City Council - Regular Meeting

I have six o'clock on my watch, so I'm going to call a meeting to order. Clerk, please take the roll call.

Mayor Frederick.

Here.

Deputy Mayor Winkler. Here. Council Member Elliott. Here. Council Member Walton. Here. Council Member Wargo. Council Member Burrow. Here. Council Member Thakur. Here. And Council Member Gassick.

Do we have a motion to excuse Council Member Gassick?

Mr. Mayor, I make a motion to excuse Council Member Gassick. Do we have a second?

Okay. So moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Thank you. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge we thank the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice.

First tonight, we have a time for public comments. This excludes new business and public hearings. There's a three minute time limit. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make public comments? Okay. We'll move on to the approval of the agenda. I want to make one brief change and that's to move the proclamation 7.1 right after the approval of the agenda, since we have guests that are coming just for the proclamation. Do we get a motion as amended?

I make a motion to change the agenda.

Okay. Do we have a second? Second. Any further discussion? Okay, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? First tonight, we have a proclamation. For as we celebrate America 250, we recognize September 17th, 1787 as the day the Constitutional Convention drafted the Constitution of the United States of America. And whereas the Constitution of the United States of America is the world's longest surviving written charter of government, making the United States of America the world's most enduring beacon of liberty, freedom, and democracy. And whereas it is fitting and proper to officially recognize this magnificent document, the oldest instrument of national government in the world, and the anniversary of its creation. And whereas celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution provides an opportunity for all Americans to realize the achievements of the framers of the Constitution and the rights, privileges, and responsibilities it affords. And whereas when honoring our Constitution, we must also recognize the duties of citizenship, emphasize citizens' responsibilities for protecting and defending it, and encourage the study of historical events which lead to the framing of it. And whereas the city of DuPont celebrates and recognizes the hardworking Americans who contribute daily to the strength of our nation and recognizes the men and women who serve in our armed forces, especially those serving overseas and at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, who are protecting and defending America. Now, therefore, I, Ronald J. Frederick, Mayor of the City of DuPont, do hereby proclaim the week of September 17th through September 23rd in the year 2026 to be Constitution Week in the City of DuPont and encourage all citizens and organizations to celebrate the Constitution originally adopted by the American Congress of the Confederation on September 17th, 1787. Signed this eighth day of September 2026. Now I believe we have some America 250 committee or DAR people would like to have a quick photo op for this. Can you come on up?

All right.

Thank you very much. Good job. We'll move on to item 8.1. We have a public hearing tonight. The council will hold a public hearing on a proposed data center.

Point of order. We're going to do the study sessions first.

Oh, I jumped ahead, didn't I? Okay, to item 6.1. That's the RMSA member standards, OPMA and public records training. And Sabrina's here to start us off on that. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to welcome Henry Dietz from RMSA back again to go through this information with us. Thank you, Henry.

Thank you, Sabrina, and thank you all. I appreciate letting me come back again. So as we touched on here, it will be on an OPMA PRA refresher and then a little bit on the RMSA member standards. So unlike two weeks ago, just to kind of make sure that we are sailing as smoothly and quickly as possible, let's save all questions to the end. as I know there will be some, and especially maybe on the member standards. So we'll just kind of go through this quickly because obviously all of you have already done this. This is more refresher, things you already know. But I want to lean more into the risk aspect of these. So on the next slide, disclaimer, I am not an attorney. This should not be considered legal advice. This is risk management education and guidance. on the next one. So just a quick scenario. Essentially, let's up these numbers. Let's say a council member emails three other council members on an agenda item. So we now have four council members talking about it in a reply-all email, as you guys are seven council, correct? Yes. So now four of the seven have discussed it outside of a meeting. Is this a violation of the Open Publics Meeting Act? Yes, essentially. So we'll just touch on OPMA being how you talk about a meeting and then the PRA governs what happens to the record of your meetings or agency business. On the next slide, just a quick review of OPMA via RCW 42- or .30.010. Basically, actions for the public agency should be taken in the open. A meeting is a gathering where there's a quorum for collective intent to discuss, deliberate, or decide agency business. What we are doing here today. A final action must occur properly in a noticed public meeting. A vote isn't required to be a public meeting. Any deliberation can trigger the act. On the next slide is obviously regular versus special meetings. Regular meetings are to be held according to our periodic schedule. Looks like you guys have every two weeks or twice a month. um the agenda should be posted at least 24 hours in advance from the website to the front door and you must provide public comment and there's usually no restrictions on the type of business special meeting outside of that schedule notice should still be posted um within 24 hours and it's the content of that is more uh limited in scope specifically related to the topics on that agenda and i don't think that's anything radical for anyone here on the next slide what isn't a meeting social gatherings you know if we got you know hudson bay days that's not a that's a social gathering that is not a meeting unless you start talking about open or a public business in a number of four or greater then we have an issue we should refrain from talking about business if we get those conversations even if it's like there's four of you kind of hanging out um having having chili and someone's like i want to talk about business he's like that's a really great thing to talk about at the next council meeting we invite you to come public comment we'll put it on or we'll talk about putting it on the agenda you know some way to move away from discussing it at length um other ones are you know tours with no business being discussed and then anything that has less than a quorum is not a meeting um as just a general reminder the state requires that you do this hence you guys have already done it and as we'll talk about in our member standards for rmsa we require it as well we're um not try to double up on anything don't want you have to do any more than what is already asked of you on the next slide is more particularly important on the rmsa end a knowing violation is a personal civil liability so the first violation for any particular elected official is five hundred dollars and then any subsequent one is a thousand dollars that is personal not necessarily paid by the city in the event that the city is um if there is a claim or suit against the city for a violation the agency pays the prevailing parties and in this event it's confirmed that yes it is indeed a violation that prevailing parties cost and attorney fees are paid for by the city and actions taken in that violating meeting are null and void or can at least become null and void so those are the big risks to look out for obviously the other ones are reputational risk and just kind of crazy creating chaos in your in your in your city on the next slide is executive session so obviously these are closed to the public and they are limited in scope um you must publicly uh the presiding officer must announce the um specific rcw that relates to why we are having an executive session um there is on mrsc there's a great script tool there is no reason to reinvent the wheel and have to determine every time they've got a great tool that you guys can use for any sort of reasoning that you're an executive session. So pretty simple there, it's just a closed session to discuss certain topics. And on the next slide is just some general pitfalls of executive session that I really wanna sit with is just, if we have a certain topic like litigation of a claims, for a claim, we don't want to stray from that topic in our executive session. That has to go back into your open meeting. Just because your attorney is in the room does not mean you can lean on litigation as the reasoning to call it an executive session. It has to be announced. It has to be cited with the RCW. And what's discussed in an executive session stays there. There is no recap to your spouse, to staff, to social media, please. No final actions would be done in an executive session. Actions must take place outside of that executive session. The next slide is on serial meetings, which we kind of discussed in the beginning, which is basically when Council Member A and Council Member B one-on-one discussions can snowball into a quorum without everyone actually talking at once. This does not require in-person contact. This can be via phone, email, social media. If four of you talk about city business on a Facebook post, that is potentially a violation that we need to try to address. So any of those could be, you know, as long as we're getting three members and a five council, four members and a seven council, that can become a serial meeting, an open public meeting violation. On the next slide is just some general pitfalls that we've talked about, like, reply all threads group chats group texting forwarding an email you know if we forward one to the councils and fyi looping in and we reply all that's how we just generally accumulate council members um if we have a side conversation before or after an open meeting that you know results in four or more of you guys talking and back and forth social media comments um There is the legal test of this. If the court evaluates that your email, evaluating your emails, for example, they'll look into the collective intent to discuss agency business. But however that intent, you don't want to have it be a shield. In a lawsuit, that intent is evaluated after the fact by a judge that is looking at circumstantial evidence, like how fast you replied or the depth of your digital conversation. So there's a lot of pieces that go into that. So I would not hold yourself to leaning on this intent this intent um legal test that is really talked about in the wood first battleground school district um the court of appeals there ruled that a serial meeting exchange can constitute a meeting if any if a quorum is involved in any regard um so the practical risk is just you know intent you know the intent of your guys's discussion is really hard to prove either or so i wouldn't rely on it it's a lawsuit it also just generally means expensive litigation um a digital you know evasive a very invasive digital discovery of your social media or of your text or emails it's also a hit to your public trust even though so those passive fyi threads can accidentally turn into a debate um you know if that happens often that could be you know a good claim for an individual of the public to find that pattern over intent um This question's at the end, just for the sake of speed. Basically, your mindset shouldn't be how much can we discuss via email without getting caught, or without getting caught for intending to do a public meeting. The safer practice is just to avoid the pattern altogether. Treat electronic dialogue and messaging basically as a structural hazard and a potential to a quorum. You should consider any email, text, social media, just a gateway to violating the Open Public Meetings Act. So just try to either avoid it or at least making sure that you're maybe like, you know what, if I see a post talking about city business, I am not replying. Or just rerouting it saying, hey, would love, you can bring this to the next meeting. something to that nature, but you just wanna keep redirecting it and not engaging just for the pattern of not getting into a full meeting. On the next slide is just some general do and don'ts. Like we talked about, don't reply all, don't forward and comment, you know, FYI or, you know, looking forward to this. Or don't use staff as a message relay. You know, don't play the telephone game with staff. That's also just not good for staff in general. Like we talked about, we should do, you know, routing substantive discussion to your public meeting agendas, using staff for one-way communication only, just giving information over. If you're looped into a reply all, redirect, not add substance. Next here is just a quick touch on public comment. One reason I'm doing a lot of this training is public comment seems to trip a lot of people up is that elected officials may feel uncomfortable not addressing public comments. So if someone were to come up and talk about something that's definitely not on the agenda at all and very maybe a hot topic issue that maybe the council hasn't had time to gather facts and not knowing where we stand yet. And it could be, or it could just be purely inaccurate or inflammatory. You know, and we were like, how do I, how do we respond? Or do we? And honestly, you don't necessarily have to respond in any way other than you could do the simple acknowledgement of, you know, thank you. We will take that into consideration. That can be your response. There's no reason that you have to. There's no state law. There's no statutory requirement to go anything beyond that. So it's fine to just, you know, listen intentively without opening a dialogue mid-meeting and opening up that can of worms. So that's just one I wanted to touch on. That's something that we see a lot of questions on from our elected officials of just, you know, do we have to do this or what can we do? So that was the OPMA. So maybe what I'll do is maybe I'll stop for quick questions on open public meetings right here. So did you have a question on open public or from these previous slides before we move on to public records? So yeah, hit me.

So if we find our, uh, if there is a chain emails going on or the text message or anything is going on, right. And the, if emails are on the, are in on an official, uh, you know, uh, emails or anything, who really, uh,

watch on it and if there is a violation who to report it and who reports it right that's where to report and who reports that's fair i would recommend you know if you are kind of just doing your thing you see you know a violation kind of happening in front of you I would recommend talking to, I would say, that's a good question. I would say probably either the mayor or deputy mayor or your city administrator, just saying, hey, we have this here. It's something that maybe we should talk, like just letting you know that this is what, and obviously I wouldn't forward the email. I would let them know in person or a phone call. just saying hey i come across this um just want to keep someone in the loop um and you know what it could be is and it's hard because you would want to i know that there's maybe a desire to tell everyone hey don't do that but then that just it creates more of uh you're adding on to it um now i would say it would not be impossible to you know if you if there is one person that kind of started it with like a you know like if they send out an email that has like two you and three others you could reply back individually for that one person being like hey this is probably not the best idea i would recommend that you do not engage and maybe try to take this and save this for council council meetings um in any event i would just rely and send it upwards um upwards to staff and to the mayor and you know that could be then something that gets talked about in a council meeting of refraining from doing such things but in any event there's no um there's no requirement of like reporting that you need to do to any other entities um that's just something that you guys want to try to handle on your own internally awesome any other opma questions awesome Next, PRA. Basically, all agency records are public. Writing is broad. That is text, emails, voicemails, photos, social media, instant messages. Basically, anything with agency business that you're doing that is beyond verbal words and thoughts can become a public record. On the next slide, what is or what isn't a record so a record really though is anything connected to the conduct of your city government here, regardless of format or storage location. That is pretty much you know you know even if it is on your personal devices and that's kind of the big thing that I want to talk about here in a moment. What's not a record is purely personal content, physical property of that that you may own. Like, you know, this is not a public record. And then transitory records, those with like little to no ongoing value attacks of like, hey, you know, I'm going to be ten minutes late to the council meeting. That's not a record. It probably will sit and could get wrapped up into a into a request. When your public records officer is responding to one, it could get pulled in. But then as they go through, they're like, ah, that's transitory. And they'll pull it out. Transitory records are still technically public. But once they've had their purpose, they usually can be deleted. um the next slide here is on personal devices so like i talked about the storage location of your public records does not matter if it's your personal phone your personal email your personal social media if the communication is about public business then it's a public record and so this includes um this also includes personal business on city devices so if you know and that's what will happen is again it might get caught up into a records request you know like oh or someone's you know someone's looking for this thing and somehow in terms of their searching and whatnot it pulls maybe records off that you did something personal for your own you know i'm trying i go to banking every time but like obviously banking wouldn't count um but you know something like maybe a email to your spouse about And in the words of the email, there's something in the dinner recipe that gets pulled up in that request. And then we see, oh, you know what? That's personal. And it will probably get pulled, but it still is going to be disclosable, meaning, hey, we would tell them we have this record, but it is a personal record and would not apply, and it would probably be pulled. But just knowing that it would be pulled and looked at. With that, basically, that's a gray area. And that's where things get funky. And that's what I really want to sit with, because that's where we're getting on our end, we get a lot of questions. And we just had our own public records training on our end through our record officer, because we essentially follow all the same guidelines that cities do. next here is that blurred line so the great area with records and devices is that you know it comes to this test that a record does not stop becoming public records simply because it's on your personal phone or email if you text or email about city business like a pending vote a zoning opinion a complaint about staff that's a public record regardless of whose phone or whose name is on that account but on the flip side don't assume that your agency email or agency issued phone is a private space either you know essentially and even for all of our regular daytime jobs is that there's no expectation of privacy your workplace can see and can pull and can review your emails, what documents, where you've been looking up on the internet, things of that nature. So if doing that similar stuff on Citi devices is the same exact thing. So, you know, anything personal, like a message to a friend, a happy birthday note, it's not going to be considered a public record by the legal definition, but it doesn't mean that it's protected. It doesn't mean it's confidential, especially if it's sitting on an agency-owned system. IT can see it. And it's still subject to, because it's on your devices, it's subject to whatever retention record you guys have. So it will sit there for however many years you normally have it. Like for us, we have a six year retention on all records. And so in turn, if I sent a happy birthday message to somebody, it's gonna sit there. And if I said one funny joke that I thought was funny, it's five years later, it can all come back to haunt me. So I'm trying not to do that. Personal content can still get swept up in these and potentially disclosed, depending on how directly it relates to whatever that public records request is. The clear guidance is basically the device doesn't protect you, but also doesn't expose you all by itself. It's the content. It's what you're talking about. So my safest thing is I don't do a single thing on my work laptop that's personal. Thankfully, work gives me a work phone. I don't do any texting of any friends on that phone. Just keep everything as split as you can. That's your best, safest bet to reduce the likelihood of personal stuff getting swept up publicly. And then having to go through your own phone looking for business records if a public records request comes in that might apply to something that you've talked about. And then you have to usually send an affidavit saying, I looked through my phone. I went through all these things. And then you have to get that digital stuff that may apply over. And that's just a hassle. So keep things on the agency level so your agency can handle those requests also faster too. On the next slide is that response to a records request. Basically this should be done by your public records officer. If you get anything that looks like a records request, we get them too where you might get like this super long email and there's about 150 people cc'd on this email across the state and it's saying a bunch of bunch of things. someone has to go through that email and double check, is there anywhere that they're asking us for a public record? Even in all that rambling of an email, if there's a line that says, I'm looking for records regarding X, Y, and Z, we have to send that to a records officer and they have to start looking for it. um for anything that even looks like it to your records officer right away um there are very few exemptions to requests um so you can disclose exempted records but that's different that's different from prohibited records prohibited ones are like personal identifier information tax information social security numbers You can't necessarily withhold anything to avoid embarrassment if it's not necessarily a prohibited piece of information. On the next slide here, I call it, and I've heard it been called the five by five rule. You got five days to do one of these five things. which is the public records officer for your agency is provide a copy of the records that are requested or let them review those records in person. Come down to City Hall, here's the records for you or provide a link to the agency's website where those requested records are or an acknowledgement and receipt of that request and saying, hey, based on the size of what you're asking for, we need a reasonable amount of time to do so. Here's our rough estimate, and we'll give you an update as soon as possible. Also, an acknowledgment is an option, acknowledging it and then seeking clarification of like, hey, I want to confirm you're asking for this. And sometimes that clarification is honestly the best first step because there's sometimes when you're looking for clarification, that requester may even parse down what they're looking for even more. That first request could be just, you're like, oh, God, where am I going to find all this? It's going to take forever. And if you're like, if something's confusing, ask for that clarification, and it might parse down a little bit of what needs to get pulled. The last one is a denial of records, citing any exemptions. Again, few and far between, but one of these options you must do within five days to just keep in compliance. On the next slide is just in that similar responding, there is no duty for you guys to create records. No one is, there's no statute that says you must create records for them to be, you know, so that way people can request them. But if a record exists, and it's responsive to a request, you can't delete it, especially when a request on it is in the works. If that's really bad, obviously if someone requests something and then we find out it's been deleted, that is obviously a big no-no. But there is a requirement to make records. So if you're If you're thinking about it and you don't want to make a record, pick up the phone. If it's something small and quick like that, there's sometimes no need to make a record. There's no requirement. Especially because this is the best way to just reduce the likelihood of those penalties and getting into a lawsuit on behalf of the agency, things of that nature. On the next slide is getting requests by officials. So you guys are also a member of the public, depending on what hat you're wearing on a certain hour of the day. Requests from elected officials are processed like any other request. No special permits or abilities by being an elected official and no special exemptions. So just some other practical guidance is avoid doing any agency businesses or messaging on vanishing apps. or encrypted ones. Basically, if you're talking about agency business, keep it where it can be recorded. Because even if it's vanishing or encrypted, there still can be some sort of digital trail. And if there's even a whiff of that, that's still going to be potentially a violation or the very least a complicated long drawn out lawsuit over trying to figure that out, pulling records and trying to pull the digital remnant from that app, things of that nature. I'm not sure. I'm not necessarily a cyber technical expertise, but I know I've seen where that can come into play. You, again, avoid discussing agency business on a personal device, but be prepared that if you are, that your device, your personal device or personal email is searchable and disclosable. And again, you might be asked to review it yourself and sign an affidavit that you have done so. on the next slide is penalties cost and fees for the pra so you know good faith it's strict liability good faith doesn't excuse messing up and erroneously denying a request but it can reduce the penalty amount and the prevailing requester is entitled to all their costs and attorney fees plus the court discretioned penalty of zero to one hundred dollars per day per page for record so We've seen six-digit penalties on a city for how many days, how many records. So that's definitely multi-page, multi-month delays can be pretty devastating for small cities and towns. So definitely want to be on top of those. It's also worth noting that we don't provide coverage, RMSA, for violations for these acts. We do not provide defense coverage. We do not provide paying the city back after paying a penalty that stays with the city. If, though, Obviously, if you get a request for records that ask for any and all documents related to a claim, then check in with us and we will get those records to you ASAP. We've got our own public records officer who helps us with that. Sometimes if, you know, we talk about RMSA has a pre-litigation program, so while we can't help defend a lawsuit of a records request, if you guys get one that is crazy, you know, funky, that you're looking for some guidance on, we usually can have Ashley, our pre-litigation manager assist with that, or in more complicated scenarios of that, she would get an attorney to work with you guys for a few free hours to help navigate what that may be. So while we don't defend, we try to help on the forefront to reduce the likelihood of having a claim or lawsuit. On the next slide is just a few practical tips. The requester needs to provide fair notice to the agency. So they can't say, I need every single record from the founding to now on every single thing. And I need that in five days. There's a reasonableness in there. And you guys, the city can adopt a policy pertaining to how you guys, you know, request or get requests. One of those ways is I would say, you know, if someone tries to give a verbal request, it's like, oh, perfect, you know what, you should go talk to one of our designated staff member that handles that. We have an online submission portal. I think that's the best way to do it, especially if you guys already have some good digital infrastructure. That's the best way to do those requests. We have it and then we just forward it to our records officer who emails it to those designated people that you might apply to and then we all start looking for our records. Your policy can include that it is best for all requests to be submitted through your public records officer. That's probably one of the best ways that and you digitally are the best ways to do it. um so quick scenarios here is council member a emails council member c and d did you see the staff report on the new parks levy i think we should push back on the timeline and council member c and d hit reply all adding their own thoughts now in a smaller city or town three of the five council members have exchanged opinions on a matter on next week's agenda no meeting was ever called um is this a violation i would say the answer is yes correct perfect Next scenario is a council member texts a friend from their personal cell phone. Ugh, the zoning hearing tonight is going to be a mess. I already know how I'm going to vote on the Elm Street rezone. That developer's proposal is way too dense for this neighborhood. Three weeks later, a citizen submits a PRA request for all communications from council members regarding the Elm Street rezone. Does this text need to be produced and given as a public record? The answer is yes, even if it's on a personal device. There is also a second issue here beyond that Public Records Act is that there's an appearance of fairness. This council member had kind of their vote settled before the facts were given, before the vote was given or the meeting item was talked about. So this could be used to challenge that decision on due process. And we don't want to have even more land use litigation than on top of a PRA. Again, the best thing you can do is assume that every text, email, social media message, anything that you're, because like, if you're typing, you're writing, you know, anything written is going to, it's potentially going to be a public record that is discoverable no matter where it is. So just agency business, watch out for. And then on the next slide is council member after a council meeting posts on Facebook, great meeting tonight, glad we're moving forward on the new bike lane project. And a constituent comments underneath, finally, what's the timeline for Elm and Fifth? And that council member replies, we should start construction by spring. We're looking also at extending it a few more blocks based on what Sarah had brought up. So do we have any concerns here? With this, one of the concerns that I would have is the original part, the post and timeline of the reply here at the start are pretty much fine on their own. Nothing too crazy. It's all discussed in the meeting. Sharing publicly available info, not a big deal. But the second reply of the council member that says talking about extending it a block is where kind of that risk comes in. That council member is now floating new, undiscussed, unvoted on. policies and action. And that could have been whatever Sarah had brought up, what if that was a private conversation between that Sarah, that council member, and that person? That's getting real dicey on, you know, private conversations now put on a public dais. So that's where second here is, This exchange is now a public record. Social media comment about public business is a disclosable. So if requested, this record would be produced, including then it would pull in whatever sort of discussions were between those council members, the person you're posting and Sarah. Practical guidance, again, is it's fine to share info about decisions already made in open session, but, you know, it's not okay to use the common thread on a social media to develop new policy. I would hate for you guys to come and try to make a new policy based on a few Facebook posts and thread, especially if doing that hints at a further conversation that may have been done in private, especially if it's not meeting a public meeting, if it's between just two council members. So again, safe to just reply to that question initially and if they try to expand it being like that's a great question let's get that on a future agenda you know we'd love to see you at council like the council meeting great redirect so next slide in recap text emails photos social media posts about public business they're all public records A serial meeting problem often creates a Public Record Act problem too. So three rules here is quorum level discussion on agency business is an open public meeting, executive session, very narrow and confidential, should be staying in that room, and then assume everything you write about Sydney business on any device is a public record. And then on the next slide is these have links. So if you guys have this, there's just links here on different resources from MRSC and from us. On the right hand side, there's I have an elected officials roles and responsibilities guide, how to run an effective council meeting guide. And then we have a more in-depth recording on public records, open public meetings. A to B does this as part of their elected officials essentials. There's a full 40 minute recording that does comply with the requirement. Mine was very fast, so this is a refresher for your requirements, but those are just some general resources. Any questions on Public Records Act before I bounce back to the member standards?

How long after our elected term are we required to be able to provide documentation?

So upon taking the oath of office, we say 90 days of doing the training and then every four years thereafter, as long as you're an elected official. Is that what you're asking for?

No, I'm saying when my term ends, I'm a civilian again, how long or am I required or how long back? Yeah.

It depends on your retention records. I'm not sure. Do you guys know your retention records?

uh how long you keep records uh retention on depends on it depends on the content of all the state retention schedule but well i'm i'm like so if there's a requirement and i was you know a council member um and but now i'm not are are you going to know to come and ask me or am i even obligated after i'm out of office to even give up any document or anything on my phone from when i was

We have done that in the past. So if we got a public records request and you were no longer in office, but I knew you were in office and your records fell into that, I would send you one of those search affidavits. We do them.

all the time to ex-employees or electeds after a certain number of years you know when whatever record records retention hits then they would get you know um disposed of and then you wouldn't have that but yeah like very soon after yeah you would probably have to pull you would still have duties from when you were an elected official to at least search and find that affidavit that you have searched and that you have no um recollection or proof to have any documents to give yeah Any other PRA questions?

So I had a follow-up question from my last question. So what you answered is that talk to city administrator or a mayor, but then I was thinking about some of the situation where presented when I was in AWC conference last time. So based on those, these are two types of question here is what if you report to the mayor and city administrator and still nothing happens? So it's kind of a whistleblower situation, right? And a second thing is what if somebody is fearful to even report it or to initiate that conversation? So that's where the whistleblower word comes in. So it's an anonymous place and anonymous person to report it. Is that a system in place or is it just the way you described?

I do believe, so this part is, I'm not exactly entirely sure. I do believe that the state has like a sort of ethics, maybe not ethics is the right term, but there is like a state reporting type of play set where you can, I'm not sure about anonymously, but I know that there is like a state portal that you can report some of these. So that is where in those more uncertain situations where you're like either fearful or, you know, you've asked and nothing's happened. That's a great place to put it. That is what I'd recommend. I don't know the name off the top of my But I know that there is like a state portal where you can request those. There is like a there is a body that that handles those in a sense.

So is this reporting is only for the council and or is it for the city staff also in terms of say the city staff observe something and if they want to report it?

Oh, it's for anybody. Yeah. I mean, the public idea for anybody, anybody can report there. Yeah, anyone can. Absolutely. Any other questions? All right. Next is our member standards. So this in and of itself could be a whole hour. We're not going to do that. Um, essentially our board adopted these standards back in the late eighties, early nineties. These are either they're good, just general risk management practices or either training policies or certain acts or requirements of things to do. Um, basically they outline good risk management practices. Um, they are keeping our members proactive and, um, protected and prepared and this also helps keep a zero dollar deductible for the majority of the different types of coverages that you have with us so that saves money there's a lot in here there's a lot of requirements for a lot of different people and a lot of different timelines there is a member standards tracker that we have and it is a booklet that says hey these people need to do these things this many times you know or every year on this on this cadence um so there's if there is a lot of information here that you're like i don't know what he just said just know that we have a lot of stuff on our website that we can pull to give and help explain it a little bit better and i'll try to do it quickly here now our membership team is also happy to do a virtual connect in in small groups or for staff as well to go over them in more detail ask questions especially with the training there is a training required of every level of city personnel here elected and staff and in turn we have all that training for free on our website and sometimes our website is a little bit you know funky and getting to it and how to utilize it so we're happy to provide that training as well So the first one is administration standards. The next slide is, so all of the officials, department heads need to do an annual review of our RMSA member standards to assure compliance and understanding. This will suffice. You've got it on your, and this is your proof of completion. You know, this right here. um the next one is the city or town administrator mayor or designated rmsa contact which is sabrina in your case needs to do an orientation within 90 days of joining our pool or within 90 days of a new contact so let's say if sabrina retires and we have a new hr director or a new contact just checking in with us within 90 days and we in turn can I think we're one slide ahead. It's basically an orientation. So who we are and our resources don't get lost. As someone who goes out to visit members, a lot of times I get, who are you? And this is to help prevent that, to see all the things that we can help with. Number three, all newly elected and appointed officials need to do OPMA PRA within 90 days of taking office and every four years. For these ones and the next slide, if a claim comes up that we're handling and, for example, You guys didn't review the member standards that year. It's a $2,500 deductible. So if a claim comes up relating to one of these and the standard has not been complied with, the deductible goes from $2,500. If you get a claim and you did do whatever is required in it, it's $0. So a great way to save some money. Hopefully you don't have claims though. Next slide. Number four. all elected officials, employees with direct reports, any department head, basically anyone who's overseeing another employee needs to do at least one approved training course on employment practices. This is kind of to reduce employment claims like hostile work environment, sexual harassment, bullying, those types of things. Now, if you go to the AWC Labor Relations Institute, then that actually, by attending that, definitely one of those sessions, just by going, will apply to that. So we also have, I think, four or five on our website. So every year, anyone who oversees an employee and all elected officials, one course on employment practices every year. Number five, contracts and interlocal agreements that have need to, this is with usually contracts with third parties, need to include third party identification language and insurance requirements. We have pre-approved language and pre-approved a tool to pull the right identity language on our website, or you can just email me and I review it. And I usually pretty quick, either the same day or the next morning, if it's at 3 or 4 PM time. So this is mainly when you're procuring services via contract or interlocal agreement. Number six is the mayor, all department heads, and others identified with emergency management for the city need to review your disaster plan annually. That could just be reviewing it as an agenda item. That could be a full tabletop exercise. Oddly enough, our language also says having a full-scale disaster counts as running your disaster plan. So if there was flooding and you pulled your disaster plan out and you did it, that counts. We obviously don't want that. I don't know why we put that in there, but it's in there. Again, if a claim comes up and one of these has not been complied with, that applies to that claim. So, like, you know, we wouldn't try to apply the disaster plan member standard on a contract issue and, you know, only if it applies. A $2,500 deductible would apply for noncompliance. On the next slide is crime, employee fidelity, public funds. Every year, anyone who handles public funds and all elected officials as the ones with the purse, as the one that controls the budget, overseers of the public funds, need to annually do a fraud prevention training. That's usually the state auditors. That's what we link on our website. So every year, anyone who handles financials and all elected officials, a fraud prevention training. Number two, members need to have a policy outlining your separation of duties. So in your financial policy, how in our structure of staff are we separating duties where not one person's doing everything? And you guys definitely have that. It's more for our smaller members that have like a clerk and a public works person. We're like, you gotta split it up, but you guys have enough staff to make that work. um number three is also having a credit card policy if you have credit cards just you know having a policy on how to use them who should or should not be using them even having certain limits for certain staffing levels between you know regular staff managers what have you and also disciplinary consequences for credit card credit card misuse just giving yourself the avenue to protect your public funds even though it's a credit card you still have to pay that credit card with public funds And then number four here is having scheduled and unscheduled reviews of your financial reports. So part of this is just one, complying with the state auditor's office, but two is in your own internalized city here to do either full audits, which is a bit much, we don't expect that, or just generally reviews. The way that I have been telling members how to do this one is, at the end of every quarter during one of your council meetings to do a quick just in part of your council report of, hey, here's what we had last year for the budgeted amount that we were going to spend by the end of quarter three. And here's the actual by the end of quarter three. And then we're reviewing for any big discrepancies. Like, oh, why is our office supplies so much? Why is it at 99%? It should be at 75% of the budget. And then lo and behold, someone's, I don't know, skimming money off the printer, something like that. You know, that's the kind of imaginative way to do the simple review rather than having to do a full blown audit. That's what the auditor is for when they come knocking, but some way to do a little review. Um, and number five is how about on your financial policy, um, how you will annually conduct reviews of your vendors. Basically you guys probably spend out a lot of money on public funds to contractors, vendors, different, you know, someone who does, you know, certain gardening or what have you, any of those things review every year to make sure that we are getting rid of duplicates discrepancies. If a vendor got bought out and changed names that we have just changed that things of that nature that way to avoid sending money to the wrong person. That's really all it's for. Um, Now for these ones, it's a tier deductible over a 10-year rolling period starting now. So we're not retroactively putting this on, but from here on out, in any 10-year period, the first claim for any of these crime ones that is not complied with, the deductible is 25% of whatever is lost. The second claim in a 10-year period, the deductible is 50% of any funds that are lost. And then the third claim and so on, we do not provide coverage. If you guys are looking at anything from the state auditor's office on their reports last year, and partially this year, there's just been a lot of, even the news too, just strings of smaller towns with a lot of financial fraud issues. Those small towns are a lot of our members. So we're like, what can we do? And these all used to be $1,000 flat rate deductible. And I think we were like, clearly, this is not enough of a motivator to do just fraud prevention training policies and whatnot. So these are the new deductibles. And this is what applies for crime and financials. Next one is cyber security. So basically anyone who has access to your digital systems, you know, if you can get hacked and it can affect the city systems, you got to do cyber training. So probably you guys with having devices and whatnot, for maybe our smaller members, elected officials that, you know, they just get one email once a month, twice a month, and it's just the agenda packet, they're not emailing out, they're not getting a lot, then maybe they don't have to. In any event, the size of you guys, I would recommend doing it because as we've just been seeing more cyber attack on infrastructure is becoming more and more apparent and I would hate it to just be on the one place we're not looking and our elected officials that that's how they get in and something's going on with our water plant or something. So this would include volunteers too. If our volunteers are working with our data systems, if we're having a volunteer doing, you know, passing a background check and doing, you know, financial volunteering, then they would need to do fraud prevention and cyber, things of that nature. So you apply based on the activities that they're doing. Number two, you need to have some level of IT. You know, you guys are fine with this. It's either gonna be in-house IT person, contracted IT vendor, or utilizing free resources for local governments. So you guys are good. I'm not worried. This is more for our tiny members. And then number three, this is a little bit financial. Have a written policy on the verification of external financial payments. This is essentially if we're getting requests to change a vendor's banking information or payroll information. that we're calling a trusted contact or payroll being in person. But basically, on your financial policy, have something on the books that says, when we are getting a new payment request to verify the authenticity, we're calling the trusted contact that we already have on the books to even know that we are going to be expecting this invoice. I would even go so far as to say, to do that same callback to our trusted contact if the logo changes, if they got bought out and the name changes, or if just the format of the invoice, paper or digital changes, public records. People can go and look through your minutes and be like, you know what? They're going to contact with this person. Let me just send something in the mail, see what happens. It happens to many cities. For these, if a claim comes up, it's a 10-year rolling deductible starting now in 2026. First claim that a claim comes up, this wasn't applied with, $2,500. Second claim, $10,000 in a 10-year period. Third claim and so on within a 10-year period, $25,000 deductible for these cyber losses. We have had a couple of cyber losses from members in the past year here. It's only going to get worse with AI and just how easy it is for anyone to start hacking. Just make sure we're doing these. Next is driving, a little bit simpler here. Employees, drivers, anyone, which we talked about last time, anyone who's driving a city-owned vehicle, defensive driving training every three years. Our emergency responders need to do their EVOC, EVIP training just as well. Usually they have their own training for that. They usually have their own association or membership that does that. They usually have that under control, but just making sure that we're doing those Have a driving policy on all things driving. Who can drive? Who can't drive? How many driving infractions, DUIs, are we going to accept before we say, hey, maybe you shouldn't be driving a city vehicle? Are we allowing personal vehicle use for city business? I recommend no. Are we allowing staff to take home city vehicles? Usually no, but sometimes let's say if they live outside of town and they have to drive all the way back in to meter read and grab a city car and then go halfway back out of town just to read, maybe it might make sense. You guys get to make that call. I definitely recommend not using personal vehicles for city business, but take home vehicles is up to you. There is those added risks where I would say we don't allow them to use city vehicles for personal business. If they take it home, they got to just commute and then switch back to the personal car. And then part of that policy should also include that we're pulling driving records upon hire for those positions that would be driving. And then usually every three or four years thereafter, just pulling records for our, usually for Public Works. They're the ones doing the most driving. And then number three in that policy, having procedures to address having a single driver with multiple at-fault auto claims. If someone's backed up or rear-ended someone three times this year, what does our policy say that we can do to help reduce that? Is that reassignment? Is that termination? Is that taking them to a specific practical training course? What have you. Whatever you guys want to do, just having something on the books on what can we do to help reduce that. And number four, while we don't require backup cameras, we recommend them, but you should have a backing policy on the books. This can be as simple as, before you get into a city-owned vehicle backing out of the city hall parking lot, walk around, do a 360, check your surroundings, and then back. To maybe our big rigs where we have limited visibility, we require a second staff member to be a spotter to get out and do that. To even implementing, and if we have backup cameras, you should be doing whatever acronym you want to do. You can do the signal, the mirror, the backup camera, all those pieces. So something on the policy, on your driving policy for backing. Backing is one of just the biggest amount of claims that we get. Auto is probably one of our most, it's lower claim usually compared to a cyber loss, compared to financial fraud, but it's so frequent. And then for all of these, if a claim comes up and the standard wasn't applied with, $2,500. But if we have someone who backed up into somebody, but they did driving training, and we do a backup camera, you do have a policy for backing, $0. It says just have a policy. technically doesn't mean that they had to have actually, the staff member actually had to have done the policy. Obviously you have the policy that we may have them sign maybe an acknowledgement that they did it, but if they don't do it, that's not necessarily required for the standard. Next is employment practices. Basically part of our pre-litigation program, check in with us prior to any personal action that would result in termination and we would provide guidance and that guidance must be followed. That's either through Ashley, our pre-lit manager or an attorney that she'll give some free hours to, depending on the complexity of that employment issue. It could be, even if it's as simple as, Hey, we have a seasonal temporary employee. They're still within the first six months. They've been late and they know called I want to fire them Which is you have full grounds to do still check in with us, but that's a quick Ashley going Yep, you're good. Go ahead but if it's like yeah, we have someone who's union and And we're having all these issues and would get a full defense attorney to work with you guys to help navigate that so just check in with us and follow that guidance and then number two here is to have your personnel policy reviewed by an hr employment practices attorney every five years or utilizing our hr resource via zywave and that just kind of does a lot of bulletins if olympia updates something it does a lot of references reference guides and sample policies so that's a free way to do it there's also this more expensive attorney way to do it We also provide loss prevention grants, so you could use your eligible every year for that. You could say, hey, this is a year we're having an attorney look at it. We want to use our grant for it and apply for that in the beginning of the year, and we would help reimburse and lower the cost for an employment attorney to help. For these, if a claim comes up and it wasn't applied or the standard was not complied with, $25,000 because employment claims are very expensive. Next is land use. This one is a bit funky. So if you have questions on this one, I might lend you or send you to Ashley. Basically before any land use action, moratorium, existing moratorium to check in with us. And that's Ashley again, she's a pre-lit and she might get an attorney on depending on the complexity. I know that we had one come in today and we sent it right to Ashley being like, please, you know, get to work on that. That's part of the pre-litigation program. I would say this does not apply to your daily administrative land use stuff. If we're doing a simple permit that staff does, that's not necessarily what we're talking about here. This is bigger stuff like moratoriums, council action type of things. Number two, if you have a planning commission or the council does land use, doing the land use training within six months and every four years thereafter. It's a bit dry, it's a bit long, but the short course on local planning from the Department of Commerce complies with that. That's what I'd recommend, free, and we have it linked on our website as well. Next is law enforcement. Oh, sorry, going back on that, $2,500 per claim if it has not been complied with on land use. Next is police law enforcement. Commissioned officers and reserve officers need to annually complete training on their use of force policy. So whatever that is that you guys have, annually doing it, you're good to go. Number two is your department needs to follow the CJTC training standards for criminal justice professionals. I'm sure that they're doing that. They're pretty, they've got their, they know who to contact. They've got that really settled in. So we're just saying, yep, do what they ask. For these, if a claim comes up, police claims are very expensive. They have a high liability class rate in terms of our rates for you guys. $25,000 claim if a use of force policy training was not completed for an officer and something happens. Next is public works, and then we'll be done. I'm almost there. So these are pretty easy. They're very bread and butter. First one is have documentation confirming the routine inspection, maintenance, cleaning of your sewer stormwater systems. This used to say you have to do your full sewer system every year. and we had a public works focus group and they said that's crazy don't do that it's impossible no one has the time the budget so now it's every five years within five years to to at least inspect your sewer lines the entire line does not say only cleaning and maintenance as needed so but you need to have documentation to show that this is really important for just general good management. But also, if a claim comes up, those records help us defend a claim. If someone's like, this backup is due to the city. And it's like, no, you've just been flushing non-flushable wipes for the last 20 years. That's why it backed up, things of that nature. With this, only caveat is, if we have a known problematic area of our sewer line, checking that every year, just because that's just good risk management practice. Because if it backs up every year, inspecting and cleaning it every year usually should do the trick. Number two, documentation on complaints responses on sidewalks and streets. This is like the pothole standard. Having a documented system. If you guys have that log digitally, just keeping that record. Who sent us what about which street or sidewalk and who did we send out and what did they do? Having that recorded, you're good to go. I'll talk about the deductibles on the next page. Number three, simple enough, just have a policy on how we're securing our high value vehicles, portable items, movable equipment when they're not in use. I go out on site with members and I'll go to the public workshop and they have a couple of cars sitting around and everyone has the key in the ignition, windows down. I'm like, anyone could just pop in here and drive off with it. Let's talk about what can we, let's pull them, put them in a lockbox, things of that nature. So basically have a policy on what are we doing? Is it in a fenced shed? Is it locked? Is there a key box? Do we have tool lock boxes in the back of trucks? Whatever that works for you guys, just have that written down. And that gives you guys the ability to enforce that policy. And then the last one here is, members shall address identifiable hazards or practices that result in third party claims that implement mitigation measures. Now that sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo. So I will first start with the first three. If a claim comes up on the first ones, the first one that we talked about, and the standard has not been complied with, the deductible is $2,500. For the last one here, if this is um this is basically if we have repeat third-party claims in public works operations um we basically want to reduce the likelihood of them keeping happening so this is like example if the sewer line the same line backs up three times or just three different homes three different times i say three as a pattern um then usually we say hey do something permanent to stop that you know um if we get that what will usually happen first before we implement this last standard is we'll probably touch base with your public works director being like hey what's going on tell us you know what's going on with this super line what can we do to help are there resources evergreen rural or some recommendations to help reduce you know what are we doing to stop this and if we get the cold shoulder if our recommendations are not you know not considered if we just get nothing and we're getting more claims then we will send a letter of this one saying hey you know from claim x y and z we've got we find this identifiable hazard you have till this date to do something permanent or these deductibles will start applying that's essentially this is kind of our our safe our fail safe of like hey this one member is not listening to our recommendations and guidance and resources and they keep having claims how do we reduce these losses so our other members who are engaged and are doing good risk management aren't getting higher rates because of this number of claims So once we send that letter and activate claim number four or standard number four in a 10 year period, first claim $5,000, second claim $7,500, third claim and so on, no coverage. Again, this is all on this like certain identifiable hazard. If it's a different sewer line, it kind of doesn't count. That would be my thought process on it. We have never, as far as I have been in here, we've never utilized this. This is mostly for covering our own butt on this. that's the member standards and that is it for my my spiel any questions okay lots of stuff lots of stuff here i appreciate you guys this time uh member standards was the big one because these are new for this year and the deductibles are very big and i just wanted to make sure it was well known um before anyone has a big claim so i thank you all for your time you know henry one thing does this does this suffice for our elected officials training I wish. For the member standards, yes. But for the Public Meetings, Public Records Act, I think it would be just a refresher. I think it has to be a little bit longer, unfortunately. Hey, if you could throw up our AWC video for 40 minutes and that would count. Yes, exactly. But I thank you all so much. And I'll let you guys continue with your evening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next we're going to put council member Thakur on the hot seat. He's going to talk about establishing a youth program in the city of DuPont. Amy, why don't you come up here to sit at the table. We have an extra seat and you might have some information for us about the history of some of this stuff. So go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. And I'm sure It will be a very exciting to hear this, but I think one of the thing happened to me, this is how I started thinking about the youth program and youth council program. So when I become council member, some of my kids, I was talking and they were so excited and they're like, yeah, dad, you know what? I like it, I love it. And maybe I should think about running for election or becoming something, you know? And some of my kids are like, I absolutely hate it, dad. I don't want you to do it, and I don't want me to do it. So I asked them a question. I'm like, why would you hate it, right? I mean, hate is a strong word. So why would you hate? So talking about it, they have no experience. They don't know anything about what happens. So the way I also realized in the last seven months working here, More than running for an election or getting elected and becoming council member, I thought this is more of my civic duty I'm doing. This is my civic service I'm doing. So I'm really serving to the society. I'm serving to my community. And, you know, I can put my expertise into it and say that, hey, this is what I love to do it or this is what I know about it. This is my opinion about it. So I thought, you know, a lot of our kids don't get a hands-on experience, I should say. So hands-on experience, we try to give them in a high school. So I thought maybe we should have some kind of a youth council program. So the way I thought that, hey, we have a mayor, deputy mayor and council members. So maybe we can have high school students who make a similar kind of an arrangement. So become a mayor, become a deputy mayor, become a council member, just like equal amount of us. And what we need to do is basically they come and they will attend all our council meetings. They learn the procedure. They learn the process. They learn how the etiquettes of the meetings, how to operate the meetings and realize that how important it is. And it's not just about you run for an election and you win the election, or this is more about even if they don't run for an election in the future, they can become informed citizens. So rather than complaining on the social media, hey, why is this happening? Or what are they talking about? Well, if you are in the council meeting, and if you have learned about it then you will know so that makes them a better citizens and informed citizens so that's how i thought that maybe this is a good idea so i think is you know it could be very encouraging although our high school does have like asb programs and they do have like a president and vice president and treasurer and everything right yeah yeah so i think uh So there are some people who if they are interested how the government works and that's important party when I learn how to govern the government, right? Or to govern the governance. So those governance is the thing which I wanted to teach the kids. So it came to my mind that if we have a council members or the, and we will call it as a mock council. So it's not that they are coming here and making the decisions for the city, but they are learning about the process. They are learning about the issues and we should also give them a chance to just like we are sitting here for some study session or running the meetings. They will have a similar kind of a mock meetings. We can have an agenda items and the city staff can run through some of the agenda items. So it's not that they are voting members, they are not going to make any decisions for the city, but more of it's a learning lesson for our kids and students to become a better future leader, or at least an informed citizens. So that is what is my proposal is. And I think you might have some questions. I do have some questions in my mind. The first question I thought about it is We are city of DuPont and our high school sits in Steilacoom. How are we going to work out? The students also live in Steilacoom and some other areas. So my proposal would be that we go with the school district. So it's kind of a, you know, MOU we did for the parks with the other city also. So we can talk to the, our, you know, we can talk to, school district and school administration, and we can have like a joint working some kind of a model here. So any student which lives within the school district area can be a part of this council. I think with that, I can open up for the discussion or questions.

Am I in? Really? Oh my God. As an administrator, I guess I like the idea, Jugal. I just have some concerns. It seems like an idea right now without a systems, how do we get these kids involved? Seven council members, mayor, what if more kids than seven were interested? Who's going to train the students? Where would the training take place? When you want to start student groups, even within the confines of the school itself, it's a lot of work, not impossible, but an outside entity is even more problematic. Not that it's not impossible, but it has different problems. And I'll just be really frank, I would not want more time of our council to be spent mentoring my position seven high school student. Just to be really honest, it's a lot of work here. I'm just going to be frank. We were here until 10, 21 recently. I wanted when I come here, I come right for school. I want to get busy. I want to go. So I think observing could be nice or they could, you could create your own kind of counsel, but I just would like to know very, very specifically who's training, what's the timeframe. And then when you say with us, what does that look like and sound like? Because I'm, really hesitant to become too overburdened with trying to do that. And I love kids, obviously. But that just would concern me. So I think it's like an idea right here at the 10,000 foot view. I need to go down to the 10 foot view, the details. How do we anchor that into something that questions can be answered? There we go. Does that make sense?

Yeah, so I think I was thinking about it and I do some research online. So there's the two cities which I found has already this kind of youth council program in place, which is a city of Scrim and city of Federal Way. So I look at all those, you know, their application, their eligibility criteria and what they do. It doesn't sound very complicated. And this was something also I thought maybe I should check the interest of the school district. So I did send out an email just to check the interest to our school district admins. And they said that they will be interested to do it. And to answer your specific question that suppose say you are not interested or you don't have time, it's not necessary that we are taking everyone's time. We can have one or two council members who can take a lead and they can be a possible mentor. And also if everybody else wants to even mentor the students, I think they are welcome to do so too.

So were you talking about every single council meeting we had that we would have a mirror student council when it comes comes to fruition? Is that the idea? Would you have a mirror for the mayor, a mirror for each one of us is what you're thinking? Or is there going to be more than just seven or in between?

My suggestion would be to do at least the body who gets selected or elected, they come at least once a month. So not two meetings a month at least, but if they can come once a month. So that's part of their learning process. And one of the other benefit also we have to think about it that many times our colleges are very competitive, right? And they need something above and beyond to show and prove that, hey, I did something. And especially when it comes to the civic duties and the governance, it's pretty good. It looks pretty good on their resume. So I think it's a yes, we can make that happen. So they can come like a once a month and they attend the meeting. And if possible, I would like to see at minimum we run the one youth council meeting per year and maximum maybe we can run once a quarter. That would be my suggestion.

Can I ask a question about that follow up? How do these students get elected? Because, and also just to caveat a little bit, anytime you have an outside agency and a school, if a school supports your plan, the school also has certain liability that they're responsible for. If something happens to these students, if something was, so I'm just saying that's a little more complex than, you know, it's delicate balance to have those two, public and private. But let's say, you know, 20 people wanna do it. how how is the election and who votes because the whole like stillicum high school votes there they may be interested may not so how do i get selected if i'm interested in even pursuing this so that's uh definitely we can think about it and we all will come up with an answer of uh eligibility criteria which we call so like basic criteria can be you are in the high school

we can put some another criteria in place that you can be a mayor only if you are a senior or you can be a deputy mayor if you're a junior something like that so these are the ideas we have it and definitely we all can put in our two cents into it while we are forming the how do they get elected? Now, that's a good problem to have. First of all, we should have the seven people or seven students or nine students should be ready to come.

And if- But I'm basically, what if 20 want to participate and we have seven positions?

I haven't thought about it, so I don't have a specific answer.

Then you'd also need to answer to, I'm assuming, the high school principal or someone, maybe a civics teacher, and to those parents, why my child wasn't selected. And believe me, they might ask. So I'm just saying, those are things that until I hear really, really specifics, it's hard for me to do a lot of yay or even nay. I'm just like, ooh.

yeah so i don't have a specific answer for it other than if any other council member has an ideas i would love to see the answer to this question

I don't have an answer for Susan's question, but I do have a suggestion that before we even look at going into some sort of training kind of program, that we put it out to the civic teachers at the high school and give them an opportunity to invite the students and their parents to come to our council meetings and just observe. And then if they find that they as a group find that they want to explore more, maybe that's when we bring it back to the table. But right now, I think that just putting an invitation out to the teachers, the principal at the high school, we don't have to go district, but just putting it out that we hold council meetings on these dates. If you'd like to set up some sort of program with parents and students to come and observe our activities and how we run our meetings, I think that would be the way to start

I just echo too. I think those are great comments and I, and I like your enthusiasm because I think we do need to reach youth, but I think there, there's much more that needs to be done. And I like your idea about the civics class, and maybe we could do a mock council meeting in the civics class made up of just a couple of council members and students. I mean, really get kids involved if they're interested, but it's a good idea. I think a lot more work needs to be done around it though.

i would agree um amy i hate to put you on the spot but uh are you willing to share for those of us who've been around for a long time a little bit of the history what worked what didn't in and um and be candid uh because that's why i'm looking forward to hearing whatever happy too so i am going to pull up um

no no i don't have any slides i was just going to read something no i don't have any slides so we have had a teen league in the past that started in 2016 for i don't recall what the reason was but we were not allowed to call it a youth council but we did have a teen league that started in 2016 and i was reviewing the level of interest and at the peak we had eight we had eight active kids that were interested And then by 2018, we were down to six. And essentially what we were doing, we weren't doing anything really civic oriented. We were doing a lot of activities. They were planning events. They were volunteering. That's what they were really interested in. And then in 2021, we put out a youth survey to the community. And I'm happy to share those results with the council on what type of activities that the teens really wanted to engage in and participate in. More importantly commit to and put their time to because these teens are busier than ever they will say they will sign up for an activity and then oftentimes we would have a lot of attendance issues and whatnot. So, and that was the main reason why we decided to discontinue the program. We were having two or three kids. We were putting quite a bit of staff time into it. We're going to, we'll have to discuss that. But the survey results council really showed us that kids, teenagers. I'm just specifically referring to teenagers. They want to plan events and programs and parties. I say, you know, appropriate parties for themselves and their peers. And they want to socialize and they want to put their time into getting volunteer hours. So our program was not civic oriented. The one that you are clearly is. So, you know, we have not done that but um really that's my feedback on the history of it yeah i think uh

Harry, can we pull up the city of Federal Way, the council, and maybe we can look at some of their bullet points of eligibility criteria and what they do. And I think that will clarify a lot of things rather than I say a lot of points. Let's see here.

Amy, correct me if I'm wrong, but before we had the Teen Link, we did have a youth council with a, I don't know if we called it a president, a vice president, or a, and we couldn't keep a quorum, right? We couldn't keep a president. I can't remember what we called it, but, and so, we treated it just like our parks and rec commission. We treated it just like the council, the planning commission. So we always had to do notices, notices, special meetings, notice of a cancellation. Cause we treated it like the civic duties and then we changed it to the teen league.

Correct. Isn't that correct? That's why we went from teen council to teen league because we were having to like Carrie said, minutes and agendas and whatever.

Okay. So I think if we just read through the terms, it says it runs from September 1st to August 31st, and it's a two-year term, and all commissioners serve without compensation. So that's pretty basic term. We can come up with a four-year term. We can come up with a year term. But something we can, it just outlines what term looks like. And then the eligibility criteria, also it says the grade 9 to 12. That's exactly what I was talking about. And they must reside within the federal city limits, they say. We can talk about maybe living within the school district limits rather than the city limits. And they should be attending the high school in school district. Keep going down, please. And it should be a combination of freshmen, sophomore, juniors, and seniors as eligible to become a council member. So what do they have a chance to do is enhance their public speaking and organizational or communication skills, deeper understanding of the cultural competency or the, I'm sorry, reading from here is difficult. Gain insight from the prominent community and the city leaders while forming a new connections. Thank you so much. Go ahead. Okay. So then there was also one of the things they talk about the local issues and developing ideas and address them. So many times the students get an idea like we are talking about environmental issue or the land development issue or putting the parks together. And sometimes this council can listen to our conversation and they come up with better ideas. and present it to the council also and that's a similar kind of program has been placed if you look at even at the state level and there is a on a like there's a page program like we are aware of it right so even the student who is going as a page with the house of representatives or as our state senators they can come up with some of the ideas and they present as a bill so those kind of an opportunity it's huge for the and even some of those bills which is presented by the youth it has gone to the house floor for the vote so that's kind of a leadership development is possible and starting with the city and that's what i think it's referring out there so also coordinating an annual event uh i would not go in the event like you suggested and uh it it has to be just basic like a civic duty what we are doing as a council so they are not going to plan any events or parties here so they will be strictly doing the council job Like we do.

Would it be possible, Carrie, to, I mean, and then put it back up again, shrink that down where the bulleted list. There, yeah, and show that piece down a little bit. Okay, so when I'm looking at that and I'm looking at this as a school principal, that's a full-time job for somebody to do that. I mean, that's a job description, to be honest. You're going to coordinate annual events. So my question is, who is doing all that? Because I don't think we have the city staff to take that on. And I don't know if you want to take it on as one person. I also want to point out, and I just looked it up, that the Federal League School District has 43 schools. we, I mean, elementary through junior high and high school. It's one of the biggest, maybe the sixth biggest in the state of Washington. So they have quite a bit of people and services from staff that work at the district office to teachers from high school to high school to high school to high school. My guess is if high school teachers are doing that, they're getting a stipend for it and some kind of extra pay. But I just want us to be really cautious because if that's the goal, and I love big planning and work backwards to it, But that alone is a full-time job for someone to do. So I can't do it. I'm just going to be honest. Other people can help. But when you work with young people, too, it has to have a schedule. You've got to have assignments. You've got to have videos. You've got to have lessons. You have to have some way of assessing, not a test, but some way of assessing what do they know about city government. And I'm just saying it's a lot. Maybe there's a way to, like Robin was saying, talk to teachers about it. And, you know, I'm from the school of thought, especially with school programs, measure twice, cut once. Be careful about starting small. And it's always good to build. It's impossible to go the other direction. So when I was looking at that bulleted list, I'm like, yeah, and who does that? That's a full-time job, that right there.

Let me piggyback on that a little bit. Good points there. Any type of program like this requires a champion.

Yes.

Someone who's going to really get after it and do those things. And what happens with that is that a program could be successful with the efforts of that champion. Of course, when that champion quits doing it, a lot of times the program will die. because there's only so many people that want to do that sort of thing. And the other concern I have you already brought up is about staff time. We have a small staff and we don't have the ability to do these type of things. So if you have a champion who's going to do these type of things and recruit other people to help and stuff, you could potentially get something off the ground. Now, one third thing that I thought about is looking into the um organizations at the school such as you know key club uh who already exist already exist and they have a teacher advisor probably and uh and they might be interested in doing some aspect of that sort of thing and take the burden off of the champion or whatever maybe they want to attend occasional council meetings or they want to do other things related to the city so there's different ways to look at this But the concerns, of course, would be, you know, our staff are pretty well tapped out and all the things that they're doing now. So it does require some other type of effort from some other organization or person.

You know, I was, you know, Jugal and I went back and forth on this with some of the concerns and potential issues. There are some definitely pros and cons to it, but I'm not, I am thinking it, what we're probably trying to get out of this, Jugal, and correct me if I'm wrong, is not necessarily a yay or nay right now as far as, but more of a, more of a, are you okay as a council that I go and seek this, make the charter, make it, you know, develop the situation? so they can come back at a later time and present that. And if that's amenable, vote on that kind of thing. Is that right, what you're thinking, Julie?

Yes, thank you for that. And I think this is all trial and error based. And this is in looking for the youth's leadership development. And there is always going to be a trial and error. And if we don't try, then we don't know, you know, the answer to it. So this is like you said, it's, you know, just giving it a try. And if we work together and if there is anything possible, we should, I think, give it a try to make a civic leaders out of our high school and give them a first hand experience of what it looks like being on the city council or being a mayor and And like you said, as a champion, somebody can be, I think we, there could be a, I'm sure like Susan already said two or three times, she don't have a time. And I totally respect that, but maybe I have time. I have a thought. And maybe Tom has a time or Mike has a time. And some of us can put together, put an effort to make it happen where we are developing the future leaders from our school. And that is what the goal is. So if we just don't even try, then I think it's not good. I'm just saying not good in the sense We are here to develop the future leadership or future of this country and future of the community or the city. And this is our role for us. And that's why I started as a civic duty, civic lessons. And this is a civic service to us. And that's what we're gonna teach them. So there could be some people who are willing to move forward. And I think, We can talk to a high school principal. So this is all, we just need to think about it should we move forward. It's not like a set all the criteria is I have it right now from, but we can take some of the guidelines from a city or federal way and scream. And some of us can be like you said, champions, and we can try some of the programs.

Can I circle back onto something that you said, Tom? Like we're saying pursuer and I'm going to be honest, I'm not I'm not yay or nay. I don't really want this to be pursued until a few more details come our way. And I think if you're going to talk to a very busy high school principal, the details need to be really ironed out because that administrator is ultimately responsible for the entire thing, including student safety. So. I think you, we, whomever goes in with a very specific plan, very small scale, nothing like that. I think you go into it with, if people wanna volunteer here to lead it, I do not think our city staff has the time or resources to run something like that. I just think that's an unfair burden to them. So again, that kind of very, very small step, but I can't say, yay, go pursue it, because I don't know what we're pursuing yet. I'm a very systems-oriented, data-driven person, and it's great, but it's kind of up here right now where great ideas flow. They all start up here, but I need it grounded a little bit more before I say, yes, go talk to the Silicon High School principal.

I completely agree.

Because I'm not for that.

Basically, I think what Jugo is trying to do is pitch the idea, but not necessarily the 100% plan. It's not even really a 30% plan. It's a develop the charter kind of thing. talk through the holes, talk through the negatives. And if it's not something that we can actually do and it's not viable, then we don't proceed. So there's a lot of those RFIs or requests for information that he's got to, or we would have to get answered in order for us to move to whether we're going to do this or not. So I guess it's really more of a thumbs up. Should we try to develop this program of instruction kind of thing or not? And I think

i'm thinking you you want to at least give it a go and put something down i think you give it a go and then come back to us with this is what i i just think all of us as a collective group i don't think i don't want to be represented by any by this body with a stillicum high school principal using my name to be honest until i can say yes i'm aware of that program we talked about it we did multiple study sessions here's the main person in charge, here's the locations, here's the calendar. Certainly not something, I think you would need all year to be frank, to really put that together. You're talking about a very substantial program. And at the end of the day, who's responsible because whoever that person is needs to have monthly meetings with that high school administrative team as well. Um, so I'm just saying it's, it's a big thing that, that needs a little more specificity before I want the DuPont city council, which I remember talking to the school at this time until there's a, I'd like to see the plan that you guys would present to that administrative team.

So the only question I have with that, do you believe in what you want to do, that there will be RFIs to the school district that you would need to, like as you're developing this plan, you might have to ask the superintendent or someone, hey, what do you think about this kind of thing?

Yeah, just like I'm floating the idea here. I don't have anything. And without the approval of everybody, there is nothing we can do. And we all have to be on board. for an example, even the students are sitting here or the parents are sitting here. So we all are, there is a city's liability comes in here also, right? So, I mean, there's a lot of things are there, but the way I see it, it's not, too complicated, I think I want to make it as easy as possible. And I talked to the superintendent actually, and she did not say no to it. Actually, she said that I would like to set up a meeting with the high school principal and you and see if that will work. But before I move forward with the next step, I have to see that even we here get agreement. So I'm just trying to see if there is a program can be developed between the city and the school district and high school and students in the county.

Could we do this? Could you come up with even a fairly skeletal version of what you want to present to the Steilacoom School District so that you have our backing to do so? it seems like we're going to them and then coming back to figure out how we're going to support it. It has to originate here, well thought out, pretty planned, and then go present to the school board obviously would be a part of that too. It just feels like I would like to know more before the DuPont City Council goes to talk more. Does that make sense? And ultimately, are you running this? Who's in charge?

No, I mean, I am definitely afforded as a volunteer, and I can volunteer myself for next three and a half years.

Okay.

And I can be coming here. That's on record.

Yes, but I can't say right now. I just want more details. Right now, it's very pie-in-the-sky-ish, and I would need a little more specifics.

Mike was also part of the school board report. And if he wants to be part of it, and Tom is also the liaison for us for the school district.

I don't mind helping you out with the plan at all. But as long as it's like, we've got concurrence that we're okay to operate outside of this council. Because like Susan says, if we... if we're not in agreement that we can go and at least do some questioning or, you know, because they may come back to you and say, it's just not going to work for us, right? Do something on your own, DuPont City Council, and then we have to do something internal. You know what I mean? There's probably going to be inquiries I would think that you would want to get and check the block off that it's not gonna, it's either a yes or no that they are okay with looking at it too.

Yeah, give us something to say, wow, please take this and pursue it with the school district's telecom. before it has our name on it as a unified group. So right now, my answer would be no. I'm not comfortable having conversations with anyone until that gets ironed out.

I would definitely think we would have to vote yes or no. We're actually going to do this.

One other thing to look at is that a certain amount of this needs to be driven by the kids. They have to... uh you know you need to find go down and find out where the interest is if you don't have anyone if you don't have anyone interested it's not going to go anywhere right so uh we have to bring them or you have to bring them into the loop to see uh how many kids you got that are really interested in doing something like this you know maybe you have a bunch i don't know maybe you don't have any so that's the type of things you have to find out but i still need to have an uh approval

within us to move forward and at least look for some more. No?

Well, what I'm trying to say is we need more information. We need you, Tom, whomever to come back and say, hey, here's what our plan would look like that we would like to run by the superintendent and the high school principal. Students are gonna meet once a month in city chambers from six to seven. And we have a tentative agenda of what that would look like. Maybe on day one, they do a little background knowledge of what is city council. What do we do? What do we not do? Maybe they take a vote on who's gonna be the mayor. There's a scope and sequence as there is with good curriculum and teaching, right? I want to see that and then go, yeah, that's cool, or make some comments as opposed to just, hey, guys, go talk to that superintendent. Yay, sounds good. No. As an administrator, I would feel so bad if people came to me with the best of intentions. It happens all the time. And I have to ask questions like who, what, where, what are my kids learning? because you can't teach something that's not approved by that school as well.

And what kind of funds would you be putting in?

What kind of funds and what parts of city government? There's some hot topics and some of them we talk about as educators and some of them we stay away from, quite frankly. So I want all of that because at the end of the day, it is our name collectively as the DuPont City Council and mayor And city that would be supporting that. So if you guys could come back with that, I'd be happy to email you just the 2 of you with what that could look like. But right now it's an idea. It's not a system. And I need to, I need to see the system play out.

And I can agree with that. So let's do the schematic that you want and the vision that you have, right? And let's put it into some type of analytical way and then we can come back.

And you've got a couple of examples that you found out there that you can look at and work with. again we're starting small is what i hear and what i feel and uh so uh and then of course once everyone gets a general consensus that this looks good then the stillcomb school district may say well what about this or that but you've given them a template at that point so i i think what i hear tom and you're both saying is Tom is, you know, let's look at, you know, to create that template, that schematic, take the Federal Way one, dig into it more deeply, try to simplify it as much as possible, include in there their procedures, maybe modified how you think it should as far as selection process. And I hate to throw yet one more curveball, but since we were talking about risk management here, we also need to run this by risk management because child protection would need to be involved. There's the boundaries issue that, you know, I volunteer in my son's classroom every year. I go to that hotel and we're going to be, same applies for high school. So we just need to be aware of that. I looked at the SCWIM. They're very specific that... If you're communicating with these students, they all have to be issued a city email, and that creates another different can of worms. But, you know, coaches are not supposed to be, or teachers, calling students on their cell phones. Very true. So these little logistics on how we're going to communicate with students, because then that starts involving staff there on how we're going to communicate with these students in a safe environment.

risk management kind of adding on that mike we if you're within the still looking high school let's say those teachers go through boundary training all of this stuff in order to work with kids um and they also have the confines of the school system as a place of support when outside entities come into public ed it can work but it's a whole different ballgame And ultimately, no matter who's running it, it is the Steilacoom School District that will be responsible for the dialog that takes place, the conversations, an appropriate encounter.

Transportation.

No, we don't do transportation. It'd be like, you know, they would do that. But you're right, Mike. There's some really dicey things in dealing with students that are very liability oriented.

We have Henry as a point of contact. There we go. That you can reach out. And I don't want to speak for Henry. But that just needs to be, you know, at least when it comes back to the council. Federal Way does this. Squim does it. But yeah, I mean, I took a look at squims and it's pretty specific on communication with students. And as a retired teacher and a volunteer, I totally understand that. And that's just one more check that we need to be careful. that we get at least that initial.

And remember, those school districts have probably been doing it a while. I would be interested in learning where they started, because they didn't start with that big bulleted list, I guarantee it.

Maybe reach out to SCWIM. SCWIM would be more like us. Yeah, smaller, yeah.

I think I can reach out to the SCWIM, yeah, the city staff, as well as the council and mayor, and find out how they do it, and I can present it. however some of these questions what we were asking and talking about it dealing with the kids but i think amy just said that there was a at point we had this program in place this similar kind of not exactly same but we were dealing with the students and the council kind of program took place so then we did check had a lot of check boxes done right from what we are talking about here i'm hoping

Yeah, as far as liability and what it does, of course, yes.

But that was, what year was that though, 2016 and 2018? I would be hard pressed to think those are still the same standards when it comes to things like, you cannot have students give you their cell phone numbers, absolutely not, even if it's voluntary. So some of those rules that might have been in place back then, have changed. I know they've changed at the elementary level, because I have sixth graders. So I'd be, you know, worrying about that, too. But I would definitely start with a smaller, we're 43 schools, we're not Federal Way, we're never going to be. But maybe we're more like SCWIM. And see, you know, how did they do it and, and all that kind of stuff. But there's definitely changes in issues around student safety since 2018. Yeah.

I've been waiting to say something for a while now. One, there is criteria in the civics class that they have to meet those requirements. Two, teachers who do anything outside of the classroom, like different clubs, different organizations, they get paid a stipend for that extra time. That's something to consider that they may not have a teacher that wants to volunteer for a program like this and help direct it. I would recommend definitely going to visit a student council at Federal Way and see how it actually operates and then bring that information, even SCWIM, you could go to SCWIM and do the same thing. So I would recommend that. I wanna just say that I think that inviting parents and students to see what happens at city council will give you a clear idea of what they really want, because the... The idea of the student council is to follow the same kind of guidance that we do here at a city council. So the school and the students already have some sort of introduction into how government is run because that's how they run the student council.

And they're all elected.

And they're all elected by all the students. And so I just think that before we design a plan, completely design a plan, that more should be done, a second study session should be presented, and some of the findings from investigation. The criteria for the civics class, you can probably get that online. I did that for the elementary school for their history information. They sent me all of the grades and what they needed to cover. And I think you can get the same thing from the high school. It's probably at the school district level.

So, because we've been going for almost two hours without a break. All right. I'll be the first to speak it up. And I don't, what I kind of hear is we're, we're comfortable with Tom and Jugo and, doing more of a skeleton plan, and then coming back and bringing with, and they might go and do some research, they might go to the SCWM, they might go to Federal Way, and they might look up at different sources, but try to create something that is a little more detailed for us to look at. Okay.

Not just that conversation before we do take a break. I'm going to be really honest. I don't want city staff to have to spend time on that. We know how busy they are. We know we are short staffed. And I will not... I will not support something that this has to be done independent of the city staff. They are maxed out. We watch our finances. People are doing double time. We all know that we appreciate them. And it just, like I said, even half of that bulleted list is, is a full-time job to really keep up on. So I think this has to be something done outside of our city and I won't, I cannot support putting more burden on them for that. Even with the, best of intentions and great causes, they need to be serving the citizens of DuPont first and foremost. And that's already on a pretty thin thread right now. So that I would not support.

Okay. Let's, uh, we don't have a, we don't have a whole lot more, but it's probably good to take a, take a break here. Uh, uh, let's, uh, let's be back. Let's be back at eight o'clock and we'll finish this up.

Yeah, we should do that. Yes.

Didn't have to sit here all this time. The public can have to sit here. With us?

Right. The public hearing earlier is what happened.

Yes.

Yes. Citizens don't have to come in.

Well, the staff do. I mean, they're not having any input in there. Excellent points.

Excellent points. You're speaking my language for the last 37 years. Oh, I know. It's like having a dentist sit there and we try to tell the dentist something others.

He's like, I'm a freaking dentist. Okay.

yeah just trying to get up and here's school teachers yeah he and our general leader what do you mean

So they have figured out ways to make communication with teenagers. Whereas we don't have access to those systems in place.

I guess the only other way is to go through their parents, right?

Or their email. But then a private email of Jubils to a private email. Oh, boy. Can we get everybody here?

I might as well get started. We got everybody back. So, uh, I think we can go ahead and get started here.

Okay.

Tonight we're number eight, 8.1, right? So tonight the city council will hold a public hearing on a proposed data center moratorium. Is there any council member has a conflict of interest concerning which would prohibit them from participating in a public hearing? Okay. People wishing to be heard at this hearing should call 253-215-8782 with webinar ID 845-6439-2846 and passcode 262-391. The city clerk will admit one at a time. Once called upon, please state your name and address for the record. Three minutes will be allowed per person. It is now 8 o'clock and I will open the public hearing. The purpose of this hearing is for the City Council to hear testimony on the proposed data center moratorium. Order of speaking will be a staff presentation followed by testimony from anyone wishing to speak and then followed by the Council comments. So at this time I'm going to turn it over to Public Services Director Parks and she's going to tell us where we're at on this moratorium.

Great. Thank you, Mayor, and good evening, council members. So I have for you tonight a brief presentation to talk a little bit about this moratorium and where it came from and what it does. So on the next slide, you all I'm sure are aware that there's significant national and statewide concern with the rapid growth of data centers. and the potential impacts on communities that they represent. For example, they have a significant water use for cooling purposes. There can be emissions when they have fossil fuels are used, for example, in backup generator systems in order to be able to back up their power use. And there can be a lot of noise and heat that emanates from these uses and affects the health and wellbeing of communities. So on the next slide, currently we do have a comprehensive plan policy and the updated comprehensive plan that was adopted in February of this year that talks about implementing regulations that reduce environmental health hazards and ensures access to clean water and air for all of our residents. The challenge, however, is that we currently do not have any specific development regulations that address data centers particularly. So we don't have any specific provisions that we can look to if there's a question about can a data center be located, and if so, we don't have any regulations that would govern how to protect our community necessarily from those potential data centers and their uses. So the state of Washington allows for what are called moratorium. There are two sections of the RCW. One is in the Growth Management Act, that's RCW 3670A390. And then in the Municipal Code Cities Act, Title 35A63-220. Both of those provisions allow for jurisdictions to adopt moratorium on development, a specific development. So essentially the idea behind a moratorium is to temporary pause a specific activity or use to allow the city time to study that issue, to update any regulations that might be necessary to address concerns and or to protect public health and safety during an emergency. So when you are adopting a moratorium, it is good for six months. It does require that you hold your public hearing, which we're doing tonight. And you are required during that six month period of time to actually have a work plan during which you're doing this, the study and the review that you are putting the moratorium in place to allow you time to do that. So on the next slide, what the moratorium actually would do in this particular case is it would put a temporary pause on any permit or activity related to data centers specifically. So we would not accept any applications, we would not do any pre-apps, we would not entertain any application materials or issue any permits for data centers. As I mentioned, it's for a period of six months. It does expire at the end of that six months, unless the city takes action, for example, to extend the moratorium based on work continuing on your work plan, or unless you actually adopt regulations that would replace that moratorium. So that is essentially what would happen. It does allow for us to extend that timeframe. I believe the city, some of you may be familiar with this tool. It's been done used in the past. I was just reviewing some information on the Old Fort Lake sub area plan and I think there was a moratorium on that. So hopefully not a new concept to all of you. so then on the next slide the requested action is to for the council to conduct conduct the public hearing tonight and to adopt the ordinance in this case the rcw does allow you to adopt this ordinance immediately in fact it allows you to adopt the ordinance and hold your public hearing subsequently as long as you're taking public testimony again the idea being that you're getting this um this temporary pause in place as quickly as possible so that is allowed by the statute it is very different than what you're used to in terms of ordinances but you you have that option you're not obligated necessarily to have your first and second reading tonight but you do have the ability to adopt it tonight and with that i'm happy to answer any questions okay well uh we'll hold off on the council questions

First, has the clerk, has there been any written comments submitted about the data center moratorium other than the ones that were already submitted to the council?

No, there hasn't been any other written comments.

Okay. Written comments can be submitted to the city clerk until the close of the hearing. They will be entered into the record and sent to city council members. In addition, if anyone has any questions on the subject, please do not hesitate to call our main line and staff will assist you with getting answers to your questions. I will now call up anyone locally here who wishes to testify. Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to testify on this subject? Okay, no one has come forward to testify. At this time, I'll ask council members if they have questions or comments.

Yeah, I have a question based on our presentation tonight in the reading material. So do we need RMSA's legal approval before we pass this ordinance?

The ordinance was drafted by the city attorney, but we did forward it to the RMSA today, I believe. And we did get back from Sabrina indicated that we got back their approval of the of the review.

Awesome. Yeah, thank you. Yeah.

I just had a quick question. When you talk about the six months, whatever work plan, what would be involved in that work plan? Would it be more specific details about where there could even be one and the implications? So just a deeper dive into the bigger questions that you presented on the slides.

Yes. So the work plan itself would lay out the process by which we would do the investigation, the study, the review of what we would like to do in terms of appropriate development regulations. Because it is a change to our development regulation code, it goes through the planning commission and the public process that's required for them to do their review first, review and study, and they make a recommendation to the city council, which would ultimately then adopt an ordinance that would amend our zoning regulations likely to adopt criteria or to say it can go in this zone and that zone so there is a process that includes planning commission work and then city council action but the work plan would lay that out all right thank you perfect that's what I wanted to hear thank you anyone else have comments

Okay. Well, it's, uh, 8 0 7 and there'll be no further testimony. I will close the public hearing at 8 0 7. And next we have the, uh, ordinance. Yeah, we're getting to that, but we, we gotta go, we gotta go to the ordinance here. Now we've had the hearing. Now we have the first reading of the ordinance. and uh lisa do we have any additional information to put out on the first reading of the ordinance it was in the packet for everyone to read correct nothing additional it was in the packet nothing additional okay so uh in that case we can uh entertain a motion to uh on the ordinance can i go

I would like to make a motion that we establish a six-month moratorium in DuPont, Washington regarding data centers.

Could you just change that to move it to a second reading first?

I would like to have a second reading on data centers moratorium in DuPont, Washington.

Thank you. We need a second. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. We're voting to move this to a second reading. So all those in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose. Okay. Now we need a motion to approve the ordinance.

I'll make a motion to approve the ordinance for the moratorium.

Okay. And do we have a second?

I'll second that.

Okay. Any further discussion? Very good. I'll call for the vote then. All those in favor say aye. aye opposed the ordinance is approved so thank you director for that uh next we have um the consent agenda do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda mr mayor moved to approve the consent agenda items for 8 september 2026. do we have a second second okay any further discussion seeing none i'll call for the vote all's in favor say aye aye opposed thank you Next, we have the mayor's report and comments. I just have one thing. I wanted to remind everyone that we do have a 9-11 ceremony in Ross Plaza Friday at 1 p.m., and we have a guest speaker, and uh it should be a nice ceremony to remember that horrible event that we had and and this is the 25th anniversary by the way so i invite everyone that would like to attend to please uh come to ross plaza at 1 p.m on friday are there any uh council reports no don't see any okay city administrators report

Yes, Henry earlier made a great foreshadowing of my comments. He talked about a short course in local planning sponsored by the Washington State Department of Commerce. We are actually doing that. So I just want to invite everyone from the public Monday, September 28th from 6 to 8.30 right here in the city council chambers.

Can you say the date again, Keith?

Yeah, it's Monday, September 28th at 6 p.m. right here in City Hall.

I'm sorry, but the Mayor's Cup. We need to remind everybody that Friday is also the Mayor's Cup here at the home course.

We have a lot of activity. And with that, Mr. Mayor, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

Okay. Any questions for Keith? Okay. It is now 8.10, and I will adjourn the meeting.

Go ahead. When? October.