City Council - Regular Meeting

Meeting of the King County Council. I'm Sarah Perry, chair of the council, and I'm joined by chairs Jorge Barone and Reagan Dunn online and our council colleagues today and this meeting is called to order. Before we begin, please join me in acknowledging that we are on the traditional lands of the Puget Salish peoples past and present. We thank these caretakers of this land who've lived here and continue to live here since time immemorial, bringing their cultural ways of life and greatly enriching our communities. With that, Clerk Hay, would you please call the roll?

Thank you, Chair Perry. Council Member Balducci? Here. Council Member Barron?

Here.

Council member Dembowski. Here. Council member Dunn.

Here.

Council member Fain. Here. Council member Lewis. Here. Council member Mosqueda. Here. Council member Von Reichbauer. Chair Perry. Here. You have a quorum.

Thank you. Next, please join us in the pledge of allegiance led by vice chair Reagan Dunn.

Well, chair Perry, just imagine that I was there, and I would ask that all everyone, if you can, please stand and join me in pledging allegiance to our nation's flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag.

That's one warning, Alex. Thank you. Vice chair Barone, may I please have a motion to approve the minutes of the 04/21/2026 council meeting?

So moved.

Thank you. Motion is before us. All those in favor, aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Minutes are approved. Clerk Hay, are there any additions to the council agenda?

I have one, Chair Perry. It is proposed motion twenty twenty six dash zero one zero seven. A motion relating to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority providing notice of King County's intent to terminate participation in the authority under the amended and restated interlocal agreement. This is being added to the agenda for introduction and referral to committee of the whole.

Thank you. Next, we'll turn to our special items, the first of which is a proclamation recognizing April as sexual assault awareness month and prevention month in King County led by council members Balducci and Barron. I'd ask that you step on down and begin when you're ready. And I also want to let folks know in the chambers that we have a policy of sitting when you're in chambers. We don't have folks standing. And so when it comes time for public comments, we'll ask folks to rotate in and out so that we do have everybody seated during the time of public comment, then folks can go out and come back in. So just letting you know. Go ahead, Council Members Balducci and Barone, whenever you're ready.

Thank you so much Chair Perry, and welcome to everyone who's here with us today. Here at the King County Council, we observe sexual assault awareness and prevention month each year. Raising awareness of what sexual assault is, how to prevent it, and the supports and services that are available to survivors. It is unfortunate that this continues to be a necessity year after year because people continue to perpetuate sexual assault too often without repercussions. And we continue to see people who have been sexually assaulted abandoned, shamed, and blamed.

Too many survivors are silenced by threats and intimidation, by fear of not being believed, by fear of loss of financial and housing stability. These fears spring from the same societal attitudes that allow sexual assault to keep occurring. It does sometimes feel like we're backsliding, like our country is leaning into the ideals and behaviors that tribute to sexual assault. This may embolden people who may commit assaults and make survivors feel increasingly unsafe to speak up for themselves and feel less likely that they would receive justice if they do speak up. I've had the privilege over the last couple of years of attending the county's Crime Survivors Summit put together by survivors, advocacy organizations, and public agencies to discuss how we can better provide survivors with the services they need to heal and reform our justice system so that they can receive real justice.

The only real way to honor the survivors who share their stories and the survivors who advocate or who for any reason are not able to share their stories is by taking real action. So, this month is also a reminder and a call to, in coming budget season, commit real resources toward the programs that prevent sexual assault and provide access to the services that give survivors the support they need. Now I'd like to invite council member Barron to say a few words and then we'll read the proclamation and hear from our guests. Welcome.

Sorry. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Thank you so much, council member Balducci. Colleagues, I'm honored to join, council member Balducci in presenting this proclamation recognizing the month of April as sexual assault awareness and prevention month. And just to echo, some of the comments that council member Balducci made, you know, undeniably we've made progress in this area. And while I'm thankful that we're taking steps in the right direction and survivors are being heard, there is still much much more work to be done.

The experiences of sexual assault, harassment, and abuse unfortunately continue to impact many in our community today. So I think we are here today to stand in solidarity with all survivors, and I want them to know that, your voice matters and that your stories help give courage for others to speak out. So thank you, and I'm honored to, that we're gonna have people who are doing the work day in and day out in the community and look forward to us reading the

proclamation. Alright.

Whereas sexual assault is pervasive, Every sixty eight seconds someone is sexually assaulted in The United States and.

Whereas sexual violence impacts everyone, anyone can be a victim of sexual violence and people who commit sexual abuse, assault, and harassment exist in all of our communities. This underscores why it's important for all of us to care about sexual violence and take steps to promote the safety and well-being of others and

Whereas black, indigenous, and other people of color, people living in poverty, LGBTQ plus people, elders, people with disability, and others who have been historically oppressed are disproportionately affected by sexual violence in significant and complex ways, and

Whereas sexual assault is among the most underreported crimes for many reasons, but survivors who are already most marginalized face additional barriers to reporting such as language, immigration status, or disability and

Whereas ending sexual violence requires us to address racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression that contribute to the perpetration, yeah, I said that right, of sexual assault and.

Whereas sexual violence exists on a continuum of behavior that includes racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, ableist, or other hate speech, and it ranges from rape jokes to verbal harassment to physical assaults and.

Whereas survivors of sexual assault may never forget their victimization, but they can heal with support from family, friends, their communities, sexual assault programs across King County and Washington State offer free and confidential support, advocacy, information, and resources to survivors and

Whereas by working together as a community, we can all alleviate the trauma of sexual violence by ensuring supportive resources are available to all survivors while standing up to and actively disrupting harmful attitudes and behavior that contribute to sexual violence. Now

therefore, we, the Metropolitan King County Council, proclaim the month of April 2026 as Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month in King County and with survivors join advocates and communities throughout the county in taking action to prevent sexual violence and commit to a safer future for all children, young people, adults, families in our community dated April 2026 and signed by all members of the King County Council. And we do have a couple of very special guests that I would like to invite to say a few words and accept the proclamation.

Hi there. Good afternoon council members. My name is Ameren Theotaurus and I'm the co executive director of the Coalition Ending Gender Based Violence. We are proud to join you and our partners in this work, and hello everyone here, in acknowledging April is sexual assault awareness month. In the book Truth and Repair, renowned trauma expert Judith Herman states, survivors want the truth to be recognized and the crime to be denounced by those in their communities who matter to them.

But this means that survivors must actually matter to their wider communities. Our work as a coalition is to care for, connect with and mobilize over 35 local programs who are all working to build communities that value consent, safety and equitable relationships and where survivors' experiences matter. We are all bearing witness to survivors powerfully disclosing abuse and exposing decades of cover ups. We believe that strong survivor programs and working in coalition can shift the conditions that allow abuses of power to flourish and why local leadership from our elected officials is so critical. The times in which we live demand a strong show of support in standing resolutely against sexual assault.

Thank you to council member Balducci and council member Varon and the entire King County Council for standing with us and for making this issue a priority here today. We look forward to the work ahead and there is much work to do to fully realize communities of consent, safety, and equity. Thank you so much for allowing me to speak today.

Good afternoon. My name is Laurel Redden. I'm the director of communications and policy at the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center. Council members Balducci, Baron, Chair Perry, all members of this council, thank you. This is a very special sexual assault awareness and prevention month at CaseArc.

We are celebrating our fiftieth year as a nonprofit serving all of King County. And over time, the county has been a strong partner in our work. Those here today and your predecessors have decided that it's important to support survivors, respond to schools and community groups who aren't sure what to do after receiving reports of sexual abuse, and to educate the community about sexual assault. Thank you for your leadership and your partnership. I wanna take this opportunity to let survivors of sexual abuse and their families know two things.

Number one, you are not alone. There are resources available to you. CaseArc has resources including a twenty four hour resource line at 1888998423. We also offer services like advocacy, legal advocacy, trauma focused therapy, family support, and etc. Number two, I want to let you know it is never too late to get help.

Whether abuse happened recently or long ago, all these services and resources are available to you. They're all confidential. And thanks in part to our King County leaders, cost is never a barrier to getting that help. We know this is a difficult topic for people to talk about and to think about, and yet we must. A community visibly in solidarity with survivors is strongly correlated to healing and recovery, and that is what Amaranthia was referring to with research by a trauma therapist and researcher Judith Herman.

Survivors need to see that sexual assault is something that we are all bringing up and talking about. It shows that we're equipped as a community to support them, and it shows them that there's hope and there's help for them. So thank you for fostering this continued conversation and bringing to light, sexual assault and giving hope to survivors every time that you do.

And,

colleagues, if you'd like to come down and, take a photo with us.

Let's please join council members Balducci and Barone at the podium.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much for this important recognition. Turning next to a recognition of the fifty first anniversary of the Kamay Rouge genocide led by council members Mosqueda and Barron. Council members, please go ahead whenever you're ready. And we'll give a minute to to clear the space here.

Okay.

Wonderful. Well, as our friends join us, I wanna say thank you to my colleagues. We're very lucky today we have six speakers to accept this recognition. So the in the interest of time, madam chair, we're going to leave the bulk of the time, to hear from our friends from the Khmer community. I'll keep it very brief. It is truly an honor. This is I believe

May I interrupt for just a moment? Can our can the folks let the folks who are here for the Kamae recognition step forward, please?

It's okay. You're all welcome. Thank you so much. And again, chair Perry, it's my honor to help sponsor this recognition in partnership with council member Barron. Last year, we brought it forward, I think this is the chance that we've had now four years in a row to be part of the sponsoring party bringing forward this recognition of the vibrant Khmer community across King County.

Today, we're gonna hear from Khmer leaders, including Sean Ross from the Cambodian American Community Council of Washington, Jenny Up from the Cambodian American Advocacy for p for peace, Semi, Mel who is, you're gonna have to help me with Speen Rajana.

Speen Rajana.

Okay. And Soste Kaden So from Khmer Student Association, Sina Sam from Khmer Anti Deportation and Advocacy Group, and Tida Cham from Khmer community of Seattle and King County. Again, it's my honor to be able to bring forward this recognition in partnership with council member Barron. So before we turn it to our community partners for the recognition of the fifty first anniversary of the Khmer Rouge genocide and our call for action to never forget and always be working towards not only observe observation of this day and this time period, but to also recognize the role that King County Council and our community has to play in supporting the Khmer Americans throughout King County in rebuilding lives, preserving culture and identity, and advocating for policies that protect immigrants and refugees. I'd like to turn it to my colleague, councilmember Jorge Barron, has been leading in this area.

Thank you very much Council Member Mosqueda. I'll be very quick and just say that I'm honored to join this, proclamation and, grateful for all the community members who came here today. Look forward to hearing their remarks, so I'll just turn it over to them.

Thank you.

Thank you again council chair, vice chair, and council member Mosqueda for helping with this and the full council. My name is Sumit Mel. I'm 1.5 generation Khmer American. My family were refugees here in the county. We landed here in 1985.

I grew up with no concept of a full family because of this genocide, and so many of our communities experienced the same thing. This was devastated between the 1975 to 1979. So I know that today we wanna remember the lives that are lost during the genocide and also honor the resiliency of the Khmer communities abroad here in the diaspora and back at home country. I just wanna say that this war is not that genocide was not isolated. We were pulled into this particular war during the Nixon administration and where hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs were targeted on Cambodian soil.

That was a secret bombing that killed a lot of villagers and displaced millions of people. And that destruction helped to create the conditions for the Khmer Rouge to take power. And I just wanted to make sure that we all know that it is not isolated at all. So for many of us, the history still lives in our families and the traumas, survivors carry and in the journeys that brought refugees here to the county and to Washington State to seek safety and healing. So today we want to thank the county council at Whole for helping to recognize our community and standing with our truth, remembrance, healing. Thank you so much.

First, I would like to say thank you all for your time and for allowing us a safe space to do the proclamation. My name is Charm Sok, and I'm here representing CAP, which stands for Cambodian American Advocating Peace. Over one point seven million lives were taken, and to this day, we still carry the pain and the trauma. I am here today because my mom and dad survived, but survival came with a cause. Our elders still suffer from depression, anxiety, trauma, and PTSD.

I'm sure that it's very triggering for them to to witness the chaos happening in the world today with ICE tearing families apart. How can any real healing start when history keeps repeating itself? It's time to break the cycle. In fact, it's long overdue. This is why the work that I do with CAP is so significant to me.

Our mission is to promote healing and empowerment for survivors and their families while addressing the underlying factors that contribute to gender based violence, including poverty, systemic oppression, and intergenerational trauma. Now as we wrap up our Cambodian New Year celebration for this year, I want to say thank you for the official recognition to honor survivors and remembering the nearly two million lives lost. I'm Charm Sok, and standing next to me is my teammate, my sister, and another founding mother of Cambodian American advocating peace, Mary Meng. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, and thank you to the council members for giving us an opportunity to speak today and for recognizing the anniversary of the Klamai genocide. My name is Solstai, and I stand here as a proud Klamai American and the child of immigrants. Many Klaai families lost generations of scholars, teachers, and professionals. And because of this, education access has not always been equitable for Klaai students, and many of us are still navigating systems our families were never given the chance to experience. This is why representation and resources matter.

Expanding Khmer language and cultural studies is essential not just for preserving our history, but for empowering future generations to understand their identity and succeed academically. When students see themselves reflected in education, it creates a sense of belonging that is critical for success, and the resilience of my parents and elders is the reason why I'm here today. Their sacrifices are the foundation of my opportunities, and it is my responsibility to continue uplifting our community. And today, I ask that we not only remember the past, but also invest in the future by supporting educational access, cultural preservation, and opportunities for Khmer youth. Thank you.

Hi. Thank you so much council members, particularly council member Mosquito for leadership and supporting our community. My name is Sima Sam. I am the co founder and board member of the Khmer Anti Deportation Advocacy Group. And our organization has been most active since 2018 in advocating for and defending our communities.

Many of every single Cambodian here is if there's anyone else who wants to stand up who's impacted, every single Cambodian that you may know, have met is impacted by the war and conflict that happened in the American wars in Southeast Asia. And for those who are lucky enough to be, resettled here in Seattle, which is the third largest population of Southeast Asians nationally outside of Cambodia. Our community is resettled as the largest refugees in US history. And for Southeast Asians with Vietnamese, Hmong Lao, Mian Khmu, Montagard communities who also came from Laos and Vietnam during that time, we make up the largest refugee community in US history to be resettled in Nass, the largest community. We face so much in rebuilding, and every single Cambodian Khmer person who is here today is not only impacted, but works so hard to heal from this tragedy.

And two, almost 2,000,000 people, if you think about population wise, King County, we have a population of, if anybody knows it, it's 2,300,000. Am I correct? And so 2,300,000 in all of King County in four years in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. All of us would have perished during that time. That's how many people we're talking about when we're talking about genocide.

And so I stand here so proudly with our community because not only do we have Susannei who is a college student running the president of our my student association has been active since the '80s in our community and throwing a New Year's celebration next weekend, actually. It's a time of celebration for us. And during the nineteen seventies when, the genocide broke out, it was Cambodian New Year. And so we also are here to reclaim celebration, history, our heritage, and also say that we are one of the largest refugee groups to stand with anti deportation, gendered violence, anti racism work, reproductive justice. We've followed the movements.

A lot of our scholars are connecting with our young folks and educating out. Sivone Lamb, who is co director of the cage. She's in Tacoma. We're working with the Northwest Detention Center. And so when we talk about progress, our community is at the forefront of coming back from total erasure. And so today, having you here supporting us and celebrating with us and recognizing that we're here and we are going to continue to thrive and rise. We really appreciate the recognition and the visibility.

Good afternoon, council member, and good afternoon to you all. And thank you so much for allowing us to be here. Thank you, council member Mosquera and council Barone for allowing us. We've been doing this for four years now, and it's always what a drag. I mean, it's something that we should we, you know, have it, you know, every year, but, you know, we'll continue to do this.

So I wanted to open with thank you thanking you all for having us. And as we honored our fifty first anniversary for this awful, awful day, the tragedy that took nearly two millions of my family and community members, it left a deep wounds that continue throughout the generations. For our Khmer Americans, this remembrance is not just only about remember and looking in the back, looking in the past, but it's also about protecting our community. As you heard today, many of our family will come here to seek a new life, a better life. But with the current immigration policies and the threats from the current administrations, we see a lot of this rollback, these protections, and it's creating fears to our communities that call this place home.

And Seattle has been home in a century for our communities for nearly five saint five decades. I was gonna say century, but I wish. At this moment, we need not just commitment. We need stronger commitment from you all to protect our elders, our family, our youth who are here. This is their homes.

And to not reopen those wounds of war and those hurts that we felt fifty years ago. So as we honor those last one, we also stand with the survivor, with the descendants of the survivor who are still healing, who are fighting to make a new life here in this country. So thank you for recognizing this day for our community. And not only do we should be able remember the past, but also remember in protecting them, remembering our humanity and injustice in us all. So thank you.

Honorable council members, thank you for having us here. My name is Tita Chelm. I'm with the Khmer community of Seattle, King County. So I was born into war just before the Khmer Rouge genocide. I was only five when Anka, which is under the Khmer Rouge regime, executed my father and to his brother.

Soon after, his sister and her husband were executed along with their two childrens. My 10 year old brother was taken for forced labor and we later learned that he was buried alive after falling ill. At age seven, my family attempted to flee to Thailand only to face an a new nightmare Along with 10,000 others refugees, we were forced by Thai soldiers down the steep Dongrek Mountains in Privyih Province infested with landmines. My mom shared with us that we had to pave the dead bodies to navigate the land fields. At the time, my sibling and I were starving and suffering from chickenpox.

My mom didn't think we would make it. I eventually reached The US in 1983 after two years in a refuge camp. As we've heard from my peers, the root of our displacement started with The US secret bombing of Cambodia that triggered our country into genocide, where nearly 90% of our educators, professionals, and artists' master were tortured and killed. This left community survivor, mainly farmers, with little to no formal education. Thus, not all refugees are created equal.

When we settled in The US, we struggled and continued to struggle with system navigation. We were labeled problem refugees. We were placed in under resourced neighborhoods, burdened by under undiagnosed PTSD and broken courage. Navigating a system that saw our trauma as a deficit rather than a wound in need of healing. Because of our historical trauma, recurrent trauma and intergenerational trauma, our community needs a dedicated space to heal, bridge intergenerational gap, and cultivate economic growth for sustainability.

We are proud to announce that we are in the permitting phase to build the first ever Khmer community and cultural center in White Center neighborhood. We are halfway with our funding goal and would welcome partnership from governments, philanthropy, and community to bring the Khmer community and cultural center to life. Thank you so much for having

collectively right these historic wrongs. So I appreciate the the message here today. We are going to read the proclamation, and then we'll take a picture with everybody and share with our group as well. Up there sounds great. Okay. We'll start. Whereas Cambodia is one of the original civilizations in Southeast Asia dating back nearly four thousand years. And?

Whereas between 1969 and 1973, The United States dropped 540,000 tons of bombs into Cambodia, destabilizing the country's already fragile government and helping fuel the rise of the Khmer Rouge. And during the Cambodian genocide from April 1975 to January 1979, approximately 2,000,000 people lost their lives at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and

Whereas today, over half of the members of the Cambodian population experience varying degrees of post traumatic stress disorder or other forms of mental health issues brought on by the Cambodian genocide and

Whereas King County is home to over 22,000 individuals of Khmer descent and

Whereas this year marks the fifty first anniversary of our community coming together to remember the atrocities that occurred to the Khmer community and under the Khmer Rouge regime and.

Whereas between January 2025, the current federal administration deported more Southeast Asian American refugees in a single fiscal year than any prior administration as well as placing a pause on immigration applications for 75 countries including Cambodia. Hence, The current US immigration policies have increased the vulnerability of Khmer Americans to deportation through targeted ICE rates, expedited removal proceedings, and rollback of protections for long standing US residents, leading to renewed trauma and instability in Kamay American communities. Ann?

Whereas King County has served as a welcoming and safe home for Kamay refugees and immigrants for over five decades with local organizations such as the ones that we heard from today, schools and community centers playing a vital role in supporting Khmer Americans in rebuilding their lives, preserving cultural identity, and advocating for policies that protect immigrant and refugee communities now. Therefore, we, the Metropolitan King County Council, recognize 04/14/2026 as the fifty first anniversary of the Khmer Rouge genocide and encourage the county residents to join in this special observance day. Thank you, hon. Thank you.

Would you like to take a

picture up there? Would you like to join

us up on the dais for a picture given the large number of folks here with us today? Thank you council members Mosqueda and Brion for that wonderful recognition and happy new year to all of our wonderful guests here today. We'll now turn to the reading of items into the record and hearing of public comments. Clerk Hay, would you please read the items into the record?

Thank you. Item six are the two special items, proclamation of April 2026 as sexual assault awareness and prevention month in King County and recognition of the fifty first anniversary of the Khamai Rouge genocide. Thank

you. The council will now take public comment on those ordinances, motions, proclamations, and recognitions on today's agenda for action along with comments on any topics directly related county business. Listening to the public and taking into consideration the public's thoughts is an important part of our process and one that enhances our deliberations. In order to allow everyone equal time to provide comment, I'd like to set the following ground rules. And before I do it, I'd also like to remind folks that we need everyone to be seated. And so if folks are signed up for comment, if you could please wait outside till your name is called, then we will be able to continue.

We

wanna hear from everyone and everyone will have a chance. So thank you very much for making sure that we have folks in any open seat that we have.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. In order to allow, as I said, everyone equal time to provide common, I'd like to set the following ground rules, and I'd like to know who how many have signed up in person and how many are here online. In person? Okay. We will have one minute.

We'll provide one minute to speak, and apologies to those who are looking for two, but it'll be one minute to allow everyone time to talk. So please remain seated until your time for public comment and do not make audible noise during the meeting out of respect for the speakers. This is also a reminder that public comment may not be used for the purpose election of any person to any office or for the promotion of or opposition to any ballot proposition. In addition, per rule 10, disruptive behavior can or may lead to commenter being asked to leave the meeting. Disruptive behavior includes the following among other considerations.

Standing rather than remaining seated except when entering or leaving the chambers or when providing comment at the podium after being called on to speak. Speaking from the audience without being recognized to provide comment. Making audible noises in the audience beyond speaking, holding signs that obstruct the free passage or view of others attending the meeting, no use of bullhorns or noisemakers, no signs at the podium or visible behind anyone speaking at the podium out of respect for their testimony. For online comment, press 9 on the phone or click the raise hand icon on the Zoom toolbar located at the bottom of the screen to notify the clerk. The clerk will call the names or the last three digits of the phone numbers in order and will then unmute each line at the end of each comment.

The clerk will lower hands. With that, clerk Foss, please begin calling the names here in person followed by those hands raised online for public comment. Thank you. Yes. Please do call three names so that they folks can be ready to step up and we don't have that wait. Thank you. First

name on the list is Kevin Alzheimer, Yvette Dinesh, and Alex Zimmerman.

Hello, council. Let's start Good

afternoon, chair

and council members. My name is Kevin Alzheimer, publisher of kingcountyoversightfiles.substack.com. I'm speaking on proposed ordinance twenty-one zero one which would create an inspector general for fraud, waste and abuse. Oversight matters. But before King County creates a new watchdog, this council should address unresolved oversight failures already inside county government.

Records I obtained show the Overson Investigative Group twenty twenty five investigation was charged as an administrative cost to the Best Starts for Kids two point o levy, specifically under the Liberation and Healing from Systemic Racism strategy. The accounting records identify project number 114280, task number 12O1, award number 21893. Project Expenditure Organization 937301. Cost center 937301. Expense type type 531002 Professional Services. Means let's

What that means

Thank you. Thank you. Your time your time, mister Alzheimer. And

talk about that 13,000,000. Yeah. It's a crime.

The next name on the list is Yvette Dyneisch.

I'm telling you. I take the bus to come to weekly meetings, and the bus ride I'll take is a hot mess. So the amount of bus driving have to put up with the lights and I know they're under contract negotiation, so please get it settled sooner than later. I also wanna thank King County and council members for funding of the Seattle King County clinic. The one that just happened over four days as one of the volunteers. It was a heartwarming experience. And those that came were not necessarily unemployed. There are people who had jobs that didn't have our coverage. And lastly, thank you for the union members who showed up today to advocate for your your fellow employees. Thank you.

Thank you, miss Dinesh.

Next on the list is Alex Zimmerman, Danielle Wallace, and Tanya Coburn.

Alex Zimmerman. Mister Zimmerman, your sign belongs at the chair. You know that. No. No. No.

Chair. Chair. Okay. No problemo. No problemo. No. You see?

I'm a

good boy now. Why you charge time for me? My name Alex Zimmerman. I'm president of Stand Up America. I 15 time candidate for election. They Nazi get stop a fascist buster, seven time prosecute me, and I have seven thousand day of trespass. This house is Nazi pig treat people who have different opinion and support Trump. So I speak right now to you because you all slave. Why you accept one minute? You're supposed to be half two minute. You all quiet. It's a problem what is we have here. They treat these two and half million people like a Nazi mafia junta. It's exactly what's happened. Why you quiet like a fish?

You American or not? We were Trump. We were new American revolution. Stand up, slap, and happy cow. Look. This is Nazi pig.

Thank you, mister Zimmerman.

Up next is Danielle Wallace.

Good job, Alex.

Good afternoon, council members. Thank you for, having us here today. My name is Danielle Wallace and I'm a resident of Snoqualmie and I'm the president of the Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy. You will hear for quite a few of your neighbors today. We represent different concerns but a single conviction.

Industrial scale infrastructure cited without updated safeguards and without meaningful community input, undermines the stability of everyone who lives here. We will show you that the proposed Cascadia Ridge Best threatens community stability, including at Echo Glen Children's Center, where 95 incarcerated youth cannot self evacuate. We will show you what this proposal lacks the planning rigor required for major infrastructure. Washington's own siting standards for best remain unfinished. We will show you that it offers twelve to eighteen months out of out of state contract work, then the jobs are gone while the hazard remains. And we will show you that our community discovered this a 130 megawatt industrial facility was already in motion before we had a meaningful voice. That is not how decisions of this magnitude should be made. We support clean and green energy. We ask you to support us.

Thank you.

Up next is Tanya Coburn, Susan Virgo, and Nikki Bragg.

Hello, King County Council. My name is Tanya Coburn. I've lived Tanya,

would you like to move that microphone down a little bit? Thank you very much.

Thank you. I've lived in Snoqualmie Valley for twenty six years and have had the pleasure of teaching its children. Two proposed industrial battery energy storage sites in King County sit next to places where children learn and live. The proposed Cascadia Ridge site in Snoqualmie is adjacent to Fisher Creek Park and within evacuation range of multiple Snoqualmie Valley schools serving over 7,200 students. The proposed Kingfisher site in Covington sits directly adjacent to Matson Middle School, which serves over 700 children.

You heard about the hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen cyanide gases emitted by lithium ion batteries burning, and I want to focus on the opportunity cost of placing that burden on our children. In addition to the health impacts on children near BEST, permitting BEST near schools and home deprives us of our future neighborhoods. Thank you. I'm sorry about the change of time because so many are participating, we really appreciate. Thank you.

Susan Virgo.

Hi. I'm Sue Virgo. Thank you for letting us come and speak. I've lived in the Snoqualmie Valley for fifteen years. 30 acres of residential land in the urban growth area like Snoqualmie or Covington can support a 120 to 240 single family homes at typical suburban densities or 360 to 540 townhomes middle density, now required by Washington state law for those to go in.

According to the National Association of Home Builders and US Census Bureaus, each of these homes takes an average of ten point eight months to build in the Pacific Division. Putting a 30 acre utility scale battery energy system in urban growth areas steals Snoqualmie's chance to build those homes and deprives our area of years of continuous local union construction employment, Work that stays in our communities, trains apprentices and builds wealth for families who lives there. A utility scale battery energy sort system doesn't belong there. Thank you. Thank you.

Nikki Good afternoon. Sorry.

I'm sorry. Nikki Bragg, Melody Correa, and Jo Hannon.

Go right ahead. Thank you.

Good afternoon, King County Council. My name

is Nikki Bragg. I've lived

in Snoqualmie Valley for twenty three years now. Building neighborhoods like those across King County employs many building trades, carpenters and framers, cement masons and foundation workers, iron workers, operating engineers, laborers, electricians, plumbers and pipe fitters, HVAC mechanics, roofers, drywall finishers, painters, landscapers. Each trade runs apprenticeship programs. Each trade builds careers that stay in Washington. The National Association of Home Builders documents eight distinct construction stages per home, each requiring different skilled builders working in sequence over months.

Building a utility scale battery energy storage system on those same acres requires primarily civil and earthwick crews electrical contractors for grid interconnection, and structural crews for equipment pads. And I'm sorry, I can't finish, but

thank you for listening. Thank you. And anyone who would like can also submit their comments by email so that we have the opportunity to read them in full. Thank you.

Good afternoon, council members. Thank you for listening us explain the need for enhancements to ordinance one nine eight two four. My name is Melody Correa. I've lived in Snoqualmie Valley for eighteen years, and I volunteered for the Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy since it was formed. You have heard what 30 acres of urban growth area land should be doing, building homes for 1,000,000 families and employing union carpenters and electricians for a decade.

They are right. We are here because clean energy is too important to have derailed by hazardous site placement. Washington clean Washington's Clean Energy Transformation Act requires our utilities to fully decarbonize by 2045, and our grid needs energy storage to make that work. We support that goal. But our grid does not need to put energy storage in people's backyards. Puget Sound Energy's good neighbor guidance is to excite battery projects near existing generation infrastructure and substations, not in residential urban growth areas. We are all learning more about the grid and where we can store Washington's renewable energy until it needs to return

to the grid.

We can site best safely and continue to share our clean energy with our neighboring states.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Do we have three?

Council members, my name is Joe Hannan, and I've lived in Snoqualmie Valley for twenty four years. Before we can talk about where to safely put a battery storage facility, we need to understand how one big one is. Electricity's rate of flow is measured in watts. A thousand watts is a megawatt or a megawatt is a million. Enough power to power approximately 800 to a thousand average homes.

The Snoqualmie Falls plant that's been there for two a hundred twenty five years and is 270 feet underground generates 54 megawatts. The battery energy system proposed near our homes would discharge a 130 megawatts, more than twice the size of Snoqualmie Falls. And we've heard that it may actually exceed 400 megawatts, which is more than seven times the falls. A facility more than twice the size of Snoqualmie Falls does not belong in a neighborhood park or near a neighborhood park in middle school. It belongs in industrial facilities, not in an urban growth area. Thank you.

Next name on the list is Shelly Smith, Whitney Schrader, Kurt Schreiber.

Good afternoon. My name is Nicole Capri Simon, place of Shelley Smith. I've lived in Snoqualmie Valley for five years. My neighbor Joe explained megawatt power at a single moment. I'm going to explain megawatt hours, total energy stored. Megawatts are like your car's speed. Megawatt hours are like the distance you've traveled. One megawatt hour is one megawatt of power sustained for one hour. The average American home uses about 10,500 kilowatt hours, roughly 10.5 megawatt hours per year. The proposed Cascadia Ridge facility would store 520 megawatt hours, enough energy to power 43,000 homes for a full day.

A facility storing energy equivalent to an entire day's power for 43,000 homes contains enormous potential energy. That potential energy in a thermal runaway fire becomes an enormous release of heat and toxic gases. The EPA's own guidance says first responders should let such fires burn. A facility this size belongs near existing power generation infrastructure, not beside a park and elementary schools serving 7,200 children. Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Whitney Schrader, and I live in Snoqualmie Valley. I've learned more than I ever wanted to about transmission lines when winter storms knock them down. Transmission lines are at the interstate highways of energy. High voltage wires that carry power over long distances to distribution lines, which are the local roads connecting to our homes. Here is what great opponents of safe siting don't want you to focus on.

The existing transmission and distribution system already delivers approximately 95% of every megawatt hour generated to its destination. Losses average only 5%. That means Snoqualmie Falls electricity already reaches homes in California with 95% efficiency without a battery storage facility sited in anyone's backyard. Battery storage near neighborhoods does not meaningfully improve that 95% delivery rate. It adds industrial risk to residential areas without a corresponding efficiency benefit.

Thank you very much.

Whitney Schrader, Kurt Schreiber, Maggie Austin.

My name is Kurt Schreiber. My wife and I have lived in Snoqualmie Valley with our two kids for four years. Whitney explained transmission line, Norman explained switching stations between those high voltage interstate lines in our neighborhood's local roads, substations. A substation uses transformers to step voltage way up before electricity travels long distances and way back down before it enters your neighborhood. Battery storage facilities connect to the grid at or near substations because that is where the infrastructure to handle large flows of power already exists.

Here's the key fact. Substations are not inherently in neighborhoods by design. They are wherever grid engineers place them, near generation sources, long transmission quarters, or in industrial areas. PSC cites its own battery projects near existing generation infrastructure and substations, not in urban growth areas. The argument that best must go in an urban growth area to connect to the grid is not an engineering argument. It is strictly about costs. Developers profit from using existing substation infrastructure. That is their interest. That is not ours. Thank you.

Thank you. Maggie Austin,

James Hitala, Amber Spady.

Hi. My name is Maggie Austin. I live in the city of Snoqualmie. I live pretty close to where they wanna cut down the forest to put in the best, and my kid's school is within one mile of where they wanna put the best. As mister Schreiber just said, they need to build these things near substations. We happen to have one nearby, but it's so close to many other very important things that shouldn't be near, like, a pollutant hazard. I can see why they would wanna use this one, but there are other substations they could use. Maybe they wanna use this one because those executives in Texas are not the people who will be breathing in the toxic fumes if this vest catches on fire. That will be us. I think that this proposition is all risk and no reward for the city of Snoqualmie. That's all for me. I'll keep it brief.

Thank you.

James Hetala, Amber Spady, Dennis Pierce.

My name is James Hightala, and I live in Snoqualmie Valley. I wanna address directly the claim that we need battery energy storage systems in residential neighborhoods to keep Washington's lights on. We don't. Washington is one of the largest net exporters of energy in the nation. In 2024, the Grand Coulee Dam supplied 1,400,000 megawatt hours of electricity to eight Western states and to Canada.

A quarter of US utility scale hydropower is generated in Washington state. The Bonneville Power Administration operates some 15,000 miles of trans high voltage transmission lines across the Northwest. These are already built to supply our surplus to states that need it. We are not an energy deficient state begging battery developers to bail us out. We are the most electricity abundant state in the West. Washington's challenge is not generating electricity. It's managing when and where the supply flows. That is a transmission corridor engineering problem solved at substations near generation sources, not in residential areas.

Thank you.

Amber Spady, dinner Dennis Pierce, Alex Taber.

My name is Amber Spady, and I live in Snoqualmie Valley. My neighbors have explained what battery storage does and why Washington doesn't need it in any backyards. I wanna share a few areas where it should go. The city of Maple Valley's July 2025 ordinance states that battery energy storage systems may be more appropriate for heavy industrial zones rather than commercial neighborhood retail offices or residential zones. The Washington State Interagency Clean Energy Siding Council acknowledged in its October 2024 report to the legislature that dedicated best siting standards are still being developed.

Appropriate best siting options Brownfield industrial sites, parcels adjacent to existing substations on transmission corridors, and land already zoned for heavy industry. In Eastern Washington, where Grand Coulee and other Columbia River dams generate our surplus, there are thousands of acres of appropriate industrial land near existing BPA transmission infrastructure. Our urban growth areas, land that Washington designates for housing and community use are not the right place. Washington can lead in clean energy and in responsible siting. Those goals are not in conflict. Thank you.

My name is Dennis Pierce, and I live in Snoqualmie Valley. Washington's Clean Energies Transformation Act requires our utilities to reach 100% clean electricity by 2045. We support that goal entirely. Battery storage is part of how the grid will get there. But Washington is also the state that generates 25% of all US hydroelectric power and exports millions of megawatt hours to neighboring states every year.

We already lead the nation in clean electricity generation. Now we have the opportunity to lead in clean energy siting standards as well. HB nineteen sixty, enacted in April 2026, requires that 75% of the revenue from battery energy storage excise taxes flow back to local jurisdictions, including counties, school districts, and fire districts that host these projects. That structure acknowledges that host communities bear real costs and risks. The financial framework is there. The citing framework is not yet. Washington can be the state that shows the rest of the country how to do clean energy right.

Thank you. Up next is Alex Taber, Theresa Bechtel, and Nivedita Tanwar.

Hi. My name is Alex Taber, and I have lived in the Snoqualmie Valley for twelve years. You have heard nine neighbors explain the grid, the surplus, the transmission lines, and the substations. The conclusion is clear. Washington does not need industrial battery storage in residential urban growth areas to operate an efficient, clean electricity export grid.

Our surplus hydropower already reaches eight Western states and Canada with 95% transmission efficiency. Battery storage connects most efficiently at substations near generation, which exist along the BPA transmission corridor in Eastern Washington far from neighborhoods. What we are asking King County to do is simple, require that battery energy storage facilities be sited in zones appropriate for heavy industrial use as Maple Valley's 2025 ordinance recognized, require financial assurance sufficient to cover a worst case scenario as King County already requires a fossil fuel facilities under ordinance one nine six zero one, and require evacuation impact assessments for any proposed best near communities with limited egress like ours. We support clean energy. We support the grid.

We ask that Washington's clean energy future be built safely for our children, for our watershed, and our valley.

Thank you very much. Can we take a moment, please, and make sure that those who have already spoken, step outside to allow for those that have yet to speak to come inside. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your consideration. And then any of those that are standing, if I can ask you to please find a seat for our rules. Thank you.

Up next is Theresa Bechtold, Nivedita Tanwar, and Raj Jadeha.

Thank you. You have heard 13 of my neighbors explain the need to revise King County's ordinance regarding battery energy storage systems. We ask you to consider requiring community involvement before an application is filed so that communities like ours aren't surprised by the prospect of lithium ion batteries on their doorstop and by their children's schools. We ask you to ensure that adequate evacuation routes exist in partnership with the communities who know the roads well, and we ask you to ensure that water rights are respected and negotiated before something that could potentially go wrong does. Thank you so much for your time.

We appreciate your attention to, revising ordinance nineteen eight twenty four. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and members of the King County Council. My name is Navee. I am a thirteen year resident from Snoqualmie and a parent. And I'm here to respectfully oppose placing BESS in our community. This is not an argument against clean energy. It's an argument about location and safety. The proposed site places schools, parks, medical facilities and Ecogland Children's Center inside the direct and extended impact zone in event of a failure. Within that radius are three elementary schools, a middle school, a high school and the places where our children gather every day to play. Battery fires are not ordinary not ordinary fires. They burn hotter, can reignite, release toxic gases, and require significant emergency response.

Lately, we

must have heard about the fire in Puyallup High School which has deemed that facility unusable for the next six weeks. This is one and the battery size for that fire was small enough for it to fit in a closet. This was one battery in one closet. Please do not approve facility at this location. We deserve better. Thank you.

Thank you. Up next is Raj Jadeja, Tim Brown, and Vera Volk.

Hi. Good afternoon, council members. My name is Raj Sri Jadeja, and I'm a Snow Call Me resident. I'm here to raise the health, you know, critical concerns when this batteries that are really good technology but very bad location that is close to our city. In case of thermal runaway, the chemical toxins that are released, sometimes it's silent, it leaks for thirty minutes before even you can notice and visible flames are noticeable.

For our immunocompromised neighbors, those are battling cancer, autoimmune disease, and organ transplant, these commissions are not mere irritants. They are life threatening. The symptoms they trigger are permanent lung damage. This is personal. I am a parent to a medically challenged child. She has survived lung hemorrhage, and I have fought my entire life to keep her alive. My daughter, Mira, medical cost for two months hospital stay was over $1,000,000. And the cap for the best liability in our state is a million dollar. This is a sick choke. This is not okay.

And I'm looking up to you guys to, you know, defend Meera and lot of our community members like Meera. Thank you. Thank you.

Tim Brown, Vera Volk, Charles Vision. Hi.

Thank you. Sorry. I'm upset. Lost half of my family in Campbell.

I'm a

former fire officer. I work with ecosystems, I worked with endangered species all over The United States and Canada for both countries. This is not a good idea. If we have an accident, we have dangerous salmon runs. It's a fact all the way up to Puget Sound. And being the former fire officer for forest fires in this watershed, we have high winds rolling there and put big smoke screens, it'll be catastrophic, devastating to our environment and our people, the health of everybody in that. And, any further question, feel free to

ask me. I I didn't miss my family. Sorry.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, council members. My name is Vera Volk, and I live less than a mile from the proposed Cascadia Ridge Jupiter power battery facility. My concern is site suitability, specifically noise. Battery energy storage system require cooling that runs 20 fourseven. Noise studies are often performed at 40% capacity and still show sound comparable to heavy highway traffic noise.

In real conditions during peak demand or hot weather, noise increases and creates a constant low frequency There is no hiding from it. Just across the road in less than half a mile we have Snoqualmie Main community area, an elementary school and nearby homes. Continuous industrial noise in this context raises serious compatibility concerns. Meeting minimum code requirements does not mean this is the right location. I encourage the council to strengthen the current framework by requiring a clear guideline around proximity to communities and public places especially schools.

Thank you. I'll remind that we do not allow signs behind speakers out of respect to the speakers. Thank you very much. We have the next three names.

Up next is Charles Vision, John Schrader, Sonubatra.

Hello. My name is Butch Vision. I'm a mechanical engineer who specializes in failure analysis. Been doing about thirty years. So I know that Jupiter is suggesting that this BEST stuff is really, really safe, but I would like to rebut that concept.

The EPRI is actually a research organization that maintains a failure incident database for BEST installations. In 2024, they released a study and that study determined that, we could that that in there is a seventeen percent chance of a fire, every five years during a BESS installation. So imagine yourself that if every time that you flew for five years that there was a one in five chance that ultimately that plane could catch fire. And the big problem here is is there is actually no requirement for regulation to actually do this. So actually that number could be quite low.

So I'd like to convince you that fires will happen and that it shouldn't happen in a neighborhood like ours.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, council. My name is John Schrader. I live in Snoqualmie Ridge. I'm a huge, fan of green energy. I wanna say that this particular site decision is egregious. What's being proposed here is not progress. It is negligence. This would be the first residentially sited battery facility of this scale in this country, and we're being asked to be the experiment. This proposed facility, upwards of 450 megawatts, is 18,000 Model s batteries. Firefighters fighting a single Tesla burning under full PPE have developed lifelong health issues. This is 500 feet from homes. It's next to a community planning mandated park. It's an egregious decision. King County's ordinance won't protect us. Eastside Fire and Rescue cannot serve this emergency response.

I demand that we have a determination of significance and a full environmental impact statement. I demand that mandatory and appropriate setbacks from every school, hospital, and youth facility are written into code and not just left to discretion. If one child dies or develops long lifelong health complications, that sits directly on this county, on Jupiter Power, and on PSE. We have to do better. This is egregious.

Thank you. Would you please make sure that your comments are sent to us on email as well?

I would 100%.

Thank you.

Up next is Bhatra, Travis Grizzle, and Nicole Caprice.

Hi, everyone. You might Hello council member.

My name is Sonu Microphone down a little bit. Thank you.

My name is Sonu Bhatra. I'm a resident of Snoqualmie. Today, I will be talking about the lithium ion battery safety. When a utility scale lithium ion battery facility catches fire, it releases hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen cyanide, and carbon monoxide. Each of these gases can kill within minutes.

Washington State's own fire marshal says, once ignited, these fires cannot be safely extinguished. The Environmental Protection Agency guidance tells us that first responders to establish an execution zone and let the batteries burn. We have seen that letting best facilities burn looks like. In January 2005, the Moss Landing battery fire in California forced 1,200 residents to evacuate from eight square miles and closed the highway for one mile. Even before the fire occurs, the World Health Organization documents that the noise from the industry and cooling systems causes cardiovascular diseases and sleep disorders in neighboring communities.

These are not hypothetical risks. These are documented peer reviewed facts. Our communities, families, children and homes deserve better. So please help our neighbors. Thank you very much.

Travis Grizzle, Michael Westgard, Austin Field.

Thank you counsel for hearing us today. My name is Travis Grizzle. I also live in Snoqualmie Ridge and I do support clean energy. I also support battery energy specifically. I drove an EV here today. I have an electric motorcycle. I once tried to put solar and batteries on my own home. It didn't work because of, my roofline would not allow it. That experience taught me this. Good technology in the wrong location is the wrong project. That is the issue with Cascadia Ridge that you're hearing about today. The site was not chosen because Snoqualmie Valley is the safest place for utility scale battery facility. It's chosen because the interconnect is convenient. The substation is nearby and the parcel sits just outside of city limits making it easier to push through. But a convenient interconnect does not make a site truly suitable.

This facility would sit yards away from homes, schools, parks, wetlands, streams, and constrained roads. Battery fires can enter a thermal runaway, burn for a long time, and release hazardous gases. King County cannot treat Snoqualmie Valley like a proving ground. This project is a BlackRock backed energy market scheme to enrich investors, one that completely ignores community concerns. Please require a full review. This should be buffers measured in miles, not yards.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Michael Westgard. Others?

Hello. My name is Michael Westgard. I'm an SEIU nine two five shop steward, an e board member representing local government, and a King County wastewater treatment operator, and the Westsection off-site team. We are here because we are being grossly mistreated by OLR in our contract negotiations. Our contract has been expired for four months already going on '5 on the first.

Happy May Day. And throughout this process, OLR has told us that they are just going to take things from us as far as our BT and making demands of us without negotiating. The scheduling practices of OLR have been inconsistent at best. Like, the treatment has just been awful, and it's not a respectful process. And on Workers Remembrance Day, I think we should remember that working people and their contracts is their one claim to power. This is our one ability to come and stand up for ourselves and to be treated this way by King County, proclaims its platinum status as an employer. It's just it's it's just gross and unnecessary.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Field.

Austin Field, Scott Bose, Joseph Smith.

Can I remind folks that it the rules do not allow for noise from the audience, but we can do this? That might be alright.

Hello. My name is Austin Field. I am a King County public defender, and I'm here representing SEIU nine two five, members in King County public defense. And we have the same requests that our union siblings in the wastewater and, parks chapters have, which is a fair contract. Today, it's primarily wastewater and parks that are here to talk, we're here to speak in support of them.

These are jobs that keep this county livable, and these are jobs that we are not gonna be able to retain people in unless we are creating fair contracts and fair union wages. And right now, unfortunately, the people who clean our water and make our parks the parks that we all want and who make sure that our courts are fair are all dealing with practically pay cuts because county negotiators have, for months, refused to engage with very simple, straightforward, common sense requests. And so we are requesting fair contracts for both our siblings in wastewater and parks as well as for ourselves.

Thank you. Scott

Bose, Joseph Smith, Daniel Alvarado.

Hi, my name is Scott Bose. I am a industrial engine mechanic with King County. Been employed by county for twenty six years. This is my first time being a member of a contract negotiations team and honestly it's not at all what I had expected. We have been in negotiations for nearly a year.

During that time nine twenty five has made several concessions. Monetarily management side has made almost no movement from the beginning. I was expecting some give and take from both sides. The only interest, it seems, from the management side is to split our BT in a separate vacation and sick times, reduce our BT bank, and eliminate our ability to request a wait survey from contract language. All we are asking is to be treated fairly, negotiated with good faith, and shown respect.

During our last round of negotiations, management was trying to remove two line items they believed we had proposed, but in fact they had written themselves. Once we pointed out to them that it had come from them, they decided it was okay and they kept it in. I'm proud of my service with the county and all of my group and I have accomplished through the many years. I was hoping that this contract would be something I could be proud of and right now, it's it's sad.

Thank you. Thank you.

Joseph Smith, Daniel Alvarado, John Houston. My

name is Joseph Smith.

I work with the electrical and instrumentation group at West Point Treatment Plant. During the catastrophic February 2017 flood, our department was nearly fully staffed. Since then, we have not been fully staffed for at least seven years.

Moment. We're just gonna ask for the door to be shut so we can hear you. Can you restart his time? Thank you. Go right ahead.

Okay. My name is Joseph Smith. I work with the electrical and instrumentation group at the West Point treatment plant. During the catastrophic February 2017 flood, our department was nearly fully staffed. Since then, we have not been fully staffed for at least seven years and are currently short eight full time positions. As it stands, our current pay is noncompetitive, making it nearly impossible to attract qualified technicians to maintain the equipment that protects the Puget Sound from King County's wastewater. On top of noncompetitive pay, King County will make the position even less attractive by changing our benefit time without any form compensation. The few people left in our group are extremely talented individuals who will take who take pride in protecting the Puget Sound. But if the county doesn't come to the negotiating table in good faith, we will become completely bereft of talent. And we'll put the plant and therefore the Puget Sound in jeopardy.

Protect your workers so we can protect the Puget Sound. Thank you.

Thank you.

Daniel Alvarado, John Houston, Jaden Knoll.

There are seats up front for those who would like to have a seat and who are not speaking. Thank you.

Your proposals are nonstarters. This is a response that we received from the Office of Labor Relations when discussing splitting our benefit time, a key benefit that the wastewater employees hold dear. However, what isn't a nonstarter is showing up to a negotiations meeting and rejecting all language that they thought we proposed, including language that they themselves proposed. The office of labor relations when pointed, when pointed, to this issue that they rejected their own language then backtracked. This is acceptable behavior that we do not feel is appropriate.

This professionalism should not stand, and you as the King County Council have power to enforce good faith negotiations, this is not a good faith negotiation. So with this being said, what will you do, and how will you help us?

Thank you.

John Houston, Jaden Knoll, Ryan Porter.

Hello. My name is John Houston, and I'm here to represent my family who lost land and rent into the Renton School District. They were forced to sell the land for a supposed new middle school. The school was never built. The school district turned around and sold the land to a Bellevue developer that put over a 100 houses on the land.

So what I'm you know, I've gone to Olympia. There was a bill signed. It passed the house 97 to zero. Unanimous decision for the Houston Eminent Domain Fairness Act that's passed in the law now that no school district it's limited, but no school district can ever do that again to another family. My father couldn't read or write.

I have documents here that he signed his name with an x, but the Renton's the Renton School District put 300 pages in front of him to sign, couldn't afford an attorney. We had two houses burned down on the land and a bomb at our front door while the school district was still harassing my parents to sell the land. So I also have another document here that shows fires in the area, and it said the fire started in a garbage can or garage.

Sir.

When it came to the Houston family, it was blank.

Sir, would you mind giving your information to us on email so that we can hear it more, fully, as your time is up at this point?

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you very much for testifying.

Jaden Knoll, Ryan Porter, Ren Mcdonald.

Hello, council members. My name is Jaden Knoll, I'm a playground safety inspector for King County Parks. I'm here again on behalf of nine two five members still negotiating the contracts. We are now in our second year without a contract, yet we're still showing up to provide safe, clean, and accessible parks to the public. When it comes to the bargaining table, while we are providing information on the scope of our work and the continually growing level of our responsibility, management responds with comments that we are replaceable and that not earning a livable wage is not a unique situation.

We understand that the office of labor relations represents the county in this process. Not only is it unethical that we are being denied a livable wage, it is an embarrassment on the county's behalf that we are having to come to you and ask that you ensure the office of labor relations is holding true to the county's values. Respect us, protect us, and pay us. Thank you. Thank you.

Ryan Porter, Red McDonald, Jeremy Ward.

Just gotta reset. Okay. Hi. Brian Porter. I'm the president for SEIU nine two five King County Parks chapter.

I'm here on behalf of lots of people wearing purple today to talk about how our bargaining with King County has been going lately. In our previous session, we came to King County Parks, showed them some comparable jobs that had higher wages than us. We talked about the importance of our members being able to live in the communities that we serve. And the representative for King County turned to us and said, that situation is not unique to you. It is completely within the county's power to allocate the budget that the voters approved for our levy, $1,400,000,000 over six years, to help pay a livable wage for its employees, allow the people who serve this community to be a part of it.

All we're asking for is a fair shot, real negotiations, someone to actually come to the table and speak to us instead of presenting the same offer for over a year without change. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ren McDonald, Jeremy Ward, Jerry Grasick.

Howdy. I am Ren McDonald, and I am a member of SEIU nine two five King County Parks. Last month, I spoke before the council to bring attention to the unacceptable power dynamics between our negotiators and the county's own leaders. I'm here again to help the council understand the amount of change that has happened in sixteen years. Our last structural pay increase happened in 2009 during Obama's first presidency.

During that time, we had a 170 parks. The following year, the county passed a growth management act which removed 36 of our parks using a mothballing technique. In other words, abandoning them. Since then, our labor has increased by a lot. Sixteen years later, we now have 215 parks, a 185 miles of trails, and 30,000 acres of green space that we take care of.

That's a 126% increase in labor and efforts. Yet, today, we are allowed to dip below our competitors' rates of pay and in that result has created a culture of stagnation. While management booms and is able to hire project managers left and right, the boots on the ground are struggling to survive here in King County where we should be. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Jeremy Ward. Hi. I'm and Aiden Barr.

Hi. I'm Jeremy Ward. I'm here with KCIT and Project seventeen. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. This is about RTO. The county hired a consultant to determine how many workspaces would be missing if everyone returns to the office three days a week. The consultant found there are more than 2,500 missing workstations. That's like one and a half Chinook buildings. I'd like the council to imagine how much it would cost to acquire one and a half Chinook buildings instead of just allowing workers to work from home. This is not better government.

This is more expensive government. These public funds should be spent on services for our community instead, such as wages for workers who have been talking here or a community center for the Khmer Rouge that we heard about or services for folks who are suffering from sexual assault. I've got six seconds. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Thank you very much.

I'm Jerry Grasseth, an instrument tech with WTD for the last twenty six years and recently an SEIU vice president and also on a on a negotiating team for our current contract. I'm appealing to counsel today to support our members. We deserve a fair and honest collaboratively both bargain contract for the skilled and dedicated work that we've done for King County 247365 for over sixty five years. Currently, we treat a minimum of seven Olympic swimming pools of sewage an hour and as much as almost 50. We are the labor that holds all of this infrastructure equipment and permits together generating millions of dollars per year for the general fund at the same time doing so with less than half of the staff of many systems or population centers elsewhere in the in the country providing incredible value to King County and the ratepayers.

The Office of Labor Relations continues to delay and demoralize what should be an open and collaborative contract negotiation with the demand to reduce our vacation benefits with little to no incentive to our members to do so. We clean up after two. Three million people and we get sick earlier and more often. We work through storms, earthquakes, floods, pandemic, and protests, and we do our job so well that hardly anyone even notices us. We are only asking to be respected and paid equitably for the quality, value, and future that we constantly provide to this county and all of its residents, visitors, and waterways.

Thank you so much.

Aidan Farr, Travis Butcher, Casey Gifford.

Good afternoon, honorable members of the King County Council. My name is Aidan Farr. Council members Fain, Perry, and Von Reichbauer may recognize me for my presentation to the regional transit committee last month. I started my career at King County Metro almost ten years ago as a bus driver, and today my work helps secure tens of millions of dollars a year in federal funding for our county. Media reports suggest that executive Zahalay is planning to ask you for at least 22,000,000 taxpayer dollars for new office space to implement his unnecessary RTO member mandate.

Honorable council members, what does that money do for our communities? Council member Dombowski, I can tell you what it would do for our neighbors in District 1. $22,000,000 would completely fund the operation of Metro's e line rapid ride for over eighteen months. We've heard today from members in SEIU about other things that that money would do for our communities as well. So I'm asking you today to vote against funding new office space for this mandate. If that money is available to spend, spend it in our communities where it belongs. Thank you.

Thank you.

Travis Butcher.

Alright. Good afternoon, council members in person and attending online today. My name is Travis Butcher. I'm a proud KC employee for seventeen years. I've taken a vacation day today to be here because I believe the the RTO mandate and possible expenses is too important to ignore.

I'm here to speak for my coworkers who are currently in the Chinook Building working on a hybrid schedule. I'm here today to urge the council to not earmark any funding for office space or return to office initiatives. There was a 2024 auditor's report on office space efficiency, and I'm urging you all to request that that that those six recommendations from that report be fully implemented before any funding is spent on any RTO efforts. Here's the reality. The executive the executive mandate leads towards hired overhead,

exact

time when we should be pushing towards savings and spending that money on a fair living wages. Thank you.

Thank

you. Casey Gifford, Audrey Monroe, Andy Strayler.

Good afternoon. My name is Casey Gifford, and I've been a transportation planner for King County Metro for the last nine years. I'm proud to support many of Metro's flexible services such as Metro Flex and Access. These services provide trips throughout the county and often to some of our most vulnerable riders, people who rely on Metro to get to dialysis appointments, church, work, and school. The communities I work with are asking for more and better service, more Metroflex in South King County and the East Side, more services in rural communities like Snoqualmie, more same day booking options for access customers.

And demand for these services is outpacing our budget, and we are having to make really difficult decisions on how to manage limited resources. The county should not be spending millions of dollars renting downtown office space. It could pay for new services for our customers. Council members, I'm asking you to invest in the communities that we serve rather than RTO. Our communities deserve more and better transit service.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Audrey Monroe, Andy Strayler, Angela Vega. Richard Wilson, Aaron Fenner, Rachel Brown.

Andy I thought there was somebody ahead of me.

Oh, go right ahead, please. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Andy Strayler. I'm a King County resident, voter, employee of wastewater treatment division, and I'm represented by local nine twenty five. Council members, I'm sure by now you're aware of bargaining tactics by the office of labor relations, OLR. And I hope you members will exert influence to press OLR to collaborate and bargain in good faith. KC leaders look for support of labor, yet send OLR to negotiate and l OLR shows up lacking respect. There's a power imbalance. OLR has paid staff. They come to the table making demands, not collaborating. They set schedules, then cancel.

Nine twenty five negotiators are a team consisting of worker volunteers. Wastewater treatment plants are staffed twenty four seven by skilled trades and professional staff. During COVID nineteen, we worked on-site every day and can you continue to do so. KC designates us as essential workers. Yes. We are. It feels like OLR treats us as expendable commodities. So my coworkers collaborate every day to treat wastewater, protect public health and the environment. Please, county, respect us and bargain with us in collaboration. Thank you.

Thank you. Up next is Angela Vega, Richard Wilson, Erin Fenner.

My apologies, I wasn't here for a comment. I was invited by Larry Gossett for Larry Evans, that final adjournment. Okay. My apologies.

Okay, thank you. We'll get there soon. Thank you very much for your patience. Who's next?

Richard Wilson.

Thank you.

Dear Council, my name is Richard Wilson. I've been with DCHS for over fifteen years. Councilmember Dombowski, I'm from District 1 here to talk about return to office today. Council members, please do not fund office space when instead we should be investing taxpayer dollars back into the community and into better financial stewardship. My colleagues and I are lifelong career servants having worked both in and out of government.

Our program helps young adults with significant disabilities across the county get jobs and move with support beyond high school to be contributing members of society. The actual work doesn't happen in the county building. It's in collaboration with schools, community organizations, state partners, business leaders, and family groups. It's not supported nor strengthened by being behind a badge access building or a door with between eight to five, and its reach and effectiveness has only grown with our new tools and our new strategies. Going backward doesn't help us serve better communities better.

It hurts. And at the same time, it costs taxpayers millions of dollars now and in the future. Now we learned the morning this morning that while we're able to bargain, this bargaining the bargaining is there's a lack of interest in writing an MOU to any agreements we might get. When our county budget's so tight with the need to be focused on better financial stewardship and with community services on the line, I ask you to prioritize investing in people, not desks and cubicles.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for your time.

Up next is Erin Fenner, Rachel Brown, Lucas Smith.

Council members, my name is Erin Fenner. I live in District 2. I am a King County DCHS employee and a union shop steward. I'm speaking in opposition to the investing in the return to office mandate, which costs taxpayers much and offers very little back. As a communication specialist, I have worked several months to understand, provide clarity on, and look ahead regarding the audit of our department.

What I hear from staff time and again is that they agree we need better compliance supports for our department. What I do not hear from anyone is that working in cubicles will help us reach that goal. If council is taking the DCHS audit seriously, you must recognize that our issues in DCHS with financial stewardship are the result of chronic understaffing, not lack of office supplies and office space. Investing in oversight means creating good paying government jobs focused on contracts, compliance, and accountability. 22,000,000, what we've been hearing in the media, could go a long way toward better oversight if spent on staffing rather than real estate.

Our budget is already tight and in the best interest of our community and toward rebuilding public trust. I ask you to not invest and return to office and instead dedicate funds toward better better fiscal stewardship. Thank you.

You. Rachel Brown, Lucas Smith, Chuck Lair.

Hi, council members. My name is Rachel Brown, and I work as a research analyst at Metro. I live in Capitol Hill in District 2, and I'm commenting today as a steward with Protech seventeen on executive Zahala's return to office requirement. I work at Metro because I believe passionately that everyone needs reliable, safe, and affordable transportation. And much in the way that each individual's mobility needs differ, everyone needs a healthy and supportive work environment.

The executive plan to unilaterally call employees into the office three days a week means that we need to be able to accommodate people coming in three days a week, and our available office cannot do that. Attaining more office space, especially in the areas where we are expected to work, is expensive. We've been working hard to serve our communities for years with our current teleworking and on-site agreements, and we have not seen evidence that our ability to serve our communities has been diluted under this current arrangement. So for this reason, I'm asking you to vote against funding, any new office space so that we can continue to serve our communities with that money.

Thank you.

Lucas Smith, Chuck Lair, Zach, Pinard.

Good afternoon, council members. My name is Lucas Smith. I work as a transit planner at for King County Metro. I'm a resident of King County District 2 and a member of Pro Tech seventeen, also talking about the RTO mandate. My fellow public servants and I are proud of the work we do on behalf of the county, and we're proud of how we've adapted processes to hybrid remote work to maintain continuity of critical county services over the last six years of uncertainty.

The announced increased return to office mandate is rigid and one size fits all, but the county's office space does not fit us all. That means the inflexible blanket RTO mandate will cost the county substantially in ongoing rent. Every dollar of public funds that is thus transferred to big downtown landlords is a dollar that could be spent to serve our communities, and we know we're talking about millions here. So on behalf of myself and my fellow ProTech seventeen members, we call on the council to be responsible with our public funds, to fund the services our communities need, not this unflexible, arbitrary, and unnecessary RTO mandate. Thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Chuck Lair, Zach, Pinard, Luca Ocrancic.

Thank you council members for the opportunity to speak with you. My name is Chuck Lair. My comments are only my opinion experiences, and I am not in any way speaking or representing Metro. I've been driving for twenty years before, during, and after COVID. The elephant in the room for return to office discussion is what is the value in forcing employees to return to the office.

RTO will waste millions of dollars and will drive much of our employee talent out of our organization. Instead, let's focus on accountability. Wouldn't the millions wasted be better spent providing value to those we serve and supporting our valuable employees? As a bus driver employee, instead of wasting millions on RTO, I want access to a safe work environment like clean bathrooms and toilet paper. As a bus driver, I ask you not to waste millions on RTO.

Instead, I ask you to use those millions on more behavioral health specialists who can solve many of our operation challenges. As a King County taxpayer and employee, I ask you not to waste millions on RTO. I ask you to spend millions on employee access for clean bathrooms, behavioral health specialists. These are two examples of where your employees and your communities we serve will gain value for millions of dollars wasted to force employees back to the office. Let's focus on accountability and not wasting millions and forcing employees back to the office. Thanks for your time.

Thank you very much.

Zach Penard, Luka Okrancic, Neil Tuber.

Hi. Thank you very much. My name is Zach Penard. I'm a King County resident speaking on behalf of Clean and Prosperous in strong support of the 2024 BESS ordinance. We wanna thank the council for their leadership in passing this ordinance.

We at Clean and Prosperous are especially concerned that our state ranks dead last in the nation for building out new renewable energy. This is something that we desperately need to change and battery storage is one of the most important ways that we can do that. Battery storage systems are resilience assets for communities to keep the lights on in times of need such as during a bomb cyclone like the one in 2024 that caused 650,000 King County residents to go without power. They also meet rigorous and continuously updated safety standards. For example, Texas recently increased its battery storage capacity by 4100% and yet according to Environment America has yet to experience a single best fire.

Again, we applaud the council for their leadership in passing this ordinance. Reopening the ordinance would risk delaying the clean energy economy that we cannot afford to wait for. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Lukey Kraenschuk. I live in Sammamish. I'm in council member Perry's district. I'm a project manager at King County Metro.

Up until this year, I was working on an innovative project to use technology to make King County buses more reliable, specifically focusing on the highest ridership and highest frequency routes. We were rolling out our project on about one route per year, and we were showing really good results reducing reducing elite buses by up over 10%. The latest budget passed by the councilor reduced funding for this project, and now that team can only roll out a bus route every two years approximately, and I am no longer on on that team due to the due to those cuts. In spite of this, despite council being asked to approve $22,000,000 to buy downtown office space without any evidence for its effectiveness, This money could be used to roll it out to every single RapidRide line, my project, every single RapidRide line, and on and then some to show real results for King County riders. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Neil? Can I ask the question, sir? Was the program? Sorry. What was the program, sir? You went kinda quickly there for me.

So it's the advanced service management program at King County Metro, the general resource management program. Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. Go right ahead. That was quite alright.

Neil Tibbert, Bonnie Helms, Ben Tibbets, and Tarn Ohana. Neil. Bonnie. Bonnie Holmes.

Afternoon, council. Bonnie Holmes. Born and raised Southeast King County. You've been asked to improve the best ordinance for years. I've mentioned an oral comment before that the difficulties for the community in navigating the topic of best and the lack of guardrails in place are too often exploited to the del developer's advantage.

POC and battery developers given the ear and consideration of counsel over that of concerned citizens too frequently for this to be considered a fair process. Dismissing the community while exalting the expertise of those who stand to profit will not work on this issue. Since this ordinance was passed a little over a year and a half ago, there have been over a dozen bus fires. As community members and independent experts have warned, this was an inevitability. We are seeing a consistent stream of thermal and fire related incidents across multiple regions and especially places like New York, Texas, and California with a high deployment of bus.

But thanks to community members and some dutiful government staff, so far the risks to Washington have been somewhat mitigated, and we will continue to work to slow the gold rush and do things the right way. Just look at how many of us showed up this past Sunday in Snoqualmie. So either so this might be your last chance to get this right, either before one of them blow up in our faces or before somebody decides to vote you guys at office.

Thank you. Ben Tibbets, Tarn Ohana.

Hello, all of our council members. I am named Ben Tibbets. I work for King County Metro. I'm here to speak to you about executive Zahalai's approach to return to office. So I I work for the Orca business operations team, our primary goal is to ensure that we are fiscal stewards of public funds.

As we do day in and day out, we work with the regional Orca operations team to ensure that we are implementing major improvements to the ORCA system that serve every single consumer and every single business, every single person that uses ORCA cards. And I can say that $22,000,000 on office space that does not have ergonomic accommodations, does is not being used for major public improvements to infrastructure, to housing, to public goods is a is a waste of taxpayer funds that can be used in much more utilitarian and insane ways. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Tarno Ahana. I am a ten year King County employee, King County Road Services Division. I'm here to speak in opposition of investing further funds in the RTO mandate from the executive. I'm sure you've heard a lot about this policy.

I'm here to also warn you about other costs that are associated with this policy that will have to be borne by King County taxpayers. The policy is deeply unpopular. We are shedding staff and we cannot replace them because the HR staff have also left areas that do not have a three day mandate. We are used to making do with very little. However, our institutional expertise and capacity to respond to disasters and emergencies is evaporating. We simply don't have the boots on the ground that we need for mission critical staff to fill. Safety improvements go undone. We will have to rely on expensive consultants because we're losing people that can do

the work,

And our people here in King County are being asked to pay for an already failed policy and they will continue to have to pay for it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. This is our last speaker in in person, but I do wanna ask before we move on to online if there's anybody here who wanted to speak, testified that did not have a chance to sign up. Going once, twice. Okay. Thank you very much. We'll now move to online speakers.

First online speaker is Oliver Hansen.

Hello. Can you hear me? Oliver,

can

you hear us?

Yes. Can you hear me?

Sure can. Go right ahead.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, council. My name is Oliver Hansen, and I'm a member of King County Information Technology as well as member of the Balanced View Well-being Employee Advisory Committee. I'm here to speak on return to office. Much of my career in King County IT has been in support of public health from supporting the installation of a new CT scanner for the medical examiner's office to upgrading the systems used to store x rays at the dental clinics. As recently as 2025, due to funding issues, King County was considering closing most health clinics, including some of the dental clinics, but now the executive is requesting spending millions in capital and operational costs for office space.

Council members, please consider using these funds to support valuable programs like the public health clinics that serve 80,000 residents of King County instead of unneeded office space. County departments identified office space needs a few years ago based on the work they needed to accomplish. Use the data and telecommuting policy we already possess to let individual work groups serve their customers. In 2022, the King County Future of Work Implementation Plan estimated the county would save $5,200,000 on real estate and facilities costs in the first

year of

remote work alone. Please don't throw away those savings to implement this return to office plan that has no data or concrete goals to support it. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next online name is Patricia Traug.

Thank you very much.

Oh, we lost you. Go right ahead, Patricia. We can see you now if you can unmute.

Can you hear me now?

I sure can. Go right ahead. Okay.

I am down located in Enumclaw unincorporated areas, and I know that you've heard a lot from our non rural residents. So why would King County spend millions of dollars to increase salmon population just to install best units close to our salmon streams that could wipe them out? Why would King County and Washington State ensure our Growth Management Act, our comp plans and other documents contain verbiage to protect our rural lifestyle only to install best units which could severely compromise our rural lifestyle? Why King County and Washington State allow electricity generated here in Washington to be sold out of state without great guardrails or to keep that money here for our people. I know that we heard a comment about that we would use that energy in case of a bomb cyclone.

Transmission lines are shut off when we have electrical failures so our workers don't get hurt. Anyway Patricia, really

thank you. Thank you very much for your comment. Really appreciate it. Next

online is Christine Moreland.

Thank you. Good afternoon, council members, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Christine Moreland, and I have the honor of leading the more we love. We are an organization that creates pathways out of homelessness, addiction, human trafficking, and domestic violence. For more than twenty five years, I've served on the streets of King County, walking closely with those most vulnerable in our communities, women caught in the crossfires of homelessness, violence, addiction, exploitation, and instability.

These are families living in cars, mothers fleeing abuse in the middle of the night, and women at risk of being lost to the streets. That is why we intentionally built a continuum of care through The More We Love. From our Crisis Recovery and Healing center in Renton, we respond twenty four hours a day, seven days a week to calls from law enforcement hospitals, CPS recoveries, jails, prosecutor office, and more. Year to date, our 247 line has received more than 1,300 calls for help. In the month of April alone, we've already taken 406 calls.

That is more than 14 crisis calls every single month showing the urgency. Those calls are coming from mothers fleeing families sleeping in the cars. We are part of the solution, and we are ready to partner with you today and scale. Our center in Renton is ready to expand the doors, deepen our partnerships, and serve more families.

Thank you. Thank

you very much.

Thank you.

Next online is Christine Moreland.

She just Marissa

Bean. I'm sorry. Marissa Bean.

Hello? Can you hear me?

Sure can. Go right ahead.

Good afternoon, council members, thank you for allowing me to speak today. I can I stand before you as a participant at The More We Love and as someone whose life has been changed right right now through this program? Before I came here, my life was filled with fear, addiction, violence, trafficking, survival. I was caught in a cycle that felt impossible to escape. I lived in instability, surrounded by chaos, and was becoming more involved in the criminal justice system instead of finding the help I truly needed. I was one of the women many people passed by without seeing clearly someone hurting, struggling, and trying to survive one day at a time. But the More We Love saw me differently. They they saw value in me when I had forgotten my own. They gave me immediate safety. They gave me a place where I could find finally breathe.

They connected me with the recovery services advocacy and people who walked beside me instead of giving up on me. They're helping to divert me out the criminal justice system while giving me the support to heal and rebuild my life. They helped me reunite with my son and gave us both a safe place to stay while I heal. That kind of support changes everything for a mother. They are helping me step away from the streets and away from patterns that kept pulling me backwards. They're helping me believe I can please invest in this work because someone Wait, sorry. I ask you to invest in this work so more women and children can experience the same healing and opportunity that I'm receiving right now. Thank you for your time and for listening to my story.

Thank you very much for testifying.

Don't email the rest because it's longer. Thank you.

Next on my name is Jackie Schleppi.

Hi. My name is Jackie Riley, and I'm a case manager with The More We Love, serving families across King County. Every day, I sit with single mothers, even fathers, and large families coming out of traffic in domestic violence and homelessness, many that have nowhere else to go. My role is to step into that chaos, become a consistent support, and help create a path forward. I help families navigate overwhelming systems, housing applications, enrolling children in school, sometimes for the first time, and advocating for kids with autism and trauma related needs.

I don't just refer people. I walk with them. I attend D C Y F meetings, connect them to employment, budgeting, recovery programs, and mental health services, and the work doesn't stop at my office. I take on-site calls, respond in crisis, and help families across resources in real time. Because instability doesn't wait for business hours, this work isn't quick, but it works and family is stabilized. Parents find employment, children get into school. Right now the need is growing and especially for large families who often fall through the cracks. We say yes, where other programs say no. Thank you.

Thank you.

The last name on the list is Lexi Power.

Hello, hold on one sec, sorry. Good afternoon. My name is Alexis Bauer, and I stand before you today as a grateful survivor and participant in the More We Love program. For much of my life, lived today to day in survival mode. Our world was shaped by violence, addiction, instability. I wasn't thinking about my future. Was just trying to make it through each day. During that time, my interactions with system were mostly through the criminal justice system. I found myself deeper into that cycle, not because I wanted to be there, but because I didn't have access to the kind of resources that truly help someone heal and rebuild. When I entered the program, I wasn't alone. I had my newborn. I just had my newborn. Where Mori Love provided immediately life changing support by entering instant safety for both me and my baby. In the moment where everything felt uncertain and fragile, they stepped in without hesitation and made sure we were protected, cared for, and not alone. The level of urgency and compassion made all the difference.

Mori Love didn't just offer services, it offered me a real chance. For the first time, was surrounded by people who saw me as a human being, not a case number or problem to manage. They met me where I was without judgment and helped me begin the process of healing. They provided not only resources of consistency, compassion, and sensitive belonging that I never experienced before. Two is program I gained access to support I had missing for so long. Today, I'm not just surviving. I'm living and making healthier choices, building stability, and beginning to see a future for myself that I once felt impossible. I urge you to continue supporting and investing in programs like The More We Love, not just for me, but for many others who are still out there and where I went to was waiting for someone to believe in them. Thank you for your time and the work that you do to serve this community.

Thank you.

That's all we have online. I just want to give a moment for anyone else that has not raised their hand if you'd like to speak online. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak online? Do we have any other? Yeah. We have another. Okay. Go right ahead and call.

Braden Pitzenbarger.

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes. Please go right ahead.

K. Thank you. Good afternoon, council members. My name is Braden Pitzenbarger. I'm a King County DLS employee and resident of Duval. I'm asking about the cost of the executive's unfunded work in Seattle mandate today. Over the last six years, the county has maximized services by minimizing the overhead costs tied to our physical footprint. The result has been by all measurements the most productive years the county has ever had. The old model is obsolete. The facilities division has published that deferred maintenance alone on the Civic Crown would be $700,000,000 Unnecessary Seattle office space will increase costs now and in the future, and county services in your districts are being cut to make up the difference.

Council members, I urge you to spend on services, not spaces. And I ask you to create legislation to enable county departments to continue to innovate on work so we can better serve in our King County communities. Thank you for your support.

Thank you very much. I wanna thank I wanna close public hearing, and I wanna thank the 57 speaker 58 speakers that we've had today. It's a wonderful opportunity to hear from the public, and and we strongly encourage folks to show up on the fourth Tuesday of every month to talk about anything that's not on the agenda. We'd love to hear from you. It helps inform us.

We wanna thank you very much for taking the time. If there's no objection, the published marked agenda together with any changes made in today's meeting will stand approved as the first reading and referral of ordinances and motions items eight through 18 as listed. Moving on to other business. In accordance with king with k c c four a four a one hundred zero eight zero, we received notification regarding capital project exception notification notification. On 04/22/2026, the clerk distributed a copy to all council members.

Under the code, a transfer from an emergency fund exceeding 15% shall be noticed on two council agendas to give council members an opportunity to object at either of these meetings. In addition to inclusion on today's council agenda, this notification will be included on the 05/05/2026 council agenda. With that, do my colleagues have any other business for the good of the order?

Excuse

me. Sorry about that. Council Member Dembowski.

Thank you, Chair Perry. Today, our eye today walked on a piece of legislation number twenty twenty six-one 107. I previously shared a version of that with all colleagues by email. It's the legislation which would call for the dissolution of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Given the interest in that, and that's been referred to the Committee of the Whole, is chaired by Councilmember Barone.

Councilmember Barron and I along with Councilmember Fain who are our two representatives on the KCRHA wanted to just share with colleagues and the public a little bit of a preview with respect to timing and our work together. I'll leave it to Councilmember Varon to highlight kind of next steps as the committee chair. We wanted to convey that we're working together on a thoughtful process to consider the issues and steps that might be required in the event that there is a consensus that that's the direction we want to go. It's not as easy as just turning off the lights and locking the door. There are things to do and Councilmember Barone and Councilmember Fain have taken the lead on a companion piece of legislation which would outline those steps which I'm happy to be joining as a supporter of and councilmember Barone will highlight that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Dembowski, vice chair Barone.

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to Councilmember Dombowski for that introduction and for bringing forth legislation that was introduced today. As he mentioned, we've because I chair the committee of the whole that has jurisdiction over KCRHA matters and because with customer refrain, I serve on the governing board for KCRHA. I wanted to make sure because I know this is an interest of this is an issue of interest to a lot of community and, course, all of us, I think, here have been disturbed by the report that came out last week regarding KCHA. So I think this is an important conversation but I think we all appreciate that this is a very important decision that we're being called to to make and we wanted to outline the process that we're going to undertake and so we'll be bringing forth, customer Fain and I have been working and in collaboration with customer Debowski on a motion that would be as customer Debowski mentioned a kind of a companion that would outline the process and also invite and request the executive to weigh in on this decision and provide some reporting with information that we think is necessary for us to make an informed decision on this topic.

So our current we'll share the language once it's ready. We're getting engaging with the executive and finalizing the language. We'll share that with all of you. But roughly the goal is to have an interim briefing in mid June and a final report by the executive in August with a goal to have the motion that customer Debowski introduced today considered during the committee of the whole meeting in August and but by that point we'll have received the report from executive with some of the questions that we're going to be previewing in this motion which we hope to bring to the council, introduce it next week or submit it for introduction on Thursday, bring it forth before the council next week and I will be asking the council or we will be asking the council to approve it as a roadmap of how to make this decision. So I'll pause there and I would love to turn it over to my colleague, Councilmember Fain on the governing board.

Councilmember Fain. Thank you

very much. And I just want to thank you council member Dombowski for bringing forward the legislation but also recognizing that there's a lot of shared interest in the future of KCRHA and so partnering with us to create a strong framework and timeline to really consider this pretty big decision. It's extraordinarily complicated space and I'm stepping into it as a new KCRA board member, but I think that this approach really reflects a shared desire for good governance, transparency, accountability, but also recognizing the important services that are provided through our service providers and the reliance of so many people in our community on those services. So it's important that we do this thoughtfully and I'm really pleased to be working collaboratively with council members Barone and Dombowski on our next steps here. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Fain. Council member Dunn. Council member Dunn. Sorry.

Just a reminder that we have flood district right after this.

Oh, great. Thank you very much. I so appreciate that. At this point, before we adjourn, I want to briefly note that we had a request to adjourn today's council meeting in memory of Larry Evans. I want to pause and allow council member Dombowski followed by any other colleagues to share some brief remarks if so inclined, and then provide an opportunity for our former King County Council Member Larry Gossett to speak as well. Council Member Dempowski.

Thank you, Chair and colleagues. We lost a member of our family, an alumni member in Larry Evans, very recently. And I just wanted to take a moment today to acknowledge and remember Larry, who is a friend of many of us on this 12th Floor for a long time. We'll hear hopefully little bit, seeing a little bit from Councilmember Gossett, whom Larry worked for. In just brief remarks, I will say that I was looking at an article in the Seattle medium that talked about Larry's work with the CD Panthers, which is a youth football program in the Central District.

And then Councilmember Zahalai and I had a chance to go visit them one day and present a check from our Get Active, Stay Active funds and the enthusiasm and joy and also the life skills and leadership that was occurring on that field has stuck with me. Larry Evans was deeply involved in that program for many years, including as its athletic director, which he kind of fell into by showing up when others didn't. But in the article, in the concluding paragraph, it was remarked that quote, he believes more in those little kids than anybody else in the world.

And

you can take that quote two ways. He believes in those kids more than anybody else in the world, the kids, but perhaps Larry himself more than anybody else in the world was looking after those kids. It kind of defines his life and his work and his focus. Larry served in the Marine Corps and then in the Reserves and came to Seattle and really worked in a career lifting up and working with young people. He was a gang intervention specialist and case manager for therapeutic health services.

He was a division manager for Central Youth and Family Services. Then he was an ombuds and dispute resolution specialist at the City of Seattle and then came to work for Councilmember Gossett for many years where we got to know him. After here, went on to become a program manager for reentry services at the county. He co wrote a book, Reclaiming A Guide to Healing, Growth and Personal Power. He was a complex and loving human being.

His gentleness was unmatched on this floor. And I saw him firsthand with respect to the children. Elizabeth on my staff, we had a Bring Your Baby to Work program and both of her girls grew up for a little while here on the floor and would get a lot of visitors. But Larry was a regular visitor, a hugger, a holder, a caregiver for the kids, and he, just brought a lot of joy. I'm deeply saddened at his, death way too soon. We're joined by, some of his family here today, but I'll let our colleague, if it's okay with you, share a few more words. But I think we need to remember our friend Larry.

Thank you. Council member Dombowski. Others?

Council

member? Council member von Reichbauer. Followed by council member Lewis and council member Thank Balducci.

Thank you very much. I'm glad his family is here and I know you're going hear a lot about his work here. Team Gossett did a lot for this council. We still have the legacy of team Gossett here in the Flood District and other things. A lot of people talk about the the shared values and shared things.

What I'm

gonna miss about him is a sense of humor. Larry had a laugh that was infectious. And when he was happy, everybody knew it. And I want you to know that. And Rhonda's smiling. She knows that he was a good man, and we're all the beneficiary of team Gossett. Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you. For as long as I've worked at King County, Larry Evans and I never worked in the same branch. So when I was in the executive branch, he was in the legislative branch. I came to the legislative branch. I guess he didn't want to be here with me.

He went to the executive branch. But one thing I could say that I remember about Larry is that it didn't matter which branches we worked in. We were one King County in his eyes and and in his heart. And if he heard about something that the executive was proposing or thinking about, he would not hesitate to give me a call and say, hey Rhonda, I know so and so who can help you with x y z. And so I appreciated that spirit so much, the spirit of doing what's best for all of King County including the kids. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis. Councilmember Bell Ducey.

Thank you very much. I I also I I did get along with Councilmember von Reichbauer and some of my colleagues here to work with Larry Evans. And, yeah, I had the exact same thought you did, Councilmember von Reichbauer, to, you know, just acknowledge that Team Gossett was a powerhouse team, really. Made a big impact on the floor and what it was like to work here. You all were wonderful and Larry was wonderful to work with.

Open door, always willing to talk, answer questions, patient with new council members, which I was when we first started working together, willing to negotiate and just so effective, made such an impact on the larger community outside of this government because of the work that you led. You put together quite a team, council member, and Larry was definitely high among them. The story that came to my mind when I saw we were doing this today was one day at the Sound Transit Board, we were having a bit of an outburst from some of our employees, much like we did today. And the complaint was that we were not honoring apprenticeship rules within, like giving people enough of an opportunity to have jobs and to move up in the ranks. Sound Transit spends billions and billions of taxpayer dollars and builds major infrastructure and creates a lot of jobs.

Who gets the opportunity to have those jobs was always a very big concern. And I know Larry showed up for meetings sometimes to advocate for spreading those jobs around to community members and making sure they had opportunities. And he was there one day and a young man came to the table and talked about trying to get a job with Sound Transit and told a story of having difficulties in his early life as a child resulting in some bad experiences as a young adult, having involvement with the criminal system, having some drug addiction issues, then fixing, figuring it all out. Getting his life in order, getting a degree and now wanting to work for the agency and wanting to be the sort of person that helped to build the future for our communities. And I heard that and I was really moved because it sounded a lot like, you know, the kind of story that somebody from Council Member Gossett's office would have picked up and said, you know, we've to fight for this young man.

So I spoke up as a board member and I said, you know, this is exactly the sort of person we want to hire, right? This is what these jobs are about, about somebody who wants to make good and wants to do good for the community. And Larry Evans came had been in the audience the whole time and came up to me afterwards and he said, I put that thought in your head, council member. I was sitting there. I was thinking, this young man is doing everything people want him to do and now we should help him and I was just like, yep, Larry, you did it. You beamed it right into my brain and it came out of my mouth. So he was a great influence, a great influence and a great colleague and I will miss him. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much. At this point, I'm wondering if former council member Gossett would like to say a few words. Wonderful. Thank you.

First of all, I want to thank King County Councilmember Rod Dembalski and the other members of the county for allowing this agenda item to be added at the end of a very long meeting. Larry Evans worked for me at the King County Council from 2007 to 2019 when I retired. He was a legislative aide and he was unsung hero as a legislative aide as are many of the legislative aides that I'm sure that you all have now or have had. What I mean by unsung hero, Larry's, one of Larry's areas of responsibility in my office was trying to figure out what we can do about recidivism, particularly amongst black and other non white men and women in our community and stopping the school to prison pipeline, another area where we had high disproportionality in the ranks of those who were dropping out of school and ending up in jail. In 2008, after Larry had only been working less than a year, he got a case that became historic.

He started working. Can't I can't mention the cat's name because he didn't give me the authority to do that, but we helped him get out of jail. He had been in jail for fifteen years, ended up being in jail sixteen years because it took us almost a year to get him out. He was the first person ever allowed out of any state prison in Washington State after having three strikes and you're out. So he was supposed to be in jail.

He's still alive. Matter of fact, we got him Larry and I helped him get a job at the county. He still works here and he's a supervisor getting very good pay. And, this is another eighteen years after he has spent nearly sixteen years in the Washington Penitentiary. And, the way that Larry brought this case, this is what I mean by unsung hero of doubt, Rod gave a good example earlier too.

Larry said this guy, the first one you get three strikes in your hour and council member Gossa, the third strike was was snatching a woman's purse. Yes, snatching a woman's purse is wrong, but he gonna be in jail jail the rest of his life. And he wrote you and he said he had tried to contact eight or nine other legislators, politicians and community leaders and and I think we should write him back and we ended up according to Larry Evans, we were the only person he had written that had even written him back said this is after he already got the three strikes. Can you guys do anything to help me? I think this is wrong.

And Larry did all the groundwork. We went to the prosecutor, Dan Satteberg. We ended up in 2009, Dan Satteberg went down to Olympia to talk to board, I forgot the name of it, that handles any kind of special consideration given to folks that are in jail for anything, but this is this particular person had gotten three strikes and you're out and he was still only about thirty thirty five years old and and we had such impact because of the kind of information Larry wrote up on this guy and gave to Dan Saderberg staff that Dan Saderberg was willing himself to go down to Olympia because of the first effort that we made to really work on getting somebody out of jail after three strikes. He testified, the board reviewed this case and this person became the first person in the state of Washington to get out of jail after being sentenced to spend the rest of his life in jail. And he's still working for King County, and he's doing very well.

He gets paid very well, and he's still alive. So, I just shared that with you all because that's a reflection of the kind of work that Larry and other important legislative aides and staff that we have do and it's unsung because they don't our names go on the letters, know, and we get the recognition, but they do the hard work that enable us to be as successful as many of us have been And that's why I'm very happy in closing this afternoon to have the opportunity to share with all of you the the work and the meaningfulness of Larry Evans as a legislative aide to me from 2007 to 2019. And before I close, I want to say that his son, Roberto Evans, is here. His sister, Linda, is here. His daughter Serena was here, and his niece Monica I got her name right there.

Was here. And Angela, who used to work at in district two staff came down to be with us. My beautiful wife Rhonda Gossett is here. I'm really glad she came down with me and Roberta, I forgot our homeboy's name already sitting next to you. Mario, Mario came down.

He was one of the many young men that worked under Larry Gossip when they were youth with the Centuri Youth Association on his foot. He he coached football. Two of my sons Malcolm and Langston Gossip both played for Larry Evans And, these boys remember Larry Evans of all the coaches that had the because he was special like Rod said earlier. He just cared so much about them. Of the 89 team that my sons were on, these are eight nine year old is that Larry coach fifteen years after he coached them 16 of the 44 kids were in jail and Larry was interacting with all of them.

Thank you very much for recognizing the work that Larry Evans did.

We hear a few words from his son, Roberto.

Hello. I want to thank you guys for considering this because it's not every day that somebody leaves a legacy like this behind. But this is a a lifetime of knowledge that I've gotten since, I don't know, since I was eight, being in circles of him talking. And then coming up here, I remember when he first started a couple years in, like this was the floor, like everybody up here is important. So I felt like my dad was a part of something like really big and I felt proud of him and people would be like, you lost?

And I would tell him because I was young, cocky, or whatever. And I would tell him, I'm like, I'm with the band. And so, you know, because Larry Gossip's been, you know, on on his seat for a long time. But I just wanted to leave you guys with something that my dad would always do is when he talks, he always leaves you with some kind of knowledge to think about later on. So I found this and it says it's about your life and the decisions that you make and all you have to do is decide what you wanna do with the time that is given to you.

You won't get to choose how long you're here. You won't know how many sunrises you have left. You don't get to rewind, pause, or skip the hard chapters. All you get is now, the moment, this this breath, and most people just waste it waiting for the perfect timing, for clarity, for permission. They wake up in lives that don't feel like they're that they're theirs, surrounded by people who don't really see them and wonder why nothing ever changes.

But time doesn't ask if you're ready. It moves with or without you. So ask yourself if this is the only life you get, what are you gonna do with it? Who do you wanna be when nobody's watching? What are what are you building, and why does it matter?

Because one day, this time that you're living will become someone else's memory that they hold. And I want to thank you guys, especially Rod. He's talked to you about you a lot, brought you up a lot with us just hanging out and sharing stories about how important he felt when he came here because he didn't have a college degree. He did this off off of I don't even know when he stopped going to school. Think eleventh grade, tenth grade at Franklin.

And, you know, he every day, he'd be like, I don't I don't know how I how I got this position, the PPM position that he retired from. He's like, he'd be sitting there working from home and be like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna figure it out. It was like, I got a meeting that I have to give this proposal, I don't even know what it's about. But he'd go in there and read whatever and, I guess, kill it or do his job. So I wanna thank you guys for being a part of his life and being able to share stories with him and have conversations with him and see a smile and, you know, I just thank you so much.

And with that, in honor of Larry Evans, this meeting is adjourned.