's no perfect world. But I do think we need to do everything we can to maintain for. I think for me, the ideal goal is why I was involved in the 2017 levy. It had to meet 60%, the majority vote for it, only failed but 29, which means over 58% of the people voted for it. So the majority want it, but there are laws and it takes a higher number. But I want to build a little bit on Shauna's thoughts here. I do really think why the four is important is although fires may not happen very often, we need to maintain the two in, two out in the event of a fire if they do happen. And that's not an arbitrary thing. That's from OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It's non-negotiable. So more importantly, if we look at statistics, and you shared that 27% of the time is when we have four on duty, that means 70% three percent of the time we don't have four and then if you look at the other number where you say that might be a higher percentage that really should be classified ems that would even increase that 73 percent above that so the reality is and i you know i shared you know my neighbor's experience without going in detail but my belief for those who know me and being involved in levies before have And four, it's the ideal goal on duty at all times. Just from a community, it was way before that. So how do we do it? This is the hard part. I know you mentioned the extra rover, but I would say at a minimum, We have to live within our needs. What we looked at in 2017, Ron, to your question, is let's try to shoot for a five-person team, which would be two more. It would increase the likelihood of having four. We should get way above 27%. It will, at times, based upon those off years that you cannot predict, we'll need to supplement by overtime. You're absolutely right. We need to be aware that the overtime period requirement will be there there might be someone injured this is tough work you know and you budget it in but to go higher than a five-person shift may very well be a bridge too far for a community like this you know in my opinion that was our opinion in 2017 when we looked at uh It may still require mutual aid because, you know, you can't have three ambulances sitting around and waiting. But so how many more people? I think, Shana, what you were suggesting ideally would be three more. I would say at least two would get to the five-person shift. And why two? We have a row, so we would need two more. But that problem that you were talking about, there will be times that overtime will be needed. whether it's injuries or leave or multiple calls going all at once, it would be there. So are you guys okay if I go a little farther on this? I'd like to just share a couple more thoughts on this. So how do we get there, okay? Fire utility fee is a potential option, I will share. It's a potential option. The one concern I have, having been involved in levies. It might be a negative impact for some people to vote for the 2029 EMS levy if they say you're billing me also on my water bill or utility bill.

We need to be thinking about that.

But does it offset? The problem is we don't have enough, in my opinion, uh ems you know we could say fire but we're really talking ems um so if we were to look at this and that's why i was asking my question we we did a good cost estimate on how much it would be keeping it as low as possible realizing that we have the ambulance already sitting there and most of the equipment's in there and that whatever amount we is we'd be very very careful, keep it as low as possible. Because in 2029, a bunch of us are gonna be out there waving signs and knocking on doors and passing a levy. And we need to explain that we were good stewards. That's one option. I think there's actually, Another option, okay? But I want to clarify, this is an option. Another option, do we go out and try to do another levy lid lift just like we did in 2017? We got close. It's going to be a lot of hard work, but it's a potential option. And in that case, the voters are being asked again to look at it. What we want to avoid is we don't want what we went through in 2017, where we're back to back. If we want to try to do another levy lid to pick up two or three We need to try this in 2027 or 2028 because there's some very, very tight timelines. And if we wait until the August election in 2029 and it fails, we will not be able to get it in by November.

and our levy will lapse we almost got in that timeline you might remember that whole discussion i just don't think the city will pass a levy for fire ems services and i would hate to put the fire department through that again it was awful it's a tough one i cried it was awful and i i think the utility tax is really our best option and you know if it's two or three i think that is Really what I'm hoping to see at some point is to bring on additional staffing, because I do know that there is short staffing. The Rover does help, but if you have five per shift, I think that would be ideal. That covers if one person's out all the time, and whether you want to keep the Rover in or not, I think it would be a good idea to keep that position.

And I'm going to mention two more, and then I'll be quiet, okay? I just think it's important that we all know what are the potentials, and I might be missing. And just for full disclosure, a lot of work in trying to pass it. If we do it, it's going to be hard. The other one is this last legislative session, House Bill 2420. 42 pass and we would need to get some legal folks into involved it would allow us to establish our own Fire district as a city, but we're under a smaller city. We don't get quite the benefits I'd be curious to hear just a legal viewpoint if if we want to try to explore that The other one which I don't think would happen at all. I think Shana will agree with me on this would be even harder and trying to join West Pierce. It was very expensive. I think it was tried once when you were on a console and it didn't go anywhere close. And that was a contract for services, correct?

It was in 2015, I think was when we tried to do that.

And I wasn't involved on that one. So I don't remember the details like I remember the other ones.

It was a bigger gap between approval.

And it was a lot more money.

It was a lot of money. But it was, yeah. And it is very expensive. That's why I just don't think that citizens here will vote for any tax increase just based on history alone. Okay.

Yeah. So I think in summary, do we feel, and you know how I feel, should there be four? Should we have four on duty for all the reasons we discussed? I feel we should. But there's no utopia, no perfect way to get it. There will be some over time. I shared four possible ways to do it. The one that you two asked to come forward is one of the ways to do it.

I had a question. You talked about a consultant. Is there someone that could look and get, like Beth was saying, more specifics?

Absolutely.

Of course, I'm sure that comes with a cost, but I'm sure there's someone out there that has done this work and can bring us back, not perfection, but something kind of close to it. So I'm interested in what that could look like. But I agree with Sean. I don't think a citizen thing is the way to go. and initially where I'm sitting right now. I just want everyone to know.

This to me is public safety. This is why we're here. This is why we're elected. It costs the same either way because it costs about 50 grand to put it on the ballot, and it costs about 40, 50 grand to have a consultant come in. I think utility tax is our best bet. If you're a betting person, I would go in that direction.

I'll let you know, I am so incredibly happy to see such informed council members, mayors, Because you guys are making my job easy for me. Is the utility tax, and again, you know, I'm kind of skipping ahead here in my slides. Is the utility tax, I guess you would say the low-hanging fruit, yes. That needs council approval. We don't have to go to the vote. And it's consistent. But with a caveat, you know, we do have an EMS levy coming up and coordination with, you know, maybe potential other departments when we increase fees across the city. And then we try to coordinate putting in a utility tax. And then we have an EMS levy behind it. It's it could be about timing. And that's the greatest concern. We don't want to put a constraint on our community members going. We need this. We need this. We need this. Because we see where things are at in the economy right now. But again, I'm just a fire chief. I do my absolute best to deliver that information. But I do like the idea that we would look at all options and explore all options.

I have a question. So you mentioned that if we were to collect too much money, what were you going to do with it? My question is, are we in that year? Do we have to spend that money only in that year or can we bank it? and only use it for that, but use it in additional years in the future or additional time? Is it restricted to the year that we collect it or the following year?

I think what the chief was saying is he didn't want to be a guess on what we would need because he wouldn't want to be off on that.

No, I understand that. But somewhere in the RCW, it must say, and I haven't read it because I'm going to go home and read it later, but I just need to know if it says in there restricts the time that you have to use it. I understand.

yeah okay and rc i actually do have the rcw if anybody with it with the utility tax we're not going to collect too much money Yeah, and that's the purpose of the cost of service study because they'll let us know what options we can do. We'll be looking for more. What will we do if we collected too much? Again, you know, the cost of service study.

I mean, you said it, so I was like, okay.

Yeah, you know, we can buy a new aerial. I'm being facetious and I apologize. I do have a question. Yes, sir.

So we are talking about hiring more people. But when it comes to the fire and police, I mean, we just cannot have people sitting there, right? We need equipment also. So that would be another question. Do we have enough equipment? Say, if you go from 13 to 16, then those three firefighters has or the ems people need another ambulance or another fire engine or what what do we need with that we we do have seats for that uh and i i wouldn't worry about trying to fill those seats because there are we don't need any additional equipments

know i i really wish i could say yes and i'm going to say yes but i'm going to do that with reservations well you would need additional equipment i mean you would need you know the turnouts you would need you know yes things like you know things like this they're gear but i think again what we're talking about is that the cost of service study we're looking about doing is going to look into all those things and make the recommendation

Absolutely. And that's really where I'm headed. And again, you know, you make it easy for me to kind of skip through a few of these. You know, right here we have what we still need to determine, cost of service study, and what it would identify. And, you know, these are the things that we talked about. Appropriate ambulance EMS cost allocation, availability demand costs, applicable transport revenue, EMS levy funding, GMT, so on and so forth. And that 1.81 million in the EMS program expenditure, and I wanted to highlight this, that's a starting point. That's not the proposed utility cost or fee. So, you know, Council Member Elliott, you know, that's where I want to look at my crystal ball and I want to say, oh, the difference of this 1.7, 1.8, oh, we just need $100,000. That's not necessarily true because each year could potentially be different over time, you know, people on leave, so on and so forth. Next slide, please.

If I can interrupt real quick, it does say the legislative authority must allocate available emergency medical service levy funds in an amount proportionate to the percentage of the ambulance service costs to the total combined operating costs for emergency medical services and ambulance services toward the total costs necessary to regulate, operate, and maintain the ambulance utility. Must allocate all revenues received through direct billing to the individual user of the ambulance service to the demand-related costs under subsection. The total revenue generated by the rates and charges shall not exceed the total costs necessary to regulate, operate, and maintain an ambulance utility. They must be kept in a separate fund for the purpose of paying for the cost of regulating, maintaining, and operating.

so it doesn't look like there's a time constraint but it looks like you you need to be precise is what how i'm interpreting that is that right precisely which is why you need this and again you know as a fire chief you know i can perform that study but i would have to be spot on and my fear is that um yeah well city administrator you know and we would do our best to get as close as possible so As we're looking at this, some people may ask, aren't residents already paying? And again, we did talk about a number of these things, where we get our funding from. Again, we're billing our patients for transport. and the question is whether the residents currently pay for the ambulance service the overall question is the existing funding structure the most sustainable transparent and equitable way to maintain this ambulance availability in the future and again that cost of service study would help council answer that question next slide please okay And we'll get through this kind of quick, but for again, light reading, and I have to be mindful of time. I know we're kind of running over here. There are a number of communities here that I've listed, and you'll see that these communities include Moses Lake, Ocean Shores, Grandview, which I know the fire chief there. I've run many calls in Grandview, as well as College Place and Richland, Washington. And my former alma mater of Sunnyside Fire Department did use ambulance utility fees. They were all different, though. And they all had different needs. So that's something, again, as we go through, like, oh, we could just adopt what Moses Lake does or Ocean Shores. We need to tailor that specific for DuPont. And if anybody wants to look into that, all this information is available on their city websites to take a look. And I do have the actual information. links along with the PDFs in the server for us to review. Some of those may have been updated since then, so I would have to go back and take a look. But the last time we looked at RFP was in 2024. Next slide, please. And again, this is just a complete review of everything that we talked about. I won't read down the entire list, but just kind of a summary of what we need to figure out exactly, and mainly the cost of operating this ambulance. Next slide, please. So before council considers any type of ambulance utility fee, there are the answers that we need and the cost of service study is gonna give us that. What does it actually cost? How much is the cost is already recovered through all the existing revenue that we discussed. What is the current general fund contribution? What is the portion of the ambulance cost is availability versus demand? Again, we have to figure that appropriately. And again, Deputy Mayor, we do have that availability pretty much already in place. We just got more or less looking at the demand side. But again, I could be wrong in that matter because I'm not a consultant. uh what the customer classifications are appropriate so when we look at utility uh fees different communities do different things so we could say okay we're going to do this on all the water bills well like what bills is it could it be residents could it be multi-family dwelling could it be commercial is there going to be a difference does commercial pay more than a residence so on and so forth that's something that we would and i think that's a very important question especially when you have uh

You know, our hotels, not picking them, they're very, very important parts of our community. You know, we have a lot of residences in... in Patriot's Landing and we will in Affinity. So we have to determine, you know, if they're only paying the same amount that a single family resident in Spain, we're going to have a real tough explanation.

They generate a lot of calls. Yeah.

So that hopefully will be a method that we can determine that it's proportional.

And one thing I can do look at is I can look at a like. affinity project which we do have one in lacey where i right down the road and i could do a public records request or just reach out to chief schmidt uh there and they could put me in contact and i could see how many calls that they run at a like facility and try to get those numbers might be a good idea And then some of the other things, again, we talked about residential, multifamily, commercial, what exemptions or reductions would we require? And are they permissible? What effect does future development have? All these things that we've talked about. What different rate structures mean for the residents and businesses? And would the ambulance utility materially improve the long-term sustainability of this EMS? So, next slide, please. So what we did is back in 2024, as the mayor and the city administrator and I were discussing this, we wanted to get a good idea on what the RFP pricing was. So what we did is I'm sorry, the consultant pricing was so we put out an RFP to take a look. We had to come back and the consulting agencies were incredibly busy. I was actually told no by a number of people that I actually called. They go, we've got too much work on our plate. But we did have to come back. We ran through a rubric like we were going to do the real thing. And this was the cost that came through. Now, each cost of service study comes with its own bells and whistles. If you want to look at basic run of the muck, here's your data. Here's the form. there you go if you but that price could go up if we want the consultants to pay site visits to the fire station to take a good look at the community to sit down personally with finance rather than do zoom that could come at an additional cost So what we were quoted back then was public consulting group gave us $35,000 and AP Triton gave us just about the same thing, just a touch more. But again, more hands off. Here's the report. Chief, you do your absolute best to present this to council versus if we spend a little bit more money, they come here, they got boots on the ground, they really get into things. And then what they wind up doing is they could come in and potentially present the information to council and give all the exact answers that we're looking for. And you can see the scope of study. They're going to analyze the ambulance service revenues, expenditures, determine the cost of providing the ambulance services. All these things talk about they would work with finance, develop findings and recommendations. Look at our call numbers and present final results to city council. And this is just kind of shooting from the hip. I would say that we would potentially spend $40,000 to $50,000. But again, these RFP quotes were from two years ago. It could be potentially more based on the services that we're asking for them.

Would we be looking for firefighter paramedics for these positions if we were to expand? Or firefighters? Firefighter EMT or firefighter paramedics for these positions?

It depends on what the need is for the community. Okay. You know, and if we're really looking, you know, and what I don't want, and we've had these discussions in operations meetings, I don't want paramedics competing for IVs and IIs. My professional opinion is having two paramedics on shift in a department of this size is adequate.

And what would be the estimated FTE budget amount for a firefighter, like including benefits and all encompassing? It used to be a hundred grand, like 10 plus years ago when I first was on council, but I think now it's probably closer to 140.

In my mind, when I think of police and fire, I think 150 as a general number. And I'm just using that as just a back of the napkin number.

It would probably be ballpark also for paramedic or paramedics get paid a little more.

Yes. Paramedics do get a 10% incentive for being paramedics.

So 150 to 165.

And then everything obviously is, you know, based on, you know, longevity, education, so on and so forth, depending on what CBA says. Next slide, please. So some of the considerations, again, we did discuss some of these, so I'm going to fly through these. Stop me if you really want me to elaborate some more. Council should consider additional monthly costs to residents for businesses we discussed. Residents already paid taxes through supporting EMS, such as the EMS levy, billing requirements. We would have to think about required exemptions for people that probably wouldn't pay into the ambulance utility fee because they have an exemption, maybe they're low income, maybe they're disabled, so on and so forth. But again, that's a decision that could potentially go to council and we would look at what the cost of service study would tell us. And then again, we talked about commercial multifamily classifications, general fund allocation, public communication and acceptance, which I think is going to be a key piece of lobbying to the community and letting them know how important this could potentially be. And then the legal requirements around the RCW And what we really need to do to make sure that we're doing our due diligence to the community is to make sure that we revisit. Just because we put it in place doesn't mean we should set it, forget it, and walk away, and then 20 years revisit. That's something that we would probably have to go back. And I am, again, just shooting from the hip. Five years, potentially 10 years. Or when we see some type of expansive growth take place, does this utility fee that was potentially implemented, match the community five years down the line, 10 years down the line. And then the utility revenue cannot simply just be used for unrelated city purposes. Again, as much as my firefighters would love a bounce house, as much as you know, I would like a fire pole put in the fire station, we can't use those for that. Next slide, please. Tonight, you know, what I'm not here to do is I'm not asking for anybody to establish a utility fee or approve a utility fee, select any monthly rates, reduce that general funding, change EMS levy, you know, because that is incredibly important, or can we do that? Change ambulance transport rates or approve residential commercial classifications. Next slide, please.

So quickly, if we go back to that slide, every single bullet point has some kind of a price tag on it. And that's something we don't know. And so even if you say, how much to charge monthly okay ten dollars then how much how many years how much do we need and does it satisfy even if we charge ten dollars are or are we supposed to charge that for how long how many years so so many things every bullet point needs some kind of uh numbers associated with it before we can think of all these bullet points because these are the half

half of the picture i'm not looking at the half of the picture and that's what i think has to be put together to see the whole picture you know i don't even know why i did a presentation everybody here knows exactly what's going on so uh sir you're absolutely right you know there there's a price tag associated with every one of these bullets that we're discussing and that's what the consultants are going to be telling us is put all these details out there and uh yeah my question is how long does it take to get a consultant in here and do this Well, how much money do you have, sir? I mean, we, I don't know. I mean, maybe they charge an express rate. I mean, I could really take a look at it, but, uh, I just want to make sure that we're going about this the right way. And again, you know, making sure that we get the price tag right for the community, not ask too little, not ask too much that Goldilocks, you know, it's gotta be just right. And if we hire a consultant, uh, qualified consultant with a proven history of getting these ambulance utility rates correct for their communities, that would make me sleep at night. And we could use that as a legally defensible document to say this is what this community truly needs. Next slide, please. So proposed FAS forward, and this is just my recommendation. Again, we're tonight doing the study session. I'm looking for council direction based on the information that we've given and information that you already have. Again, incredibly impressed that everybody's been looking into this. I would like to see about trying to update that 2024 RFP. And then if so be, you know, council direction, select a qualified consultant, carry out that cost of service study, you know, look at the finance, fire, administration, legal review, go through the whole process, return those findings, present those findings, talk about those findings, and then allow for public feedback and then a council policy decision. You know, obviously we have to go through the public process ordinance, rate consideration and implementation. So if there are any more questions, and Carrie, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sorry, I think this is the last slide. Okay, other than the thank you slide. Please, questions, and again, I apologize for going as long as I did, but I understand this is a really important issue to a lot of people.

Yes. Sorry. This is not a fire benefit charge, right? No. So different between the utility for the ambulance. And so it's not the same thing.

No, not the same thing. So fire benefit charge is actually done at West Pierce Fire and Rescue. okay it's very brilliant but unfortunately and i and i'm pretty certain on this let me go back and look uh we're not a fire district so we can't move to a fire benefit charge if i remember i thought i read that we could actually do a fire benefit charge even if we weren't a district

so maybe i'm i'm wrong i was just thinking okay and let me look into it there's a lot of benefits to that if we could do that like you know i i just like you know that bypasses like the levy one percent um lid that we have and that the state has imposed goes from like a property value, shifts from a property value to a fire risk, right? So if you got a $2 million home, it's not as risky as the $1 million, you know, warehouse.

Warehouse, exactly. And that's where a lot of that, and I think that's the reason they were so successful at West Pierce Fire and Rescue because a lot of the residents that they did pay some but they didn't shoulder a lot of that but again i could talk with chief grady mcgrady and uh chief sharp which is retired was uh very instrumental in orchestrating the fire benefit charge uh something i could look at i could be wrong it's just right now the the one that i've really been doing a lot of studying on again is the ambulance utility fee and i like the suggestions from all council members here

we'll make sure we take a look at those outside of that any further questions thoughts concerns is this your last slide you said it is i think so carrie because i thought we had asked to address the ambulance transport fees if we are charging for those when you transport a patient i know we bill insurance but if insurance doesn't pay are we in turn billing the patients and if so How much of it actually gets paid? How much of it gets written off? I was under the impression that we don't currently charge if the person is a resident of DuPont and insurance does not pay. Do we charge them?

You know, I've heard that too. And not to my knowledge, I could look into it.

It was supposed to be covered tonight. Did we misunderstand that?

Okay. And maybe I have. But I can look into it most definitely.

okay that was supposed to be part of the workshop tonight was the potential income that we could receive if we start charging for ambulance transport we don't currently charge as my understanding because uh residents of dupont are taxpayers however we have the lowest property taxes what closer to the ems levy well i don't think so i think it's it it's because we have the lowest property taxes in the county i think still but because of that and because we haven't been able to get a tax increase it's i'm of the opinion that we should start charging for ambulance transport to help cover the costs for the fire budget and to bring income and revenue to the city and i don't know if that's money that would have to stay within the fire budget or if it can go in the general fund i'm not sure how that works but i'm pretty sure that we would be making a lot of money for these ambulance transports that aren't being billed to residents because their insurance isn't paying does that make sense

Well, most insurances do pay if people have insurance.

I don't, but some of them don't. So that's what I had asked to find out was how much is not billed and how much is unpaid and how much could we potentially be bringing in in income? How much are we losing in income by not charging for that ambulance transport for a resident? Our property taxes aren't high enough to not charge for that, in my opinion.

And ma'am, let me reach out to System Designs West. They are our ambulance billing company. And let me verify that. I've heard that before, and again, I just don't know. I wish I had the information, and I apologize for my ignorance of not knowing about that if it is true, but let me dig into it.

Was there a misunderstanding about what I had wanted to be in this workshop?

I'll take responsibility for that, yes. Okay.

I'm going to just go ahead. Sorry, just a quick question. But before we get to the consultant, is there a way our city staff can put it together, some kind of database that this is how much like every bullet point we were talking about?

I would not want city staff to do that. I just think it's a level of expertize. And I think an outside person is the better route to go on that.

OK, perfect. And I mentioned four possible ways with the clarification that this proposal is one of the possible ways. So if we did this study, I think regardless of if we went with this or a levy lid left, which we tried before, we're going to need some real good data. So I think this study, will be beneficial whatever method we went with. Because we would need to know if we did a levy lift how much we want to lift it. And without this study, I would have no idea. I wouldn't be able to go out there as a volunteer and try to sell it.

It would be good educational material to have either way, even if we decide not to do a utility tax. Or utility fee for this, I think that the data would be helpful for future budgeting for if we decide to do a tax increase, if we are increasing other fees. I think either way, it's a huge benefit to us to move forward with that.

Yeah. And I think also for the residents, right? Yeah, it's a legitimate look. I trust the city staff, but but you're going to have an outside consultant that means and bullets activity to have an outside person.

I don't buy it. Yeah, I precisely.

Objectivity is the point, right? It's not like we're putting our thumb on their scale or we've done something. It's a third party that's been hired independently to make a suggestion and that's why.

We've been talking about this for a couple of years. I would like to see it come forward on an agenda as an action item.

I've been asking about it regularly.

Okay. Move it forward.

That could be on the September agenda.

next september 8th agenda we'll see how quickly we can get it on so okay perfect okay can i just figure out that i'm the stickler for this when we say we'll see how soon and i know that you can't just turn around but can we at least say by this time because Things happen, people get busy, but we'll think about it or see when, I just, I'm sorry, that does not work for me. I wanna know like by the end of, steam is reasonable.

I think that at the end of September, that gives a month, I think that's a reasonable time.

Reasonable, okay, that's different than, and I'm not saying we wouldn't, but I am a deadline person. By the end of September, it will be on the agenda.

And again, we're talking about whether or not they would want to, the council would want to move favor forward with the account.

Okay. I just deadlines, deadlines matter.

I just want to ask, can we have the, those demographics added to the RFP that we talked about, you know, like a multifamily, single family warehouse, all of those in the RFP when we go out.

In terms of having them look at maybe doing different Pricing rates.

Right.

I think that's a great.

Again, estimates.

Yeah, good, good.

Okay.

Yeah, perfect.

Cool.

Questions, thoughts, concerns? Okay. uh members council uh mayor deputy mayor thank you so much for your guys's time again i am so incredibly impressed that you already have the knowledge i'm just glad that we could talk through the process and hopefully come to a conclusion and make sure that we're adequately staffing and providing funding for the ambulance not only to provide for the community, but provide training and the equipment and apparatus as well as safety for my firefighters. Thank you so much. All right.

Thank you, Chief. Mayor, should we take a quick break here? We've got one more. Yes, we do. One more topic, but 10 minutes. Yeah, let's break. Yeah. Okay.

My body's not going to stay here, right?

Yeah. okay i think is this on am i on you hear me yeah is it i'm not is this on yeah well i think everybody's back so we can uh get started here i want to remind everybody we had a very short meeting last time this is the payback okay our next uh Our next item is about street sidewalk funding. And I guess Gus is gonna start us off here and we have some other folks who'll chip in. So go ahead, Gus.

uh good evening and thank you uh mr mayor what i have uh with me is i'm gonna show the or quantify the uh city-owned property defects uh uh from there you have paper in front of you i do not have any slides uh but i'll explain what the paper is the one that's eight and a half by eleven is it has some graphics in there that essentially explains the type of sidewalk deep sidewalk defects has letters by it um we'll probably see mostly of the type a that's on there which is probably what you see out out in the field where you have more than one inch of a um of a lip so to speak uh from there so that's the first piece of paper that you have in front of you the second piece of paper looks like some third grader drew on a map this was my artistic quick Because it was going to be just too hard for me to do it on a computer. I was trying to take where were the areas where the city owned property is. So it fell in three categories. It was going to be a right of way, which is essentially the bulk of center drive. mcneil street a good chunk of that is going to be frontages of parks and then a little bit around frontages at water facilities and storm water facilities and um just chalk it up as operator air so so you can see the yellow on there but uh when i did this i had a orange highlighter didn't show up as yellow showed up as didn't show up as orange, showed up as yellow. So that's why you see a fat green mark in there to make it highlight even more. And then the water and stormwater piece shows up as purple on yours. And the point of this is this is an eye chart. I'm not gonna go through this graphic, but if you need to do a quick snapshot on where is this and where did city staff go about identifying it, that's what this graphic represents. Then where we're gonna probably spend most of the time is this piece of paper that looks like a big spreadsheet on here. And look, I could tell you the, so what happened is the public works staff went and identified defects in what's shown in your map. and they just essentially quantified it by count uh in this location so bottom line up front and i'll give you an orientation on the spreadsheet but bottom line up front uh the staff found 373 defects i'm estimating 1.9 million dollars to replace it we do have uh Things that break it down on the back side of this From that perspective. So that's the bottom line up front And then some of the summary stats are on a back page if you want me to go over how this spreadsheet is oriented I can do that but Unless we want to move forward. Okay. Awesome. All right, let's go to the back page

okay we're going to go to the back page and anyone can ask any questions uh if you want to stop me here so a quick clarifying question on this spreadsheet these are the areas that absolutely need repair or this is an optional list like i'd love to have these seven items by the bay table but i'm gonna walk away with three okay you know what i'm saying so yes i understand papa bear baby bear so so each of these segments yeah that are shown on this list

is represented by what's unidentified in this graphic. So it's the full length of Center Drive. It's the majority of McNeil Street. It's the frontages of parks. It's the frontages of like storm ponds or water facilities.

So like McNeil and Ridgeview at the end is on here. Yes. And then you, it's the whole Ridgeview walk. Cause I, I walked that frequently long walk.

What is not represented is, uh, where there's private property owners that are fronting this, this literally just this section. Yes. Okay. Yes.

Thank you.

I'm trying to build off of your question.

Yeah.

Okay. So I heard you say the whole length of center drive, are you talking about replacing all the sidewalk and center drive?

So the public's work staff, so first you have to high grade the map and the data here to only those sidewalks that are the responsibility of the city. All other private property owner sidewalks are out of the picture. What you see here is city staff inspected all of those. These are the identified instances where they took what the code requires and classifies as a defect. and they identified those defects. So that's all these pictures.

On this spreadsheet, you see a greater one inch or three inch or whatever.

Yeah. So these pictures correspond with the sort of the center block of columns. And so Anytime city staff saw a sidewalk that had one of these defects, they identified it and coded it to the type of defect. These are the defects that are regulated by the city code.

So, so then back to the question, we're specifically looking at our DMC and we're fixing specific spots and not trying to replace those.

We are first identifying all we have done at this point is identified the places where there are defects, according to the definition of defects in our code. So we've, we've identified them and Gus and, uh, has gone through the process of calculating a cost to repair all of those. Did that answer your question? Sorry, go ahead.

So the cost for those defects, we're not going to go in and replace them?

Correct. There are some assumptions. So every single defect would have... the process of how you would go about implementing the fixes is something that we haven't talked about yet. That would have to be phased. I'm sure Gus has lots of better information than I do on that. But the first, we know where the places are that have defects as they're defined in our code, and we have a cost estimate for what it would take to repair those. And that's a high level planning cost estimate. That's not a specific, Location every location requires this fix. So it's going to cost this amount of money.

Is this using the sidewalk sucker or is this a budget amount based on not using it?

This is this the cost is for a contractor to to address this. Maybe I should pick 1 row and. And explain. sure yeah okay sure all right all right starting from the very top row you see from going from left to right uh so on center drive in one segment of center drive from dupont silicon road to international place i think most people can can picture that the first row Oh, she's oh, oh, you're on the map. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Your your right hand is where you point to is correct. OK. All right. So staff walk that on the west side, the west side of that and found seven instances where type a defects were identified.

And those are greater than one inch.

Yes.

But but less than three.

so for it to be a defect no matter what happens it has to be a vertical displacement greater than one inch and then we have other defects that are greater than three inches and then we have some that are cracks and then some that are spalling um a separation of cracks is type e1 and then a slope uh meaning you no longer have a flat uh sidewalk uh greater than one inch per slope so so that's in that one line the staff found seven defects along the west side of uh center drive between dupont silicon road and international place a little bit further down here we do have an east side of that uh a little bit further down on this uh on this spreadsheet but i'm just explaining what we have here so The costs, the contractor costs to replace, the construction costs to replace a linear footed defect is $165 per linear foot. I'm not gonna get into it, but I have another spreadsheet that looks like this that gets into how did I come up with $165 per square linear foot, but we can get into that much later if you want to, but that's what that number represents.

When they identified these places for the hazards, were these painted? Like spray painted people?

I don't know. I don't know if if when when they saw it there, did they have a spray can in hand? I can't I can't say it's affirmative on that.

I can't either affirmatively on everything. But that's the general practice. If we're if if if we get some notification that there's a concern, whether it's on our property or private, we go out there and they inspect it. And then I think that is their general practice. So I think the intent is, or the practice would be to be able to do that. But I, like Gus, I can't guarantee that.

You saw the recent email that came through from a citizen, right? And it wasn't painted.

I didn't see the email that you're referencing. I know that there have been, just from talking to public work staff, there have been cracks that have had to be repainted because they get painted and it comes off. So it's entirely possible that that's the case.

And I think it's a great question. When I did that walk before our strategic, the vast majority were not painted.

That's not good.

Can you explain what the bold lettering pieces are? The Wilmington, McNeil, McNeil-Thompson, Thompson-Haskell? Because you come over here to the sidewalk replacement, it's $330, but then it doesn't do anything.

on the other side so explain with that council member walton if if you uh allow me let me go through the the line and then i'll do it is council the barrel that was asking the question oh i'm sorry that's okay okay yeah let me let me go across the line and then i'll i'll i plan on uh jump into that one then so uh sidewalk replacement cost per linear foot hundred 165 dollars per linear foot for a construction contractor to do that So the assumption is, and I'm doing this from a conservative perspective, is anytime you see a defect, the actual length of repair is going to be 20 linear feet. At one point I thought, okay, two sidewalk panels, five foot on this side, five foot on this side, we have defect in the middle. It would just be 10 feet. But what, but we ran into practices that that is almost by exception. That's almost like a perfect scenario. A lot of times there are adjacent panels that have to be adjusted also because of that or it's the same route that's running through it and it just so happens to accentuate in that one location so so for every defect the assumption is 20 liter feet of sidewalk has to be addressed in there Then you have a sum total cost. That total cost then, because we're going to do it with a construction contractor, I need to put together drawings, put it out for contract, bid, and so forth. There's a 30% markup of that construction cost. I sum up that construction cost in the next line at 30,030. I throw in a 15% contingency. And then the sum total is for those seven sidewalk defects, it's $34,535 to repair via construction contract. So that's just that top line explaining this top line from here.

A clarifying question again. So you're saying for that one repair, it's $34,000? Yes. Okay. I'm definitely asking this question. Wow. Wait, seven repairs? isn't it seven repairs yeah seven defects times 20 feet and you said the 20 feet you thought it was 10 20 all of that that's the grand total here okay this list you're giving us guess i'm going to assume it's very comprehensive are we starting to think about all of this being done or do you know you get is this going to be prioritized like because i walk everywhere in fact i fell recently on the city property um is it going to be like these are really serious you know ones and these are maybe less serious or are you wanting us to consider all of this well i i've not even gone to a prioritization on this one we can do it right eventually yeah we eventually would have to go to a prioritization we can do it by defect we can do it by neighborhood uh okay i can tell you it'll probably take years wow it's

Right now, it's unfunded.

Yeah, this is everything. You want us to be aware. And then down the line, there'll be some discussion about prioritizing and so forth.

And we can spin this a whole bunch of different ways as far as prioritization. Got it.

Thank you. So we're just really at the beginning.

Just one clarifying question. Linear feed. So what is the... We are talking length right now. What is the width of it?

The standard width is typically five feet, which then gets into why do I have certain things bolded on this list? If we jump to, let's see, Center Drive, Wilmington to McNeil. There are places within our city where the sidewalk is 10 feet wide yeah yeah so i ask you that yeah so i've identified that in this and it looks like it's not standing out too well unless my eyeglasses are failing me here oh it looks like it is standing up yeah okay okay so i bolded i bolded some of those areas that have a 10 foot wide sidewalk they're predominantly on wilmington and mcneil okay so with that in mind if the standard sidewalk width is five feet and we have a 10 foot wide sidewalk width i essentially doubled 165 feet per linear foot to to 330. yeah but in those there was no um there is no um there's no problem yes correct there are there are no defects and that translates into zero dollars Which I think is awesome because that has a problem to itself and try to fix those that are 10 feet wide. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, so that is the explanation. The only other explanation I want to provide is there's both sides of center drive that are shown on here. There's sections of center drive where, where, because it's bolded, there's no sidewalk on the other side, so to speak. from there. McNeil, there's lengths of McNeil in here, but I can tell you, even though we have parks, Jensen Park and Gary Oaks Park, those lengths are included in the McNeil location. So you don't see a Jensen or Gary Oaks because it's You know, it's where does one start and stop, so to speak, before it's on McNeil. So Civic Center has its own location. We broke it up, not necessarily because of who's responsible, but what was the closest adjacent building. So Fire, Police, City Hall, and actually Civic Drive uh by itself are are represented by that location uh storm water and water are essentially storm water ponds or what or our water facilities where that has a sidewalk frontage uh one thing a little bit unique here is we start getting into uh Let's see here. Oh, almost at the very tail end here, because I almost forgot the street on Hoffman Hill. If you crest Hoffman Hill and start going downhill, there's a section between Brown and Swan where there's no houses. It's just a bunch of. undeveloped area, poor grass and a bunch of things. So that's us, that's the city. So that's between Brown and Swan. And then after Swan, it turns into the Hoffman Hill neighborhood park. And that's where we cover it from there. uh let's see uh and i think we have most of the parks covered some of the parks like told me don't have a true sidewalk so that wasn't really covered it does have a path but it didn't really we didn't really cover that i mean and then we have things like um the regional storm pond by ogden and jensen uh we didn't we didn't walk that path over there um uh only because i when i when we finished this that was one of those okay should we go back and what have you but but those were for the most part this is this essentially represents the the quantity uh of of that we've what we found so on the flip side of this is the essentially the summary uh summary of of uh of what we identified so 373 total defects uh representing uh 7 460 linear feet i do have a couple tables below that to identify well what type of defects are there and then for the most part Almost 90% is that type A where you got that one inch lip coming over there. We do have some smaller ones like C1s and C2s, but for the majority at 89%, that covers the predominance of locations. Defect locations, it probably should not be a surprise because we have the longest length. It's center drive has the bulk of the locations. uh in here mcneil uh a close third uh parks second uh but then there's a little bit of a carryover from jensen and gary oaks covered under mcneil that theoretically could i put that in parks well it's it's covered in one way one way or the other so between those three that's where essentially where the bulk of the locations are uh from there Let's see. Any questions about how we quantified, identified, came up with a cost estimate? Any other questions associated with this?

I've got a few. So regarding cost estimates, so some of them, if it's about an inch, that could be a fixture that is just fill in with concrete and slant it so that you're not having to remove a slab. It's just a fill because it's a minor grade.

no no what how i how i approach this is for every defect that's found 20 linear feet of sidewalk is being removed whatever is causing the defect underneath that is removed uh in the form of root pruning and then essentially new sidewalk is cast um and it's placed

the code itself actually has repair criteria in it it's not in the in the pages that we made a copy for you but if you go into the municipal code online and you look into this one chapter it'll specifically talk about the repair criteria so we we classify and categorize the defects and then we say and this is how you fix them or this is the criteria for for fixing them so this includes the disposal cost also right

Yes, this includes mobilization, demobilization, disposal costs, any hazmat because we're casting concrete and having to wash those type of items in there, traffic control, those type of items from there. And it does include things like if... if you can believe it root pruning is a i i don't know that is that is tough work root pruning uh of because it's right in with the dirt and we have not been a when we had the sidewalk program we didn't have a saw that could stay sharp and root prune at the same time the other aspect is Irrigation repair invariably there's going to be irrigation that needs to repair and that is that is also tough work because what we're finding is some of the roots is essentially just strangling, putting a stranglehold on some of these irrigation components. Yes. So irrigation repairs included in there as part of the the only thing that's not included is removing the tree. and replanting a tree. So I did not include that in here because that is such a significant wild card. Because depending on where you are, I mean, I think most of us have gone to this past weekend's Kansas City barbecue over at Clocktower Park. And if you haven't, there's been other times you've gone to Clocktower Park. It's shaped like a wedge or a half or a moon. On the two corners of that moon is a cluster of American sequoias. Those are beautiful trees, but look at the feet of those trees and you won't think it's beautiful from that part. And I'm being serious because you're looking at it and I'm looking at the trees look beautiful. I mean, it's like, wow, we should have these forever. But then you look at it and says, oh my gosh, what's about to happen or what is happening right now? at Clock Tower Park. And I don't have a good solution other than, hey, we have to essentially do some root pruning and other things around that area.

Gus, before we've talked about the possibility on those particular areas of taking the sidewalks out all together and putting some gravel in or some such thing.

Is that still a possibility? Yes, Mayor, that's still a possibility. But to be conservative, I did not... put those alternative repair methods in here i use traditional repair methods because uh let's let's face it it's it's they're american sequoias i mean yeah

And this may not be just asking, it may be a super popular question, but as someone with scars on my left leg having fallen on the city sidewalk highlighted here, at what point, though, do we kind of have some personal responsibility? Like, I go out walking, I saw it, but I just, I'm clumsy, I took a dive, bloody, you name it. I, you know. I'm just saying like if we can't make every sidewalk perfect and I know as someone who walks Beth wide spikes all I walk everywhere it's not a place here I haven't walked and I know be careful there be careful there be careful there I just feel like at some point we're never gonna have perfect sidewalks so that's why I'm really interested in what the priority would be I walk on Center Drive and there are there's a gap sometimes right you know I'm talking and I I'm looking ahead and I'm trying to make better, safer decisions. So I just feel like at the end of the day, we're just getting to the point where society, where are we personally responsible for our own accountability for walking? Because I'm never going to have a perfect sidewalk. Does that make sense? I just had to say that. As someone, I walk in this community, as you know, I see Tom out quite a bit walking by his neighbor, or do, but it just, I don't know.

Some people feel like that and other people want to make a claim, so.

No, I understand. And somewhere between the sweet spot, but I know as a walker, I'm always looking ahead. I feel there's some level of responsibility. Like I'm a driver. Someone cuts in front of me. Well, I got to make sure that I'm aware of that. I don't know. I just had to say that some of this makes me just really.

Well, I'm going to partially agree with you.

Well, I'm just a big account of, as you know, Mike, I'm big on accountability. My accountability for myself.

I'm looking at it from a citizen. I don't know if a citizen should be paying. I'm going to share a couple of thoughts, I think, with support what you're saying. And then I'm sure Keith's going to either might add in a couple because him and I have talked about this just for the record because I brought it up before and I've asked for it. a different discussion location. Cities, when they've done nothing, have been sued. One of them lost $3 million. So, you know, as far as that personal liability, we're not going to get it perfect. But I think it's really important that we do have a priority list. And then for those that we're not doing right away, I think we have a lot of responsibility to have all the rest marked in orange or red or red yeah so at one point can we really say we were there at the end so to to As far as the personal liability, if we've got a priority list, we're getting the big ones done, and we have all the rest marked, I think then that personal liability responsibility goes higher and our risk goes lower. But we have to at least mark is what I'm clarifying.

Okay, and I just, because this is official, I just want to be on the record. I'm not saying not do anything. I think you restated what I said, but I want to be crystal clear. Somewhere between painting and fixing is where I think we focus, right? You have to do something. I'm not saying don't do anything, but I also know we can't fix every little thing in our system in our system because usually you're right it's always going to be a problem somewhere so i just want to be really clear i'm not anti this and some of you have seen the damage i've done to my own left leg but at some point i just feel like the priority list will definitely be needed i mean like it's triage right we got to do the triage and sometimes the person with the twisted wrist sits while the person with the broken back comes first so but i'm not against any of that

So I think that this is a great conversation. And it is, the next step for us, what we would suggest is that we actually take our information to our risk management agency and help them understand what our priority needs to be. Similar to what you heard tonight about the volunteer program, you're not going to prevent anybody, everybody from suing you. But if you, and you're not going to prevent every situation where you might have some amount of liability. But if you have good policies in place, you have a good program in place, you've identified it, you're implementing it, it's documented, and you're consistent in its application, then that's why we have insurance, right? Is not so that people won't sue us, but so that we're doing the right thing so that our insurance covers it. So at the insurance company, right? So the member services that he was talking about earlier, I'm sure the RMSA has a lot of member service requirements when it comes to sidewalk programs and risk management programs that help us understand specifically what is a program that is acceptable because it, this is a lot of money and there are a lot of needs, not, you know, there's, we need firefighters, we need police officers. We have got, a big long list of things that we need for you from public services as well. But I think the next step is really to talk to our insurance authority, help us understand which of these risks are the highest and should be the highest priority and what are the acceptable solutions from a risk management standpoint other than just going out and fixing everything.

yeah and i concur but i think we gotta get to that point we've been talking about this for as long as i've been on the console and i'm on my fifth year we need to get to the point where we're doing something i just need to be candid you know my viewpoint i'm one member okay so just like with the other event we need to get something done and and it's a plan and you start you start somewhere um And the way we keep our risk, our insurance rates down, collectively, all cities, is to minimize the risk so there's less injuries.

Yeah. And I would like to just say that what you see in front of you, even Gus's hand-colored map, represents a huge amount of staff time that has gone into doing this work to get to this point. So I appreciate the need for getting it done and just since i've been here since june i am i've come to understand that not only are we going out and we're looking at our individual city-owned sidewalks and we've now completed this entire inventory but we every time we get a complaint on the on personal um sidewalks that are the responsibility of adjacent adjoining property owners we're also taking those calls and creating a list. We have a template of a letter that we're going to begin to use to send out to those people that basically give them the same basic information about here's the type of defect that you have. Here's the code. We need you to look at the repair criteria, and we need you to bring your sidewalk into compliance. So we're approaching the need from these two different perspectives, right? And it does represent a lot of work. I really commend your public services staff. They're doing a great job.

And I do realize it. Now, I do appreciate it. When I clarify, I just think we really need a system in place so that after we get it good and started, it will be maintained.

Once we have an actual plan and

it might be multi-year or whatever and start implementing it by just doing that that reduces our liability good intentions yeah right right so i have a one question and one comment the quick question is that as we know the history predicts the future how long this sidewalks lasted So if we fix that right now, how long are we looking at? In the future, we don't have to fix it. No, you always have to fix it.

This will be a long enduring thing because what we found out from the first time when the city was repairing the sidewalks is we thought we could just walk away from it. But what happened is nature found a way, right? The tree roots that we amputated. The tree roots that we amputated, the ones that we didn't amputate got bigger and stronger and created problems elsewhere.

okay i will share and uh no you finish you finish no no go ahead i i will share and i've been here for 30 years this labor day weekend if you walk the uh the green montgomery trees then the trees you plant make the difference we've there's very few sidewalks older than ours here unless you're in the historic village and we have literally no damage on ours so the answer to that question really in part is What trees were planted on that street? And I know what's been said. Well, it will all eventually. But you really extend your life substantially with the right trees. And I think we've got that hopefully figured out with the tree board now. But I mean, 30 years this Labor Day weekend in my sidewalks. Use a good pressure wash, but there's no cracks. There's no uplifting. There's nothing. It's a different tree.

So one quick comment what I had. So personally, I also looked into... So in front of our houses, it's our personal liability and personal property. It's not the city property. so just last week just let everybody know last week i had somebody come out to see how much it's gonna cost me so 10 by 10 section he quoted like fifteen hundred dollars if i am looking at uh what's up here at is three thousand three hundred at uh three three thirty per one linear feet by 10 feet. And then you add another 45% on top, which I added is 1500. So $4,800, which is not bad to be honest with you, with the services, what has been offered, like they're going to work on their roots and they also take it to the dump and everything costs. So I think it, to me, it's not looking outrageous.

Okay. Good to know.

So I kind of want to touch on, you know, we're having an overview on our streets. I think the discussion is great in terms of how we manage risk and liability, what our plan is. I did want to bring forward, and again, we're just in a study session. We're not saying this is what we should do, but we want to present some options on maybe funding streams or one-time money we could use to try to tackle some of these problems. So with that, next slide, please. So the first one is a tab fee increase. I listed the RCWs on there so that, you know, I'm citing where I'm getting my information. It's currently $20. The fee can be increased to $40. Our $20 fee has been in effect for 24 months, so we can take council action. So you can do that at this point. Again, you can raise it to $50 after the $40 fee has been in effect for 24 months. Fee can be increased to a maximum of 100 with a simple majority voter approval. I just want to give you what this looks like and your options that you're there. increasing the fee from 20 to 40 dollars to bring in approximately a hundred thousand dollars in revenue so that would be a funding stream per year of approximately i think it was 98 000 but i'm saying approximately so just rounding up to a hundred thousand dollars so this is just one option to consider of something we can consider doing the second one is REIT money. And I am going to say a few things and I'm gonna turn it over to Lisa here, but REIT is your real estate excise tax. We currently have approximately 3.4 million in there. We can use potentially 35% of that for sidewalk improvements. That would be approximately $1.2 million. Lisa, what would we have to do if we wanted to do that?

So REIT money, what I would say about REIT money, first one thing, REIT money is one of the primary sources of capital improvement funding for all general fund departments. So facilities, police, fire, some of our street programs, etc. So this is the primary funding source for everything except for those kinds of improvements that are related to the water fund, which is the proprietary fund and and stormwater, which are their own funding sources. The REIT is a tax that cities can elect to collect, which we do. When the Growth Management Act was passed in 1990, it added the second quarter of a percent of real estate excise tax. And it did so by requiring that before you can, the projects that are eligible for funding through REIT are required to be projects that are identified in your capital facilities element of your comprehensive plan. so um there's a whole lot of nuances um because the this code talks about the first quarter of a percent the second of a quarter quarter of a percent there was recent legislation just last year that tried to combine the whole eligibility and make things more clear which seems to have been more confusing as i was trying to look at it earlier this week But essentially, bottom line, in order to spend REIT money on a project, including sidewalks like this, you need to ensure that the project that you want to spend money on is identified in your capital facilities plan, in your comprehensive plan, in the capital facilities element, and that you have also included it into the budget. Amending the budget is one thing. That's easy enough to do, or including it in the budget. the restriction on amending the capital facilities element of your comprehensive plan to one time a year is where the challenge comes. I think the original intent behind the provision in the law that restricts you from amending your comprehensive plan more than to only one time annually is so that you're looking comprehensively and holistically at the overall needs of your amendments that you're proposing. So the idea is that you've got 3.4 million in REIT, but there is a big long list of capital improvements. You actually adopted a comprehensive plan in February, but prior to doing that, you actually adopted a resolution that identifies both a six-year capital facilities list as well as long-term capital facilities projects. and there are some nuances that the attorney will tell you about that allow you to potentially do sidewalk improvements as part of an another project that's already listed like maybe there's a street project already listed that could be included but essentially in order to do a two million dollar project to do all these fixes you would essentially have to make sure that you're amending your capital facilities element of your comprehensive plan in addition to including it in your actual budget. If there's a project that includes sidewalks, so if one of Gus's projects that's identified either in the six-year transportation improvement plan, which is an outgrowth also then of the transportation element, it's possible you could fix a section. But to come in with a single project to say, we want to fix $2 million of sidewalk defects in these locations, it would essentially require you to amend your comprehensive plan and to include it in your budget.

And you said we could do that once a year?

So amending your comprehensive plan is limited to one time a year. It does allow you to make changes to your capital facilities element in association with a budget. But it's it's not just a simple matter of we want to do this project. And so we're going to spend REIT money. And again, the reason is because REIT is the primary source of funding for all of your general fund capital needs.

So the REIT money goes to the general fund. Do we have like An increase in our REIT money from Affinity that we have, we can afford to do this first because it's part of our budget, obviously. So do we have this above and beyond our budget to pay for?

So REIT money is actually tracked in a special fund. You're required to track it separately. So it's tracked in Fund 301, but it is intended to fund general fund projects. It's two quarter of a percent that's on the sale of property. So it only happens as property sells. It's not an overall property tax.

Yeah, I know how it works. I'm curious, is it because of affinity? Do we have extra money coming in, new REIT money, and use this money? it's not unexpected, we knew it was coming, but do we have new money coming in that is not included in our budget forecast that we can use for these repairs?

No, I'm guessing that the reason you have 3.4 million in REIT is probably because there are projects that are waiting, that are in the queue waiting to be done. And Gus can probably, Gus or Keith can probably answer that question better. Yeah, go ahead.

We had the work done on Center drive could we do the sidewalks on Center drive in the area where we did you know plan for a for B, could we do that, could it be included in that.

Oh, I didn't think about that. Now, I guess it all depends on how gray you want to look at things or how much you want to squint at things. So yes, we did. We did have like your phases of center goes like a legal question. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we do have phases of center drive in, in our plan.

Yeah.

How far back do we pull the onion to say what is exactly that scope? And to expand the scope is a different discussion. Yeah. But I can tell you, I mean, the dollar values that we came up with for the scope was predominantly asphalt and then 88 ramps at that point. That's besides the point. I mean, can we look at a gray area and really squint hard and say, because these are- I would say this is a nice legal question.

Yeah. I don't want us getting, yeah. I mean, I understand if maybe if it's an option, it's something we should look at. I'm always happy to see if legal is okay, but I don't want to get us, I don't want us getting talking grays on something that it might be illegal. Yeah. Especially without prescription.

I concur with Keith, but I think it's a very, very important question to ask. And I think we just need a straight answer. And if the answer is yes, you can with these limitations, please bring it back to the console because it may be a unique opportunity to get this going faster. But I would be much more comfortable with that. But that's one of the things I think we can get an answer on pretty quick.

Well, we did sort of, but then we need to delve into it farther with Alexandra because there are nuances, right? It's like, is this a capital project that is on the current list or on a previous list? Because we have capital projects from old capital facilities plans as well. So there's more discussion that has to have with the legal person. What I was going to say is, REIT is a good source of matching money, right? So there are a lot of different, it's creative financing in trying to find ways to fund all of your needs and using REIT as a leverage or a component of a capital project that gets grants or loans from some other source. really makes your REIT dollars go even further because it's an available source for most grant programs, infrastructure programs have some sort of a match requirement. And so REIT often becomes the source of matching funds for other grant programs, which is the other reason why it's important to look at, yes, we have this project, we have, this project, this project, this project. So look at them in total, and make sure that you're evaluating different available funding sources for those different project needs, and most efficiently and effectively applying your various sources of funding to to the overall big picture.

So just a quick comment, but I think the REIT money looks pretty good. But if we are looking at the last slide of increasing $40 or $50 on the card app, already we are paying so much money on the card apps. And as soon as you put that extra $50, it's going to be a big...

big noise be prepared for it i'm just warning and and i have a couple thoughts on that too um kind of in the middle but i i'd like to see what other slides keith is going to show us is this it yeah mike i'm sorry to disappoint you but okay because it's open these are the two funding streams that we've we've initially identified as as potential to 11. i i well A couple of thoughts. You know, we have to lead by example with their sidewalks, and we have some serious safety risks. Prioritizing everything else I concur with entirely. Talk today, but we need to come up and move forward with something. In reference to Robin's question, I think it's a great question we need to figure out. We're going to, in my opinion, have to go into REIT to some degree. We just have no other avenue to do it major-wise. But with that shared, the sooner we get the feedback from the risk management, we can realize how much we need to take. Can we narrow it a bit? Can we do that? We have a couple of projects that may go up for sale eventually that would bring in more REIT money. And they're pretty large. So we need to be aware that that might replenish itself But, you know, REIT happens suddenly and then it doesn't happen for 10 years. Yeah, it doesn't happen for the next 10 years. That explains the bumper sticker. Yeah, so with that in mind, CARTAF's fees, we got to figure out some way to do it and we need to do it. the transportation benefit district if you go into the rcw it's very small it's not a lot of money but it is available for streets and sidewalks now it just asks that we have a mind change on that and realize that as we do street projects under transportation benefit district we also look at the sidewalks as possibilities in those areas and and be aware of that um Some cities have ran, I'm going to share a couple thoughts, pros and cons, have ran small levees. They only require by state law now 50% for these, for sidewalks. Some have been successful, some have not. I think Tacoma's last one passed, didn't it, just recently? I don't recall.

The streets.

Well, it's streets and sidewalks. It did. We have to remember there's a possibility of failure. If it fails, you know, I wouldn't be comfortable at that point raising card taps because they've already voted no. Only homeowners and property owners, my problem with a levy is only homeowners and property owners will pay the levy. That means those who are driving in the streets who may live here and rent here won't be. So I hear your concerns. But if we ran, I will share with you, my math calculation is if we ran a levy and passed it, it would cost you more than a cart tab increase. Probably quite a bit more if you look at that. And what a cart tab fee does, although it's going to create, you're right, there will be fees. If it currently went from $20,000 and raised it to $40,000, you could do that. But if you look at it, if you pass a $0.20 levy, like I can't remember which city you shared that you sent the info on, per $1,000, that's $500,000 value of home would pay $100,000. increase in levy. I did some math on it. So if you pass the 20 cent levy just for sidewalks and streets, you could raise your $100 on your property tax. We would get pushback on that. If you get a card tab, and the average home has two cards, it'd be $40. So you would actually pay less under a card tab increase because of the limits there than having to run a levy. And the other part is it won't be just the homeowners. The renters would be paying, too. And there are important parts of our community and everyone. But they drive on their streets. They walk on their sidewalks. So don't rule out the car tab deal because you're bringing more people in fairness into paying for it. That's my thoughts.

And one add-on to that is that – if we did have a reliable every year, $20 on the car tabs or whatever it is, it raises what a hundred thousand a year, right? Right. But for every 50,000, you can, you can borrow a million. So with, with a hundred thousand that you could, you could have a million dollars because you'd be able to service the debt with the car tab fee.

And, and that's basically what you're doing with the levy. You go out and get all the work done, and you're serving your debt with a levy that's coming in. So we could expedite this whole process a lot quicker if we had a funding stream, and that's what Ron's talking about.

And that's councilmatic, so we don't have to go anywhere to get the money.

But I would argue that a card tab fee

would actually be less than if we ran a street and uh sidewalk levy so that you would pay less couldn't we also use stormwater retention fund monies for sidewalks too not not not all of it but but some to get us started i mean i think that's a reasonable use doing a

You want to touch on that? We've talked about that.

So Stormwater is a proprietary fund. It is a fund that is paid for by users of the system by rates and fees that are charged. So it can only be used in limited circumstances, for things that are associated with the Stormwater system. I don't know, it's possible that some sidewalks could be classified and clarified as being a component of the stormwater system, but your stormwater system went through a recent rate analysis and it was based on a whole list of pretty expensive projects that already need to be done. And so adding additional large ticket items to the stormwater project list, means you're going to go back and have to do an adjustment to your rates because the rates that you set are based on your rate studies, based on the operating costs and the capital costs. And so if those capital costs haven't been included in that rate study, your rates currently are not set up in order to be able to accommodate all of the capital improvements that are already identified and waiting to be funded. Does that make sense?

But, but I would, if we're just talking about a minimal amount, a hundred thousand dollars, cause I think we've got, I don't know, four and a half million, 5 million in our stormwater fund that, that grows. Um, so rather than doing a car tab for a hundred thousand dollars a year, just maybe a hundred thousand from the stormwater fund, because I know we built in some contingencies for, for some of those projects and just, I'm just talking out loud.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I don't know how far, I think we've used $100,000 because that's what we could collect from the card tab. I don't know how far $100,000 is gonna go in addressing that. And in terms of having a balance in your fund, the decamp facility that's going to be proposed is $2.7 million. your balance is going to be way lower. I mean, there's a balance there because you have projects that need to be done, right?

And a previous me, we covered all those projects.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, but it's not, that doesn't, that isn't to say that you couldn't, it's going to be way longer to get it implemented, but that isn't to say that you couldn't, you need to be able to justify very clearly why a sidewalk in a certain location is part of the system and you would have to plan for it and identify it and incorporate it in as a component of the overall system need.

And I want to go back and clarify a couple of thoughts, especially for those who might be listening. On the CAR TAP fee, where I would have concern at this point is, and it might need to require another discussion because this has really gone long for good reasons, but we still have an important discussion about a policy thing that was brought to us last April and how we're going to work that the staff was recommending as far as our all the other sidewalks dealing with AMI and so forth so on yet another discussion we need to talk about that and I'm going to just talk about it a little bit in my final comments but if we do raise cartel fees I think citizens have to get something back out of it and what we looked at that and what Barb was in your spot at that time. She had percentages, reduced percentages based upon AMI, real low AMI below 25 or 30%, real below 50%. We never really closed that discussion and I think our citizens are hoping to hear some more about that. Do you guys recall that document?

I recall that. I also recall how, like, where's the cutoff then on AMI? Oh, sorry. Yeah. We talked about how hard that is to like, then where is the cutoff? You set it. And then if you're a hundred over, then it doesn't apply. I mean, those are some kind of dicey things. And I think sometimes if I remember Barb correctly, there was how really accurate is AMI? Like, how does that get reported? And I don't know, but there were definitely remember the conversation. Yeah. It was a lot of.

know roadblocks not not insurmountable but definitely there well i guess my question is does the mayor and if if you do do you and the staff want to bring it back um and and if you do let us know well i think what we're going to try to do is continue these conversations with sidewalks so i mean that was sidewalk driven it was a sidewalk policy yeah yeah so it was a sidewalk policy so

So I do want to say we have a council rule 2.6 to adjourn before 10 p.m. or to extend with a motion and a vote. So we are at getting close to that time. So I just want to follow our council rules. So I just want to put that out there.

I make a motion we extend for 30 minutes.

I second. Yeah.

Okay.

It's been moved and seconded. Discussion? Call for the vote. Call.

Gives us coffee.

All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. Opposed?

I'm going to need a nap tomorrow.

OK, so I do have one more question and comment on it that I don't know what percentage of the sidewalks in our entire city is owned by city and percentage is owned by the private owners. And the question is that, yes, we can fix the sidewalks for the city. What's going to happen with that? Suppose there's a 70 30 ratio. Who's going to take care of the 70% of the other sidewalks? We are definitely having challenges. So are we going to, how we let citizens know that, hey, this is your property and you're going to fix this sidewalk. We are not going to fix it. Or are we going to fix it? So certain kind of discussion needs to happen on that aspect also.

So that's what I was referencing a little bit earlier when we were talking about approaching the challenge from two perspectives. Your municipal code obligates adjacent property owners to fix the sidewalks. And we use the same criteria for identifying the defects and the same criteria for identifying the repair. So we have a list of property owners where sidewalks have been identified that are adjacent to them, that they're responsible for according to the DuPont Municipal Code. We're creating a template letter that we would send to them. And it basically becomes a code enforcement issue And so they get a letter with the requirements of the code provisions, and then the request to make those fixes. Code enforcement becomes a legal matter when it gets to the point where people don't follow through. And then it's a matter of really like, how are you making a decision about the cost moving forward to compel compliance versus going out and fixing it and what are the options there becomes a legal matter.

and i'm going to share a couple thoughts because i really want to make sure the council knows i'm not saying how we should decide or how we should vote because that's voted on each one i'm going to ask carrie to send out the dmcs or the rcws that guide this i've read them in detail i've talked about them before but i think every council member should realize it because as far as code enforcement if the property owner does not want to do the repair works the council must pass a resolution so we have to know we are in the loop and we will be part of that decision to order the repairs and costs and notice and writing to be served all right and that's under dmc our own dmc she's referring to and rcw 35.68.02 and 0.030 so then a notice of that resolution must be given and included that unless the repairs are made the city will make the repairs and cost and expense will be assessed so do we we talked early way back in a year and a half ago the reality is when these cases come forward we us seven will be making that decision And I just want everyone to be prepared for that. The notice of a hearing must be published in the official newspaper of the City and given to the owner. At the hearing, the Council will hear all parties for or against and shall determine if any changes will be made to the original plan. I just really think it's fair for everyone here to know to answer your question. What happens? They try to enforce it. If they don't, the citizen has the right to appeal and they bring it to us. And that's under 35.68.050. And if they still don't like our decision, they have a right to go to superior court. Okay. So once the decision is made, the consul at that point, passes a resolution on how the assessment is paid, either all at one time or installments. And we also asked whether or not interest is made in the rate and way back when we were doing the strategic planning. This is something I just hoped we discussed to make sure citizens know their rights and we know our responsibilities.

Okay, so one more thing I have to say that we are talking about the non-compliant part of the citizens, but we also need to talk about the compliance part of the citizens. So say we send out the notice that, hey, you need to fix the sidewalk and the citizens say, okay, I'm going to fix my sidewalk by myself. I don't want millions of dollars of levy. Great. So do we require the permit from the city? What is the permit cost? So suppose a $1,500 fix can cost $600 of the city permit. That doesn't make sense also. How quick is the process of getting the city permits? Who is going to oversee what the fix looks like? What's going to happen? Because the new concrete versus old concrete is never going to match. So are we okay with the concrete looking differently? Or are we going to change? Yeah. So who is going to look into it? And I definitely know there is a cost of applying for permits are almost like in hundreds of dollars. If this is, say, $1,500 and $600 permit, you're putting almost 30% cost as a fees from the city, which we need to talk about either eliminate the fees and let the homeowner fix the sidewalk, or are we going to continue to do what we do?

I totally concur with you and some cities waive those fees and we need to have that. And that's where I think having another look at that policy, what that policy did do, and I've reread it and I know we wanted some changes, but at least on the vast majority of the cases, it provided to staff the guidance of what to work directly with how, and probably the vast majority of these cases wouldn't even come to the council. It gave the power to the staff to look at AMI, to look at fees, and look at these things. And I concur, we shouldn't charge any fees. Just get it fixed, okay? That's a good question, but that was part of the policy, if I remember.

Oh, it was.

Yeah, and that's easily done to waive the fee. You know, we could also take the fee out altogether.

Yeah, but, you know, we should put it in the policy and just say we're waiving it. We're not, you know. Let's figure out what we can agree so that our citizens know.

So and if we are going to agree, then sooner the better. That's what I can say, because if we are going to start repairing the sidewalks, the citizens will ask, oh, or they will think that a city is fixing all sidewalks. They don't realize everybody is not as informed and not watching the four hour hour discussion on the studies. So, yeah.

And then some of them are out of town.

Yeah, so I think we need to make sure that if we're going to act on this, then we need to act at the same time for the other sidewalks issues also for the private properties. So making sure that if I want to fix my sidewalks, I'm not going to be charged 30% fees to apply for the fixing the sidewalk.

I concur. maybe we can wrap that all up in with, well, do a new policy or look at the old policy and see if we can make some tweaks about the AMI, about the permit fees.

So I'm gonna ask a question out of ignorance. So when you're talking about the policy, Are you talking about the actual municipal code or was there a different policy that I'm not aware of?

Which is entirely- With each concurrence, I will email it to you and CC Keith and the mayor.

So it was a policy document?

It was a policy document that Barb brought forward.

um to us last march okay and it never got voted on okay so that would be a great and you might like part of it you might not like part of it staff is really um we are here to provide you with technical data and information to make recommendations where we believe that those recommendations are appropriate It's your job to actually make the decision. So when you talk about staff deciding on fees and staff deciding, it's like staff implements what you put into law, right? And so I was confused when you were talking about a policy because policies are your purview, writing the laws are your purview, staff is obligated to implement the laws that you adopt.

I totally concur with you, but I'm glad Barb brought us a draft to think about. Sometimes we need a little guidance, so don't be afraid to give us guidance.

Oh, no, no, no. I needed to ask the clarifying question.

I'll send it to you, and I'll see both of you, and I'll put Gus on it. I don't know if you...

could ask a Gus question. When we're talking about people fixing their own sidewalks, would there be some level of quality control there? Because I could envision someone fixing their sidewalk with all best of intentions, but maybe they thought they went to the lowest bidder and they thought it was going to work, but it actually gets worse or it impacts other parts. So what are your thoughts about making sure people do that?

It has to be fixed to code and they have to

that's what i wanted to speak to like how would that be validate someone from the city comes out and checks it before they start the process how do we make sure we can do the best everything that you everything that you said is would have to happen in our in the public works standard is is essentially a a drawing there that talks about you know what is the dimensions of the sidewalk what is the slope minimum slope and and things like that we don't get into uh you know old sidewalk colors versus new sidewalk colors it's it's some shade of gray uh really when it comes down to it uh from there but we do have a concrete mix uh that's in within the sidewalk we also talk about a percentage compaction underneath the sidewalk uh from there so it yes there has to be a a validation process like you said a quality control process because otherwise i mean a person could say hey why not just put a bunch of paver blocks here and call it good you know hey guess i was wondering too if um is it do we have we ever considered an option that says hey city go ahead and fix it and just bill me i think that's in the code where where basically it's fixed and then we're charging or putting a lien on a property maybe in our municipal code we talk about the city executing that work and then that is then charged through a lien on the property do we have the resources to do that we don't have a lot it would be and i apologize if i mean i think we could do what tom's talking about but if we if he's got a contractor

And Tom money is sidewalks fix. Hey, Gus, get your contract out here. Do it. Tell me what I owe you. I think that's what you're saying.

That works.

That works. It doesn't necessarily have to be one of our own.

Then we control the compliance. Quality control.

But then again, what Shauna said, that's one of the things that Barb talked about was that we didn't have the funds to go ahead and fix the sidewalks. When we had this discussion before, she said we did not have the funding upfront to begin with. So, you know, we can say, Gus, go do it, but we don't have the money to pay. Yeah.

And also we have to be mindful of it that we should so far have understood that governing government here versus the privately doing the business, right? So the cost is almost three times to 10 times sometimes. So if we just say, okay, go ahead and fix my sidewalk and put a lien on my property, i don't think anybody will agree not including all of us sitting on the table saying that okay charge me 10 times and send me the bill or put a lien on my property so i don't think that's an option but we should give more option to the citizens in their hand and say okay follow this you know guidelines and make it simpler for them to fix it rather than charging 10 times that's my

Well, and I concur that it could very well be. I want to be careful with the 10.30 since I put the 30 minutes. I put it on purpose. But there's actually one city when I did all my research that actually gives a reduced rate if you have city employees do it. But they have city employees. That's all a different deal. But, you know, leave it up to the citizen. If the citizen wants to pay higher, you know, if the citizen wants to go find their own, person and get a much better price, as long as it passes Gossett's inspection.

Can we rent the sidewalk sucker? Oh, yeah. Well, I don't know. There's probably a liability with that.

We volunteer.

It doesn't matter. I mean, yeah, we can lift the chunk of concrete, cut the roof, put the concrete back. I'm happy with that.

people running over their own feet with it. No big deal. Yeah.

Final comment for me is this, this was excellent information. I think that spreadsheet was amazing and doing the color coding on the map. So thank you.

Although really good. I'll just say it would have been the perfect time to spray paint everything when they were doing that. I'm just saying, but it's okay.

yeah i think i think it would be helpful because we i did forward that email to you from the citizen that that fell because i mean he got pretty busted up so i think it's important that we get those painted hey just one last i know i'm the guy right so on on your top line here those seven it's one inch or more so it could be that six of those are one inch and like one of them's like five inches right correct it has to be you have a three inch or more sign so this is between one and three inches Oh, for the vertical displays?

Yes.

Oh, I thought that was a B1.

Am I wrong on that, Gus?

I think the graphics best help illustrate it. So if you look at the graphic for A, and then you look for the graphics for B1 and B2, I think they'll best help illustrate it.

Didn't you say 90% of A?

Yes, yeah.

Because I was wondering, I guess, not to tell you how to suck the egg or nothing, because you guys know what you're doing, but is there something, when we look at the priority list, do we say, okay, we're just going to assume some risk on one-inchers, but we are not going to do it on four or five-inchers?

Yeah, I think the best way to look at that for A is it has to be greater than one inch to be considered a defect. I think that's the best way of looking at A. Yeah.

Right. And I think to answer the question, I mean, I've seen cities do it two ways. You do the worst first, or you do it by zones. And I'm not advocating for either. I'm saying that's just common ways to do it. Yeah, zones normally based off of here.

All right.

Thanks, Gus and Lisa.

Well, thank you, Gus.

Yeah.

Nice trying in there.

Okay. We've got more information to gather and we'll have more discussions on this. But right now, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. So moved. Second?

Second. Second.

Third.

Any discussion? I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Very good. Next is the mayor's comments. I don't have any more. We have any council comments tonight? I know it's been long, but you want to go first? Okay.

It was an amazing weekend. I really feel compelled to take a moment to congratulate and thank everyone who was involved in the barbecue event this weekend. Many people were involved, so I won't mention anyone by name. But by groups, the American Legion, great, great job. And all the sponsors, great job, a lot of sponsors. Many volunteers who were not in the American Legion were out there and also doing some work. Some of those Volunteers were some of our full-time team who were out there volunteering on their off-duty hours. Thanks to the parks and recs, they're very, very involved in this. DuPont Police Department, DuPont Fire Department, DuPont Public Works. And then I know behind the scenes back here, there's always a ton of paperwork that goes as they figure out LTAC and everything else that goes with it. So to all those people who are involved in that, Just thanks. The volunteers and the city staff did an amazing job.

i was just going to say i read the the press release that the city put out today regarding the medians and addressing that maybe we might not have the right plants there back in 2013 when the city had a budget crisis and they let over 100 trees die in the medians because they turned off the water to save money which was a very bad idea also incidentally the same year that we were awarded the tree city award but When we replanted everything, we did a lot of research for the right trees and the right foliage. And it's all native plants that are in those medians now because we did the research 10 years ago to make sure that this wouldn't happen. So the fact that this happened is somehow on the city. I'm not sure. why it looks so terrible. I know it hasn't been weeded or anything, but you couldn't ask for better plants in those medians because there was a ton of research done on that. And I can pull the documents and the workshops that we had on it. I mean, it was meticulously planned by, you know, I think it was, I don't know, Gus, were you here when we did that? The medians, when we replanted the medians? That was like 2014, 2015?

It was exit 118 to McNeil, then a couple other sections.

Yeah, I mean, it was there was a lot of research put into that. And it was, it was very well planned. So I, I don't think that we could do anything different in those mediums. But we need to take proper care of it and maybe replant some of the same same native plants, but it was called knick knick is the name of the plant that they put in there because it's native to the area. So I just wanted to bring that up. And second, I am going to the Pierce County LTAC grant meeting tomorrow they're doing the grant reviews for the year and our community center grant is up so i will be there to answer questions i'm not a voting member i'm like the member at large or whatever but so i'll be there to answer questions in person there so just wanted to let everyone know about that any other council comments city administrator i plan on being there as well so on the ltac tomorrow um

Jesse Davis has been with the city for 13 years. He's a maintenance worker too. He is retiring. I'm just going to give a quick story about Jesse. I know it's late, but I love seeing him because every time I see him, he has a big smile on his face and he always comes up and gives a warm greeting. And no matter what he's doing or where he's at, I just appreciate the joy. And so I will miss the joy of him and I wish him nothing but the very best in his well-earned retirement. So I just wanted to acknowledge him and his years of service. With that, Mr. Mayor, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Any other comments, questions? I don't see any other business. I think we're before 1030, so it's time to adjourn. Thank you.