City Council - Regular Meeting

Agenda. Oops. Please come to the podium or press the raised hand button if you would like to speak about an item that is on the consent agenda. I'm assuming there's no one online since I can't see it right now. Okay. I will now close public comment on the consent agenda and open it up for a motion from council to approve the consent agenda.

Council member Martin. I move that we approve the consent agenda.

I second.

It was moved by council member Martin and seconded by council member Tessichini to approve the consent agenda. Please vote on your screens.

Aye.

Motion passes seven to zero. So for my mayor's report, I just have to start with, wasn't last weekend glorious? Definitely a reason that we all live in the Pacific Northwest. I hope you got outside to enjoy it. I got some gardening in during some breaks from a busy, busy, busy community weekend.

Friday evening, we cut the ribbon on the first phase of the Gig Harbor Sports Complex, which we built in partnership with the YMCA. This project was twelve years in the making, but it was so moving to see the fields absolutely filled with people playing all weekend long. What an amazing testament to what a community can do when it's committed to doing what is right and needed. And I wanna offer my thanks to all who helped make this project come to life, beginning with the twenty fourteen city council and moving all the way through today. Saturday and Sunday was the paddlers' cup at Scansea And Ansitch Parks.

I so admire the athletes participating in these events. They range from brand new paddlers to some very experienced ones who are making us proud on the international stage. And, again, thank you to all who helped showcase the community at this event. The city administrator, the Housing Health and Human Services manager, and I just returned from a meeting of the elected leaders group for the unified regional approach to homelessness in Pierce County. Today, the group reached a general consensus for moving forward on the unified approach, and I look forward to bringing the program to a council study session in May or June to discuss our participation in this important initiative.

This Friday, I get to do something really fun. I'm excited to be talking with the kindergartners at Swiftwater Elementary School. These opportunities to meet with young people are so very special. I love meeting with them to inspire them to give back to their community. The kindergarten classes are studying the environment and especially how their actions impact the environment.

So we'll be talking about ways that can help us all reduce, reuse, and recycle. And I'll probably get some amazing ideas from these young children, I'm sure, and I'll share them with you when I'm done. I do want to give a plug for Thursday's study session. If you, like many, are concerned about traffic in the Gig Harbor North area and want some information or have questions about any plans that we may have to address those issues, please join us for the study session, which begins at 03:00. And with that, I will now turn it over to the city administrator, Katrina Knutson, for her report.

Thank you, mayor. Good evening, counsel. Just want to acknowledge for the public that on the consent agenda tonight, council authorized the mayor to sign a quick claim deed of second amendment to deed covenants, regarding the return of the Hunt Street property from the Fish Food Bank to the city of Gig Harbor. A little bit of background on this. The city acquired the property from Pierce Transit in 2018 and subsequently deeded it to Fish Food Bank in December 2018 for a period of five years for them to either build a food bank or, a storage facility.

In July 2023, the city extended that agreement to the 2028. Through our Housing Health Human Services program manager and other city staff and electeds, we have a great working relationship with the Fish Food Bank and continue to partner with them on a number of items. And through that partnership, our housing health human services program manager and the president of the food bank, Ron Cohen, were in discussions, and the property was mentioned. And in earlier this year, FISH board president Ron Cohen requested to return the property to the city due to changes in their development plans. They no longer have plans to develop a food bank or storage facility on the Hunt Street property.

And so tonight or sorry. Not before tonight, Fish confirmed through their board to return the property to the city

for affordable housing,

and the documents were ready are ready to sign in council tonight. You authorize the mayor to sign those documents. So this is a lot of work that has been done by staff to include Shay and Eric Baker as well as Fish Food Bank. So really want to acknowledge this partnership and what will be, hopefully, the near term, some affordable housing, truly affordable housing within our community for all ages, wages, and stages, potentially. But it really gets to the city councils, one of the new priorities in our strategic plan. So congratulations to the city council, the mayor of Fish Food Bank, and to Shay and staff on this momentous occasion. That concludes my report. Thank you.

Thank you. We have three business items tonight. The first is Resolution thirteen fifty nine, setting a public hearing for Artina Lane nonuser statue right of way vacation. And I'll turn it over to public works director Jeff Langhelm for the staff report.

Thank you, mayor. Good evening, council. The city allows jurors or residents to request public right of way vacations through multiple processes. One of the processes that is occasionally used, but it's a little odd, it's not not very common, is non user statute right of way vacations. Non user statute requests are allowed for areas of city that were platted prior to 1891.

State law and the city's municipal code allow these certain parts of right of way to be given back to the adjacent property owner when it's not being used and it's given back at no cost. There are some administrative fees that must be paid and the applicant must also pay for the survey necessary. So, specifically, the request that's before you tonight, this is for the property owner may request made by the property owner at 368 or sorry, 3613 Ortina Lane. The property was originally platted and known as Columbia Street, but now it's known as Milton Avenue. And I am going to try and share my screen.

Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Using a slightly modified display tonight. So on the screen is the map showing the property owner's location.

This is 3613 Artina Lane, and then Milton Avenue is just to the east. To the right, They're requesting half of the existing right of way be vacated and provided back to the property owner. Here on the screen, and I know it's tiny, but just so you can get reference, this is the original 1891 plat of Artina. And the red circle shows Lots 262728. That now makes up 3613 Artina Lane.

And so this is the survey provided by the requester's surveyor. You can see this says Block 10 Artina, and there's Lots 262728. So, originally, the right of way was supposed to be used for roadways. It wasn't. We have actually placed a couple of utilities in there.

But for the utilities, we just are gonna be requesting easements for the utilities we have in the area to be vacated. It's the area to the east of to the right of the property. You can see there's other hash marks. The surveyor already identified previously vacated sections of the same plat for the various property owners around here. So in this instance, it's a little hard to tell here, but there is a emergency turnaround, and that's why there's a bit of a jog in the map that you see here.

There's some odd shapes here because this is the South End Martin Milton Avenue, and this section is a dead end road. We have what we call a hammerhead turnaround, emergency turnaround that the public can still continue to use. So the city staff is requesting we not vacate the turnaround or the site distance for maintenance of of this turnaround. Tonight's step in this process for right of way vacation is to adopt the resolution that you have before you tonight that will set the public hearing and proceed forward with an ordinance to vacate the right of way. In these types of nonuser statute right of way vacations, the city doesn't really have the ability to charge fees or request appraisals.

That's for all other typical right away vacations. But in these types, because of platting, because of that nonuser statute, we essentially have to provide it back to the adjacent property owner if we're not using it for roadway purposes. So that's what you have before you tonight. If approved tonight, we'll be back for in the near future for the public hearing and the reading of the ordinance. Happy to answer any questions if you have any.

Thank you. Are there any clarifying questions from counsel? I'm not seeing any, so I will now open public comment on this agenda item. If you're in the audience and wish to speak, please come to the podium now. If you're on Zoom, please press the raised hand button.

And I will now close public comment and open it for counsel deliberation and action. Does anybody want to make a motion to adopt resolution thirteen fifty nine? Maybe.

I move to adopt resolution thirteen fifty nine and set the appropriate hearings.

Seconded. It was moved by council member Eckberg and seconded by council member Stone to adopt resolution thirteen fifty nine and set the appropriate hearings. Please vote on your screens.

Aye.

Motion passes seven to zero. Thank you, counsel. Our second business item is the senior services grant award recommendation, And I will turn it over to Housing Health and Human Services Manager, Shay Smiley, for the staff report.

Thank you, mayor and council. Tiffany is going to pull up a presentation, and we're going to discuss the senior services program grant award recommendations. A couple of things to start off. Seeing that there was an increased need for senior services in the community, the city proactively included $80,000 in the biennium budget for senior services. On February 17, the city developed and launched their first senior services grant program.

The application window ran through March 30. The type of funding that this grant has is a reimbursement grant program. Therefore, the grant is not paid in one lump sum. Programs are required to submit, the appropriate documentation, including the number of Gig Harbor residents served to qualify for the reimbursement of the cost. The total grant amount is up to $80,000, and the city was able to award funds to one or more one or multiple organizations.

We received seven applications, and six of them met eligibility. The it's okay. The grant review team consisted of the community development director, the parks manager, along with myself, the housing health and human services program manager, as I will oversee the grant program. The assessment modality that we used is applications were reviewed and rated using a predetermined scoring rubric. The average score of each application was then calculated, and these scores are what were used to determine the top three applicants.

Staff recommends that we for the this grant program, that the top two applications are fully funded up to the amount that they requested, and the remaining funds from the grant cycle can be awarded to the third highest grant applicant. You will see below the three applicants that rated the highest. One is Olympic Civic Services, then the Greater Gig Harbor Foundation, and Good Roots. On the next slide, we are going to talk about what each of these organizations will be doing. At the top of the screen, it's small from here, the total average score for each of the organizations is listed.

So Olympic Scene Civic Services had a score of 86. The Greater Gig Harbor Foundation had a score of 84. And Good Roots had an average score of 78. I've also listed the funding amounts that were requested by each organization. Again, we funded them based on the amount that they requested.

The programs and activities that the Olympic Civic Services will be providing is social engagement activities, health and wellness programming, educational programs, resource navigation and support, as well as community connections. They will also use the funds for venue and accessibility, outreach and engagement, transportation support, and program supplies. The Greater Gig Harbor Foundation has laid out that they have different areas that they work in. So they have move well, connect well, live well, navigate well. And move well is going to apply to wellness classes, instructions, equipment screenings.

Connect well is going to be, social programs, creative, aging, and intergenerational activities. Live Well is going to be centered around nutritional programming, TLC, which is their Tuesday, Thursday lunch club meal, expansion, and a cooking series. And then the Navigate Well is related primarily to technology and then resource navigation. And then, additionally, they will use funds for the implementation and oversight. And then GoodRoots, had the third highest score, so we were able to fund about half of what their ask was, a little less than their their ask.

The funding would be used towards the installation cost of one refrigerated food locker. And for anyone who's not aware of GoodRoots, they are throughout Pierce County. That's a picture of the lockers because we may not be as familiar with it. Think of Amazon purchasing locker. Individuals can, on the app, place the order of the food that they are in need of.

This is for our residents who are in need of, who have food insecurity and in need of food. And so then the food is delivered to the locker, giving someone access twenty four seven to be able to access what they need rather than having to work within the confines of a schedule. This organization was already awarded a $71,000 grant from councilmember Denson, Pierce County councilmember Denson, for the actual locker itself. So they were applying for the funds they need in order to have it installed. The purpose of the food locker is to increase access to food for those that are food insecure, maybe their schedule doesn't allow for them to go in person.

Additionally, they are partnering with Food for All out on the Key Peninsula to work with if people need food delivered to their homes, and they're going to partner with them in several different ways. Those are the three programs, and that concludes my presentation and recommendation for funding.

Thank you for your report. Are there clarifying questions from council? Councilmember Martin. Thanks for

the report. That was really informative. So just so I'm clear, we're doing 80,000 this year because we have 80,000 in the biennium. So last year, unfortunately, we weren't able to grant any funds. Is that do I understand that correct?

Correct. Okay. So next year, if if, let's say, it was in the the budget again, it would be 40,000 each year.

Okay. And then did I also understand you just say that this is for residents of Gig Harbor, or is it Gig Harbor community? So not just those that live in our little 6.2 square miles that we would be reimbursing for. Just clarifying that.

That's a great question. Gig Harbor residents. So it'll be for when Gig Harbor residents are utilizing the services. Thank you. Yes.

Councilmember Stone.

Thank you. Again, this is really helpful. Kind of a follow-up to councilmember Martin's question. For the GoodRoots, is there is that also specific to the senior residents in Gig Harbor? And then how would you kind of account for that since it's to help kind of offshoot the whole program? Thank you.

Yeah. Great question. So it will serve anyone that is able to access it. The uniqueness of of the good roots in our senior population. Within our community, our seniors are the ones who are most income burdened and being able to help with that. It's also depending on where we're going to be installing it to make sure there's accessibility. And then for those homebound seniors, this is going to help alleviate the pressure of food backpack for kids, formerly food backpack for kids, now food for all, when they were delivering everything over to this side.

Great question. Councilmember Eckberg. Thank you. For the first two recipients, are these, existing programs that we'll be helping pay for, or is this an expansion of these new programs?

My understanding is it is to sustain some of what's already happening and then to be able to expand them even further.

Thank you. I'm

not seeing any other hands raised. So I will now open public comment on this agenda item. If you're in the audience and wish to speak, please come to the podium now. If you're on Zoom, please press the raised hand button. And you have three minutes to speak. If you could please give your name and your connection to the issue, please, Joyce. Hi.

Hi. I'm Joyce Schultz. I'm the director of the Gig Harbor Senior Center, and I just wanna thank the the review committee for putting in some thought on who should be awarded these funds. And I, I guess I would ask for a positive vote on these. We we serve many seniors every day of the week at the Gig Harbor Senior Center, and, these funds will certainly allow us to expand and sustain already existing programs and activities. So thank you so much.

Thank you. I'm David Olsen. I'm the president of the Greater Gig Harbor Foundation. Thanks for giving us an opportunity to to address the council tonight. Thank you, Shay, for the work you've done.

Thank you for for your committee and your selections tonight. We saw during COVID with seniors that were sheltered in place how devastating that was to them and their mental health. The Greater Gay Harbor Foundation partnered with other community events venues to make sure those seniors received meals during COVID, And so that was very important to us. Another thing that we see is and they mentioned earlier tonight, you were talking about student well-being and how some of the programs you're doing to address student mental health. You know, our seniors in our community, especially ones that live alone, shelter in place, and have minimal resources, the the activities that we're here that you're talking tonight, whether it's the one that's up at barbecue to you, the Olympic one, the Greater Gig Harbor Foundation Senior Center, and especially the roots where seniors can go and then their own time.

Might even be in the middle of night where they don't want people to know they might be in need of food. I think all three of these programs are really wonderful. I think the city should be commended for your $80,000 grant to help seniors. And I would I would support you approving all three programs because more that we can do for seniors, the better. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in the room who would like to speak on this issue? Is there anyone online? I'm not seeing anyone. So I will close public comment on this agenda item and open it for council deliberation and action.

So I'd like to move to approve the staff recommended senior services grant awardees.

Second.

It was it was moved by council member Martin and seconded by council member Eckberg to approve the staff recommendation for the senior service grant awardees. If you could please vote on your screen.

Motion

passes six to zero to one. Council member Eckberg has abstained. You're on here as as for yeah. Council member Rodenberg. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Council member Rodenberg abstained. So our third business item is to select a council representative to the South Sound Military and Communities Partnership, and I will again turn it over to housing and health and human services manager, Shay Smiley.

Hello again, mayor and council. Tonight, we're gonna talk about who council would like to appoint as the elected representative for the South Sound Military and Communities Partnership, SSMCP. On the February 26 study session, we received a presentation from them, and they informed us of the 50 member, the 50 members that of the SSMCP are made up of cities and counties and tribes, nonprofits, corporations, organizations, and JBLM talked about the incredible work they've done in the South Sound to make sure that they support not only the military, but all of the surrounding communities that a lot of the military lives in. So with that membership at at that time, council directed staff to move forward with a membership. With that membership, we will need an elected official to sit on their elected official council.

So, I will open it to the mayor now to see if anybody is interested.

Do we need to do public comment on this, or can we just move to nominations?

That's No. I don't have a slide for this. This is

Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out what this one

would say. We'd recommend that you do clarifying questions and Definitely. Public comment. That would be great. Thank you.

Okay. Councilmember Stone, if you have a question.

I did. Yeah. Apologies if I missed this. But what's the time commitment? How often are they meeting? Just would love to know more about what that elected position's role will be and how frequent. Thank you.

Yeah. It's once a quarter, and then they also have an annual meeting where everyone comes together in person.

Thank you. Are there any other clarifying questions from council members? I'm not seeing any hands up. So is there anyone in the room who would like to make comment on this agenda item or anyone online? I'm not seeing anyone online, so I will close the public comment, and I will open it to council nominations for or volunteers for people who would like to serve.

Councilmember Martin. So I'd be happy to to serve on that once a quarter. That sound I like that meeting agenda, but I have to say I was so impressed by how much this group has been able to accomplish for families around here and working together. And I know that in Gig Harbor, in our greater community, we have a lot of current active military and veterans here. So if if nobody else wants it, I am more than happy to stand up and do this. Thanks.

Thank you. Anyone else? Councilmember Rodenberg.

I would like to be the city's representative on that committee.

Thank you. K. I'm gonna ask for guidance on how to move forward on this since we have two nominations.

I believe the appropriate move forward would be a motion. Someone would make a motion. And

Vote.

So somebody makes a motion to vote for one or the other. Yeah. Okay. So does somebody want to make a motion?

I will, move to appoint councilmember Julie Martin as a representative of this commission. And if we need an alternate, the councilmember Rodenberg could serve as well.

Is there a second for that?

I'll second.

It was moved by council member Eckberg and seconded by council member Amon to appoint Julie Martin to serve to be the city's representative on the Southside Military and Communities Partnership with Councilmember Rodenberg as her alternate. If you could please vote on your screen. Motion passes. Seven to zero. Thank you, counsel.

And now it is my great pleasure for our staff report to welcome our finance director, Scott Larson, to provide our quarterly finance and budget reports. Mister Larson joined our team earlier this year and has quickly made himself a very valuable part of the executive team with his expertise both in finance and in city government in general. Scott.

Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. I'm really excited to be here with you tonight as well as just in general at the city of Cape Harbor. It's been great so far to get to know the several of the council members so far, and I just can't say thank you enough to Katrina and the rest of the team for being so warm and welcoming to me over the last couple months. So, I've got a quarter one update. There's some information included in the council packet as well, but I've got a little bit more of the financial side in some slides that I'll go through here in just a moment. Next slide slide, Tiffany, please. Okay. So, quarter one is looking fairly stable. Nothing, is is kind of out of the realm of where I'd expect it to be.

We're at about 23.1% of revenue collected based if you were just to divide the year up into quarters. We're a little bit ahead on sales tax, which I'll dive into here in a couple minutes. And general fund expenses are running about 18 per 18% of what our total budget was. So everything's looking pretty good at the moment. Next slide, Tiffany.

Like I said before, revenue is generally within range. Everything, below 25% here has to do with timing of when the revenues come in, whether it's seasonality or just when the big property tax payments come due. But it kind of shows you some of the main, buckets where the city, is collects revenue and is able to pay for the services, which I'll get to in a moment here. Next slide, Tiffany. So sales tax.

This is the general fund's biggest source of revenue. For the first quarter, we've collected about $2,270,000. I apologize for the overlapping text there. It's just slightly above last year's, 2,220,000 year to date number. One kind of interesting thing about sales tax is there's about a two, month lag.

So this is representing economic activity that happened about two months ago. So in reality, quarter one represents the holiday bump from 2025. So it'll smooth out. If you go to the next slide, Tiffany, as the year goes on, you can see the seasonality here. The peaks, for the city Gig Harbor are the summer months as well as the holidays, and the green arrow or the green line actually represents the, moving average of that, so twelve month average.

So you can see kinda where we expect to be versus kinda what we have to deal with on a month to month basis. Everything everything looks pretty good. The one kind of interesting pattern that I've noticed as I've dived into the data over the last couple months is that the seasonality has changed, since COVID. And I'll present more on sales tax as we move through the budget and start thinking about longer term forecasting. But our purchasing habits in the community have changed, but that's a bit of a teaser of future slides.

So, next slide, Tiffany. So as a couple slides ago showed, we're we are lagging in property tax, which is expected. We get our two major property tax payments at the April, which is just a couple days from now. And then in this the fall time, you'll see that appear in the coffers in November. So those graphs will catch up substantially the next time I give this presentation.

Next slide. So back to utilities. Utilities are one of our seasonal businesses that we operate. So right now, it appears we're a little behind if you were just to compare us to 25% of the year, but we'll catch up substantially in water and sewer a little. There's a little less seasonality in stormwater. However or there's no seasonality in stormwater. However, that's driven by how we bill. We bill a lot of customers annually, and then a lot of customers, get billed every other month as well. So, next slide, Tiffany. Here's our water seasonality as far as revenue goes.

The blue blue line represents our average monthly collections for the past five years. The green dots on there show what we've actually collected for the first quarter of the year. So we're ahead of that. The primary drivers of that are the change in rates that council adopted either earlier this year or the end of last year. So we expect to for those or excuse me, our water revenue as well as the rest of our utility revenue to catch up here in the next couple months as we move into the heavier seasonal usage.

Next slide, Tiffany. So overall expenses look good. As I mentioned in the first slide for the general fund, the utilities look good as well. The one yellow, bar up there is our parks development fund. It's a little, above kind of that 25% mark if you're just to divide our budget evenly.

However, that's a real that's a project driven fund, and so those aren't necessarily predictable. There's also projects that lag, from when it started to when it builds, and so some of that is driven by prior year projects. And since we are operating in a biennial budget, it's this is only kind of contemplating a single single year, so that's why that looks a little bit out of whack, but but everything else looks good. Streets Capital is behind right at the moment. However, as we, bid some projects and move into the construction season, Streets Capital, will start to catch up and and jump ahead here.

Next slide. So, as the re as a kind of a summary of the reports that were provided by the directors, we've had some big projects ticked off the list over the last year or so, the comprehensive plan. We're at full strength on police staffing, so that'll start to kinda shift the numbers in our quarterly reports for the general fund. And then we've completed several key utility projects with more to come. With that said, we have had the timing on some of our capital projects slip just due to capacity within the team.

You know, bandwidth is a real constraint that we're facing right now, just, you know, how many projects single people can take on. And so I know our our human resources team has been working furiously to try to bring on and backfill folks. I'm a good example of the Citi backfilling a a critical position lately. And then an another thing that that I'm watching that the rest of the team is watching is cost pressures. There is still some, higher than, preferred inflation in the in the marketplace right now, especially when it comes to construction projects, and we're we're seeing that as we go out to bid.

However, we have had some favorable bids come back lately. So so it's a watch item right at the moment. But from a financial perspective, we're looking good. But from a capacity perspective, we're we're at the max. So next slide, Tiffany.

Yeah. That's fine. So that was it. So, yeah, it was just a summary slide there. So thank you, Tiffany, and thank you, counsel. Happy to answer any questions, Mary.

Thank you. So I'll ask questions. Councilmember Stone.

Yes. Thank you, and welcome. This is a really great presentation and very digestible. In the agenda packet, there was the quarterly budget report. It's very comprehensive, 56 pages, which is really helpful that kinda lays out for folks who may not have seen it status of the goals, and it goes by department. And I did have a question. I don't know, city administrator, if you might be able to help answer this. But on page 30, it references this is the community development section. It references our comprehensive plan, periodic update development regulations, and it notes that that is complete. But according to the state, you know, even as of March, it's on their public website I just checked.

Gig Harbor is not in compliance with the GMA and with their housing elements with the like, we've done the comprehensive plan, but we haven't done the development regulations piece. So I just wanted to get clarification around what that means when it says it's completed.

Thank you for the question, council member Stone. I'm pulling that up right now. You said it was page 30?

Page 30. The very first one on page 30 of that PDF. Yeah. Apologies.

Thank you. We're gonna need to address this with director Baker because you are correct that the development regulations are still underway in order to make them consistent with the comprehensive plan, and those are forthcoming. I think council received a work plan schedule of that implementation a few weeks ago, so we'll ensure that this is corrected. Thank you.

Council member Eckberg.

Thank you for the report. You mentioned the seasonality of some of data points both on the revenue and expense side there. Would it be possible to see the same period of the prior year in in future data so we we might visualize that a little bit better? It's just an an idea.

Yeah. No. I think that's that's a great idea. I'll add it to my notes for updates. Thanks.

Any other questions? Councilmember Martin.

So you mentioned, and we're all feeling a little bit of a stress by some of the cost increasing and the inflation that we're seeing right now. What are you seeing as the largest impact to our departments and our budget right now? I think you mentioned construction costs and some of the materials that public works needs to purchase. Is there are there other things that you're seeing are are of somewhat of concern, but they haven't reached oh oh, We might be needing to find some additional funds.

I think probably the the other big one that's hanging out there is staffing costs. As council's aware, there is still an open contract right now with one of the bargaining units, and and the inflation that we're experiencing now could kind of shift how that conversation ends up. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much for that report. We appreciate it. So I will now move on to public comment for items that are not on the agenda tonight. If you would like to make a comment about something not on the agenda, please come forward at this time. Or if you're on Zoom, please press the raised hand button. And I will now close public comment on nonagenda items and ask if there are any reports from council. Council member Stone.

Thank you, mayor. I'll be quick. I know we have a lot of folks here in the audience, but, just wanted to share that last week was the Pierce County Housing Summit that was put on by the Master Builders Association here locally. And it was a great opportunity to be in a room full of a couple 100 people in and around the region in the Pierce County area, and I was really grateful to also see director Baker attending on behalf of city. It is no secret that we are in a housing crisis, and my hope is that we continue these conversations around housing, and it's really exciting some of the things that, city administrator Katrina reported on tonight that we can really try to dive in as as a council, as staff to really find adequate attainable housing for all ages, wages, and stages.

I really love that phrase because that is exactly what we need here in our community. And I do think that as council members who are elected by the people, we do have a duty to our community to find more housing options, remove barriers, and to ultimately uphold our oath of office, which does include upholding the laws of the state and coming into compliance with state laws. I'm looking forward to continued conversations. I know there's a lot of complexities and nuances and challenges with those conversations, but, would really love to find more ways that we can accelerate that. But the the summit was really great, and it was nice to know that we have lots of knowledgeable folks in the community that are ready to help our city navigate some of these changes. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Martin.

Thank you. First, I think our housing health and human services manager, Shay Smiley, was the state advisory council on homelessness. You were appointed to that governor's panel. Congratulations, and thank you. The other thing is, I, like so many people sitting here and in the community, got to attend the ribbon cutting for the sports fields.

And like everybody here, it was fun to be a part of that vote to say yes. And it was really cool to see past council members there seeing, gosh, this really did come to fruition. The excitement from the YMCA was amazing, but probably more than anything was almost getting run over by a bunch of young kids. So excited to get out into that field. So congratulations to everybody who was involved. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments from council? I am not seeing any other comments, any other hands raised. Before I ask for a motion to adjourn, I want to remind you all that the scouts who are here had some questions for you. So if you could hang around for a little bit to see what they've been learning during the meeting, I have a feeling. So I will now entertain a motion to adjourn.

I move that we adjourn. Do I have a second?

Second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Meeting is adjourned. Thank you all very much.