City Council - Regular Meeting

Alright. Kim, could you please call the roll?

Mayor Ralph? Here. Council president Kour?

Here.

Council Member Boyce?

Here.

Council Member Boyd?

Here.

Council Member Larmer? Here. Council Member Michaud? Here. Council Member Schocher? Here. Council Member Troutner?

Here. Thank you. You. Item number three on our agenda is the approval. Are there any changes to the agenda from council or staff?

No changes to the agenda from staff, your honor, but we do have a closed session as council item number 11. It's to discuss collective bargaining per RCW 4,230 one-44A. There will be no action following that closed session, and we estimate about ten minutes for that portion of the meeting.

All right. Thank you. So given no changes, is there a motion to approve the agenda as published? So

moved. Second.

A motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Alright, moving into public communications and public recognition. My guess is that this is the section of the agenda that everyone is here for. So just a guess, but I feel like that's it's probably a pretty safe one. I wanna thank you all for joining us this evening. We have some some exciting things on the agenda this evening.

Swearing ins, we have an election of the council president, and also the presentation of employee of the month and a proclamation. So we are gonna go ahead and kick this off, and I would like to invite our presiding judge, Judge Frans up to do the honors. Thank you for being here with us tonight.

State your name.

I, Dana Ralph.

Having been duly elected to the office of the

been duly elected to the office of the mayor.

Of the city of Kent State of Washington.

The city of Kent State Of Washington.

For a four year term

expiring 12/31/2029.

Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will faithfully. That I will faithfully and impartially.

Discharge the duties of the office of the mayor.

Discharge the duties of the office of the mayor.

As prescribed by law.

As prescribed by law. To the best of my ability. To the best of my ability.

And will support and maintain the laws of the city of Kent.

And will support and maintain the laws of the city of Kent.

And the laws and the constitutions. And the laws and

the constitution. Of the state

of Washington.

The state of Washington and The United States Of America. All right, next we are going to have the swearing in of three council members. Council President, we have historically done this as a group, but I would defer to you on whether you want to do that as a group or individually.

Group or individually? Do you have a breakfast?

Okay, can do it elsewhere. Okay. So we will be swearing in of our current council president, Seth Windercor, council member Tony Troutner, and council member Sharn Schoker. So two reelections and one brand new election. I do do wanna provide everyone with an opportunity to have photos with their family and friends.

So, council president, wanna start and have is there anybody that you wanna call up for photos?

Don't all move one time.

I feel like Sean in my face.

They're probably slipping out the door by there.

Think Sean would divorce me if I made them made him come out?

Okay. Ready. 321.

Okay, I'd like to have your attention for a moment. You know, as the longest member to serve on this council, it gave me some right to do certain things and put certain people on the spot. I know the madam mayor have a family here, and I know you're very ecstatic to be here. I know her husband Sean is very proud of her. So I'm going to ask the Madam Mayor family to please come up here and take a picture with the mayor. Please. Mother, you too? You should give mother some. Shawn, she told me not to do this but I

didn't listen to her. So you can

talk deal with me later, okay? How you doing?

Last call for photos?

Alright.

Again, thank you everyone. We're very, very grateful that you are here tonight to help us. Very, very grateful that you are here tonight to help us celebrate. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is election of council president. Is there a motion to nominate the next council president?

Yes, madam mayor. I like to make a motion to let that one occur to serve a two year term as a council president. Second.

We've a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations, council president. Alright. Now that that is official, I'm going to turn it over to Council President to make the announcement of subject matter chairs and other various committees.

Alright, thank you so much Madam Mayor. And, thank you to my colleagues for choosing me for the next two years again as council president. And, we're going to go ahead and get started with congratulating and welcoming council member Schocher. We're excited to have you here. And I am so thrilled to have you on this dais.

So we'll see what we can accomplish over the next two years working together. For the subject matter experts, we have Councilmember Michaud as the Parks SME, and she will continue serving on Human Services Commission. Council Member Larmer will be ECD, Economic and Community Development SME and also continue serving on RFA. Council Member Boyce will be Public Safety SME and Council Member Boyd will be Arts Commission liaison for the council and serving on the RFA. And Councilmember Troutner will be public works SME or the chair and serving on RFA. And that is all I have. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay. We are gonna now move into our next celebration for this evening, and that is the announcement of our January 2026 employee of the month. So each month, here at the city, coworkers can get together and nominate, someone that they believe exemplifies the mission, vision, values, and goals of the city of Kent. It is almost always someone who not only is exceptional in a special project, but in their day to day, just how they show up, and that is absolutely the case for our twenty twenty six employee of the month.

So I would like to announce that Rick Armstrong is our 20 our January 2026 employee of the month. Absolutely. Round of applause. Put you front and center while I talk all about you, and then the chief will come up and say a few words, and then we will also have a chance for photos. So, a little bit of background for you.

Rick was first hired by the city of Kent on 09/01/2006 as a corrections officer. He left the city and was rehired in 2012, realized this was the place where things were happening, so came back. He was promoted to his current position as a corrections sergeant on 11/01/2015. This position supervises activities on an assigned work shift within corrections facility, including but not limited to implementation of division policies to ensure the safety, security, and control, well-being of our inmates, and the preservation of the rights of the incarcerated. Rick was nominated because he is an exceptional City of Kent employee who consistently goes above and beyond expectations.

He continually strives to make both the City of Kent and the City of Kent corrections facility outstanding places to work. Through his leadership and work ethic, Sergeant Armstrong sets a powerful example for others to follow. He is currently in the role of administrative sergeant. His various titles include accreditation coordinator, PREA coordinator, hearings officer, acting commander, community liaison, training coordinator, public disclosure coordinator, and program supervisor. This is a very long list of duties.

While wearing all these hats, sergeant Armstrong still makes himself available to assist with jail coverage and transports when staffing is short. He commonly sets his work aside and covers the main jail for staffing and routinely completes inmate transports outside of the building so that jail staff can perform other functions inside the jail. Rick is also very in tune with mandatory holdovers when vacancies exist and works tirelessly to find coverage or often covers those overtime shifts himself to save officers from having to work a seventeen hour mandatory shift. Sergeant Armstrong recently led the City of Corrections Facility through a rigorous WASBIC reaccreditation process, which requires meeting 172 standards. This achievement exemplifies his exceptional dedication, professionalism, and work ethic.

Employees like Sergeant Armstrong are what make the city of Kent and the Kent Corrections Facility outstanding places to work and serve the community. Thank you for embracing our values, and we're celebrating Sergeant Armstrong as our January employee of the month.

Rick, I'll give you a reprieve if you want to come stand over here for a little bit.

Thank you.

So mayor, thank you for the honor. I'm very much in support. I don't know where he went, but very much in support of him receiving this honor. You went through a long list of the things that he does. But I wanna point out the person that he is that has made him so well deserving of this award.

He is in a leadership role and does some tremendous things that I'll talk about here shortly that keep our jail at the highest level of performance. But he's also a leader that cares about his employees. The nomination comes not only from his peers but from his subordinates. So think about that for a second, right? And what kind of impact the leader has to have to where their subordinates feel so grateful for what he does that they put in a nomination and get this award on his behalf.

So I think that's incredible. The attributes I would use to describe Rick are high energy, intensity, capable work ethic like no other. And the thing I like about his leadership the most is he leads by example and he leads from the front. He gets in there, he has probably the heaviest workload of all of our sergeants in the jail. His administrative workload is complex.

The project to complete our accreditation through the state sheriffs and police chiefs association in and of itself is a huge feat. I like to brag about it so I'm gonna say it one more time. We are one of three departments in the entire state that have accreditation both at our jail and in our patrol police operations which is a very high bar. And not only did we get accreditation, we had a flawless clean on-site. The inspection team found zero deficiencies in the way that we were running the jail and Rick is the primary reason amongst others but he is the primary reason for that.

So again, I really appreciate the honor. Rick, congratulations to you, very well deserved. That's all I have.

Sergeant Armstrong, you wanna come up with your family and we'll get a quick picture?

That

means all family.

Good job.

Alright, we are going to move on. We do have a proclamation this evening, and I'd like to invite Anna Ogall up. And if you want to come on up, I'm gonna read the proclamation, and then we'll do a picture, I'll have you say a few words, if that's okay? So, the proclamation says, whereas cervical cancer is a disease that strikes over thirteen thousand American women each year, And whereas cervical cancer most often affects women in the prime of their life, and whereas regular cervical screening cancer screening tests are effective in detecting the disease early when it can be effectively treated. And whereas cervical cancer disproportionately impacts vulnerable communities lacking access to health care and proven life saving tools.

And whereas cervical cancer vaccines are available and together with screening tests provide a formidable and effective means of preventing this disease. Whereas increasing awareness among patients and health care providers alike regarding the best use of these prevention tools is a key component in safeguarding women's health. Now therefore I, Dana Ralph, mayor of Kent, do hereby proclaim January to be cervical health awareness month in Kent, Washington, and call upon our residents to encourage and support women in taking charge of their health. I want to say thank you very much to Anna for bringing this proclamation forward and being here tonight. I'm gonna come down and we'll present it and have you say a few words.

Mommy. He want his mom.

Yeah.

Made your point.

Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for this proclamation and for recognizing, cervical cancer awareness Month. Standing here tonight is deeply personal to me. Exactly five years ago today, on 01/06/2021, it was during the pandemic, I received a call telling me that I had cervical cancer. I still remember where I was standing, the sound of the voice of the doctor, and, you know, how suddenly, like, my life divided into, like, before and after.

Mhmm. Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable disease like cancers we have. And yet too many people are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year. That is often because they don't have access to information, screening, or timely follow-up, or maybe just because they just didn't put their their health first while taking care of others. So I just wanna share a simple message with you today. Early detection and prevention saves lives. Thank you so much. You do.

Anna, I wanna say thank you for reaching out. Thank you for your bravery and willingness to share that message. I truly believe that that message will save someone's life. And for that, I am very, very grateful. So, thank you.

All right. Always tough segues. We are going to turn now to community events. Council President.

Thank you Madam Mayor. We have events happening, always happening at ShowWear Centers. If you have not been there, you can always check out their website, assessorshowwearcenter.com to get tickets. This weekend, we have on 01/09/2010, there's Gut Check Wrestling Tournaments happening. On January 19 is King Showcase Basketball Tournament.

And on January 30 is the Harlem Globetrotters, oh my gosh, I cannot say it today. Trotters one hundred year tour. And nothing says Valentine's Day than taking your spouse to WWE event and it's happened, it's WWE presents NXT Live. And the tickets go on sale, actually they're on sale right now. I'm reading December 17. So that should be very fun if you want to spend your night with your date and assess the showers center watching some WWE. And that is all the events I have. Madame Mayor, back to you.

Right. Thank you. Think it sounds I very romantic and a perfect way to spend Valentine's Day. Yep. And supporting Showers Center, so I'm a fan. Alright. My helper here, the one that's willing to say things to my husband that maybe I'm not. Maybe we There can plan a

you go. All right, we'll do. Own it.

Alright. We are gonna move on. The next item on our agenda is reports. So this council, I have to say, I could not be more proud of the level of engagement and involvement across the community. So not only at these meetings that happen the first and third Tuesdays of each month, but our council members represent the community and are involved in in very important conversations across the region, across the state on a regular basis.

This is an opportunity to hear from all of them about the work that they're doing. I am going to kick it off with one more thank you to the community for putting your trust in me to continue on as mayor of the city that I love so much. I am I am being ungrateful for the trust and want to say very publicly I am committed to doing the very best for the city every single day and committed to showing up and continuing to support. So, thank you for that. I'm gonna lead off with just some committee assignments that I have for the coming year.

Things, as you can imagine, over the holidays, there was a break. Transportation Policy Board at Puget Sound Regional Council I will continue as chair of that. I am also the city's representative on the executive committee at Puget Sound Regional Council and was re elected to the Sound Cities Association Board. Before I turn it over to our Chief Administrative Officer, I also would like to take a moment to say thank you to every single one of our city employees. Since we met last, there was a pretty significant weather event that happened here in our city and across across multiple counties.

All of our City of Kent employees showed up in a way that is truly, truly exceptional. We have a saying. We talk about being one Kent. And really what that means is how do we show up not considering the boundaries of individual departments or even job assignments, but how do we show up to take care of the city that that we all work for? And through this flood event, there may have been a question up until what does that actually mean?

I can tell you that what happened over the last couple of weeks in December truly was the spirit of everything that One Kent embodies. We had employees from every department stepping in, whether it be working at the emergency operations center, doing levee walks, pumping pumping the freeway off, filling in and and rebuilding the levee in Tukwila. It does not matter whether it's finance or HR, making sure that all the time got accounted for. Public works, parks, economic development working on on the restoration efforts. IT making sure that everybody could communicate, our partners at the Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority.

This this group of people came together in a way that I don't think we can ever fully describe to the residents of this community. And I just wanna say how grateful I am for all the work that was done, and just really the way that people showed up. It was truly exceptional. Awesome. So, yeah, it is, I think it is applause worthy. I All of those employees had a choice whether they were gonna work sixteen, eighteen hours a day, and they all raised their hand and said yes. So, I'm just super grateful. With that, I'm going to turn it over to our Chief Administrative Officer.

Thanks, Madam Mayor. I was going to speak on the same issue, so I'll keep mine very brief. I would note that yes, we had every single department engaged in this process. And what is super important that we can't forget is city operations remain normal the whole time. I mean we had people here holding down the fort doing what they do every day also.

So this was a learning experience but we stood up and we took care of it. And I can tell you that I think council members you probably read my updates that I was always putting out. The emergencies were handled because of Kent. Even though they weren't even in the city of Kent, some of them. We handled I don't know what that is out there.

We because of Kent employees, we were able to get the 167 Freeway open way earlier than it would have opened. So there are a lot of things that we did cross departmentally, but also cross jurisdictionally to help our neighbors. And I couldn't be more proud of that. But also, we kept the city going. We had employees working a immense number of hours during this time.

Saturday nights at midnight, two in the morning, three in the morning, twenty four hours we were going on this for many, many days. Special thanks to the Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority to help us stand up the the emergency operations center and help us guide us through the the early parts of this process. And and your city came through and we did an excellent job. So we anticipate giving you a full debrief on kind of what happened and how we handled the emergency. We're shooting for January 20.

This is an all hands on deck presentation. So I'm not a 100% sure it's gonna happen that day, but we'll give you a lot of the details then. But thanks for your support during that time. So that's all I have.

One of the things that I will tell you that I have heard from multiple employees, I wanna recognize both our public works crews and our police department. But the number of our public works employees that said a highlight of their career was having a police escort to repair the levy. I I heard that over and over again. So thank you to the chief and the department and thank you to our public works crews and that is another one of those examples of those two departments figuring out that there was a need and filling it. Again, really, really grateful. Alright. Council President.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. As we've heard from our CAO, Kent is always a leader and we look forward to always working regionally, not just serving Kent communities. So I'm proud to say that I am serving on Association of Washington City's nominating committee again. And I'll also be serving continue serving as the Chair for PJ Sound Clean Air Agency Advisory Council. And I will also continue serving on PJSON Regional Council's Growth Management Policy Board.

And I've been newly appointed to King County Board Health and also continue serving on King County Domestic Violence Initiative Regional Task Force. So looking forward to serving our community there and raising Kent's voice being at the table. With that, I'm going to go ahead and get started and recognize council member. I'm going start with council member Schocher on that side.

Yes, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be here and be on the city council. I look forward to the opportunity of being on a committee when that opportunity opens up. So thank you.

Thank you council member. Council member Schell.

Thank you madam president. I just wanna echo what Pat and madam mayor mentioned about staff. I checked in with a few people and they said that it was definitely a learning experience. They all said they were learning so much. And I just wanna say there was an elected officials meeting, like, on Christmas Eve or the day before Christmas Eve, and we had two at least two staff members there, and they were not only there, but they were asking the important questions, and they were engaged.

And, so I just wanna thank all of the staff for I know they were long days doing things that you never thought you were gonna do in your career, but there you were. So thank you. I thankfully am still serving on the Human Services Commission as the council liaison. Thank you, council president for that, trusting me with that. The Human Services Commission is gearing up for the upcoming grant cycle and the Human Services staff is holding some technical workshops for organizations that are interested in applying for grants and I believe that that is upcoming in February.

There is more information in the CAO report in the agenda packet. Also, I am still continuing to serve on Regional Law Safety and Justice Committee. Because of the changes at the county, our meetings are going to be on hold for a few months because the staff have been laid off. At our last meeting though, I did mention that we are going to be talking about House Bill twenty fifteen, which is the funding for police departments. It's still kind of a, we're just waiting.

One thing that we did learn is that I guess there was a survey that went out to cities and police departments asking like what kind of grants you would ask for and how much you would ask for, and they claimed that there is enough money for all of those grants that were mentioned in the survey. So we'll see, more to come. That concludes my report.

Thank you Councilmember. Councilmember Malarmer.

Thank you Council President. As you mentioned, I continue to serve as the subject matter

chair for economic and community development. I also will be starting service on the King County Growth Management Planning Council. I'm still awaiting a calendar to know when those meetings start, but I'll

be bringing that information back when they do.

Thank you. Thank you. Council member Boyce.

Thank you, madam president. I will continue to be the council rep for SEA PIC with the public issue committee and also be the SME for the chair for public safety and also a representative council for lodging tax as well too. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Boyd.

Yes. I also like to add or to add on to what Pat and the mayor stated that the city of Kent, we weathered the storm, rain, and water and and we and we made it through. And and talking to the chief, I'm glad to hear that nobody got hurt. We even though we had people dare to try to cross avenues and streets that they didn't make it, nobody got hurt. I'm proud to say to them, you guys did a great great job, chief, Jeff.

And also, I would like to state that and this is not on a committee that I sit on, but last year, we passed a resolution down in the city of Olympia. The resolution was number seven five five. And with the help of Gwen Hawthorne and Claudia Kaufman, we passed this ordinance stating that the house bill h j m, house joint memorial 4,000, this bill will be re renaming portions of the Benson Benson Highway that starts on Benson Highway beginning at the North Benson and Petraviski extending south through the city of Kent. This portion of the highway will be called the Martin Luther King Highway. And I'm so glad that the City Of Kent and members of Kent chose to sign and ask for this to be done.

I mean, being out of Kent is the fifth most diverse city in the state. Also, and I know my counterpart will will speak about this, is I sit on the regional fire authority governor's board. And our last meeting, we talked about our response service and one of the things that response service care teams is doing right now, initiating a pilot program that will start interacting with individuals on a twenty four hour basis. It used to be from eight to five and now we're going do a pilot program that's going to be for twenty four hours. We don't know how long this program is going to last, but it's a good thing that we have this, have this program in action because, you know, as you know, people don't choose the time in which they have mental illness problems or they overdose.

So, I'm glad this program is in effect. Also, over the past last year, I was nominated to sit on the aging and disability board. This is something that would be added to some of my other committees and such as I sit on the local hazardous and waste management program board and also like I mentioned earlier, the re RFA, the Regional Fire Authority Governors Board and everything else that I would like to say would be in my weekly report. Thank you very much.

Thank you council member. Council member Chartner.

Thank you madam president. I am currently chair of the Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority Governance Board. We will hold our first meeting of the year on Wednesday, January 21. I am also going to be continuing on the Regional Transit Committee, and we will meet on the twenty first as well. I am subject matter chair for public works. Information on our meeting from earlier this evening will be in the newsletter. And then lastly, I'd just like to take a moment to thank my family and friends for their support in my reelection. My husband couldn't be here tonight because he's at the airport getting ready to fly home, but he was watching on TV. So hi Brett, thank you. That is all I have.

Thank you council member. And with that concludes our report Madam Mayor.

Alright thank you we are going to move on in the agenda item number six is a public hearing we do not have one this evening item number seven is public comment Kim do we have anyone signed up to speak?

We do not.

Alright that brings us down to item eight which is the consent calendar Consent calendar is a compilation of items that the city council has received presentations on, discussed, and addressed at the committee of the whole meeting. Things have passed out of committee of the whole without controversy. We have a very short consent calendar this evening, given that we didn't have that second meeting in December. So, there are two items, consent calendar A and B. Is there a motion to approve?

So move. Second.

A motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries seven zero. Item number nine is other business and we do not have any this evening. Item 10 is bids. We've got one bid for council consideration, and it's the 2026 new guardrail installation. Joining us this evening is our public works director, Chad Beeran.

Good evening, mayor. Thanks, and council. Hello. My apologies to begin with. The noise outside is a Vactor truck.

They're working all the things we talked about all night.

Not ours, but working with working with one of the private utilities.

And

note to self, don't let them go on council night. If he gets unruly ill, I'll run out there and ask him to stop. Sounds like it's quieting down for now. So very quickly, guardrail installation. We've had a number of locations in town that had some requests for guardrail, and we done some analysis and determined that these are three areas where we should add guardrail.

One is at the end of two fortieth heading down into along 1 48th. The canyon there that's on the East side of town, this is a good candidate. This is a fairly wooded area and we've had some crashes there, so I want to add guardrail on there. Also at East Smith And Summit, this is in the Mill Creek neighborhood just off of Canyon Drive. That's Canyon to the lower left of the picture.

This is a fairly sharp curve up in the neighborhood there. We've had a couple of especially when slick, a couple of cars have run off there. You'll notice the apartment complex just down below it. So another location we think is a good candidate for guardrail. And then lastly, at 228th And 94th, this is just up along the rim of the East Hill. 93rd, 94th, 96th is kind of a collector, neighborhood collector that runs along there. And this is an area of this corner is right above very steep hill. There are trees there to catch you, but we'd rather have a guardrail. So we did get five bids. The engineers estimate was 154,000.

Low bid was from 101,000 Columbia River contractors. We've checked on their credentials. They're out of Oregon, but we hear good things about them. So we do recommend award.

Okay, counsel. Any questions for Chad? Seeing none, a motion would be in order.

I move to award the twenty twenty six new guardrail installation project to Columbia River Contractors Incorporated in the amount of $101,821 and authorize the mayor to sign all necessary documents subject to final terms and conditions acceptable to the public works director and city attorney.

I second.

Got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. We are now moving on to item number 11, which is a closed session regarding collective bargaining as per RCW 4,231.404 a. There will not be action following this executive session. We are looking at about ten minutes, so we will reconvene the meeting at 07:55.

And with that, if everyone not part of the closed session could please clear council chambers, we are grateful. And again, no action is expected after this closed session. Alright. Welcome back. Council has completed their closed session for this evening.

As stated earlier, we do not have any action following closed session regarding collective bargaining. So with that, we are at the end of our very first council meeting for 2026. I think it was successful and a lot of celebration and looking forward to all of the work that will be accomplished here. So with that, happy new year to everyone and we are adjourned.