City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everyone. It's six on Tuesday, February 17, and I'm called this Lacey Regular City Council meeting to order. I want to know that Councilmember Greenstein's with us remotely. He's sort of a little under the weather, so he'll mostly be off camera, but the rest of the council members are here in Council Chamber. And if you're able, please rise for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to of The United States Of America and to

the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

I I also pledge want to acknowledge that we, the city of Lacey, are on the ancestral lands of the tribal people, the Treaty of Medicine Creek, including the Nisqually Indian tribe and Squax Indian tribe. Can I get a motion to approve this evening's agenda and consent agenda?

Move to approve the agenda and consent agenda as published.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? That motion unanimously carries. So next up on our approved agenda this evening is our Lacey Youth Council report. Lacey Youth Council, come on up.

Good evening, counsel. I'm Yor Chren, and I'm representing Riveridge High School. Last week, we had our week of love, and we just wanted to bring in more school spirit and unite the student body. We also had our Hearts for Hygiene Drive that we also collaborated and had a friendly competition with our other high schoolers. Unfortunately, we did come in third place, but we did still donate some hygiene products.

So that was just the ultimate goal overall. Our boys and girls basketball teams are currently in the playoffs in hopes in making it to state, so wishing them well. And then we also are planning our CD's dance, and our theme is CD Hawkins, inspired by the infamous show, stranger things. So that is what is new with our school. Thank you.

Great. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Michelle Euig, and I'll be giving the report for North Thurston. We've also recently finished our Hygiene Drive, and we placed first in the friendly competition, raising over 300 items that we'll donate to the Family Youth and Resource Center. We've had our sports team compete at state or are competing at state currently, and we're very excited to watch them continue to represent our school. We're also planning our spring and multicultural assemblies, and our drama our drama club has produced a play about Valentine's Day.

Thank you. Great.

Go, Rams. Good evening, council. My name is Luca, and I'm representing the homeschool community. It's been very busy, and I'm looking forward to spring break when when that arrives. Spring sports are showing up. For me, it starts tomorrow, And the first events are already coming up for that, so that's exciting for me. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, counsel. My name is Arion, and I'm representing Timberline High School. Last week, we had our, hearts for hygiene drive. We got second place from the three schools. It wasn't third, so we're better. But we also had our week of love where we had a bunch of different events where we try to connect our school together, increase student involvement, and just get everybody connected. It went really well. And then last Friday, we also had our our school hosted our power lifting competition, and everybody performed really well. It was well received, so that was good too. And we had blood drive sign ups last week, and we're gonna have our blood drive this week on Thursday and Friday.

Thank thank you so much.

Good evening. I'm Isabella Valera, and I will be giving our youth council update. In our last meeting, we learned about different components of the city budget and participated in an activity where we had to prioritize what departments received what portion of our budget, which was really difficult. And as of now, we are preparing our presentation for our joint meeting with the commission on equity. Thank you.

Right. Thank you.

Good evening, counsel. I'm Makayla Lissane, and I'll be doing the update for the Lacey Summit subcommittee. We haven't met yet, but we are excited to meet next week. So thank you.

Great. Well, thank you, Youth Council. Keep up the good work. And I know it's hard to make those budget decisions. Trust us. We know that, too. So next up on our agenda is we are going to do a grant award for Together, but they were not able to make it this evening. So we're going to reschedule that. And so we'll go on to our next agenda item, which is our neighborhood grant program overview. Jenny.

Good evening, council. Thank you for the opportunity to share about our Lacey neighborhood grant program and what took place last year and what's coming up this year. And I know we have a couple new council members who might not be quite as familiar with this program, so I'm happy to give a brief overview as well. So this program was reinstated. Oh, do we have,

oh, we'll have some oh, there we go.

So you can go ahead and go to the next slide, please. Oh, I do. Thank you. Let's see. Maybe it needs to be turned on. I'm not sure.

Manual override.

Oh. Uh-oh.

I broke it. That's okay. We'll just go through without the slides. So the program intention for the Lacey neighborhood grant program, is to foster community pride, expand community member involvement, and beautify the city. So back in 2017, the council reinstated this program. There we go. And they just wanted to provide opportunities to bring neighborhoods and neighbors together and invest in their community. So for this program, grant eligibility, you've gotta be located inside the Lacey City limits. So our UGA, does not qualify for this program. The program the projects need to have a lasting or a benefit a direct benefit to the neighborhood, and then the projects need to be nonprofit in nature.

I'm not sure if I'm controlling it or not. We'll just go on. So some of the grant guidelines. This is a reimbursement matching grant program. So 50% of the total project cost can be reimbursed, up to $2,500. It does require a dollar for dollar match from the neighborhood. Volunteer hours and in kind donations may be eligible to meet this requirement as well. So they need to provide the documentation, complete the project, provide documentation. I review all that, make sure everything matches up, and then we provide the reimbursement grant following that. Projects must meet city codes, ordinances, and nondiscrimination policies.

I do share these applications with a small committee throughout the cities in different departments just to get their perspectives. They always provide really great feedback. So I appreciate having their expertise in their fields to make sure that we're meeting all of those requirements. And then it is open to formally recognized HOAs. And then in 2023, council requested that we open it up to informal neighborhoods as well.

And we've had a couple informal neighborhoods that have participated in the past as well. Yeah. There are five grant categories for this. So, people can submit applications for neighborhood beautification, safe neighborhoods, and community emergency response team organizations, so CERT, environmental sustainability and resiliency, board education, and organizational development, and then compassion. So we've had I encourage groups to be creative within these categories when thinking about what they can do to, improve their neighborhoods.

So some of the if we can go to the next slide, some examples of completed projects for 2025, so this last year. This is just a small snapshot, but we've, had a free little library installation. We've removed, hazard trees and trimmed some hazard trees, neighborhood park improvements, storm water facility restorations. Again, this is just a small a small snapshot, but we had some really good work that was done in the community. If we can go to the next slide, I just the the next three have some examples here.

So this was done in the point a couple years ago, actually, of, installing some community gardens. The next one was done. This one was just last year at the cottages. They have some parking areas in their neighborhood, and we were able to help with the cost of replacing some curbing, to make that more safe and just look better as well. And then Meadowlake HOA, we they were able to replace their park sign, and this was actually a great partnership with our parks and recreation department.

The Arbors Park is technically owned by the city of Lacey, but it we've had a long term contract with the HOA that they maintain it and all of that. So, but they did work with us to make sure that the signage that they replaced it with, you know, kind of was in line with the city's sign, standards and things like that. So they worked with, Jen and her team, and they did a great job of coming to a nice improvement for that. So for 2025, if we can show the next slide. So the total approved and completed grant projects was 23 this last year.

The funding request that came through was 42,240. We had $60,000 available, and we ended up issuing, $41,978. So just shy of what was requested, and that really is when people put in their request, they're not sure of the exact amount of what that project will cost. So those are estimates, and then this is the the dollars that actually were spent that we were able to reimburse. So we have a remaining balance of 18,000 a little over $18,000 that you'll probably see in a carryover in a future meeting, probably.

Carryover request. And then so for this year, we have applications currently open for the neighborhood grant program. They'll be open through March 31, and then we will do an application review from April 6 to the seventeenth. I will notify all of our, applicants of their status during the week of April 20, and then they just will need to have their projects completed by the end of the year. So are there any questions that I can answer for you?

This has obviously been a very popular program, you know, that we've provided for a while, and I'm very in support of it. Obviously, when we first got started, we were thinking more, you know, what would this look like? And we've seen some really good examples of But some we haven't really raised the contribution back to, you know, what we could provide to the community. As I think everyone knows, the cost of almost everything has gone up, including, you know, just doing some small projects could have gone up. Is there like, from the grants that request that you've seen have come in, is the the $2,500 a have been a limiting factor on what could have been?

For some of them, yeah. Some of the projects are are considerably more than 5,000. Like, if you're looking at a total project cost and 50% of that Yeah. Some of them are dealing with, you know, maintaining their stormwater facilities that haven't been touched for fifteen years, and that's a pretty sizable expense. So, yeah, some of them are are pretty expensive. So this is just a small piece of that, but we can certainly look at maybe expanding, you know, increasing that maximum dollar amount.

Yeah. I think what maybe the best thing to do is to, you know, go through the program. And then if there's leftover funds, you know, especially on some of the projects that could maybe need a little more help that we could, you know, maybe expand that Yeah. To them, you know, staying within our budget for the year, but Right. Making sure that, you know, some of these bigger projects and I you know, coming from an old neighborhood that would love to do some things as well, we talked a little bit about it, I was like, well, what can we do for, you know, dollars 5,000 total, when some of the ideas have been a little bit more expensive than that.

So that's just been a little bit of feedback I've gotten on that, but it's worth considering.

I like that idea, know, making sure that all of the projects that can be awarded Mhmm. Receive money, but then potentially increasing that if we have, you know, $18,000 left over Yeah. Could potentially

Especially, I know in some neighborhoods, have, like, some fencing that needs to be done, and Mhmm. You can't really replace too many Sure. Too much fencing, you know, with that. So it's something to think about.

Yeah. If we go through this grant cycle, and there are additional funds that have been utilized based on the grant we'll bring the policy and criteria back to counsel for review. Okay. If that's you know, the counsel would like to review and have that opportunity to address that policy. Because it really is set up with our policy and criteria, and then we would need to make some changes there before we could. Sure. So I mean, in summary, we'll bring that situation back to the council if Yeah. It presents

Well, so yeah, if you get through that, and it's going to be clear that we're going to be under the budget, let's bring that back to us so we can maybe make an amendment to that, you know, and so we'll know before the end of the year about that. Okay. That sound fair? It does. Okay.

That'd be great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So next up, we're gonna go on to, proclamations, and we have two proclamations today. The first proclamation is Cancer Prevention Month.

Alright. City Of Lacey official proclamation. Whereas cancer is a leading cause of death in The United States and the state of Washington affecting individuals, families, and communities, and whereas according to the Washington State Department of Health, approximately forty two thousand residents are diagnosed with cancer each year, and more than twelve thousand lives are lost annually to this disease, and

Whereas prevention plays a critical role in reducing cancer incidence, and studies show that up to fifty percent of cancers can be prevented through healthy lifestyle choices, including a nutritious diet, regular physical activity, avoidance of tobacco, and limited alcohol consumption, and

whereas regular screenings and early detection significantly improve cancer survival rates, yet many individuals face barriers to accessing essential health surface services, highlighting the need for increased awareness and accessibility, and

Whereas the city of Lacey supports community initiatives that promote cancer prevention, early detection, and access to quality treatment, as well as organizations working to advance cancer research and patient care. And?

Whereas National Cancer Prevention Month serves as an opportunity to educate the public, encourage healthy behaviors, and advocate for policies that support cancer prevention and equitable health care access for all, and.

Now, therefore, I, Andy Reider, mayor of the city Of Lacey, on behalf of the Lacey City Council, do here pro by proclaim February 2026 as cancer prevention month in the city of Lacey. And I encourage community members to take proactive steps to prevent cancer, support those affected, and promote a healthier future for our community. Signed myself by myself, mayor Andy Reiter, on this date. And, Cole, you wanna come up? I just want to, you know, thank you specifically for both of you for everything you do for Cancer Awareness Month in our community.

I know you've been working for a long time, and, you know, of course what we're always looking for is a cure. But one of the things that, you know, as you're very well aware of, I'm a cancer survivor myself, and it's all about, you know, early detection whenever possible. And so if anyone's out there thinking, know, should I get tested? Yes, go get tested. Catching cancer early is extremely important for your survivability. And so just I want to thank the, you know, your organization for everything you're doing on on, you know, getting the word out. And I this is a partnership, you know, I'm very proud of, and I just want you to keep up the

great work. Thank you. Thank you.

Perfect.

Well, hello, everyone. For those of you who I don't know, my name is Robert Lane, and I am the chair of the American Cancer Society South Sound Leadership Council. We talked a lot about the statistics around prevention, and I actually had them also in my speech, so it'll make it shorter. Really, the importance is that prevention isn't really about perfection. It's about the awareness and informed choices made over time.

So we're striving for just a continuous improvement rather than perfection because we know sometimes you want to eat that dessert or sometimes you want to have that extra drink. But the important part is to really just try to make a cognizant decision each and every day to make healthier choices so that we can prevent up to forty four percent of the estimated six hundred and twenty thousand deaths that can potentially happen this year. Another way that you can get involved if you want to is Relay For Life. We host it here in Lacey, the number fifth in the nation, which is a pretty awesome statistic for us on June 20. So I'm gonna pass it over to Nicole.

My my stats on there

that I wanna read.

I forgot my notes. I'm sorry. I'm Nicole Balsi with the American Cancer Society. I'm our senior development manager here in Thurston County, and we appreciate the opportunity and love that Lacey embraces the health of the community. This is a number that I wanted to share.

So over the past four decades, cancer prevention and screening services alone have averted approximately four point seven five million deaths from breast, cervical, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers. Can You find more information about that on fightcancer.org. So really, we're the American Cancer Society. We're here to be a resource. So on this table back here, I did bring screening guidelines by age, and encourage everyone to take one before you leave today and a form that has a QR code for the cancer risk three sixty.

I also encourage everybody to take that. Online, you can look at cancer.org and find these as well. But the cancer risk three sixty is a really quick five minute quiz about you personally and it will just help you direct you to some lifestyle options that might be good for you or tests you might oh my gosh screening you might want to start at an age just in case you might have a family history or some other concerning factors you might want to start some screening early so just a little direction and I just encourage everybody to take that because like they said we can take charge of a lot of things in our life not everything not everything can be perfect but there is screening it does save lives there are some risk factors that we can just say no to like the candy me but thank you so much for having us tonight and our phone number is also on all of the literature I brought but +1 802272345 if you have questions about screening or lifestyle prevention anything concerning a cancer diagnosis please call us we're available 20 thank you

thank you thank you both So our next proclamation's on the Keep Washington Working Act.

Alright. City Of Lacey official proclamation. Whereas the City Of Lacey is a diverse and welcoming community that values the dignity, safety, and well-being of all people who live, work, learn, and contribute to civic life and

Whereas Lacey's strength and vitality are rooted in its inclusive spirit, reflected in a commitment to equity, system fairness, and mutual respect regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, or background, and

Whereas immigrant and refugee community members are an integral part of Lacey's social, cultural, and economic fabric, contributing to local businesses, the workforce, civil life, and the overall prosperity of the community. And

Whereas fostering trust between local government, service providers, and community members is essential to public safety, public health, effective local governance, and sustaining a compassionate community and

Whereas the Keep Washington Working Act affirms Washington state's commitment to protecting the rights and dignity of all community members by limiting the use of local resources, personnel, and facilities for federal and immigration enforcement while ensuring compliance with state and federal law. And whereas the city of Lacey supports the Keep Washington Working Act and is committed to encouraging cooperation between immigrant communities and local government to reduce the fear of accessing services, reporting crimes, and promoting public health and well-being so that all community members feel safe, fully participating in the community without fear of discrimination. And?

Now, therefore, I, Andy Ryder, mayor of the city Lacey, on behalf of the Lacey City Council, do hereby reaffirm its position as a compassionate and inclusive city and express its support for, and commitment to upholding the Keep Washington Working Act and the city of Lacey and pledged to use every lawful tool available to protect our community members' rights and to stand in solidarity with immigrant communities against violence, intimidation, and discrimination. Signed by myself, mayor Andy Reiter, on today's day. And, Megan is here. You. You wanna see a few birds?

Thank you for coming here. Thank you much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Megan Matthews. My pronouns are she and her, and I'm the director for Washington State's Office of Equity. I can't tell you how much this proclamation means to people. We get phone calls, emails. When I'm out visiting with people, they're terrified. And our communities aren't good when people are terrified. Our communities, we're an ecosystem. And when people are hurting, it all impact it impacts everyone. And so I just just want to just acknowledge just sometimes just saying it, putting it on paper, affirming your commitment means a lot to people who feel unseen, unheard.

They feel, victimized and terrorized right now. The office of equity exists to facilitate policy and systems change. We are in the office of the governor, and, governor Ferguson established executive order twenty five zero nine, last year in the fall of last year, for, immigration subcabinet, which is led by the office of equity so we can do what we can at the state level and working with you all in the local government as well to protect our communities. I'm really grateful that our partnership already exists. We worked together on your first home ownership depot last year, and you're doing another one this year.

That's really great because in addition to you said cancer, that's another you know, health is another area where we see disparity, where we see people not access to health care, to quality care, to some of the services that are so meaningful to health outcomes, but so is housing. We have a lot of our neighbors who are on the streets or don't have pathways to owning homes, which is a wealth generating tool for many in our communities. And so I just wanna give you kudos for that work as well and for continuing that. And I'm excited for the other collaboration we're working together on your DI b summit. So congratulations on that, and I thank you. And I welcome any time to collaborate and coordinate in the future.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, we appreciate all all the good work, that you guys are doing, in the Washington State, Office of Equity, and obviously, it's something that is near and dear to this council's heart, my heart, on all the the work that we're doing with our commission on equity. You know, I think one of the first established here in the state of Washington. And so we're looking forward to that work program a little bit later, working with them in our work program. Okay. Next up, we do have a public comment, and we do have one person sign up for public comment. Annie, if you want to come up and

Yeah. My name is Annie Clay. I'm offering my opinions today as a private citizen about this proclamation, Washington keep working act proclamation, stating that the city of Lacey's intention is to have a safe place, for immigrant community members and stating that our law enforcement will follow the law, the Washington law, about limiting limiting the use of resources and facilities to enforce the ICE agenda. It's all well and good. But I believe that the city council should make a stronger statement, a public statement that the community will really hear that that we oppose the rounding up of noncriminals who are following the asylum and immigration protocol, that we are horrified that that people are being killed in the streets, that we don't support the detention centers that make a profit over rounding up 70,000 men, women, and children with little very little health care, inadequate food, and inadequate legal assistance.

We have community members in Lacey that are afraid to go to school, afraid to go to the store, afraid, to go to work. And as this proclamation, states, we need all of those people. There there are community members that, add to the to the richness of our community. But I think these people need to hear from Lacey loud and clear that we support them and that we have a deep understanding of the tragedy that is here. So I urge the city council of Lacey to make a public statement to go along with the proclamation.

Great. Thank you, Henny. Is anyone else wishing to address the council? I don't think we have anyone online either, do we? Okay. And, thank you so much. We, next, we're gonna go on to the the mayor's report, and I have several different appointments to this evening. The first is for the planning commission. We've had a couple openings on our planning commission, so it's been nice to go through the process. And we had a lot of very, very qualified applicants, and a lot of people really interested in serving the city of Lacey.

And it was a really difficult decision after all the applicants we went through, but we had to come up with two. And so it is my recommendation that we point Alan Acosta and Aaron Dumas to their first term on the Planning Commission.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. I think they're both here. Do you want to come up and introduce Alan, do you want to come up and introduce yourself? Over here. Just go over here. Over here.

Again, my name is Alan Acosta. I've been a resident here at the city of Lacey since 2006. My last duty station here was JBLM, so I retired in 2013 from the military. I've raised a family here, daughter, and I've been here ever since. I love this community. I want to see it grow. I want to see how we can invite more families into this community and continue to bring, diversify, and bring a lot of talent back here into this community. So I'm looking forward to working with the City of Lacey and the Planning Commission to get all the agendas and goals done.

Thank you so much. Is Aaron here? I guess I didn't. I thought I saw him earlier, but that's alright. So it's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of appointing Alan and Aaron signify by saying aye. Aye. Is there anyone opposed? Then that motion unanimously carries. And then I have a couple more. Next one is the appointment of John Crosson to the Human Services Commission. That was another round of interviews I did, and again, it was a difficult decision. But I see John I think I see was John here? He was here.

Here. Yeah. I think he just just stepped out. Anyway, it's my recognition that we appoint John to his first term on the Human Services Commission. Is there a second? Second. Moved and seconded. Any discussion? And all in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye. Anyone

opposed? And that motion unanimously carries.

Can we give him a chance to

Yeah.

Say a few words when he comes back?

If he comes back, we'll we'll introduce himself. John, by the way, has been serving the city of Lacey in one capacity or another, going back like twenty years. It's truly amazing, someone who has dedicated so much of his volunteer time to this city. He had just finished serving a term on our public facilities district as a member there, but he's been on serving in several different capacities in the past, and he just has a very unique long term, you know, vision, you know, or perspective of where has been and where Lacey is going. So he'll be just a wonderful contribution if he hasn't taken off.

But I do have two more appointments to the library board. It's Jade, Sarah, and Pat Tavis. Are they here? Y'all there? You want to come up and introduce yourself?

Good evening, everyone. I'm Jade Sierra, and I'm serving on the library board as an a new appointee. So grateful to be on this city of Lacey board and to serve the community. I've lived here for about six years now, and it's it's a really great opportunity, and I'm excited to get to work. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Is Pat here? No? Okay. So it's my, motion that we appoint Jade and Pat to their first term on the library board. Is there a second?

Second.

Moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Is there anyone opposed? That motion unanimously carries with that as well. So thank you all so much for being here. Now we'll go on to the city manager report. Do you have anything?

I have no report. The two reports I did have got moved to the work session when we needed to move the economic development strategy plan. That's great.

Well, then we'll go on to council and committee's report. The first report I'm giving out is for the Transportation Policy Board, which met last Wednesday, and there wasn't a very heavy agenda. I guess the one thing that is very pertinent is that I was appointed to chair the Transportation Policy Board for another year, which I think will make I'm not sure if it's my fifteenth year or it's been a long time being the chair of the Translation Policy Board, but I was elected to another term there. And then the other discussion that we had was more of a discussion about our next call for projects, which was coming up. And we're still in the early stages of that, but one of the things that what the county has historically done is set some money aside for the South County to build for them to defederalize some dollars so the South County can use those dollars because and the smaller cities of the South County can use those dollars, not Tenino, but not Tenino, Bacota, Rainier, and possibly the tribes, because they just don't have the staff available to be able to handle a federal contract like that.

So the county has defederalized some dollars, and they're looking about doing that for another cycle. And so we're just having some conversations about what that will look like. There is a possibility that they've sort of reached out to the City of Lacey and asked if we can maybe step into that role, and we're at the early discussions of of that, of of what that would look like. But that was that took up the majority of our our time at last Wednesday's meeting. So it's in my report. Deputy Mayor? Yes.

A couple of quick ones. The EDC Board met on January 28. We did welcome a couple of new members. Tumwater has appointed Megan Sullivan. She's just recently elected in her first term. Prior to her, it was it was mayor Sullivan that was that was on the board. So we welcomed her as a new member. We also received a new member from the Port Of Olympia. In this case, it was Joel Hansen. Prior to him, it was Jasmine Vesavada.

So Joel will be taking that position. So we welcome those two members. We did have some financial report that extended through the November. As you guys know, 2025 was kind of a rough year for nonprofits as a lot of federal dollars dried up. And so balancing out 2025 was interesting, at least.

And by the end of November's number, the EDC was back in the black, and we were able to meet all of our obligations. There are a few people who are still on shared work through Employment Security Department, though. So fortunately, we did not have a government shutdown at the January that really helped. So the Apex will continue to operate. There are a couple of programs that may get cut as we just do not have the funding for them and are looking for some alternative ways to continue doing those programs but under a different name.

So more to come on that. Lacey Makerspace, which is also falls under the EDC, has really come out of 2025 with more positive numbers than it's had in any time before. So the Lacey makerspace has been operating in the black for almost ten months now, which is really good because creating a membership base and getting new members is can be difficult. We are one of the only maker spaces in the region, and we do get people from all over The United States coming to the Lacey makerspace. So with the city's contribution, thanks to the council and the EDC the powering behind the EDC and the marketing and all the different things that we do to keep the makerspace going and the contracts that we've gone out and gotten through like Ajax and some of the workforce development community has really made a difference in the viability of the makerspace.

And as you guys know, there was some dollars last year that came in from the federal level that helped in the expansion, going from 5,000 feet to 10,000 feet, adding a lot of new equipment, and so on and so forth. I also asked the abbey if we could clear some of the brush so that you can make this make your space visible from the street. And I've been pushing for some signage to go up on the side of the building so that people know driving down College Street. And we have so many people that drive down College Street, and you see a building now, but you don't know what's in it. So I feel like there's not really a whole lot of businesses that can survive without any kind of marketing that you can see as you go by.

I think it's going to increase the membership. And it's going to keep it operating the way it is. And who knows? The goal, obviously, is to not rely on any CD dollars or anything like that for the Maker Space to stand on its own. And we are definitely heading that direction. So very proud of what we've been able to do with the Maker Space. Let's see. We do have a section of our meeting called the roundtable. And in that section of the meeting, different jurisdictions, different people get to talk about what is happening in their jurisdiction or in their industry and so on. One of the conversations was about the Lacey and the MJR developer doing the Midtown work.

And there is a group that's been put together to kind of help facilitate that. I think the city manager may even be part of that. And so the goal is obviously to create an identity for Lazy Midtown, something that will attract more businesses and kind of clean up the corridor and make it its own thing. I know Vanessa's been a part of that. Several people here on staff are a part of that.

It's an effort that's that that's been going on since I've been on council, and it's really starting to get some traction. So so that was that was one of those areas where we're all so so very happy to see Lacey Midtown growing, the roundabout potentially coming in. The there's a couple new businesses that are being developed. MJR doing the conversion. So Lacey Midtown is one of our primary focuses at the EDC.

And the Ag Park down into Nino is always something that we spend a lot of time discussing because it was an EDC powered venture combined with the city of Tenaino. The first two buildings went up really well. They're open for business. Colvin Ranch is operating out of one. There's a couple businesses operating out of another and also a meeting and event space.

Now, there's another section on the back where there's going to be a meat processing plant. This will be the first time we have meat processing in Western Washington. So those jobs now will not go out of state, but they will stay here. And we will be able to have meat processing for all of our ranchers in the state. Doesn't have to go to California and come back to be distributed, can just be processed here and create jobs and save money for those businesses.

And that is my EDC report. And then my second report is for JASCOM, met on February 9, last Monday. We did it is our first meeting of the year, so we were able to we needed to elect a chair and a vice chair. I will continue to be the chair of that committee. And our vice chair is Kelly Green now from the City of Olympia.

We did get into some numbers and statistics. In terms of numbers and statistics, our volunteer hours are up significantly this year or should I say, in 2025, we'll be doing contrasting 'twenty four and 'twenty five. 'twenty four and 'twenty five, we had 13,747 volunteer hours at Joint Animal Services, which is more than double of the previous year. So the executive director, Sarah, has really done a good job of devising a system to onboard volunteers in a quicker way. And so those thirteen thousand seven hundred and forty seven hours represent 6.6 full time employees at roughly $24 an hour.

So Jazzcom is really getting its money's worth, and the community is really coming out to support Jazzcom. Let's see. Outreach events went from 22 events in 'twenty four to 30 events in 'twenty five. There were 3,823 total exams. 434 of those were in December alone, which is a 52% increase. 1,860 procedures in 2025. The busiest month for 2025 was August. The foster program is doing really well from 2024 at 427 fosters to 614 in 2025. Intake is up 27%. Field calls are up 12%.

The intake breakdown is County at 57%, Olympia at 21, Lacey at 15, and Tumwater at 7% of the intake for this facility. Field calls are County at 44%, Olympia at 34, Alaci at 22, and home order at 10. Prosecutorial referrals went but there were 18 of those. Let's see. The National Animal Cruelty Task Force, which is the first and original of its kind, will have their first meeting, I believe it's next month.

And the HVAC unit is going to need some repair work. So you guys know that the JASCOM facility made our our list of city buildings that really need some some help and or to just get a new facility. One of the top ones was the Lacey City Police Department, which was built in, like, 1984, pre Internet. And and so that was the one that we took care of first. JazzCom is looking to do a capital outlay.

We are pursuing design and know what kind of square footage we need and also what kind of dollars. There is some legislative push to receive some dollars to help with design. I think we got a million out of the two that we asked for. So that is really good. And so that design work will continue.

There is also bill that is going through that will potentially allow for some tax dollars, excise tax dollars to be created that will allow JASCOM to operate off of excise tax. And I'm not sure exactly how that's going to to change the assessments for the cities. We'll see how that goes as we, you know, kinda put get this bill pushed through. I think it's gonna be in the next session, though. I don't think it'll be worked on this session. Let's see if there's anything else. And that is my report.

Thank you. Council member Cox. The

Thurston Regional Planning Council met on February 6. Unfortunately, that meeting conflicted with the city council's day one of our retreat. So I'm gonna give you very abbreviated roundup of what we did. We heard presentations on the federal transportation demand management legislation, the human services transportation plan, the regional safety action plan, and regional planning council meeting norms and expectations. We also elected officers for 2026.

The new chair is Eileen Swarthout from Tumwater City Council. I will continue in the role of vice chair, and secretary is port commissioner Jasmine Vesabeda. We had an agenda setting meeting just this afternoon for the March 6 regional planning council meeting, and I'm really excited for that one because planning representatives from the cities, Lacey and the county, are gonna give presentations on their recently completed comprehensive plans. And what's exciting to me about this is it's an opportunity for the jurisdictions to really communicate with one another and look at where our plans align and, you know, identifying gaps in the regional planning framework. So it should be a good meeting.

I'm looking forward to that. Intercity Transit Authority met on February 4. Very routine meeting. We're purchasing some new AV enhancements for the boardroom. We authorized the general manager, to purchase replacement vans to support the village van program.

We elected, officers. I will continue in the role of chair. We elected Sue Pierce, who is a community representative as vice chair, and she will continue also in that role. We completed committee assignments that are pretty routine. We got to meet the latest class of people who are training to be bus operators, And that's always a really fun thing because the fellow who heads up that program always has human stories to share about each of the the trainees there.

And it's just it's a great way of getting to know them and them getting to know the agency. I think just one other note, our general manager, Emily Bergkamp, took part in a meeting of local elected officials with congresswoman Marilyn Strickland, who was wanting to gather local input on federal infrastructure and transportation policy, particularly with the infrastructure investment and jobs act. So she I I commend her because she wanted to hear directly from us what it is that we need, and she'll fight for it for us in DC. And finally, LOT,

which

is the Lacey Olympia Tumwater Thurston County Clean Water Alliance, met on February 12. We had a legislative update from lobbyists, Kelsey Hulse of Propolis Communications, and Bill Clark, who is an attorney at law, who is partnering with with Kelsey on that. We set the year's meeting calendar, including probably it's gonna be a half day retreat on budget setting. Lot does their budget on a two year cycle, so it's kinda like the legislature. You get a kind of an easier year between and then a rough year.

So rough year coming up. We elected board officers. County commissioner Ty Menser was reelected chair, and I was elected the new vice chair. I will also continue to represent lot on the Thurston Regional Planning Council. And then we finally, we heard a presentation on the twenty twenty six year ahead from executive director Matt Canelli that largely consists of working on the two year budget and construct construction projects. The February meeting, just so you know, was the first meeting of the year for our board because we generally take January off. And that's my report.

Thank you. Council member Dunning.

Yes. The visitor bureau bent, today at, 03:30, mainly went over financials. The only thing, really of note, is they have finalized the process, and qualifications for hiring their next, CEO, and they're looking at going out, for that in April. So I'll give you guys an update as soon as I get it if we do that.

Great. Thank you. Council member Turner.

Yes. As, council member Cox mentioned, the TRPC meeting took place during our retreat, and so I was not able to go, but I'm looking forward to joining them next time. The Nisqually River Council is meeting this Friday, and I'm looking forward to joining them as well for the first time. And then the law and justice group will council will meet next month, and so I'm looking forward to meeting with them as well. Council member Siu and I were very happy to go to the Chinese New Year festival, Oh, agreed in advance that council member Siu would represent the city, and he did a great job.

Thank you. Thank you for that.

He'll say more.

Oh, I will?

Yes. He will.

Well, council member, so you're up next.

So, yeah, it was my pleasure to be able to speak to the Olympia Area Chinese Association at their Lunar New Year celebration, and it was it was a wonderful time. Delicious food, lots of presentations, like dances and songs sung by members of their organization for

it was a it was

just so fun. The kids had a blast. There are so many kids there, and was just really honored to be able to represent our city there. I got to talk about our our cultural grant program as well as our cultural day coming up here on March 7. And, yeah, it was just it was really great.

Mhmm. In terms of the committees, on February 5, the Solid Waste Advisory Council met. Most of it was just legislative updates. Nothing really of note at this point until we know what's gonna come out of the what bills get passed. And they pushed back doing, board elections until the next month, because several voting members, myself included, had not been actually appointed by the BOCC or the board of county commissioners, and so I'll have that report next month.

And then the Olympia regional Region Clean Air assoc Agency or ORCA met on the eleventh. We had a lovely presentation from doctor Meredith McCormick at John Hopkins University about how air pollutants affect your long term health, particularly about childhood development. And so we talked a little bit about how air quality really affects us. We heard earlier about cancer awareness and how all of these things kind of coincide. And so we talked a little bit about how we have a new air monitoring system here in Lacey at the Mountain View Elementary School.

And I believe in April, they'll be holding a little their meeting at Mountain View Elementary because it's spring break. And, so that way, they can kinda show off the new unit and talk more about that. They also highlighted that they're still working on they're still doing their, wood stove recycling and replacement program, where if you have a wood stove or a insert, you can actually get reimbursed part of the cost for upgrading to something that's not wood burning so they can help kind of clean up the air in the region. You can visit their website to get more information about that. And then the Thirst and Climate Mitigation Collaborative will be meeting on Monday, the twenty third.

Great. Thank you, and thank you too for attending the the Chinese Lunar New Year. I I participated last year, and I just couldn't fit into my schedule this year. So I really appreciate you guys going and representing Lacey. We are at the end of our agenda, but we're going going to a work session. So it's 06:57 right now. Let's let's, meet back at at 07:10 in the back, to go over our our, couple of items that we've been trying to get to, and we've had to push off till today. But until then, you I'll keep class late.

Will it keep the same link?

Yes. Keep it the same link. Thanks, Lenny. Keep the same link, and I'm gonna adjourn to a work session. Okay.

I'm gonna call this work session to order, and we have three items on our our work session agenda. Our first being our 2026 commission on equity work plan. Motion in commission.

Great. Thank you. Good evening, mister mayor, deputy mayor, and council members. I'm joined here by, several members of our commission on equity. And since we have some new council members, perhaps we could do some introductions.

Please. Great.

Would you like

to start us off?

Doctor. Thelma Jackson. I'm serving my second term as chair of the Equity Commission.

Annie Clay, you've been a member since the beginning.

And Cliff Brown, I'm one of the regional members also of the commission. Just started my second term.

We also had commissioner Makita Hart join us as well. Makita just had to leave a little bit earlier. But what I do wanna say And Kim Sauer as Thank you. Thank you for that. Commissioner Hart is serving as the vice chair this year.

And I I just wanna pass on my deep appreciation to all of commissioners on the commission on equity. They spend a lot of time here with the city working and providing recommendations for you all to take a look at and for city staff as well. So thank you for spending every fourth Monday of the month with us as well as other times throughout the year as we have done several other events. What I'm planning on doing is just providing kind of a a brief recap and then hoping that we can have some discussion about the 2026 work plan. So let's see if I can get PowerPoint to work this time. Sorry. We were having some technical difficulties a little bit earlier. And it looks

like it's gonna work perfectly.

Alright. So for tonight, we're just gonna take a look at this. It's for review only. The purpose is to take have some discussion, and then we can bring back for council consideration for action at a future date, likely on the consent agenda. Commissioner Brown and I were asked last year to do a presentation for Leadership Thurston County, and we've kind of been using the presentation framework that we created for that for our Commission on Equity presentations here moving forward.

And the question we were asked as part of that presentation is how are we moving forward? Now that we've moved through kind of the forming of the diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging plan, how are we continuing its progress? And what we took as our key takeaway is that the key to movement is the refusal to stand still. So not just having this document, but taking it and looking through it and using it on a monthly, daily basis to determine some of the actions that the Commission on Equity is working. We frame this as kind of a you know, we have our stretch where we're being very intentional, so we're not just jumping into action, but we're planning.

We're having our stride where we're knowing that we have limited resource and so that we really have to take a look at making the best of what limited energy we have. We have our log it, which is really important as part of our strategic plan as being accountable and having those updates on the work that we're doing. And then repeat, knowing that it's not just a one and done, but that we are going to be continuing to stretch, stride, log it in perpetuity. So like I mentioned, we've been using the diversity, inclusion, belonging strategic plan as our guiding star. And it's really to help advance and support equity efforts in the greater Lacey community. Thank you all for providing that document policy for us to work off of.

And this is what it looks like.

And thank you, commissioner, for pointing that out, because all I have are the goal areas here and our goal statements and sub areas. But what you can see is we really, in mapping this out, have a comprehensive plan for a variety of areas from workforce and work environment, community access and engagement, policy programs and services, and livability. And we've been striding quite a bit for the last couple of years. And again, Commission on Equity has been doing phenomenal job. And so some of their twenty twenty five accomplishments that I do want to highlight are our regional diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging summit, which Veronica Hand played an integral role in organizing and helping, as well as some of our commissioners who served on not only committees, but also on panels at at the summit.

We've also started hosting some regional diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging advisory board meetings, meaning that it's not just with city of Lacey, but we are trying to get all of the advisory board members from across the jurisdictions. So City Of Olympia, Thurston County, and soon to be Tumwater as they're standing up their commission on equity in a room together to talk about what are some of the things that you all are experiencing, how can we learn from that, and what might be some considerations for future projects working together. We've also they've worked on the comprehensive plan, language access plan. They finalized the equity map, participated in the cultural celebration, met with the Lacey Youth Council, helped provide feedback on the employee survey, community survey, the poet laureate policy, the community and cultural grant policy, the Leadership Thurston presentation that I mentioned, and also being a participant in several Doctor. Martin Luther King Jr.

Day celebrations. And that's just a highlight. These are some select there's been a lot more that's been going on. But before I proceed, I'd love to open it up to the commissioners to talk about some of the projects that have been worked on and some of key takeaways.

I'll say the thing that really excites me is the fact that when you're doing good work and hard work, you can't keep it to yourself. And so having the, other jurisdictions, to turn look to us, you know, for leadership and asking questions of us and how we're doing these things and what are some of the the initiatives, and how you're finding success, how you're working with the the, council and and the leadership in your various jurisdiction. Those things are exciting to be able to share and to see see that they're mirroring us in in a number of areas, is real exciting. For example, Tom Wood, you know, they are now filling a commission on equity, you know, and they say, oh, we took after you guys, commission on equity. We want to establish, you know, the same type of commission, you know, with their their local, focus.

But those things are exciting to me that, it's gone beyond the city of Lacey. You know, we, you know, for the county, are being leaders and doing some good work that they want to follow. Well,

we're at a point where, know, we take a great deal of pride in what resulted in this three year strategic plan. But in our discussions as equity counsel, it's like, where do we go from here? And it's implementation time.

Yes.

It's, so we want very much to not let this just become another document sitting on the shelf collecting dust, that it really is a road map and a blueprint for how the city of Lacey is actuating its concept of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Those words are losing meaning Mhmm. In this country. And so what does it mean now that we're looking at, the accountability part of it? What evidence do we have that these action steps are being implemented?

How can we continue to bring advice to the council in the policy areas, in those things? And one of the fundamental questions, we've asked and I often ask is, so here's what we say we want to be. Here's where we say we are. What are we going to do differently to get there? And so we're getting down into the weeds a little bit more now.

The first three years, you know, and we've all been very, very appreciative of the staff leadership under Shannon and the support that the full council has given us. And when other jurisdictions talk to us about, our successes and how we got there, we say to them, make sure you have the unequivocal support of your council. Without that, you will go nowhere. And this is one of the reasons why Tumwater has been so slow to get a council up and going. But with the new mayor, she's determined that this is gonna happen for Tumwater.

And so we work through these things. We try to look at, you know, how LACI is changing and what kind of new and different considerations do we have to be discussing because business as usual just won't work anymore. And where most those things happen? We spend a lot of times looking at demographics and data. You know, who make up the city of Lacey? What are those needs? We're excited about this upcoming equity map. Where do we have inequities? That's the question we're at now. We talked about equity for three years.

Now we're talking about inequities. Where are they? And what, must we do differently to address those things? And that's the tough stuff. That's the hard work.

What must we do differently? When we think in terms of personnel, staff, practices, behaviors, beliefs, those are the difficult things to change. And so to make this, three year plan, a a reality at some point in Lacey's future, we're just trying to figure out, where do we go from here as an equity commission. And as Cliff indicated, as we share with other jurisdictions how we got here, I addressed the leadership council that morning and they came later that afternoon. They couldn't believe we had a we actually had a strategic plan.

And, and, you know, the whole attitude about, why's take all that time strategic planning. It's a useless document. It goes nowhere. And so I try to emphasize the fact that it is useless if you don't put it to use, if you don't pay any attention to what it is. And so as much work as this was, it was nothing compared to the work that lies ahead Absolutely. To implement Mhmm. To actually implement. Mhmm. And three years from now, to look back and say, what did we accomplish? What did we do?

Did we meet those performance indicators that we built into the plan? How do we know we've made a difference? What changes have been made as a result of some of the activities that we we tackled and and recommended and that kind of thing. So it is a lot of work. And as we're out there in the community trying to help, people understand that Lacey has a viable equity commission, And it's not just another commission in name, but it's a working commission, trying to live up to, our task of providing advice, and counsel to the city council as asked.

So we're out there with our ears to the listening posts, trying to hear what what community people are saying, what they're sharing with us, what are their perceptions of of where the needs are, what the concerns are. And a part of what we'll be doing moving forward in '26 and beyond is another round of community listening sessions. That's where we got a lot of our information. And, we have communities within communities in Lacey, And they talk to each other. We talk to each other, but don't talk to one another and certainly don't bring it up to this level.

So another round of listening sessions will be a a very important thing because we did that three years ago. Many more new people have come to town. Mhmm. You know, do they feel that they belong? You know, do they feel accepted? What kinds of discriminatory or or racial kinds of of things are they encountering? And, you know, we have to talk about, is it a policy issue? Is it a behavior issue? Is it just a practice? What can we do about it? And so, you'll be hearing a lot more from us as we're making recommendations that how this aggressive plan is to be implemented and enacted so that it's just not another shelf dust collector.

Thank you. I wanted to tack on to our listening sessions. That's how we started. We said we didn't know what our plan should be unless we know what the people need and what they're talking about. So we wanna continue that and keep the dialogue keep keep doing a dialogue so that we are actually talking, to each other, you know, often that we don't run-in the same circles or whatnot, but we need to get more cohesive with our our understanding and to keep the commission, elevated and approachable, from the community. So that's important to us.

Well, I just want to first acknowledge we can't let this night go by without acknowledging the work of reverend Jesse Jackson who who passed away today, who has laid the framework for Americans to start having these conversations, and we are behind. Right? If we weren't behind, this would be a lot easier. But the one thing that obviously, the commission on equity is, as you know, is very near and dear to my heart. It's something that I think was gonna bring a strength to our community if we enact what we say we're gonna enact.

And it to me, it all starts with communication. And we know that the way we have historically communicated with the public has not been very effective. And so I think that that's the first thing that I feel like we need to improve on. And it's meeting people where they're at and having conversations with them at a level where they're comfortable enough to have an open and honest conversation. And you can't always do that in a a formal environment.

You know? Some of that times that takes going to a a minority owned business and having a a conversation with them saying, tell me your struggles. Like, what what what is it like to be a business owner in Lacey? And what obstacles have you had to overcome? Because you to get you have a business start is is a huge obstacle.

And, obviously, making sure that we're always connecting with the the this younger generation too. Right? I mean, they're the ones that are inheriting, should be inheriting our good work that we're trying to make a difference. We have a road map. But unless someone continues to carry it on, right, we have to have our community involved in everything that we're doing and bring them along as well with it with acceptance and and buy in.

Because if this is a top down, you know, push it down, trying to push something down on our community, it's not gonna work. And we know it's not gonna work. And and, unfortunately, what you always see with whenever you make us one step forward, there's a deep down pushback to push you back. And and we just can't let that happen. You know, we well, we have to understand where people are coming from and then keep pushing forward. Right? And and it's about being deliberate. And I think that is the most important aspect of what we're doing. Have to continue to be deliberate. Councilmember?

Yeah. I I wanna just make a comment. I am so proud of the work that the commission does. I talk about it all the time. And I'm always asking how can we use the equity map because Mhmm. Probably people get tired of me asking about that. But I think it's important that that, as the mayor said, we, you know, do what we say we're gonna do. I I am a big advocate for listening tourists. And I would love to, at some point, if if not tonight, sit down and ask you how you structure yours. What what do they look like? I mean, how do how do you do it? Because I I'd be very curious in that.

We talked about how we did the first, first time around. What What were those lessons learned? And what are we going do differently with this next round of listening sessions? Is that something?

Yeah. I can provide a little bit of comment on that. Happy to hear it from some of the commissioners as well. But it has been a learning process. Of course. So what we started with is not where we are at today. And I'm sure a year from now, we'll be changing that and what that looks like, you know, to the mayor's point about trying to get into maybe less formal situations where you can have conversations with folks who might not feel comfortable in a formal situation. So what we've been currently doing, the process is trying to partner with community groups to kind of co host our meetings and to try to have them in locations that aren't necessarily city hall. You know, we've used the library as an example. We've used the Lacey Veterans Services Hub.

And in those forums, what we try to do is provide some background information on who the Commission on Equity is and the work that they're doing, but then to really focus some of the conversations on small groups and table talks, and then have larger kind of discussions after there's been some smaller discussions. We take all of that information. We have typically, we'll have a commissioner who is there as a facilitator at a table and another commissioner who's a note taker or staff member. And so we're taking those notes, then we synthesize them on the staff side and bring it back to the commission on equity to make sure that what we have as notes, and they're not verbatim. It's, you know, themes.

Right? Kind of capture the conversations that they heard, and then we've added them as addendums to, the strategic plan so you can see all of the notes there from those meetings.

Very cool about it.

And I

think it's important to highlight the trilogy she talked about, you know, this commission and this staff and then this community partners working together to to make those things those sessions effective. We started out, you know, kind of the way I like old school. Let's get in a room and just talk. Honey's with me. But we they grew and we developed to make them more comprehensive and probably more effective Mhmm. At the time. But we had to just get started, you know, but the information comes to us regardless of the format. Mhmm. If people are comfortable,

they share.

And that's that's what's important. And the staff has been great at documenting what is said. And then we can we use that as we develop our strategic plan. We use that as we review various policies that are brought before us. We put our equity lens on it. So it it just it doesn't go to waste. And one of the things that I talked about early on was things need to go full circle. Okay. We go out, we talk, and meet with the people, and get this feedback. Okay. We get the feedback and it's kept in house. That's good. No good. No. So we have to have a way of communicating it back out to to the community.

And so with various sessions and presentations we've made throughout the community and being able to talk with individuals and small groups, we're able to share that with what we're doing, with the information that they provided, to us.

And I think one of the important things we did was go to the people other than perch ourselves somewhere and expect the people to come to us. And the first one of those was with the black community. It was at New Life Baptist Church,

Mhmm.

And fellowship hall was full. Mhmm. That was so much. There's no way, say, had it been city hall or wherever

Yeah. Yeah.

That they would have come. And they were just the feedback was just really wonderful.

Mhmm.

And then as other ethnic groups convene their communities, they could decide where would people feel most comfortable and most participatory. Mhmm. And so that was a different approach as opposed to a governmental town hall meeting

Mhmm.

Where ethnic groups, people of color, and other marginalized people just don't show up, don't participate, don't feel welcome, don't feel heard. And realizing those things, that's how we approached those gatherings. And I think we had five or six different ones. You know? And we learned a lot from each and won't necessarily repeat those verbatim, but what did we learn from it that we can make the next round even more successful.

Mhmm.

And Cliff pointed out working with community groups that can help get the word out, that can help market this thing. Okay. You you've had something to say, show up and say it kinda thing from the pulpit or whatever might be the the perch. And it really paid off. It really did pay off. And

so Yeah. Early on, one of the issues we had was that there were no city council members in the first couple. Yeah. And then the city council members started to attend. I know deputy mayor Yeah.

You know, that's o that's always been it's an interesting thing with our our advisory groups because, like, the the the the purpose of the advisory group is for you to advise council. And so to try to get you know, it's always interesting where is council involvement in some of those things because, you know, of course, all council wants to hear what's going on, but we don't want to overstep anything either. Right? We want the work to be done and focus be where the focus needs to be and then have an honest assessment come come back to us. So it's always always a difficult that's one of the tougher things because we of course, counsel would love to be involved in a lot of things, but we have to make sure we're going through the right process too.

Council Member, you have something?

I just wanted to say one. I went to one of the listening sessions early on the vet Lacey Veterans Hub just to, like, see what was going on and how it was and I just I loved how it was structured. I loved where it was going in the very open ended conversations with it. I did have a question if any

of the community groups that

you partnered with offered, like, any sort of, like, childcare or some sort of activities in which to allow parents to come in and have a moment to be able to sit down and offer that. I know that that is a huge ass. Child care is a problem everywhere. And so I just I wasn't sure if that happened at any of the the sessions. Online.

I haven't structured anything like that.

It's definitely some feedback that we've received from some community members. The library did set up a youth state the library did set up a youth station for anybody who showed up with young children to participate in some coloring and drawings, but that is certainly something we've heard is a barrier.

And it's that kind of thing that we hear

Yeah.

And and take it into consideration when planning the next round. How many other people might have been here had childcare been provided or had there been some snacks or some food, you know, all those kinds of things. Everybody's working. Two working parents. Yeah. Pick up the kid from daycare. There you are. So those are capacity building kind of of considerations we have to give the next time around. Awesome.

Well and that's why it's important to sometimes meet people where they're at, you know, wherever it's their place of worship or where wherever it may be. And sometimes that more of an informal setting is, you know, the route we need to go. But you made a point about collecting data. And I think data is extremely important because if you don't have it, there's no way to measure it. As long as we're measuring it, then there's some policy suggestion or recognition on how to change it.

Those numbers aren't shouldn't be there just to be stared at and go, was me or whatever. It's like, what can we be doing with understanding the capacity that we have at the local level, which is where we are restricted by our revenue challenges. But are there things that we can be doing to get some early wins and some and have Lacey be a place where everyone can be successful? Like where are the gaps? What are needed?

And what are the partnerships out there? Because we're not gonna be able to do it alone. We're gonna have to do it, hopefully, with public and private partnerships to help people achieve success. And and that's what, of course, what we're hoping, right, for is that, yes, we're a welcoming belonging, but we actually have a community where people, regardless of their background, have a place to be successful.

Yeah. And I think, know, Tom, with those partnerships and everything, think, in the previous slide that Shannon had up there talked about some of those goals and what they focus on. And then is it a city of Lacey Lee's, a partnership, trying to identify and do that early work in that strategic plan, which is a great value of that work that the Commission on Equity has done to create that plan. And of course, there's been some a lot of confidence already to implement and actualize it. Think in 2026, there's gonna be many more of these things that both the Commission on Equity, the Council, and the staff can focus on. But also, it is about creating those partnerships and leveraging those opportunities and meeting people in person. And I don't know if that's something that's coming up to identify going forward.

That's a great segue. We got a few more slides on some of the things that we're gonna be taking a look at and working on which fit into those buckets. So I think the other thing I would just highlight is we did a first we held a retreat for the commission on equity where we spent the morning together and just really focused on networking and connecting and then did a reflection. This is all part of that stretching exercise where we talked about what were our strengths, our opportunities, our aspirations, and our results. And as you can see, we got a lot of really good feedback from the commissioners. And this is all in part of that work plan,

so you

can take a look at this in detail. But there was some really good conversations of, like, how can we use our strengths moving forward as we start to look at future projects. So in the draft work plan, we have identified a couple of key initiatives, and that is to continue with the poet laureate selection process. So the policy was created and now having that that group that takes a look at it makes a recommendation. Same with the community and cultural grant selection process.

To also provide a strategic plan report. So, mayor, one of your comments was about the data and showing what we're doing. And that's one of the documents that we hope to have in front of the Commission on Equity for review and then counsel at a later date, basically showing everything we've done in the last year for that accountability element of it, that log it element. There was also some discussion at the council about taking a look at just, hey, what are our utility relief programs right now? And so we're gonna do a just overlook and get some feedback on that.

A community liaison program. So this was the discussion of, like, hey, how do we get into the community with trusted messengers who are already embedded and have built relationships because they're gonna get much more honest, you know, feedback or people are gonna feel more comfortable in those situations. And so looking at how we may be able to facilitate a program like that.

I think that's a huge that would be a huge win for our community to have that program up and and running for sure.

I'm continuing to plan for the next DEIB summit called Thurston Forward. I'm taking a look at our advisory board process, doing step round two of the utility wrap program. So this is a program that we are slowly I'm sure you noticed a couple of them pop up that are wrapped around the community. We're gonna continue that once we get some good weather. And then go out for another round of artists, local artist participation to do some more utility wraps here focused on Lacey community members, events, or historic kind of ties.

Taking a look at a community connect tool and then getting some information on kind of how we kind of do our leadership mentorship and internships. And then taking a look at city recognitions and then any other, you know, city document policies that come up throughout the year. You know, we all we obviously pivot at points in times because you all are like, hey. We want the commission on equity to look at that, so building some capacity and space for anything else that could pop up. And you can see we've we've logged all of the 2025 information here, and then we put in kind of a similar format all of those programs initiatives that I just talked about in kind of a quarterly one, two, three, four, but recognizing that these are broad and sometimes these move and get spilled over just depending on time and capacity and other items that might come up from the council.

So that was an overview, kind of talking about some of those projects and those connectivities. And, again, the idea would be that it's review only, and so happy to hear any other discussions or comments that the council may have in consideration of

the plan.

Really, the one thing that I this started right before I came on council, and I everything, you know, was basically started from from scratch, and you guys created what it is. And I think the easy route would have been to come in and just say, these are all the things you're doing wrong. Mhmm. And it from the moment I talked to anyone, it was never like that. It was more of, like, here's where we're at, and here's here's where we would like to be. And I think that's one of the the reasons that buying has been so successful Mhmm. Is because it's always been about moving forward. And I think that's such a, such a powerful tool. And that's why other people look at us. I always talk about Lisa.

I'm like, I want Lisa to be the example. You know? And I want other cities to mean, we do. And it's it's so powerful that now other cities are finally, you know, starting to realize that. And, it it just shows how much great work you were doing. And then on just a little side note, you know, it's maybe it makes us all, but the utility wraps. Every day when I go into work, I pass, doctor Jackson. And and as I know him, the jump rope king, every day and I I have I have spoken with him for fifteen years now, mainly in the sauna at my gym. And I, you know, I drive by it every single day, and every day, makes me smile. It's like, yeah.

It could just be this ugly box there, but it's just it's our community, and it's highly our community. And I think that's it it may be small to people, but I think it it it brings some little moment of of enjoyment to my day. And so Mhmm. Thank you guys for for. So I

think one of the things that I always felt was important for the success of this commission was for the commission to have a really good understanding of who we are as a community. Right? And because there's diversity has always been a part of our makeup. It's always been part of who Lacey is, But a big part of who Lacey is, and sometimes we don't, I think, acknowledge it as much as we should, is that, you know, we're a military community too. And they're a big segment of our population that has its own unique set of needs and challenges.

And I think it's important that we acknowledge that. We we and we acknowledge we're a military community. And so some of this effort should be how are we communicating with our our military community? How are we supporting our military community? Yes.

We have the Lazy Veterans Services hubs that is is it's a great place. That's not gonna solve every you know, you know, everyone's needs. You know, childcare, every everything that the normal family may have issues with, plus they're a military family that can be its own set of unique challenges. And and so it's the one thing that I've just saw sort of missing, you know, a little bit out of this is our how are we connecting with our our military? How are you welcoming them to the city of Lacey and and acknowledging how important they are to not only to us, but to our country?

And And I think it's really important that we do that and we acknowledge that and that we have a conduit to reach out to them as well. We have the Southside Military Committees partnership that's trying to do some of that. It'd be great to sort of figure out how to connect that. And so especially when new military families are coming in, we we can be a resource to hear their issues and and and hopefully help where where we can as well.

Well, one of the sessions that we convened was at the hub, and it was military.

Yeah. Good.

And one of the things that we heard from a couple of the black retirees Mhmm. Who talked about their challenges

Sure.

And they're feeling disrespected as they move around the community. Mhmm. And these are officers and that kind of thing, not to mention, you know, just enlisted people. Mhmm. And so that issue of belonging has not taken place for a lot of our military community, especially military of color. Yeah. And so that's something we've we've got to think in terms of. Yeah. They laid out some pretty specific things. Okay. You know?

Well, that's

And so that's a specific

Yeah.

And then one of the other things that we added to our plan of work for 2026 from our last session with you all was the whole issue of our schools. Yes. Many of our students of color are not feeling as though they belong. Mhmm. Are not feeling as though they're heard. Many parents of color are not feeling accepted in the schools when they try to advocate for their kids. And so that's a different elected body. Yep. And we clearly understand. Mhmm.

But the students bring issues to us, and that's something we've got to try and figure out in that coordination, communication, whatever, that that whole segment of the community. If we don't have equitable schools, we'll never have an equitable community. Sure. So somehow we've gotta recognize two separately elected groups of people. But the schools Mhmm. Are leaving a lot to be desired. A lot of people don't wanna come here because of what they hear about the schools.

Yeah.

We can do all this other work, all this other work. Mhmm. But many people, you know, first look at the schools Mhmm. To decide where they wanna live.

Well, then having that information and and that data and those concerns so we can talk like a body to like a body is, I think, is really important. And there's you know, I'm not I'm never afraid of a tough conversation. Right? That's tough conversations is is is where is, you know, are necessary. And when you're dealing with difficult issues, you know, you have to have tough conversations.

And so but it sounds like we need a a a feedback mechanism too on, you know, we we have this meeting. It's important. But, you know, if we're gonna wait all the way till next year to have discuss this again, that's too long. Not when things have moved so quick in our in our community. And so maybe we need to think about how we do a better feedback mechanism of when issues come out. You know, we just don't put it on a a back burner and wait till next year to discuss it, you know, that we can

Between the council.

Between the council and of course. Yeah. Yeah. Council and commission. Things move things move quick. And so we need a better maybe we need a better way. Again, it's communication. How do we improve our communication channels? Just something to think about. Applaud all the work that you're doing, and there's so much work. It'd be a full time job for everyone to try to see some of this. And so we have to keep you know, the reality of, again, our

limited

resources front and center understanding, but it's understandable. But where we can make improvements and and if it's something within our power that we can do and communicate better faster, then we should we that's when we need to focus on.

One thing I think one thing that might might be useful if if people would wanna do it is, like, talked about, I with the listening sessions, it is, like, we don't wanna show up. I'm gonna be a distraction, you know, or make it be about us or us answering questions. But if we did just assign one person to each one, just to be there to report back to the council, and then, you know, that's something that we can report back during during our meeting. So at least we're on top of it. Yeah. I think that could be a potentially exciting thing.

You know you know, our deputy mayors in attendance and and others, and they would anticipate they were a distraction. They they just blended right in. It wasn't, you know, an issue or anything. I think they felt welcome in being what they were able to add Mhmm. I think was was very helpful. It didn't seem awkward at all from my view viewpoint. I don't know about them participating, but, we were happy to to to have them, in the audience.

Some of our police officers have been there.

Yep. Right. Police officers have been there as well.

Very helpful.

Yeah. The participation is definitely enjoyable and people really open up before and after they know who they're going. Right? And so one of the things that I and and first of all, thank you guys for for doing years of work for the city. I know it's not glamorous work. It needs to be done. And you guys have stepped up and said we're gonna do this work. I don't wanna see this thing go on a shelf somewhere and start collecting dust. That's that's not that would have been that that would be a slap in the face to everybody in this room and everybody in this community. So I'm really looking forward to you guys bringing some bold ideas and things to the council saying, hey, we wanna do this.

Hey, we wanna do that. Right? Because if if if if we're if that's not happening, then what do we do? Right? So another thing that I was thinking about is, yes, we've done listening events. We've sat and talked about different subject matter. And I've heard people communicate. I feel like this. I don't feel like that. But I don't think we've done anything for them to come out in a social way.

That's a

Yeah. Something like that.

Just even

if we took the Lacey community center for two, three hours and had food or whatever the case may be. We haven't really done that kind of a thing.

I've talked about this for years, the idea of we're doing a community cooked event.

Because

something about sharing a meal with someone. I think it's really important on a human to human level. And there's something special about everyone sharing and being proud of their food. You know? And so I would I've talked about this for years.

Again, it's a it's a resource issue. Like, if I've been waiting to say, okay. Maybe someone who in the community is gonna come up and and and and take this idea and run with it, and no one quite has yet. But I think it's a great idea to do that. We just have to figure out what what does that look like, you know, how we do it and and who are our partners as well because it's it's a difficult to you know, it's a little bit of a of a lift to it's like the city of Lacey just to be able to do that. We need some partners. We need partners with it.

If I can, nerd check here to do a little bit. The one is, we do have a great celebration every year with the cultural celebration. I encourage everybody to attend and and participate, and that's one way to be able to bring a bunch of the community together, and it's it is very well attended. We can also look at, at upcoming listening session, maybe doing some type of council liaison as councilman Dunning suggested of having some way to report back. And then Shannon and I can look at to how maybe to do some either after action report or something to that can kinda create that feedback loop that was mentioned a little bit more frequent as as events occur.

The and then you'll identify what are other ways and mechanisms going forward that when we have more resources we can plan for or other ways to to establish those those more social activities as as the deputy mayor has mentioned. We can kinda look at that and plan that out. But, of course, we don't focus on 2026 and and the 2026 work plan, which has a lot of key initiatives that we wanna create, basically setting the foundation for this future work to continue each year to try to build upon it. And I think one of those things is is that everybody's talked about is the community liaison or ambassador program is one way to start creating that that foundational work to be able to create some of these more other programs and opportunities to kind of create and bring the community together as a whole and not just have just the same with everybody as a whole.

Yeah. I would love to see some things sponsored by or powered by this commission. Hearing that some of our retired vets are not feeling welcome in the community is painful. Hearing that there are people who maybe don't want to live here because they're afraid what might happen to their kid in a school is painful. Right? And so you guys have really got us to a good position. And it sounds like we're ready to advance some items to the front and and bring those to the council so that we can approve them. I I would love for you guys to be bold in what you bring. Mhmm. And and so that we can kinda look at it and say, you know what?

Maybe there is a way we can do this. And so I agree with you. This needs to be implemented. In order to implement it, there's gonna have to be some lifting and some dollars. And that's what I'm hoping to see from you guys after this this next section that you guys deliver. So I just want you to know that you guys have, you know, the you already know that you have the full support, but I'm there all the way, you know, even if if I, you know, need to make some kind of a con contribution that is more than just time.

I saw them smile when you said bring something bold. I don't think that's gonna be a problem.

Careful what you ask. I think the officer used to giving some money

to. Like I said, I do think the community buy in is important and making sure our chamber and our business community is supportive and understands what we're doing. I think that's really important that all aspects of our community is involved in this process. And we do have people that will step up and contribute financially if necessary to help us achieve some of these community goals. Like I said, it can't be all the city. It has to be our community all coming forward. So that's going take some outreach work. But I know we're on the right track.

If I can just add one more thing I just forgot to mention last time was talking about the schools and the challenge with two different governing bodies and all. But I think there's also been groundwork being made there with both the dual district youth advisory and this leasing team council starting to have some cross meetings and and conversations. I think that's getting stronger at the board and council level too. So some of those things we has experienced for quite some time and and culminated in a couple of years ago. I think there's some conversations and some different different style conversations that are occurring to help bridge some of those those those gaps right now.

Yeah. I like it. But the way I operate, I would love to be around the table, commission on equity with members of the Northwestern school board of the leadership and have one of those tough conversations Mhmm. That we talk about. Those meetings are formal. Everybody's still structured. Have the presentations and all that stuff. We can't really get down to grassroots and have the serious discussion that we need to have. That's We've tried to meet. They send a representative. You know, that's to me, it's just not good enough.

Sounds like what we need is have a work session like this Yes. With with the school board, not a Yes. Meeting of a work session. So those are totally there's two different things. Okay. Well, let's Yep. Think that's good that's good advice, and I agree.

Yeah. Let let me say one thing on this point. Last week and this week, we've had educational field trips going on through the Black History Museum at New Life Baptist Church. And if the school board members could hear some of the things the kids are saying Yeah. Why aren't we taught these things in school? Why, you know, why do we have to come to a community event to learn this, that, or the other? Mhmm. Parents asking the same questions. Mhmm. So the whole curricular inclusion, please, piece that has a lot to do with the feeling of belonging.

Mhmm.

And and and it's been just just you know, North Thurston Public Schools has really stepped up. It's the superintendent has well, I won't say ordered, but directed. And Friday, the whole administrative staff are splitting up into two groups, and they are coming through.

Oh, great.

And so the disconnect Yeah. You know, the disconnect between what students and parents are saying, and they feel free to say it there Mhmm. But they don't have another arena Yeah. That they can openly express Mhmm. How they're feeling in schools and treatment and harassment and name calling and you know? Yeah. So I agree. I agree. We'll we'll put our thinking caps on and come back with some bold

That's right.

Recommendations on what we can do differently

Yeah.

Differently to get to get someplace here.

So I think we heard what we've heard here. Maybe that before you pass it on to us, maybe just have one more meeting to take this into account, and then we'll have it come before for the council.

Yeah. And we're known for our long meeting, this is a big deal for us.

We just went through almost an hour. So thank you. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank

Thank you. You. You. I wanna say thank you, and I could not be prouder of this group of people. You all have done amazing things. I mean,

this is hard stuff.

Mhmm. You know when somebody wants

a copy of work, you're good.

What was that?

You know when somebody need wants to copy your work?

Yeah. You're in

ultimate compliment.

Yeah. It's a great compliment. Okay. Thank you so much.

Okay.

Our next item is our fourth quarter investment report.

Great. Good evening, counsel. I think I've made about three separate promises to speak less than five minutes. We'll see if we can get that done.

I appreciate it, Don. I appreciate it, Troy.

But real quick, I'd like to provide just a little bit of background, especially to our newest council members in terms of kinda how we manage our portfolio. So two things I wanna talk about real briefly is our policy and our contractual services relationship. So our policy we adopt through the council through resolution. It follows state law. But I think the most important thing about our policy is to remember the three objectives.

In order, safety, we do not wanna lose the public's money. Liquidity, we wanna make sure we have the money when we need it. And lastly is yield. So it's very important that those are in that very specific order. In terms of our how we how we manage our portfolio, we have a contractual service agreement with government portfolios advisers.

It's been a great relationship, a lot of an eight year relationship now. We just don't have the level of expertise necessary on staff to manage portfolio of this size. They really keep us on track. They help us with our strategy, of course, to make sure our policy is consistent with state law. So a pretty invaluable service for the for the amount of money that we spend there.

So you get this report once per year. We've actually been coming to accounts about twice per year. The policy dictates we come at least once a year. And we do have the full, investment report from the fourth quarter of last year in your packets, about 25 pages or so. Lots and lots of detail, lots of transparency in in terms of what we're doing.

It does provide market commentary, market outlook. Of course, the performance has a little compliance section in terms of making sure that we're in compliance with our policies. Again, a very robust report. So in terms of performance, we experience a slight decline in total return in 2025, but that should be expected. We're in a slight declining interest rate environment, so no surprise there.

We did meet our benchmark three out of four quarters last year with the last three quarters, actually, each meeting our benchmarks. Our benchmark, we look at a zero to five benchmark. That's how we judge our performance in terms of our earnings throughout the year. In terms of actual performance, really just want to focus on yield and duration. Those are a couple of very important benchmarks for us. The total portfolio yield decreased just slightly in the fourth quarter. We're at about 3.656 3.65,

with the

quarter down from about 3.75.

I was gonna say that.

But again, to be expected, the fourth quarter, we saw two Federal Reserve rate reductions. So again, we're in a declining market. In terms of duration, again, we had a slight decline, almost immeasurable, really. It's two point zero five eight years, down from 2.09 '2. So just a slight decrease in duration.

And what's important about duration is when we look at that zero to five year range, we kind of move within that range depending on what rates are doing. We actually want to start extending that duration in a declining environment. You want to kind of stretch that yield out into that three, four, five year time frame. So that's certainly the goal as we enter into 2026.

So this shows us almost $35,000,000 that we have in cash and cash equivalents invested.

Some of that is that's checking account. Sure. For sure. Probably about 15,000,000. Okay. So we have another 35 to 40,000,000 in the state local government investment pool. So it's like an overnight rate. That rate is actually slightly higher than the long term rate

at this point.

But, yeah, that's that's liquid funds. We do need to keep funds available to to make payroll as an example. Sure.

So yeah. I wasn't aware that we had another 213,000,000 in investments. Yeah.

Our total portfolio is $2.50

See that. $2.50, $2.60?

Mhmm.

Yeah. Where's the other $2.16 investments? How did we when would that become available for cash? How much of it's in long term, short term? Didn't realize we had quite that much in investment. Sure.

It's a pretty even split amongst the years. So our zero to one or one to two and so on and so forth. Adhere to a pretty strong laddering approach. So we have investments coming due just about every month, maybe six weeks. So it's a pretty even spread across that range. But again, we're going to try to stretch a little bit to capture a little bit more yield to lock in those yields as well as we're seeing declining interest rates. That is the long term or midterm expectation.

But we still made quite a bit investments over year over year then.

We made slightly more. Yield in itself was down, but our principal went up. I think it's about $8,000,000 or so in total earnings in 2025. No. Well, again, slightly more than 2024. But we also brought in about $18,000,000 in cash for the bonds with police station, increased that principal for a period of time. We're still carrying or not carrying bond proceeds anymore. But we're still carrying funds for the police station project. We'll be in the 10,000,000 to $12,000,000 range. Okay. And

this was this the last so you there's about $1,012,000,000 range still left in for the police station. Other than that, this is all gains?

Well, if there's

I mean, because because I you know, we had quite a bit going out for the police station and with 40,000,000. 40,000,000. And so okay. Yeah. Okay. Well When you look

at the asset class, what's the difference between the US Treasury and US Agency?

Treasury is more like a T bill. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. The agency would be like Fannie Mae, that type of they're very similar Okay. In terms of yield. But, yeah, T Bill is more like think T Bill when you think about

it. Yeah.

K. When

I started, we were at, like, 02/2002 or 02/2005. 02/2005, I think it was.

Total? Yeah.

Investment asset base. And so and then having taking out did you say 40 for the police station?

Yeah. And

and then growing that back to our current level is, I guess, all I can really say is a good job.

Yeah. This has been great return on our investment, obviously, from where we were eight it's been eight years ago.

2000 well, we signed a contract 2017. Oh my goodness. So we really started wholeheartedly in early two thousand eighteen.

Well, it's obviously it's it's it's paid off. And we we saw, you know, interest rates at one point, you know, go we had nothing and be able to do that and see if the interest, you know, then go up and and everything else. It's yeah. It's been a a great great investment of our of our community's dollars. That's for sure. And I see that, you know, we're we've we've had some conversations about corporate investment there and everything. Like, how how has that been going over overall?

We're not we don't have too many corporate holdings. Are the reason it just hasn't been that difference in yield to I mean, it's just a slightly higher risk, but we wanna make sure you get the yield for that increased risk. And those we just haven't seen that in the last two years, really.

Well, I

see we have some Apple. I see I mean, we we do have some some corporate in in there. Amazon. Amazon. It's it's below,

you know, certainly below the the maximum allowed. Yeah. But yeah.

Because what what do we say the maximum could be on our corporate?

I think it's 5%

or something like that. It's three. Yeah. So where have we seen the biggest growth in investment?

There isn't any one class. I would say we've definitely moved to treasuries and agency instruments. That's really just a condition on the market. Mhmm. More than anything, it really wasn't a conscious effort. We really just take a look at the market as a as a whole. Every time an investment matures, our advisers go out and and receive bids. Mhmm. Usually between five and six bids, and we we choose amongst those in terms of how it fits in with our diversity as well as, you know, our laddering and and, of course, as yield at. So, yeah, we performed well.

I, you know, I will point out to the council that probably 45% of these funds are in our utilities. We have significant capital use programs ahead of us, so don't wanna take too much credit because we are going to spend down those funds as we as we move forward.

I guess that's the the one thing that it'd be nice to see what percentage of these funds are and which of working because it these are all together, obviously. And it'd be nice to see, Okay, how much of this is actually accessible on the general fund side of things compared to the utility sides of things.

Yeah. We typically bring that to counsel when we have the committee reserve discussion. Know, we talked about a slightly different process for reserves going forward. So we do expect to come back before the council here.

But even in the

next month or two months as we talk about priorities and how we're going to fund those. And so, yeah, we'll definitely come back sooner than later.

But even in our commit reserves conversations, we're mostly talking about the cash on hand, that $54,000,000 We haven't really dove into the other side of things here. So I said it'd nice to get an overview of where that's actually at.

Then we can probably break it. We've had shown that in the past, but we can break it into a different format to show related to our investment holding.

Yeah. We could definitely break that out into, you know, our capital funds versus our general fund versus utilities versus our internal service funds. Yep.

Yep. And in relationship to the investment amounts, that way you can see the correlation. Yeah.

That would be I think that would paint the better picture.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Do you have any I know this is kind of high level stuff.

I see we got a lot going on in the treasury and the home loans markets, which, you know, has the treasury has been on the rise for, what, three years now, somewhere in that ballpark. And we're seem to be

taking advantage of

that. It looks like that's where we're getting biggest bang for the buck at the moment. It is. You know? Yep. And see it's 5%. It's crazy.

Yeah. We'd like to be a little more diverse, but, you know, we're taking what the market has in front of us.

Do you know why there's, you know, such a a 6.1% in Columbia Bank specifically? It seems like a

That's Citi's bank.

That's okay. Oh, okay. I was not thought we invested in Columbia Bank.

No. No. No. That's who we

That's very specific for that amount of money.

No. That's our specific investments. Okay. They are for the bank. Way better. And so they give us since it's cash on you know, cash that's been going through them, that give us a decent interest rate.

Just question for you, Troy. It looks like we may have a new chair for the reserve in May 1718. And if that chair obviously is going to be appointed by the executive branch, that being the case, it's my opinion that that chair is going to have to follow a playbook that was prescribed. You may have that same feeling. I don't know. But that's what I'm feeling. Can you talk about a little bit about our potential response to that?

Is that like a risk management deal or what?

Not really. Well, let's every governor gets a vote. Mhmm. So the chair is one vote. So I'll say that. You know, right now, the the economic indicators in front of us don't show rate reductions. Know, jobs stronger than expected, inflation coming down. So there's nothing in indicators that says we're gonna have a decrease to rates until probably the last half of two thousand twenty six. So, yeah, it's really anyone's guess. But like I said, it's it's one vote even though they're the chair.

So we'll see what that what that body does as a whole. But I think it would be a shock to the markets if we saw, you know, a dive to the rates. The markets aren't expecting that. Historically, the Federal Reserve has tried to avoid shocking the system. So we'll hope that that Yeah. Holds true.

Yeah. To the tune

of to the tune of quantitative easing forever. Yeah.

And he's you know, the the administration wants lower rates, but even when he was a governor before, he was tended to air on the side of higher rates. So I I think it'll be a crapshoot of what actually happens.

Yeah. I think I think the neutral rate is somewhere around 3%. And if we're at that 3.5 right now, there's not a lot of room regardless. But we'll see.

Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, what's so crazy is is what the stock market has been doing recently. And it's good for people who happen to have some money in the stock market, but I don't think the average person is feeling that same optimism of what investors are right now. So it'll be interesting to see how this all replays out because you can only tell people you're doing well for so long when they don't actually feel it. They start questioning sanity of that. Okay.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

So last up is our economic development work program. It's on 1%. That's fine. Hey, I'll turn it over to you, Vanessa.

Or I'll

turn it over to whoever

is Yeah, with that, I'll turn it over to Sarah since she's down the mountain. As she's getting the PowerPoint pulled up. Okay. That's what I was thinking.

I'm sorry. Apologize.

Just work over me. We're

so good at technology. Oh,

okay.

Yeah. Share screen recorder.

Thank you.

Apparently, don't come

Now off to I'll

hand it off to Sarah.

Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I'm Sarah Schelling with Community and Economic Development. And I'm here tonight with Wesley and Vanessa to present the twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven draft economic work program. I have another item as well with this, and that's the draft of our economic development strategic plan.

And before I turn things over to Wesley for the, big presentation, I just wanna give a brief summary and background, into the work program and how we arrived at the work program tonight as well as just a bit of background into the draft economic development strategic plan, which has been about a year in the making. So about this time last year, the city hired Eco Northwest, which is a fiscal economic development firm out of Vancouver to work with the city to develop a five year economic development strategic plan. And this is intended to become a framework, that the city that will guide the city in strengthening and diversifying our local economy. And we first came to council last year with Eco Northwest in May to present the background and demographic and economic data that would inform the plan and help drive those actions. Eco Northwest also provided an outline of how they intended to engage the community and work with the development community in the city, to develop this plan.

After that meeting in May, they also met with the planning commission at about the same time. Econorth was then began engaging with the team of business and community leaders through both one on one interviews as well as with an advisory group to help plan development. There were representatives from the Port Of Olympia, the Thurston ADC, Peak Credit Union, MJR Development, St. Martin's University, Providence Hospital, well as small business owners like Jason Wong, who runs our night market with Sway Night Market, Kevin Campbell, who's also a small business owner in the city of Lacey, just to name a few of the people who were involved in this effort. They then spent the summer interviewing these folks, working with staff, and then researching best economic or best practices in the economic development arena to develop our strategic plan, which we came back and presented to both the planning commission a little bit earlier last fall and then council in December 2025 as a draft.

Staff in Eco North oh, let's see. We've already done that part. In in December, we had the opportunity to review the strategic strategic plan and get council feedback through a Mentimeter where you guys looked at our actions and helped us prioritize those. So since that time, staff in Eco Northwest have made some modifications to the plan in response to the feedback we received from counsel on some of the actions, particularly in regards to visioning, from that council meeting, as well as we prepared our draft work program based really on the Mentimeter results and council priorities that were identified that night, in December. So tonight, we're back for another look at the final draft of the strategic plan, as well as staff's proposed two year work program, which, again, are based on the council priorities as identified back in December.

And tonight is just, a review with a hope that we can move both the strategic plan and the work program forward to ultimately approval at a consent agenda at a future meeting. With that, unless Vanessa has anything else she wants to add, I can go ahead and turn things over to Wesley.

I'll let her know if we take it. Okay.

So I think it's good evening. My name is Wesley. I'm staff at the city as well. Today is the Lunar New Year, so I wanna wish everyone a happy Lunar New Year today. So Sarah mentioned our goal for tonight.

So I don't wanna go into that too much, but it's written right there. So these are the items that we currently are doing in economic development. And there are about 15 different item, and I don't think that list all of them. But I love my job is because it is different every day. I I could be in the office, get a phone call from a small business wanting to know, what is the zoning, regulation for that location.

Or last Friday, I went with the Lacey South Sound Chamber to do a ribbon cutting event at a new business that just opened up in, Huxbury. So it's fun. It's exciting, and and there's a lot of work in that as well. And these are some of the item that we talked about, that we do on a regular basis. And so yeah. So, I mean, I don't wanna read read that because you can, but I just wanted to say that this is just some of the ongoing work that we do for the city.

And, Wesley, if I can just add a little bit here. And one of the reasons we wanted to include this slide tonight as and present it to you all is that the strategic plan is not the only thing we're going to do in economic development. So So it's just a reminder that we do a lot of work, and it's ongoing work. It's been ongoing in the past. It will continue to be ongoing into the future. And so when we talk about the strategies and the strategic plan, these are in addition to that regular work that we're already doing in economic development and that we plan to continue to do.

Yeah. And a lot of this work do fit into the the the economic development strategy, you know, whether it be the Food Truck Depot, a night market example. Is part of the the the goal of, entrepreneurship, and so supporting small business. So I think a lot of the work that we do currently do, an ongoing work that we do, weave very well into the the the economic strategy that Equinix West have put together on our behalf.

A quick bug. This is the economic development team you have with you.

The new Just a little context to this work too.

It's powerful.

So you guys did all that?

We do all that?

Some. And some. Yeah.

We can't work PowerPoints, but we do all that. Key in. Awesome.

The arrow key. You can use So

I think keyboard.

Oh, yeah. So

Sarah mentioned these things. Alright? So I don't wanna go too much into the detail, but the most important thing that Sarah and Vanessa want me to tell you guys that the next step, approval of a plan through a consent agenda for future council meeting. So we like this plan

Mhmm.

In front of you to go into a What do council meeting for approval.

What do you think are the the biggest heavy heaviest lifts in this economic plan? I mean, there I've we've obviously went through this, and there was there's a lot of good information here. But, like, what do you think is the the heavy lifts and and and what we should be focusing on for the biggest bang for our dollars? Because as you know, I'm I'm a firm believer in meeting, you know, public dollars and and private dollars to to create, you know, great public spaces that promote economic development. Development.

And that's sort of what we can do is we can help create spaces that attracts certain type of economic development. And we've done that. We've seen an example of some of the work we've done in Midtown that allows for economic development to happen. But like, if with our limited budget, what do you think we should really be focusing on?

I mean, I'll take a stab at that. I don't

I know it's a heavy

It's a heavy question. Because I think there's a lot of things in here. And budget's a complicated question. But I do think you're absolutely right that private investment follows public investment. So where we can target that investment, hopefully, we'll be able to see that private investment follow.

And what I'll point on this on actually, on that slide back, there's a significant budget item in the roundabout investments that while it's not listed in this plan, it's one of those public dollars that I believe will help advance private investment within our community. And so not everything that we invest in as a city is gonna be in this strategic plan that will advance economic development. Many of those dollars come through public works and public works projects and other capital improvement projects. We do have a number of items identified in here for place making that that I do believe will add value to the community. It will bring that private those private investment dollars to our community Mhmm.

If we make those investments. But we'll have to have those conversations strategically with the city manager and council and other departments and move those forwards in incrementally as we have those

dollars available. And then I can add to the different types of investments. As as as Vanessa mentioned, some of the big, big bang for your buck is that infrastructure investment.

But you

gotta guess right. Right? And so we know that with the 7th Avenue and College Intersection, that's gonna create a whole different traffic flow and and energize 7th Avenue. So we gotta be strategic, and and sometimes that investment's not right away. We gotta see what that is. There's a lot of it straight in the foundation of work and smaller investments, on the recruitment front, the branding front, and and making those connections and starting to see what is possible and then how can what can help make the deal work. Right? So then you say, what's the barriers? And then that can inform us what that infrastructure investment may need to look like that we have funds available to be able to do. So there's a lot of this, I think, built that the the team here did a great job of setting up is all these different things.

A lot of it's laying foundational work this year. And I think they used that earlier as a commission on equity, but it's truly what it is. There's some efforts for, you know, beefing up our recruitment strategies and partnerships and creating investments to to spur exponential value with, say, the development of Midtown Business Association, those type of things. So it's kind of layered.

I think being strategic about our investments obviously makes a lot of sense, especially when it comes to Midtown. We've been promoting it. We're seeing investment come. And so to me, what is the next public investment that needs to happen to meet that private investment? Especially when 7th Avenue really becomes the, you know, the main street where we're hoping it's gonna become?

Is it is it special lighting? Is it special you know, where is the public investment that we can make there that will when people, you know, go down the you know, 7th Avenue, you go like, okay. Wow. This is this is our midtown. You know? You know? Is that is it banners? Is it sidewalks or special street connections?

Yes. Those are something that's in the work plan for the next two years. So this work plan is 26 and '27 only. So the economic development strategy is a five year plan. So we just pick the first two years and look at, six different recommendations.

And with that six recommendations, there are a variety of different implementing steps that we would do, including, like you mentioned, not only the 67 Avenue roundabout, but also the the a Huntsman Park improvement as part of that assembly to improve the Midtown. So there's a lot of that work as well. And it's been going on last year, previous years, and we're still going working on it again next two years to to make that happen. So it's a long investment process, like Troy said. So for the new council member so there were there were, 12 recommendation from the five year strategy, with three different goals.

And of those 12, we selected six different recommendations based on the Mentimeter conversation we had in December and based on staff recommendation and also based on resource. As you say, this is this is the economic development team. So and we have other things that we have to do. But so based on that, we select six different activities. For example, the first activity is communicate lazy economic entity with target investors and developers.

And, you know, this is the two bullet points or the work item. But if you look at this, table that's in your package, it has more detail of what we will be doing and the cost and the timeline when we will start as well. So give a very clear pathway for us as we work through each of these, action points. Do you guys have any questions?

I have questions around the way here. I can wait until we get to it.

Okay. Well, I mean, again, like, this is another action that we will focus on. Can you partner with the Port of Olympia and both the EDT to ensure the CWAC has dedicated access to foreign exchange expertise to support local business and rate awareness of FTC zone benefits. So Yeah. So again, so that's, you know, historically, Rick and the team have been working with, the port for a long time on the FTC.

And now and we're using that tool to support business that are coming into our cities or are interested in in in looking at that potential to help with that terror issues that we've been, hearing about. Mhmm. So we're we're putting together tools that enable setting down a foundation or the infrastructure to help business, come to SIC. Mhmm. Do you have a question?

So I learned a lot about FTC. I'll just say that. But one thing I wasn't completely clear about, when you talk about having access to the expert, is that an an FTE or is no?

So so the Port of Olympi the Port Of Olympi have contracted with Thurston EDC to be the lead liaison to, talk to business about the FTZ. So, for example, if a business want to locate to Lacey, we could share what, you know, the demographic and all that stuff about Lacey. But we also can connect them to resource like those in EDC to provide another layer of understanding of what

So is this gonna be required. Yeah.

The person FTC the expert person

Will be

At the EDC. EDC. Yeah. Oh, I see. So is this gonna come back as a a a contract with between this

Actually, so the city of Lacey is a member of the foreign trade zone twenty And we have a board position on that board as a staff member. And so that foreign trade zone has been followed with some of the Port Of Olympia transition of staffing, and we are now just getting that re so we have to reconstitute the board with all the other partners. I've worked with the executive director at the board as well as my colleague at the EDC to say, okay. We got there's some funds in the budget. Can we contract with the EDC to do the work to reestablish the the board so that the Foreign Trade zone itself is operating?

So then we can also go out and do business outreach to both existing and potential business. I want to locate here and talk about that benefits of the Foreign Trade Zone. So it's going to be something that's going to be resurrected this year.

But that foreign trade zone is still active. They're still It's still a They're still members. There's a member. I know sure who's a part of

Yeah. And and that is active. And we do have several activations of the foreign trade zone. Callison's as well.

I know.

There's a couple others that we've got signed up. But, again, the foreign trade zone, it's the board itself needs to also be reformed so that it's making those decisions and doing that work.

Like meeting regularly.

Right. Meeting regularly. And meets regularly, approves the budget, and all

that.

You want It might be a slight side note. But I remember we had the new executive director for the port come and give us a presentation probably a good year ago. It seemed like there was a lot of excitement about working together. Has the communication been better since then, or do we have anything

There there has been good communication between the the executive director of the board and and the and the city. Although, it goes it it's it's it was, you know, different schedules that it's not as frequent as you'd like. But I think there's general support of of moving forward with foreign trade zoning.

I I

And we also have a scheduled meeting. We're scheduling a meeting for a joint meeting between the council and the port the commissioners of the port of Olympia this spring.

Okay. This

spring. Yeah. That's that's where I

was wondering.

That's where I was gonna, yeah, go to. And so

they plan to meet the the commission the certain commission before that meeting. Yeah. So that's our that's our conversation right now that Mike Reed and Michael Cade is organizing to get everybody back to get get the band back together.

So so, again, the the foreign trade has been operating.

It hasn't been enhanced and being promoted.

Got it. Well, it's a huge asset. So go ahead.

I was gonna say looking between what you presented on one c and one d, how do those two interact? Because if you're using the foreign trade zone policy and you're working on trying to to build that area up, how are you using that to to bring in and possibly communicate Lacey's economic with Target and Best

weave together because you you the first one is more of a marketing tool. This one is is a Okay. Is more of a a a benefit to the business if they come into LACI.

Okay. So so Yeah.

Go ahead. And then I was just gonna ask, as I was looking over the packet that was given was also in as part of the one c that we talked about just a second ago, the communicating Lacey's economic identity. Was there any way to, like, roll in one a that you hadn't mentioned before in there? Like, the celebrate promote Lacey's diversity, cultural event with cultural events community storytelling as a part of the branding and the marketing that we do for that? Is that something that is, like, taken into consideration?

One c or one

Bringing in one a, one action one a, as part of, like, the marketing plan for or as an aspect of the marketing plan into one c?

I'll I'll attempt to address

that. Sick.

But feel free to jump in down there. So underneath action one a, well, it's not specifically listed under one c. So there's, random numbers here. But the the night market event is one of our ongoing events. And so that is one of those act ongoing items that does start to address one a. The second Okay. Piece, which is the faces of lazy entrepreneurial programs, we did not advance that in this two year just because we're looking at staffing resources and trying to ensure we have priorities identified. While it's a great idea and we really wanna do it, we wanna get to it, hopefully, we can do it. So that's that's why as of right now.

Yeah. I was just looking at some of these different options that were presented and what what we have chosen those. I was like, I know that there's, like, the Venn diagram of all of these. And I was, like, trying to figure out, like, what aspects of these different processes or different proposals are being hit while we work on these different

Yeah. Things.

And we'll have and we'll put together some sort of marketing materials, and it may include some of the the diversity of the community brings, right, to that. We haven't refined or created that yet, but that would be the work program item.

So the only thing we talk about what's Lacey's identity, obviously, have to sort of look at our data, you know, right now of who, you know, who's our employment base and so on and so forth. And and one thing that I've I've known we've done work in the past, but I I'm I'm surprised I haven't seen it more front and center here is all of our in Northeast Lacey, all of our what? The the

Oh, are you talking about the banners?

No, no, no, no, no. Like, our major employers in Northeast Lacey right now is all Oh, who's wearing? All where we're out. I'm like, we only got one. Right? And it's a massive like, part of Lacey's identity is that we have all these warehouses. We've, you know, we've tried to promote ourselves, and we've done a very good job. And we've we've seen that that sector come to Northeast Lacey. Now how are we supporting that sector? Right? Because there's an employment base that needs. There's ongoing education. There's, you know, specific needs. How are we helping them survive, thrive, and and and be successful? Right?

Since they we've said we want you to be here. We created a whole district for you that we filled it almost up to the brim. Now where how where's our support on the back end to make sure that they're doing well?

Well, I think one element that we talked about is workforce development. Yeah. And so that's something we're we're working with. The leasing maker space is another part of our 15 bullet point item that I worked on. So there's there's a little bit of workforce development in that space. Mhmm. Some manufacture what they call pre manufacturing training program that they have to support that work and that could roll into warehouse support logistics.

Well, yeah. I mean, what I'd like to see is is, you know, a small group together where he can pull the the managers of of that work you know, them and say, hey. Where are things working well? Where are not what's not working well? What do you need support on?

And and can we be a resource to to help? You know? There's there's maybe there's some logistic issues there. We we know we've heard time and time again that, you know, it's been it's been tough on our residents in that area. How how can we find a way to improve that so there's less of an impact yet support, obviously, a major economic development success that we've had in our community?

Right? And so, you know, is it can we schedule? Can they work together to schedule better so we're not having all the semis coming at one time, especially in commuting hour? There seems to be a coordination effort that needs to take place there that we should be working on.

Do you have Well,

you look like you want to say it, so you go ahead.

Team? So there's a lot there, and there's a lot happening that may not be noticeable to just that being in the work. So yes, there with all the warehousing distribution, one of the feedback we received was we have a really strong workforce pool. It's just a small pool. So how do we grow that?

Yeah.

And so that's part of the workforce efforts, that development efforts that Wesley mentioned, and that's in two aspects. One, trying to work with the community college to develop programs that can develop a warehouse and logistic skills so that people can get entry and elevate up and be a resource too once because but also too, supporting those HR managers at those facilities because they like to promote within. And so being able to provide supporting curriculum and education to them because they do a lot of on the job training and and and employee development. So there's the those those those aspects are working. Plus, we're trying to develop and strengthen and expand our manufacturing sector.

It's typically a very challenging sector in The U. S. And the state of Washington. I think we've seen some growth over the years in Lacey. So how do that's where Leslie referred to the makerspace and the community college in developing those manufacturing advanced manufacturing skills and partnering them, partners with Ajax and some of these that can actually have that direct conversation with those employers and meet what their needs are.

So those things are happening. You also have the foreign trades only mentioned earlier to make sure that, hey, this is a tool to help with your cash flow to keep you here and keep you surviving. So that's gonna be one of the pitches going forward with with foreign trades owning cash flow. And then, ultimately, like you've mentioned, what about the trucks and trips? They don't want to be caught up in traffic here because time is money for them.

So they are they do a lot of heavy scheduling of of truck movement at night so that they are at the least peak times. And so when peak times occur, they usually hold trucks off at the respiratory points away, and they come in and time themselves going into the facilities at nighttime off peak hours. And so there's a lot of that work that's built into their operational logistics. They don't want to be stuck in the middle of traffic because that's cost them money as well.

Well, like I said, it'd be nice to have a little outreach to them specifically, say, oh, maybe we're missing something as well. Because that seems to me, let's support what we have and make sure it's

And that stuff is set up to happen with Wesley and Sarah and Vanessa and the EDC and economic development practitioners group is having those conversations and how to match those partners and meet those needs, on the ground in that that, outreach and efforts.

So I think deputy mayor and a and a bunch of us went to, Uline for conversation. So that's another way in which we are engaging with our community up there. Having said that, one of the warehouse, Nojo, did apply to be in the foreign trade zone recently. So they have become a foreign trade zone recipient as well.

That's good. That's good. I just think there's some more partnership opportunities there that I think we shouldn't ignore. And the other big talk about, I like that this is a couple of year strategy, and we'll have to kind of go back and reassess. But we're obviously working diligently on our side, how possible urban growth area expansion, including Martin Way, which would be bringing the annexation. Did I say?

It's a whole different topic.

DG expansion is a

And so obviously, when annexation, you know, hopefully gets to a reality, know, we're gonna be bringing in a significant amount of commercial property, hopefully, to, you know, to to Lacey. And and it almost have to be, like, immediate shift to make sure because we'll be on a a time period there of making sure that economic development happens in a timely manner. So that's something that we have to make sure we're we have some capacity, you know, as as we're going through that process.

I do think that Wesley's next slide can kind of speak towards some of the things that you're talking about with the action to be business recruitment and expansion or retention and expansion of the BRE programs.

So I

think that kind of speaks a little bit to what you're talking

about. Yeah.

So this is another action recommended that we would tackle in year 2026 and 2027. As to strengthen and expand the same business retention and expansion program. For those that are not aware of the mayor, every month sign a welcome letter that we that I put together and it talks, you know, earlier conversation with the equity commission. It's about welcoming people. So that is one example of what we do in real practicality is is supporting small business by, when they receive a business license, we work

I I

put together a letter and and every month, the mayor signs that letter and we sent it out to the new business and welcome them to the seat of Lacey. We get a lot

of positive feedback. I'm out in the community and there's, oh,

I got

a letter from you. You know, it's like, oh, good face to a name, you know.

So Yeah. Especially, like, even immigrant businesses, they see that and they frame it and put it in that business. Yeah. I was like, cool. This is this is never seen that done before Yeah.

In my home country. But here, we get a letter from the the government. And so that's, you know so we we we again, this table highlights all of the things that we will be doing in this work action item. And then the fourth item, shrinking regional business recruitment effort. Again, working with the EDC on this effort to support, business recruitment, looking at, initiative to define and and and look at the vacancies and where they are and and kind of put together packages before we go out to talk to businesses.

So so for example, earlier this month, we worked with Dick's, Vic's Pizza Area and talked to them about what they want to do, what is the expansion program look like. And so with our current plan, we would we put together six, seven different locations within our city and send it to them and say, here are some potential location that may make sense for you based on what our conversation look like. And that's how we would continue to work forward just looking at those sort of engagement where we are not just having just conversation, really, information that they would want to look at and and assess what makes sense for them if they want to move forward. So these are things that we're doing on the ground.

Do we do just kind of a random question. When we go out to these businesses, I know that we we're pretty diverse community and there are language barriers at a lot of the businesses that we have. Do we have, when we go out to business, translators or people available who speak different languages in case there is language barriers. Is that something Yeah. Fine.

Veronica already left. We're now on. Yes.

Yes. We incorporated through the access program. So we now have a an app on our phones that can use as a translation app, either video or text.

It's Well, every city employee has

it too. I I get, but, I mean, it's not

Well and there's there there's also opportunities to

have that was working towards maybe, you know

But there's also opportunity to schedule Yeah. Interpreting surfaces if we, you know, have enough notice and make those arrangements. But this, at least in a pinch, if there's a crucial conversation you need to have right away, we have that ability to make that connection.

It's been very helpful, actually.

Yeah. Mhmm. And I would say it's not the language barrier. It's more of the not understanding, government is here to service them. Mhmm. Where they come from, government is corrupt, government is bad. Mhmm. So they're not used to us being nice to them. Yeah. So it's not the language barrier. It's more like understanding what we are as an organization to support them.

Which is exactly why

I was like a personal touch is really Right. In that, know, makes a big difference.

And so going out to different businesses and talking to them is one of our business recruitment retention is is having those conversation with them and and let them and and let them just just listen to what they say. I mean, we don't have to do anything for them. They just wanna be heard somehow.