City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening, everyone. It is Tuesday, May 26, 2026, and I'm called at 6 p.m., and I'm called this Lacey City Council work session to order. All council is present here this evening. I also want to acknowledge that we, the City of Lacey, are on the ancestral lands of the tribal people of the Treaty of Medicine Creek, including the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Squawks Indian Tribe. That can I get a motion to approve this evening's agenda.

Move to approve the agenda as published.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, then I'll take over that motion. Signify by saying aye. Aye. Is there anyone opposed? Seeing none, that motion unanimously carries. We approve this evening's agenda. We had two written public comments received. That will be part of the record. We did have one person who preregistered to speak via Zoom. Can we bring that person in now, Lynn? Not on yet? Okay, well, if they get on a little bit later, we'll try to get them in. We just also had two people who signed up for public comment. The first is Tom Crawford. Go ahead, Tom. Yeah, yeah. Go over here to the podium. Introduce yourself and You have three minutes for public comment.

All right. Thank you very much mayor So again, my name is Tom Crawford. I live in Thurston County longtime member and board member of organization called Thurston climate action team and I'm here to encourage you to consider supporting an ordinance that I think staff will mention briefly this evening, colloquially called the Home Energy Score Ordinance. And this ordinance will provide greater transparency for home purchasers on the the energy efficiency features of homes that they're considering and will assign an apples to apples score among those homes that are advertised on the market. And so thereby it will save home buyers lots of cost for operating the home that they're purchasing. It will also encourage existing homeowners as well as home buyers to introduce any needed energy efficiency improvements in the home. thereby, again, increasing the value of the home and saving money. So this is a fairly modest, I think, proposal and ordinance, reasonable. It's been well researched by staff among the four Thurston Climate Mitigation Collaborative participating jurisdictions over the last couple of years. So I'd ask you to consider, I know you've identified possibly considering this in 2027, ask you to consider conducting a work session on this perhaps over the summer and maybe moving up the priority for this so that you would consider acting on it sometime this fall. So thank you very much for your attention and I guess I will also mention that there are a couple of labor organizations, local labor organizations who have endorsed this including the Central Labor Council and the Amalgamated Transit Union for the local here in Thurston County. So again, thank you very much for your attention and thank you very much for your service. I know this is hard work and extra work for most of you above and beyond regular day jobs, so thank you for your service.

Thank you, Tom. Next up, we have signed up Stephanie. Good to see you, Stephanie. Introduce yourselves and you have three minutes.

Thank you, I'm Stephanie Scott Sheher, and as a Lacey resident who regularly spends time at the jungle sharing food and supplies with the residents there, I appreciate that Lacey intends to take an active role in a regional approach to eventually closing the camp. We know there are Lacey residents living there, that previous camp closures in Lacey and our city's approach to homelessness has contributed to the jungle's growth, and that when this closure eventually happens, displaced people will return to Lacey looking for somewhere else to survive. Council Member Dunning, I know that we have significant differences in opinions on many topics. I watched the most recent RHC special session and I think it's really important for me to acknowledge your advocacy for camp residents who have convictions that can make them ineligible for most housing options. Thank you. I also want to flag critical discussion that happened at that meeting about lack of input from jungle residents thus far. I'm here tonight because I'm very concerned about Olympia's decision to allow only a 10-day window through this Thursday to create a by-names list for a camp closure that's going to take time and funding. I encourage anyone here who wants to better understand the risks of this rushed approach to look at what happened during the 2023 closure of the camp off Desmond Drive here in Lacey. During this time, I was out at Desmond three to four times each week as a community member who cared deeply about the residents there, supporting them with food and supplies and emotional support through a very traumatic experience during that closure. At Desmond, I witnessed the impacts of what happens when you create a by-names list too far ahead of when a camp will close. At a camp of 15 to 20 people, depending on the day, an eight-person by-names list had been created nearly two years earlier and was initially used to determine who qualified for housing and low-barrier shelter options. What followed was confusion, delays, court hearings, and a great deal of unnecessary stress for people already living in crisis. Eventually, that list had to be reopened. You may remember that. It did not accurately reflect who was actually living at the camp. So this created a last minute scramble to make sure residents even knew how to get on that list, that accessibility needs were addressed, and that housing resources were available. And that was for a camp of roughly 15 people, half of whom weren't on the original list. The jungle is easily 10 to 15 times larger. This is why service providers, outreach workers, and community advocates familiar with previous closures are already warning that a 10-day by name list process for a closure of this scale is unrealistic and dangerous. I hope this council will listen to our concerns and recognize that the way this process has begun will not result in the closure of the jungle, rather just shifting people elsewhere. Please also ask critical questions about how Olympia is reaching people who might currently be in jail or hospitalized, as well as people who might be fearful of putting their names on a list due to immigration status, domestic violence, and other reasons. Please commit to minimizing harm, being transparent about the reality of displacement, and ensuring people are not abandoned simply because they do not neatly fit into a list or a timeline. The reality is that if our community isn't willing to put in this work, we need to start thinking about locations in Lacey where we can welcome people to set up new camps, because that is the path we'll be on. If there's anyone here who would like to sit down with me and learn more about what happened on the ground at Desmond, please reach out. What happened here in Lacey is relevant to what will happen at the jungle if we continue down this path. Thank you.

Thank you, Stephanie. Okay, I think we have Lynn with us now. Yep. Please introduce yourself, and you'll have three minutes for public comment.

My name is Lynn Fitzhugh. I'm the Executive Director of Restoring Earth Connection. And while we have many disturbing and distracting things happening on the national scene, it remains the case that climate change is churning away and still messing with us. From low snowpack to then predicted summer drought, endangering our salmon, creating risk for forest fires. Climate change is bearing down on us. Lacey adopted the thirst and climate mitigation plan many years ago now and incorporated it into your master plan. And you participate with Olympia, Tumwater, and the county in the climate collaborative. And one of the very first things that the climate collaborative has done in order to try to move the ball forward is to work together on the home energy score. And as I'm sure you're all aware, both the county and Olympia have now passed this, and it will be shortly coming before Tumwater. I know Lacey has sort of decided that they want to address that in 2027. And I hope as you listen to your climate coordinator's presentation tonight about climate, that you can consider moving that forward. You have a staff person who is dedicated to doing climate work. And I believe could be wrong that this is actually on her work plan for this year. I think to really be the collaborative partner. You know, we have the county and Olympia already starting to do the work to get that ordinance moving forward. So I think it would be nice for Lacey to join into that work. Tom already referenced some things about how it works and that it's a very straightforward measure. I know that there's always the worry for people about, does this thing or that thing increase the cost of housing? And there's really only one cost to consumers involved in this, which is the cost of the energy audit itself. which is between $200 and $300, and that is wrapped into the sale of the home, so it's not a burdensome time for something like that to happen. I think the benefits in terms of energy savings for consumers far outweigh the short minimum cost involved in doing it. So I think it's really a very common sense measure that just helps us increase the energy efficiency of the entire stock of housing available. So I hope you will consider that and thank you for taking my comments.

Thank you, Lynn. Is there anyone else wishing to address the city council this evening? Seeing none, then let's go right into our first agenda item, which is our climate and sustainability update. Turn over.

Good evening, everyone. Council Mayor, thank you for having me back to talk about our 2026 climate programs. Might need to push this back a little bit. We have a lot on the work plan for 2026. I think since I took the position in 2023, we've sort of ramped up everything that we're doing And this is definitely our busiest year. We've gotten a lot of funding through obviously the general fund, but also through grant funding. So we have a lot of work to do this year. The first thing, last time I was here back in December, I believe it was Deputy Mayor Miller who asked about the data. And so I wanted to do and talk to you all sort of the latest greenhouse gas emissions data that we have for our region. Specifically, I want to start with the goals that we sort of have now through both the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan. So the TCMP, which was accepted back in 2021, I believe, for the City of Lacey and the rest of the jurisdictions, has goals to reduce emissions to 45% below 2015 levels by 2030, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 85% of 2015 levels by 2050. With the adoption of our new comp plan and our climate element, both the sub-elements for the greenhouse gas emissions reduction and the climate resilience sub-element. And it's a state requirement that we be net zero by 2050. Our climate element, actually specifically goal eight, has some different milestones in there as well for 2040 and 2035. So the first thing we're going to talk about is the wedge analysis from Thurston County. This was put together by Commerce through Climate Commitment Act funding. So they've been putting together greenhouse gas emissions inventories for, I think, the largest six or eight counties, including Thurston County. And so what a wedge analysis really is, is it's showing you our trajectory if we do nothing. So that black line at the top shows us if we just continue on as we're doing, as we're going, and don't make any adjustments, those are sort of the emissions increases that we'll continue to see. And then the different colors and everything in between is if we take this specific action, this is how much lower it gets us, with the goal to take all of this by all of these actions and be net zero by 2050. So above that pink line, that's state, federal, and other policies. So things like the Clean Buildings Act, Climate Commitment Act funding, some of the transportation policies that the state has. Everything below that is the actions that local jurisdictions need to take to get us to net zero. Again, the largest one you might notice are land use and land use policies. So those are some of the larger decisions that we have to make at the local jurisdiction to get us to net zero by 2050. And I want to say this data is from 2022. So the hard thing with greenhouse gas emissions inventories is that they're pretty delayed by up to two years because that's how long it can take to get data for the different sectors. And so this is from 20. This is the last one in 2022, so there should be. Next year that will there will be an updated state full inventory for Thurston County, so that'll be 2025 data will actually at the city be doing our own emissions inventory next year as well to see where our specifically where our emissions are in the city of Lacey. So this is the 2022 Thurston Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory. So this is the inventory that the TCMC or the Thurston Climate Mitigation Collaborative did together. And it's in our plan and in our work plan to continue to do these every three years. And then we do DASH inventories in between those years. So it can be really bogged. It can really bog the community down if you're doing full inventories every year because you're not seeing those DECREASES BECAUSE IT'S REALLY HARD TO COMPARE YEAR TO YEAR SO THAT'S WHY WE DO DASH INVENTORIES IN THE YEARS BETWEEN ABOUT THREE TO FIVE YEARS IS REALLY WHAT THEY SAY YOU SHOULD BE DOING GREENHOUSE GAS INMISSIONS INVENTORIES. SO THE 2022 INVENTORY WE DID HAVE A 6.6 INCREASE SINCE 2015 SO WE DID SEE AN INCREASE IN OVERALL EMISSIONS AND A 16% INCREASE SINCE 2020. pretty close in 2020 to where we needed to be, but it's probably not a shocker to anyone that was COVID. So a lot of people were not driving. They were teleworking full-time. So we just had a lot of folks who those high emissions from vehicle miles traveled just got reduced. Our 2023 DASH inventory. So our DASH inventory only looks at our highest greenhouse gas emissions. So that would be energy use and transportation. And so our 2023 DASH emissions are 3.3% higher than 2015. So not growing steadily by larger chunks. The 2023 DASH emissions are 1.7% lower than 2022 emissions. So just those top two emissions are lower than 2022. So we did see a decrease in 2023 for those. And then the per capita DASH emissions have decreased 7.4% since 2015. And that just means that we have grown. So as we're growing, at least our emissions aren't steadily increasing. So per capita, per person, our emissions have decreased 7.4%. And talking with my coworkers, it really seems to be too that the grid has gotten a lot cleaner, which is why we're seeing that per capita decrease. So PSE has a mandate to be 2030 net zero or 100% clean. So they've been doing a lot of work to get the grid to be cleaner energy. And that is all the data I have. Happy to answer questions at the end if you have anything you'd like to talk about. We're going to jump right into the things that we're doing in 2026. So the first thing we're going to talk about is the regional initiative. So every year, the Thurston Climate Mitigation Collaborative decides on a regional initiative to work on. These regional initiatives have sort of stacked in staff time. So we're doing Energize Thurston again this year. That was the regional initiative last year. The home energy score was the first one in 2024, so now we're still working on that. So we might be rethinking a yearly regional initiative in the future. But for this year at least, the one we're working on is a gap analysis for vehicle miles traveled, and looking at that regionally, not just city to city. The TCMC is working with Barron Piers to conduct a gap analysis of EMT reductions in our region. This will evaluate whether existing jurisdictional plans, practices, and policies are sufficient to meet established vehicle miles traveled reduction targets, and identify what actions, both locally and regionally, so with our partners, are needed to close that gap if we're not meeting it. And these targets were set by Commerce. They're actually suggestions for our comp plan. And so the target is to reduce VMT per capita by 27% by 2040 and 41% reduction by 2050. And again, those come from commerce. So they sort of set those. Right now, we just finished staff interviews, so talking with our transportation staff about how they plan projects. And we're moving into sort of looking, again, at the analysis part of that. So what policies and plans we have in place, and are they getting to our goal of reduction?

All VMT is not equal, right?

Sure, yeah.

The vehicle mile traveled in a diesel truck is considerably different than an electric vehicle.

Yeah, we've had a lot of discussions. I think ultimately we're going to leave out electric vehicles out of this discussion. or electric vehicle charging infrastructure out of this because it doesn't necessarily get to a reduction of VMTs. Yes, it is a lot cleaner, but VMT reductions typically talk about just taking roads or taking vehicles off the road and just reducing how many miles are put on. There are differences between trips that are generated in Lacey and then pass-through miles. So we're also not going to be counting vehicle miles traveled that... originating outside of the county. So, you know, a lot of folks come to the city of Olympia for work. Um, it's a state, so we're trying to, we're really trying to focus on things we can control and we, we can't control people driving out of, um, the county to come to work, but yeah. Um, Energize Thurston. So we have funding, um, for 2026 that's coming through two different grants right now. So, um, SEEP funding, which stands for community energy efficiency program funding. and through PSE's decarbonization grant. So South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity, who's a partner in Energize Thurston, applied for and got funding for both of those grants to help bring people off of our wait list from 2025. So 2025, just to remind you all, the city of Lacey itself fully or partially subsidized 35 heat pump and water heater installations. We also had six self-funded participants, so they got one-time discounts, 10% to 15% on the purchase of a heat pump. Regionally, we engaged about 520 residents just through education materials, through applications, and through the workshops that we did. 219 total heat pumps and water heater installations across the region, 170 fully or partially subsidized. So that's across the region again. And I think it was over $2 million in grant funding that we got last year for 2025 that went almost entirely to program, which was the purchasing of heat pumps. So for this year, yeah, yes.

How do you determine who's going to be on the wait list?

Yeah. How do you determine that? That's a good question. we had more folks apply for the low income pathway than we had money for. And as they applied and submitted their application, they got put onto a wait list. So the funding this year is bringing those folks off the wait list first. And then if with enough funding we have applied, South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity again applied on half of Energize Thurston for here funding, which almost paid for all of our installations last year. We haven't heard anything yet, but if we were to get that funding, depending on the amount, we could potentially bring everyone off the wait list and maybe open the wait list back up to new participants. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah. So again, Energize Thurston is a heat pump campaign. We look to... fully or partially subsidized low-income heat pump installations. And also, we offer one-time discounts to the self-funded pathway. And that is income qualified for those heat pumps. So this year we're doing a different model. I don't know if many of you have heard of Eastside Energize or something like that. They do a similar program, but they do it through a distributor model. So instead of working with specific installers, we work with two or three distributors of heat pumps. So think like Ferguson. Then they offer the discount to... the installer, so we get more folks, more installers doing the work. And sometimes we can also get better discounts for self-funded pathways, so we're trying that model this year to see how it compares to doing it where we just contract with specific installers. Again, we're waiting for HEAR 2026 funding allocations. Hopefully that comes any day. I think we were supposed to hear in April, but we're into May, so hopefully we're getting close. The City of Lacey will be able to fund roughly half of its wait list, and that's actually decreased. Some folks either don't want to do the program anymore or have already purchased a heat pump maybe. So we have about, I think, 13 for the heat pump on our wait list and eight for the water heater. So we'll get pretty close to our wait list allocations with just the SEEP funding and the PSC decarbonization grant. And again, new this year, we're doing the distributor model to engage more installers and help reduce contracting work with the staff team as well. So Home Energy Score, I'd just like to give you all some updates on where we're at. So first of all, I'd like to note that I as staff team and the TCMC continues to work on the program implementation portion of the HES. So Olympia and Thurston County have adopted the ordinance with effective dates out for one year. So now that one year, we're working on building out a program for Home Energy Score. And so by that effective date, there will be a program. And I continue to be on those discussions and work on that program implementation so that if or when the council decides we are part of those conversations. So city council held work sessions in February and May. And I know that a list has been directed to come back with the ordinance itself. So they will be taking a look at the ordinance and moving forward with some sort of decision, I think, on the home energy score in the next COUPLE OF MONTHS. THURSTON COUNTY AND OLYMPIA HAVE ADOPTED THE ORDINANCE. CLIMATE PLANNING GRANT, THE 2026 UPDATE, WE GOT CLIMATE PLANNING FUNDING TO DO OUR COMP PLAN UPDATES, $350,000. WE GOT ALLOCATED $700,000 TOTAL THROUGH CLIMATE COMMITMENT ACT FUNDING AND THROUGH COMMERCE. That's to do implementation planning for climate-specific. So we applied for the rest of the $350,000 to update our urban forestry management plan that works starting right now. I almost have a draft RFQ ready for Ryan to review. And then we'll be working on getting some sort of stakeholder group together for that, like we did the last round. and then we do have to conduct a sea level rise vulnerability and risk assessment as part of our shoreline master plan update ecology did tell us that we needed to do that work so I've been talking with folks that I know we have very minimal shoreline in the city of Lacey and I have talked with some folks that maybe we would like to bring the beach crest community into that discussion as well just to you know talk with them as well they're in their UGA so And so we'll be using some of the money to do that. And then the last thing is updates to the bike and ped plan, but those won't happen until late 2026. We'll be starting those discussions with, again, getting together stakeholder groups, looking at the current plans and policies, and doing that work into 2027. All of these are on the comprehensive plan that we just updated as well. These are sort of the near-term plans or policies that we need to update. Portable heat pump program. So we are actually working with alongside the city of Olympia. We haven't done any contracting with them, but we're definitely mirroring their program, their piloting. And now we are piloting a portable heat pump program. This is one of our resiliency goals. So oftentimes we can think of the programs that we have going as things that reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and then also just make us adaptable and resilient to climate change and climate hazards. Heat and wildfire smoke are top two climate hazards in the city of Lacey, and that was shown through our vulnerability and risk assessment that we did with the climate update. So this program is going to help low-income seniors, specifically seniors who cannot make it to cooling centers, so who have to shelter in place, get access to emergency cooling. These aren't meant to be long-term cooling agents. They really are meant, and we're working with them Lewis Mason Thurston Area on Aging. They have client lists, and they have a lot of trust built up in the community. So they're working with their clients to come up with a list of participants that would meet some criteria. And then South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity is going to install the portable heat pump. They're going to work with the participant on the best location where they can comfortably cool during heat events. So it's not just about getting cooling, but it's about getting a place that they can comfortably cool. And then there's also going to be air filters on this as well. So that'll mostly filter out smoke particles. And again, this is part of our resiliency sub-element, so includes goals R1 and R12, and specifically policies RA1, which is our resiliency, R1C, and R12A, which talks about helping folks be resilient to climate change.

So that heat pump program is just for seniors?

Yes, so I think the age limit is 60 is what we're working with the agency on. Yes, and seniors specifically who also meet another criteria have some sort of reason that they can't get to cooling centers or some sort of disability as well.

Will they get a discounted heat pump, a portable heat pump? Will they get one for free?

They will get one for free, yes. We have funding for about 48 heat pumps, I think, so portable heat pumps. So they will get the portable heat pump installed for no cost to them, yes. And there is, just to recognize, we're working with them a lot, the area on agency and South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity, to make sure people know that this is an emergency situation, that running this does can include costs to your bill in the summer. So really, we're just working with them to get them a lot of education about ways they can cool themselves outside of using the portable heat pump. And then if they need to for heat extremes, they have a place to cool. And then it really is just for emergency. A lot of data is coming out about resiliency hubs. And what we're really finding is that people prefer to shelter in place. And it makes sense, right? So getting them access to cooling in their homes is going to be really important. So is maintenance included in the cost? That's a good question. It's not included in the cost, but education about maintenance is included. So South Puget Sound Habitat for Humanity and the Arianna Agency is working together to come up with maintenance instructions that the folks who have these can operate them.

Mostly a filter that they have to change out.

Yeah, filters they need to change or things like that. Because these are meant to, they're not attachable to a house, the portable heat pumps. So they sit like near a window and they vent out and in. Yeah. And so it's really about changing the filters, which I'll be, yeah. The one thing we might want to think about long term is just sending out information to these participants, reminding them to change their filters or things like that.

One thing I'll add is that one of the benefits of this program Which is uniquely different with the portables is that it does allow those that rent versus own also So you can be a renter or an owner and still be able to participate in this program Whereas if you're actually installing a unit permanently in your home the previous programs it really you need to be an owner So it's nice that it bridges that gap as well What's the general life expectancy of these pumps I

Ooh, that's a really good question. I don't know, but I can look it up and get back to you. It would probably be dependent on which pump we go with, but I can look at the spec sheets for the one we're going to go with for sure.

Thank you.

Yeah. The other thing we have going is the employee e-bike grant. It's a lease to ownership grant. Back in October of 2025, WSDOT released a pilot funding program specifically for e-bike lending libraries with ownership routes. As a city entity, Originally, I thought, oh, this would be a great community project. But once I read the legislation, I realized it had to be specifically for employees, which is the way it was written. So I was like, cool, that's great. We'll do it anyways. So we applied for the grant to do a lease to ownership pathway for city employees. Essentially, we got grant funding. Now we have 35 e-bikes for 35 employees. We had 53 employees apply for the program. They lease the e-bike for six months. Then there's various data collection and things they have to do during the six months during their lease program. Specifically, for the first four months, they have to bike to work once a week. And then for two months after that, submit surveys and data to me about where they're biking, how they're using the bike. A lot of that gets sent to University of Washington for their program on e-bikes. And then after the six months the e-bike is theirs and they get to hopefully continue to commute to work on it. Really what we're trying to do is hit those employees that use their single car to travel to work to find an alternative through active transportation and e-bikes are a really good resource for that. It also, I will say the side note is it's created a lot of goodwill in the city. Employees are super excited about the program. And it's also gotten them really excited about, a lot of folks have thought maybe they'd like to bike to work, but they just didn't have the resources or they just didn't have the experience or the support to do that. So there's been a lot of really great folks really excited who I didn't think would want a bike to work who are really excited about it. How much is the lease? How much is the lease? The lease does not cost employees anything.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, we had some concerns about that, but the way the legislation was written, since they included ownership routes, the employees do not have to pay for the e-bikes. So they're leasing them without cost? Yeah, they're leasing them for no cost. The lease really is the program participation and having to meet those requirements. And if they don't meet the requirements, then the bike has to be given back and we'll get the next person on the wait list. We're also making sure we provided helmets, safety equipment. They had to complete a safety education course about biking. And then we also included locks and GPS monitoring. So a big thing is, I say this, I'm expecting at least maybe one of them to get stolen, just so I set my expectations very realistically. But we do have GPS on all of them. So if it does happen, then we could call the police and get the location and hopefully we'd get the bike recovered. So lots of safety around it as well.

But yeah.

And with that, questions or concerns or comments that any of you have?

Yeah, I think one of the things that we need to look at and try to come up with a solution is finding energy efficiency that will help the tenant long term meet, of course, our climate goals. but also be financially feasible. For example, this has been a really great program that we've seen with let's get all these new heat pumps out there and get people off gas and they're on these new electric heat pumps. Well, what we've seen is when people have done that, their electrical bill has gone up considerably. in some cases, talking to some residents, I mean, several hundred dollars a month.

Yeah.

Like, so here you are thinking, oh, I get a really reduced, you know, cost heat pump. I'm doing my part, and now I can't afford to turn on my heat.

For sure.

Right? I mean, that's a huge issue. Yeah. So, you know, all these years of me looking at this issue, there's really only one thing that I've seen that makes sense. Of course, if you can get better insulation, get better windows, all those things, that can make a big difference. But the biggest return for your buck is solar. Solar with battery power, you know, battery storage. Like, That's it. Even here in Washington State, where we don't have a ton of sun, it lowers your electrical bill. You can put some back in battery storage and use that electricity during the evening, and it solves a lot of those problems. Even looking at the home energy score, I applaud Thurston County, Olympia, and Tumwater going out there and trying to get ahead on this, but even with their ordinance, all it's doing is making the owner do a home energy audit. Once they get the audit back, that's done. It doesn't require anyone to do anything after that point. So maybe it would lower the cost to the house, that's something that have been negotiated, but the way the pricing's going in our area for homes, there's no guarantee it's gonna do low or anything. Matter of fact, you're gonna probably put that $200, $300 on that bill, on that mortgage, and pay interest on it for the next 25 years. So now that $200, $300, put 6%, 6.5%, 7% interest on it over 25 years and see how much it's going to cost you. And it'd be different if you got a home energy score that said, here are the two things you can do to reduce your energy costs, and then here's a grant money to help you do that. OK. I understand that. But just to have a home energy score that doesn't then PUSH, DO ANYTHING? IT SEEMS LIKE WE'RE PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE HERE AND WE DON'T EVEN KNOW IF, ONE, WE HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE OUT THERE TO DO THESE HOME ENERGY AUDITS, WHAT THE END RESULT WILL BE ONCE THEY DO THE AUDITS. AND SO WE MAY NOT EVEN BE SOLVING THE BIGGEST ISSUE TO TRY AND SOLVE, WHICH IS TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO HAVE MORE EFFICIENT HOMES. I'D RATHER FOCUS ON GETTING grant money to change out their drafty windows that we know immediately will have a big exchange on their heating bill, or having rebates out there that we can support for better insulation for everyone. That's like, OK, we'll immediately see a return on that investment, rather than forcing someone to do something that actually may or may not have a return on that investment. I just think we need to be smarter about how we're doing this because right now we have an affordability issue, period. And so if we're making it more expensive, but we've gotten rid of gas, but now no one can afford to turn on their heat, we haven't thought this through. And so I just think we need to be smarter about making sure there's a lot of Climate Commitment Act money out there. We should be able to figure out how we can tap into that and actually change people's lives, reduce their cost to live while having more efficient homes. Let's figure that part out first before then just blindly saying here's a home energy score that doesn't do anything after that. So, council member?

Yeah, I just wanna piggyback a little bit. I definitely think with other cities doing it, it gives us some time to figure out what they're doing, what's working and what's not versus everyone all rushing in. But what doesn't get talked about enough is I specifically am really concerned with the effects it's gonna have on the senior population. because this is going to have a much larger impact on older homes. Newer homes are already going to be passed no matter what. But if an older home and seniors are transitioning in their life, they're going to have a lower score, which is going to impact the price of their home. So it's not just that cost, but then what about potentially them selling that home with a lower score? And so I think there are some impacts that need to be at least discussed that I have not seen discussed yet. So I am interested to hear more about how that work session went and potentially having people come in and talk to us as well, too. So I do really worry about rushing into it. I'd rather have the right plan than a plan. And then I also want to pick it back on the solar. I've said this a couple times. I think we need some sort of solar match. The newer technology is much better for our climate. So that old, like, oh, we don't live in a sunny place doesn't really apply anymore. And they estimate the cost just in the next few years to come down like 50%. So the technology is advancing really quickly. And what I'm trying to say is I would love to see us start laying some groundwork for some plans for when that actually does make sense. It's the number one way I think we can actually make a big impact. So I'd rather start earlier than later on that. And I know our workload right now is a lot, but that's definitely something that like next year I'd like to start or I think should be starting to be talked about. Thank you.

Can I just really fast? I would like to say we do have one energy assessor in Thurston County. Since it passed, he and his, I can't remember the name, he went through the whole program, got certified, so we have one. We anticipate that we'll need eight to 12 assessors in Thurston County in order to do the home energy score if it was a regional program.

But we have one right now.

We have one right now, but we do, in the program implementation, it's no cost to most people who get certified are Inspectors because it's the easiest pathway and it's it doesn't cost them anything to do it The only thing is I mean obviously time time is nothing, but it's not that big of a time commitment to get certified The senior question we do so actually Portland found that some of the reasons that older homes would potentially be lower on the on the 1 to 10 scale. It's not pass fail. It's 1 to 10 like your score actually gives them an advantage. They tend to be smaller square footage, right? They do have updates and so those actually do account for a score. We also, in the program, are at least talking about how we have, we can exempt folks from the score if we need to for specific reasons, income being one of them. Cells that are going through really quickly or that need to get through really quickly. We've also talked about having subsidies. So Portland actually has very low subsidies, 4,000 or under, and that usually meets their need for folks who ask for a subsidy. And Portland also, and other programs as well, haven't found that it actually, not that it's great for affordability, but they have found that folks have Through the score, they've been able to communicate the updates they've done to the home and the investment they've made in the home, either through solar, through heat pumps. And so they've gotten a return on their investment when they sell the home. And then just the last thing, and I'm happy to come back and do just a work session on home energy, or just to give you guys some information what we're thinking through. I think the other thing that was mentioned was specifically about, it is a cost to the buyer, or to the seller, sorry. So the buyer's not paying for the home energy score, the seller is, and It is just an education tool. It's one thing we have in our toolkit to hopefully get folks reducing their greenhouse gas footprint, and that's through education. But specifically letting them compare homes as well is huge, especially as energy costs increase. I don't have control over PSC's rates, and it is really hard to get folks to get a heat pump if their energy costs are going to get pushed up. This tool also does allow folks to compare homes and energy costs potentially. Yes, sorry, just wanted to clarify some things.

I know we're really not having the discussion today on the Home Energy Score, but since it's being discussed, a couple of things. I cannot... understand why we would do it the way that they're doing it so far in the other cities. It's primarily going to be done by home inspectors. That's who's likely to be the ones that get this certification. Why wouldn't we do it the same way home inspections are done? If the buyer wants a home inspection, they pay for a home inspection. If they want an energy survey, they pay for an energy survey. To me, it's absurd that we would force the seller to have to do this because like it or not, and no matter how many different ways you put it, it does increase the price of the house. If it costs $300 to do it, that $300 is going on to the price of the house. That's just how it is. It doesn't make any sense the way we're doing this, in my opinion.

Well, I want to actually see the numbers. If you can prove it to me with data that it's... doing the needle, then it's done. I'm just kidding. But again, we have to figure out a way to take data and turn it into actual real life change. And so if all it's doing is saying, OK, This house is more energy efficient than this house, but it doesn't do anything. Although, like I said, I'll listen to the data. It just feels like we need to be... We have to take affordability into account.

We don't do it. So many interventions that we make on housing.

Yeah.

We pass things constantly that drive the price of housing up as we sit here and talk consistently for all the years I've been on council about the lack of affordable housing. Yet we continue, us and all the jurisdictions and the state, to pass more ordinances and more laws that drive up the cost of housing.

It's absurd. It's backwards. I thought the buyer was going to have to eat that cost. Well, they are in the end. As you know, they are in the end. One way or the other, yeah.

The seller is going to pass it on to the buyer. I mean, that's how that works.

Okay. I'd like to ask a question, please.

Yep, please.

Lindsay, in terms of getting certified, and obviously home inspectors are a great source for this, do you know how, what the... length of the training is, how involved it is. Is it a big burden or is it a couple of weeks or what?

Yeah, it's ran through Department of Energy, so DOE, federal program. I don't think it's longer than a week. I'm not sure. I think There's probably education courses you can take on your own as you have time. And then it does require that you meet with a certified assessor already and walk through an assessment. So you get to walk through someone. They call it a mentor. Meet with a mentor and then walk through the program. And then you're certified. On top of that, assessors, as well, in a program that's mandatory, at least, and even voluntary, we would work with a third party to manage the QA, QC, so 10% of homes that are assessed will be reassessed by, just like the data will be reassessed, just to make sure the scores are actually accurately reflecting the program.

So, yeah. Sorry. Quick clarifying question that I never quite understood. Is the fee paid to the inspector or does the fee get paid, is it like a certification that goes to the city or the jurisdiction?

It would be paid to the assessor. We're talking now how that would work and how... I think the assessors in Portland do pay a fee to the city or to the consultant to do the QA, QC work, which sort of continues to fund that versus coming from the general fund. So the assessors pay for... And I think in Portland right now it's about $180 to get an assessment, which was the last numbers we had. But that money is paid to It's all done through private industry.

And then who's doing the enforcement? So the city's taking on the burden of administrating?

Yeah. As the ordinance is written now, anyone who would want to list through MLS, which is our listing service around here, would have to click a button and attach a home energy score so that they could list with MLS. It gets us about 95% of homes that are sold in Thurston County. Enforcement would be done jurisdiction to jurisdiction. That's a conversation we're having right now. I think most likely what will happen is I think Olympia is talking about sending a letter to the realtors themselves. If they've tried to list a home more than so many times without getting a home energy score, they just get a letter saying you have to do this when you list your home. Yeah. It's still in conversation how we're going to do that.

But that's provided that your jurisdiction has the ordinance on the books?

That's provided that your jurisdiction has the ordinance on the books, yes.

OK, so I have a question. So as it is right now, you know, 5% to 6% that it costs to sell a house, it's a seller's burden. And even with the recent NAF change saying that the seller doesn't have to pay the buyer's agent, what that's done in a lot of cases is create bias. If the seller's not paying me as the real estate agent's commission, I'm not showing that house. I'm going to go show houses where I am going to get a commission. Otherwise, I've got to talk to the buyer into paying me a commission. And so then here we have this home energy score comes along. And if I have one, then maybe I'll get more looks on my property. If I don't, then maybe they'll just skip over my property. So in effect, there's a bias that's created by generating this. and then an additional cost to the seller just to sell their property who's already paying all the fees. And then on top of that, you want to add on the excise tax from 1.78. You know, we can't miss that piece. And so in addition to us not having any kind of infrastructure for this to even really happen yet, it is the cart before the horse in this case. However, the report itself, like these guys are saying, doesn't really have any teeth. The only thing it really does is it just creates some bias on the buyer's side so that they can be like, oh, you know what, that one doesn't have an energy score or this one does, and so let's go look at those ones over there instead of looking at these ones because they provided an energy score or their city doesn't have that on their books yet. And so it doesn't seem like there is enough in place for us to really – I mean, there's enough for a work session. I just don't see enough for an ordinance. We'll get to that later. We're not quite there yet.

Just really quick, the bias part. Sorry. The data we've had out of the other places, especially for Portland for the last five years, all the reasons that people still buy a home are the main reasons that they're still buying a home. Location to schools, size, bathrooms. the home energy score really hasn't created any sort of bias to purchase one home or the other, except for folks who are really cognizant of how their energy footprint is. But yeah. Yes, I'm sorry.

Ryan? I just had a random question. It was not related to this at all, so my apologies. A lot of random questions. The Thurston County Assessor's Office, will they be looking at these home energy scores when it comes to actually evaluating properties? No. No, they will not have access to that.

It was a good conversation. I just want to remind the council and staff that this is on the work program for 2027. We will, I've been taking some notes of some of the questions and comments, and we'll get some responses, so coordinate with Vanessa, or Lindsay, and we'll get some general responses, but I also just want to remind the council that this will be a full conversation. Well, first off, looked at in 2027, is that something rise to the work program with everything else that we have going on, and then we'll have probably deeper conversations in the next year.

I think it's important that every home out there gets an opportunity to have a home energy audit. You know, TCAT got started basically doing this, and I remember going through the program and saying, oh, yeah, my insulation in my old home really sucks, and I'm losing the stuff. But, you know, for a lot of people, then there has to be a next step. Like, we have to find some way of affordability to make those changes happen. not only for the benefit of the person who's living there now or going to live there after the purchase or going to be living there for the next how many years, to meet what we're trying to do from a climate commitment, we have to figure out a way to finance these things. Because having an energy score that doesn't do anything, if you can't afford to do those things, it's like, what are we doing here? We have to think more strategically about, How can we do all these things, plus lower the cost for people who live there?

And back when those programs really originally started, it was an incentive base where you'd have the opportunity to do an assessment of your energy efficiency, and then there'd be some low interest loan provided through grants or through PSE to be able to make some of those improvements, and the most critical improvements in those programs.

I think are still around in some fashion and form.

They also can be highlighted and promoted too.

But that's like where I would like to see us spend our dollars is like, yeah, once you have it, like how can you actually do it or get to solar as soon as possible? You know, that's changing lives.

I want to add one small thing, which is, WE UNDERSTAND THE AFFORDABILITY CONCERN, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, PSE'S RATES ARE GOING UP FASTER THAN THEY EVER HAVE IN THE PAST. SO IN ORDER TO MEET STATE ENERGY REQUIREMENTS, BY 2033, 80% OF THE ELECTRICITY FROM PSE HAS TO COME FROM RENEWABLE SOURCES. SO LOOKING AT THE PROPOSALS THEY'VE GOT IN FRONT OF THE UTC Proposal of sixteen point seven five percent electricity increase and thirteen point three two percent natural gas increase So keep that in mind That's 2027 That's not sustainable, I mean work It's just it's just great.

That's just crazy the average person can The person who's doing well of two incomes can no longer afford I mean, something's going to have to give here a little bit along the way because we're headed in an unsustainable path.

And to add to those percentages, PSE is not allowed to promote or sell solar products. I asked them about this. So they wouldn't be able to help in the solar field in any way. And, you know, they're capped at 4% revenues. How are they getting 16% with a 4% cap?

I think we have to move on. I will also say within their proposal, they're requesting that they increase their return on investment to 10.8% as well. It's like 9.9%. So I've emailed our PSE rep to let them know how it affects our community, but I would encourage all of you to do that as well.

Well, you know, the thing is so many of our residents, all they see is their PSE bill going up. They have no idea why. They have no, you know, they're contacting us like, what's going on? You know, AT THE END OF THE DAY, WE END UP GETTING HIT BECAUSE IT'S AN AFFORDABILITY ISSUE TO LIVE IN OUR CITY. AND AT THE END OF THE DAY, IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT'S FOOD, GAS, YOUR ELECTRIC BILL, YOUR SOLID WASTE, RIGHT? THIS ALL ADDS UP TO WHAT PEOPLE CAN AFFORD OR CANNOT AFFORD. AND IT WOULD BE NICE TO AT LEAST HEAR FROM PSE TO EXPLAIN ALL THIS, RIGHT? SO WE HAVE AN IDEA that we can please pass on of why we're in this affordability crisis. Yeah, seriously. I want them to come and explain it. That's crazy. Okay, thank you. Thank you for all the great work you're doing, too. Thanks for that bummer at the end, too. Appreciate that. You're awesome, Lindsay. OK, next up is our human services grant program.

Good evening, council members. I'm Mayor. My name is Michelle Chavez, and I'm the Human Services Coordinator for the City of Lacey. I'm happy to be here tonight to talk to you about our 2026 Human Services Grant Program. So I'm just going to give a little recap of where we are. We're entering into year three of our grant program. We have an annual $300,000 allocation. We do have a competitive application process for available to nonprofits in the community. The applications are available online. The applicants can present their programs or projects to our Human Services Commission. during that application process and our Human Services Commission scores the applications and then makes funding recommendations to the City Council and the City Council has the final say on how the allocations are determined. So a recap of the last two years. 2024, we had 16 applications received. We did not have a maximum request. So there was no kind of cap on how much money you could ask for. So you could see in your staff report, it varied quite a bit on how much was requested. Some agencies requested almost the entire portion. Some agencies requested less than, you know, a really small amount, less than $10,000. 2025, we changed it. We had a maximum request of 50,000 and we had 20 applications. So when you look at over the two years, the average grant award is about $26,000 per agency. So this is a recap table one, which was in your staff report of the 2024 program. We had 11 awards to 10 different agencies. 2025 we had 12 awards to 12 different agencies and then you can see there the the ask was pretty much mostly the maximum amount but we mostly we had a few top tiered the agencies that scored the highest got a little bit more but at the average allocation was around 23,000 and So where are we at right now with this year's program? The Human Services Commission has reviewed updates to the program. Nothing is changing radically, the program at all. We've tweaked, we've made little slight tweaks over the last couple years, but nothing really substantial or big. So they reviewed the potential updates twice, March 5th and May 7th this year, and then they wanted to spread that discussion over two meetings so that all the commissioners could review the different changes and things in the proposed policy application and rubric. So they've all had a chance to look at it, and they all weighed in finally on May 7th to recommend option number three. Option number three in the table, which we'll look at in a second, is not having an administrative cap. Folks went back and forth about that, about should we have a number of dollars allocated to staffing to be limited, but they determined that that was not good to do because this money is so much more flexible than most of the funding sources out there, and this helps them to really fund their operations and helps fund staffing. And then we recommended the maximum award be $30,000 based on what we've seen over the last couple years. We are not tending to, over the last few years, award more than that each year. And then $50,000 for capital projects, although we have not had a capital request yet. No minimum ask, so there's no minimum amount that you can request. recommend adding points for the number of Lacey residents served and then also we are narrowing some of the priority areas to where the grant program policy we want to, we're recommending. So the draft policy, the last time we updated it was last year in April. Based on feedback from the city council, the commission, staff, existing research of things, other reports and things that are happening in our community. And we also are in the process of doing a needs assessment and you've heard about this before. This has been going on for over a year. We've had feedback from over 300 community members so far with in-person focus groups and through an online survey on kind of what the priorities should be going forward. So later on this year, you're all going to get to see that final draft strategic plan, but that's kind of help informing our human services grant program policy to put a priority on three kind of core areas, which is homelessness prevention, youth services and behavioral health services. So those are the only things that are different is that we had a very wide plethora of things that you could apply for basically anything that was basic needs. And now we're recommending to give additional points for things that prevent homelessness, serve the youth and help with expanding our behavioral health services in the community. And then again, we're recommending that maximum grant of 30,000 based on the past couple years experience. So this just gives you a look at the kind of different options we offer to the Human Services Commission. Should we cap the admin? They just talked about that quite a bit and determined that they don't recommend that at this time. It could be something we could look at in the future. And one thing they recommend that I do is add in the budget narrative how much of this request is going to staffing so that they'll be able to determine where they're doing the scoring in the budget narrative point that out so that they can inform their decision. And then adding additional points for the number of Lacey residents served in this rubric and adding points for those priority areas. Do you have a question?

So, this cap, I'm not sure if I'm hearing that right. So, are you saying there's not going to be an administrative cost or you're not capping what that administrative cost could be.

What the recommendation is to not recommend an administrative cost in the application process, we're recommending the total cap that they could request for a service project at $30,000 and the total cap that they could request for a capital project at $50,000.

You're thinking administrative costs like us having an administrative cost. They're not talking about that. They're talking about how much of the grant the organization can use for administration.

Am I correct?

That is correct. I saw where you were coming from. Thank you.

So the kind of big-picture policy discussion, and we have this every year, is how do you want to weigh the allocation? The lower funding, you know, we can spread it around to more agencies. The higher funding, it goes to fewer agencies in a more concentrated range. This discussion, we kind of have this discussion each year. Things that we're kind of considering, too, is narrowing the scope to those three priorities rather than just having a blanket. That will hopefully help. with the award process. As you know, last year we had 11 different scenarios that we looked at in order to determine the funding. And so I think narrowing the scope will help. And also helping to fund both small and large nonprofits so that if you look at the broad range, lower amount funding, you have more opportunities for different agencies to get involved and maybe potentially new agencies that haven't gotten awarded before.

I have a quick question. Sure. Is there, I'm just wondering if there is, like, during this process, you know, is there a requirement to say this money is going to these specific things versus just, like, an organization's general fund? Like, hey, we have this project, we want to do this project, or can they just say, hey, we're applying this money, or we're applying for this grant, and then we're just kind of going to throw it out whenever we can. and really just raising the amount of money, their pool of money. So is there some sort of requirement for, hey, you're applying for this grant for this very specific purpose? I hope that makes sense.

Yes, so that is part of the application process that's in your packet. And in the budget narrative, they're required to submit a line item budget, so what is going to which area. And what the commission recommends is we add in to also say how much of this money is going to staffing. But it doesn't affect, it's not scored or anything, like you're not deduct, you know, it doesn't hurt your score.

The program project was a little ambiguous in there. That's why I was like, okay, I just wanted to dive in. Yes.

I have a question. So I saw one of the applications, a question asking, what were the outcomes if you applied for money before? But what's in place for us to know whether or not the money was actually spent the way it was supposed to? And what's in place for us to know what the outcomes were?

So thank you for that question, Council Member Turner. We do require reporting every agency, so I require them to submit quarterly and annual reports, and then we report back to you all how the money was spent. And if it was spent, you know, we were about 97% spent on the first year, and that is part of the process. They have to agree to provide reports to us on how they're spending the funds and outcomes on how that is.

If for some reason they... Their projections were a little bit off. Do they still keep the money if they didn't spend it all?

That's a good question. We have written in the policy, I believe, information about if the funding doesn't get spent that we can review it.

So it's a reimbursement-based funding as well, so they send Michelle invoices for the program, so if they don't use all of the funding that was granted, they wouldn't receive all of the funding, just the reimbursements for what they did use. One of the other questions, Council Member Turner, that I heard you ask is on the outcomes, and I know Michelle mentioned the reports. Michelle, would you also like to talk about what we've been doing with Lacey Weekly with some of the focus on some of the nonprofits that have provided funding?

Yes, so we have highlighted all of the programs and projects in our Lacey Weekly Newsletter. So about every other week, we provide a story with real life outcomes with photographs and quotes from the agencies and people being served. We have, we do have, I have a summary of all of those and I could provide that to you all as well if you want to follow up on kind of what the results were for the 2024 dollars. All of the agencies have had great stories and personal stories to tell and we have one left to go for the 2024 grantees.

So somebody returns for funding again, you don't really need to ask them what the outcomes were from their previous funding.

There's an annual report that each of the nonprofits do provide, Michelle, and one of the requirements of the agreement is that they are providing updates on how the funding is used.

No, I understand that, but I just saw a question that pretty much said, have you asked for funding before, and if so, what were the outcomes? I see, I see. That's where I was not clear.

for the confusion.

And I just want to say thank you because I know that highlighting those was something that we had talked about, I don't know, six months ago or a year ago, something that we really were like pushing for. And so seeing you guys incorporate that, you know, there are wins for Lacey. And so I just wanted to say thank you for doing that.

So this is a draft program timeline for the 2026 program. So we are having this review today. We don't need to make any decisions today. We'll bring it back to another meeting in early June where you can vote on the policy rubric application approval. Then we would like to open up applications in June. We want to break up the presentations into two dates in July because it's really hard to fit in 20 presentations in one meeting. So I'm trying to get a special meeting set up for July so that we have two meetings. And then the award recommendations would come to you all in August. And then the idea is to have the program year start September 1 and go till August 31, 2027. Again, discussion only tonight. We are not recommending any kind of cap on administrative requests within their grant. We are recommending that the maximum award that they can request in their application for service projects is $30,000 and for capital projects, $50,000. There's no minimum ask, so we're not saying you can only ask for $10,000 or more or something like that because we do have some smaller agencies who maybe ask for just, they just need a little bit and then add points for the number of Lacey resident services and add points for those priority areas. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Can we go back to the administrative cap? Having served for a long time on boards that award grants, one of the things I was trained and is that organizations shouldn't rely on a one-time grant to pay for staff. Under this, they literally could use the whole grant.

Pay for part of a staff person.

Right, for part of that. And I just was curious what the thinking was on that, and maybe the way I did it was old school, and there's a better way of thinking about it now, but can you just elaborate on that a little bit?

The commission has discussed it at length in because like I said so many other funding opportunities are very restrictive on administrative costs and so having that flexibility to spend some additional funds on staffing. And then they may in the future recommend to the council if they see that a majority of the things that are coming in have a heavy staff focus. But again, someone needs to run the program. Someone needs to coordinate the volunteers. Someone needs to pick up the youth. So those kind of expenses, it can help to have more flexibility in terms of the funds. So definitely it's been a conversation that has been brought up several times.

Right. And I get buying time to save a job, an essential job, could make a big difference in the program. So I'm more curious than anything about that.

Are there any projects that you know of that haven't been requested because we didn't cover as much of the administrative costs as they needed to actually get that project off the ground? Have you been hearing that from potential applicants?

Not that I'm aware of. The way the program is administered is it's scored by a rubric by the commissioners and then It's all based on how they score, and then there could be an agency who had partial staff funding that scored higher that got funded, and an agency that, just because of the way the application was, they did not get funded. They may have requested more for staff, but it wasn't necessarily they didn't apply because of that I hope that answers your question.

Yes. Yes. Okay. I didn't know if it was coming from the community.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'm just curious on the additional points for number of Lacey residents and for priority areas, which I completely agree with is how much more, how much, how much weight does that have? Is it heavily weighted in the, in the rubric? That's a great question.

I think we added an additional five points to each one, each area. Yeah.

I do like that because I think it should be LACI focused, right?

We are LACI. We talked about that for a long time.

Fifteen points. It's actually weighted higher. So we took some points away from some other areas and we added them to that. Excellent. Thank you.

Any other questions? How's the conversation going with fund more agencies at a broader range, at a lower amount? How's that conversation going? Or is it?

In terms of the spread the peanut butter further, that has kind of been our, as this program has evolved, that has kind of been the recommendation from the commission is they would like to, they like to have smaller awards to more agencies rather than a large award to maybe two or three. Because as you can see in your staff report, As the program has evolved, the beginning asks were much larger than they were until we've kind of honed it in.

Does that answer your question? Putting the cap at 30,000 pretty much forces that anyway, right? You're going to spread it out because there's going to be at least 10.

It would be nice to figure out how we can get some involvement because all these organizations are really good organizations, but it'd be nice to, you know, small, you know, $5,000 projects versus, you know, those, how do we get more people to apply, you know, for those type of projects? Because these guys are the ones that know how to do this, have been doing it forever, know how to apply for the grants, like they're in it. But what about, you know, how can we figure out how to just get, you know, a group, a smaller group that just needs help?

You know, it's such a hard conversation because... I've always been saying, hey, I'd rather focus our dollars on a program that's really making a difference in our community than spreading it around where it feels good, but it's not moving the needle anywhere. But you can see why we keep coming back to spreading it around, because these are all good agencies. They're all doing good work. And it's tough to say, sorry, you have a great program, but I'm not going to give you anything. It's tough because some programs have a bigger impact than other programs on people's lives. And that's why I think we're doing the best we can with coming up with a rubric, coming up with a point system. Yeah, and going that way, you know.

And that was part of the goal of this money, right, was, you know, some of those other dollars are so incredibly hard to spend. They don't have the time or the staff to spend it. And sometimes their ask was smaller than our minimum, right? And so they couldn't even apply for LTAC dollars or whatever because the minimum is $5,000. They only need three. And so it's cost prohibitive for them to even apply for the dollars. And so we came up with this fund right here. so that the peanut butter could be a little thinner.

And I think we're on the right track. I have faith that our Human Services Commission can figure this out.

And one of the things, too, it also creates expectations. So when you have that organization that puts in a request for almost 100% of the funds, it also sets some expectations to what they're looking for. And to the Deputy Mayor's point, it is more flexible funding, too, that creates more opportunity for smaller organizations. Yes. From what I've heard from the council's conversation, I want to just do a check to see are you, as a council, okay with this policy recommendation moving forward for final action at an upcoming council meeting? Yeah. Absolutely.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. And our next agenda item, which is our solid waste franchise update.

Good evening, council members. It's good to be back here again with you tonight. My name is Chanel Pierce. I'm the city's special projects administrator. Tonight, I'll update you on the solid waste franchise fee, which was last discussed at a city council meeting on August 19th, 2025. A bit of background. Washington solid waste franchise services are unique as compared to those in other states. In 1961, Washington was divided into 46 solid waste franchise areas and contracts were awarded to private haulers. The Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission, the UTC, regulates these franchise areas. These contracts grant exclusive rights for residential garbage, recycling, and yard waste, as well as commercial garbage. The UTC approves the services and rates proposed by the certificated hauler. As shown on the map on the screen, Harold LeMay Enterprises, doing business at a specific disposal, serves the Lacey area under the UTC regulation. Cities have solid waste options. Solid waste collection arrangement options. Cities such as Lacey can allow the UTC to regulate solid waste within their jurisdiction. Cities can take over the UTC's solid waste rights within their jurisdiction at any time. To do so, cities must negotiate a seven to 10 year transition franchise agreement with the current hauler to compensate for capital investments. Under this agreement, the city can take over the rights, but it must continue to use the local UTC services and rates. Then after seven to 10 years under that UTC transition franchise agreement, a city can choose to enter into a contract with the private hauler. So a key takeaway is that a city cannot go directly from UTC regulation, which Lacey currently has, to a solid waste collection contract without first negotiating a seven to 10 year UTC transition franchise agreement with the current hauler. The table on the screen lists the four types of solid waste collection arrangements along with the number of cities for each type. There's a column there for Lacey's Pier cities and one for the statewide data. A contract with a private hauler is the most common solid waste collection arrangement. More and more medium and large cities are moving to contracts with private haulers. There are currently 157 statewide and 11 among Lacey's Pier cities. The second most common collection arrangement is the UTC regulation, which again, Lacey is currently under. This arrangement is relatively common in smaller cities and towns, but rarer in medium and larger cities.

And why is that?

We have Jeanette here who would be able to answer that question for us a bit. Would you take a whack at it? Certainly.

There is a little bit of staff time associated with managing a contract. So you have to do annual rate reviews and make sure to have communication out to the public. So cities with more staff who can take on that responsibility will do that in exchange. I'll let you finish with the contract fee.

Basically, once a city reaches a certain size, they usually have the staff to be able to then go into contract negotiations, which you can at that point hopefully get better rates or things in the contract you want to see for your residents compared to just the UTC is regulating it and we have no control of that.

That's the hope.

So there are currently 92 statewide that are regulated under UTC regulation and something to note is that none of Lacey's peer cities are currently under operate under UTC regulation. Another option is for the city to provide its own municipal collection. Currently, two of Lacey's Pier cities, Olympia and Yakima, provide their own municipal collection services. Many of the total of the 27 statewide cities have been providing their own municipal collection for many years. And currently, none of Lacey's Pier cities operate under a franchise agreement. But there are five cities statewide that do, so let's take a look at those five cities. So on the screen are the five cities under franchise agreements, and these are not necessarily the UTC transition agreement, but they're very similar. All cities could have contracted with their local hauler, but instead opted for a simpler franchise agreement option. As you can see, the benefits to these cities vary widely. In general, under a franchise agreement, garbage, recycling, and yard waste hauling services are provided for the city at no cost. However, you'll notice that in Centralia, there are additional benefits, including a 5.5% franchise fee, a 10% discount for low-income senior and low-income permanently disabled community members, and an automatic cancellation of the UTC certificate for annexed areas, which means Centralia does not need to negotiate a seven to 10-year UTC franchise transition agreement each time it annexes because that requirement has been waived. So everything I've shared so far is to lead us back to that original directive from last August council meeting, which was for the city to look into having a franchise fee in addition to our existing utility tax. The city's current arrangement under UTC regulation makes it ineligible for solid waste fees beyond a utility tax, as is the city cannot have a franchise fee. To implement a franchise fee, the city would need to first negotiate a franchise agreement with Pacific Disposal and then agree on services and or a nominal franchise fee. The table on the screen shows the city's estimated annual revenue from solid waste franchise fee. It's based on historical revenue from the utility tax. These estimates are not a guarantee because any franchise fee would require an agreement with Pacific Disposal. This table shows the monthly rates charged to Lacey single family customers under UTC regulation before taxes since 2019. It also shows the annual increase in the consumer price index over the same period of time. Garbage services using a 35 gallon cart are the most common service level for single family homes. Historical data shows that garbage rates increased modestly over time and the overall increase was less than the consumer price index. The recycling service has two components, the cost of a service and a credit for the value of the materials known as a commodity credit. While the cost of recycling service increased slightly more than garbage, it was still below the overall consumer price index during the same period. As you can see, the recycling commodity credit varied widely over time, which was in response to fluctuating global market conditions. The cost of yard waste services has increased more than garbage recycling and the overall consumer price index. We know this was in part due to Thurston County increasing the solid waste disposal fee for the first time since 2012 on January 1st of this year. Just like the previous table, this table shows monthly rates before taxes charged under UTC regulation, but it's for multifamily customers. It shows the annual increase in the consumer price index over the same period of time as well. The garbage services shown are for a 35 gallon cart and a four yard dumpster. These are the most common container sizes. The multifamily recycling cost is charged as a per unit rate regardless of the container size or the actual material generated on site. The percentage increases for both garbage and recycling are similar to those of single family customers. The next step is for city staff to contact Pacific Disposal to discuss potential UTC franchise transition agreement. First staff would reach out to Pacific Disposal to explore options and then report back here. This is the proposed schedule displayed on the screen. Tonight you're receiving an update. Next staff would meet with Pacific Disposal and then return here in July and August with more information. No decision is being made tonight because we're focused on gathering more information before asking you to make any type of policy decision. Do you have any questions regarding the information I've shared?

A lot of information. The monthly multifamily rates that you're showing, that's our current, under our UTC, what we currently have? What does that compare to our peers? How much are we paying for 35-gallon garbage, four-yard dumpster, so on and so forth, compared to our peer cities? Because that's There's two things that, you know, and it's former council member Steadman is the one that's been asking for this for well over ten years, saying, you know, we should have given notice, we should, right now we'd be at the end of that seven, ten year period and we could go out, we had a bunch of options then available to us. We don't have really very many options until we negotiate with LeMay, but For what we're trying to do here, there's two things. One is our customer is Lacey residents getting the best possible deal they can for their garbage services. And so how does that rate they're receiving now compare to our peers? If it's lower, then our peers, then I think we would kind of have a difficult time saying, well, then let's just go forward so we can add a franchise fee cost onto it that would raise the costs for, you know, so that's number one. But, you know, what we kept hearing was that we should do this because we would have an opportunity to enter into a contract that could not only, one, lower the rate, But we could also possibly lower the rate and add a small franchise agreement where we could receive some dollars. And so it's a win-win for everyone. It helps budget purposes, plus it lowers the rate. But I only see one side of this, what we have been spending. What are we getting? What could it possibly look like maybe if we went into a contract agreement?

So I think it's a really good question. We do have Jeanette here who is going to have a lot of more information on that specific topic. But I think, Mr. Mayor, it's a really good thing for us to do some more research on. And that's part of where we're at the phase of this is just the initial research. And we want to continue to take a look into this. And we want to continue to have dialogue and conversations. And so that is something that we can look into in more detail and come back to this council with some more information. But I know just broadly, generally, maybe you can speak to that.

Thank you, Mayor. That's a great question. When comparing rates with peer cities, it's essentially comparing apples to oranges because every program is a little bit different. It depends on how far away the services are, what types of things are embedded. The UTC rates are generally a la carte. So you would pay for garbage and you pay for recycling and you pay for yard waste and everything separate. Under city contracts, they're generally bundled. So staff Upon the direction of council can work on pulling some of that information But I do when I preface this with it is not as an exact comparison.

I Mean, I think we should give notice Enter and to seeing what we can as soon as possible because at the end of that if we just go back with them you know at the same cost it's not costing us anything but

It gives you the options.

It doesn't force you to do anything.

At the end of the 7 to 10 years you don't have to make any changes.

It feels like we probably missed the boat on this and we probably should have given those a while ago and we probably have a lot more options right now today if we would have. So I think I would feel comfortable with directing staff to reach out to see, you know, what it takes to do that. I think Council Member Hsu has a question.

I was just going to ask... ARE WE ABLE TO GET INFORMATION FROM THE CITIES WITH FRANCHISE AGREEMENTS, SO FROM CENTRALIA, FORKS, THE FOLKS THAT YOU HAD THAT INFORMATION FROM, TO SEE WHAT THE RATES PEOPLE WERE PAYING BEFORE ENTERING INTO THE FRANCHISE AGREEMENT VERSUS LIKE WHILE THEY WERE PART OF THE UTC OR IN THAT TRANSITION PERIOD SO THAT WAY WE CAN KIND OF LOOK AT POSSIBLY THAT CHANGE IN RATE. I KNOW IT'S HARD TO MAKE THOSE COMPARISONS. And then also if we could look at the rate in which, in the franchise agreement, the cost of their services have increased compared to the consumer price index. I really like that table, so thank you so much for including that.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Council Member Hsu. Under a franchise agreement, generally what those look like is It links to the UTC rates. So basically it should be a very similar rate. There is a potential when you pull out an area from the UTC area. Sorry, that was a lot of areas. When you pull out a jurisdiction from the UTC area. And you're sharing that overhead cost over a smaller amount. There could be some changes to rates there, but in general, the franchise agreement areas should be very similar to the UTC rates. Where you will see changes is when cities go from that franchise agreement to a contract. But many of these have happened so far in the past that there are other factors and we don't have a lot of information. We can pull this upon council direction, but I'm not sure how much insight it would provide.

Do you have any insight into whether, just in general, if we would go through that route and at the end of the seven to ten years, and you're at the point where you can do a contract, is there a significant savings to the residents? I mean, are we accomplishing anything if we were to make this move, or are we going to wind up with rates that look very similar to where we are anyway? I'm just curious, is there any real advantage to doing the work?

I do think what you can do once you enter a contract agreement is right now it's pretty much all a cart with the three, you know, with the yard waste. And right now you have to get that all separate currently if you live in Lacey. Yeah. And where I think we've seen some changes is we've been able to negotiate to include some of that, you know. So you can sort of... say, this is what our community needs, more recycling, blah, blah, blah, blah. The other thing is the ability, and that you see, like in Centralia, to give discounts for seniors and so on. Disabled. Right, disabled. And here we're talking about affordability. Yeah, that's a good thing. So it'd be really nice to hear all the options that are available. when you're looking at a possible franchise agreement or contract down the road. But in the meantime, it just feels like we have next seven, 10 years to figure some of this out. But we might as well get started one way or the other. Better for some future council that none of us will be part of. Yeah, that won't be around, of course. But I think you have enough information to go forward to, right? Are we all on the same page? go forward and so we can at least have some get some information back to us, but maybe start that process to negotiate with LeMay to see what, yeah?

Okay. I have one quick question. Go ahead. A lot of these numbers follow a very similar trajectory, you know, slightly up, with the exception of the commodity credit. It's pretty wild. And I'm just kind of wondering, you know, do they talk to you guys about what affects that and how... Why it's so crazy, or is it just, you know, $2.93 one year and 87 cents the next, negative 52, and, you know, for a total of 42%, this is our recyclables, right? Yeah. And other countries buy our recyclables, yeah? Yeah, kind of mostly. They used to. I remember when China stopped buying. Yeah, they stopped buying. 2018 or something like that.

It's 2017. Otherwise, they don't want it.

Clean enough. That's right. And stuff like that. Is this what we're looking at here? Is the total market effect of our commodities?

Yes, correct. They can differ from year to year based on global climate, right?

Mm-hmm. Listen to the conversation, and I see there's direction to proceed with the process. Again, just to reiterate, this is our first step in the process of bringing it back before council to start digging a deeper dive. It's a great conversation because we got a good sense, too, of what type of questions council has, and if there are more questions, please let us know, and we'll continue to try to run that down. And it is. It's a process that will take some time, and the only way to get there is to start the process, right? So we'll start having some conversations directly with Pacific Disposal, and I think what I saw in Chanel's timeline will be coming back sometime in July or August to report back and give a briefing and an update to council.

That's where we're at.

Do you know that you have the representatives over here? Yes, we do know.

Okay. Sounds good. Thank you so much. So now we're on to committee reports. Do you have a committee report? I do not have a report.

I have one quick one. So Thurston 911 met on May 6th, and a little late giving this because I was gone for a few weeks, but just a couple of things. I spent quite a bit of time recognizing one of the employees there at TCOM, Angela, who was named the State Trainer of the Year for all of the 911 centers across the state. She was also the TCOM Employee of the Year. I wanted to mention that. Financials are in a really good place right now. We are way under on spending and over on revenue. So things are moving in a really good direction there. Also, they just received their 13th consecutive year as a Well City Award because their insurance is through the AWC. So they just got their 13th consecutive year of the Well City Award. And what else? And then the county has expressed some interest in possibly selling the building that we're located in, if TCOM is interested in buying it. So we're actually starting some of those conversations now. Currently that building houses both TCOM and EMS, Medic One. Medic One is part of the county. TCOM's a renter from the county. So they're interested in possibly selling that building. So we are starting some of that conversation. And that is my report. Council Member Cox.

Excuse me, I have two reports. The first is the Intercity Transit Authority met on May 20th and conducted a public hearing on the draft 2027-2030 Transportation Improvement Program for anticipated federally funded projects identified for programming into local, regional, and state planning documents. prior to adoption in mid June. We had I think seven people who gave public comment about the system overhaul and how they were affected by the changes. There was only one person who was just extremely agitated and upset. Everybody else had good things to say but on the other hand things to say were mainly I think taking inner city transit up on its word that you know, we're gonna hear these and try to do some tweaks Over, you know, maybe into the fall as we gather more information about those routes Excuse me, this thing keeps going dark on me See We did award four surplus vanpool vehicles to three nonprofit organizations, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Thurston County, the WE, W-E-E, Love Early Learning Center, Innovations, Human Trafficking Collaborative, and City Gates Ministries. That's actually four. And then the final thing I want to report on is that they've created and now hired a new position of Chief of Staff. And this is going to hopefully enable Emily Bergkamp, the General Manager, to actually be able to be more outward facing into the community, perhaps join the Economic Development Commission Board and do some other things that she has been limited in her time and demands on her time to do. So we'll see how that goes and then This past Friday, the 22nd, Rick and I attended an inter-jurisdictional meeting having to do with regional immigration coordination. There was a great presentation. Well, this was pulled together by County Commissioner Carolina Mejia and Olympia Mayor Dante Payne. And it kind of builds on a meeting we hosted here at City Hall late summer, I think it was, or right around Labor Day. A woman named Teresa Cardinal Brown from Cardinal North Strategies gave basic information about the complexities of the immigration system and She talked about green cards and temporary visas, asylum seekers and refugees, other humanitarian avenues, and work permits and benefits. She had some slides. I don't know if those at home can see that too well. This is the path that somebody has to take on their journey to enter the country and actually become a citizen. I mean, it's just stunning what people have to go through to do that. So upshot is the group agreed to continue meeting, sharing information, and already our law enforcement agencies I think are doing a good job of that, but trying to provide, not like everybody has to be on exactly the same page, but an awareness of the pages that the various jurisdictions are on so that if there is a significant incident here, we kind of know what to expect from member jurisdictions. This was work I was very interested in last year and kind of dropped the thread when I got so sick, but I would offer to represent Lacey on this group when they convene more meetings if that's agreeable to the rest of the council.

Thank you for that. I was asked to attend that meeting and I had a scheduling conflict which I then pushed out to Rick saying can someone please take up my spot and I felt bad because I was probably the only mayor that wasn't there but I really appreciate you stepping up. There's another poll you know process going on where the state AG and governor is having meetings with a bunch of mayors and other electeds across the Washington states. And so trying to make sure everyone's on the same page. And we have a lot of questions that were asked and we didn't get a ton of answers about process. And so, you know, this is sort of a continuation of that, and there's also a continuation of those meetings. So we'll stay in touch, and I appreciate you stepping up. And, yeah, please feel forward, you know, keep attending these meetings as we go forward, and I appreciate that.

You good with that? Yes. Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think it's important, and we just don't know what's coming, and we need to be ready.

Council member?

I don't have a committee, but I did attend the Nisqually Indian Tribe presentation with the City of DuPont last Thursday, where they went over the history of the canoe journey and a lot of their planning. Got a chance to speak a little bit with the council members from DuPont and also the Nisqually Indian Tribe and just reiterated, you know, we are here to support in any way possible, and they were really appreciative of that, so. Great, thank you for that.

Council Member?

Yes, there are several things going on with the Nisqually River Council. I want to highlight three. One, a group, I hope I say this right, Holyroyd, wants to build a vertical mine. Typically, the mines are built with the big crater sort of disturbance of the land on the surface, but they want to go straight down. So proponents think that this might be a really good way to bring in more jobs, but the opponents are concerned that this could harm the environment by damaging the fish habitats, polluting the water, along with some other things. The period for making comments was due May 11th, so we'll just have to see what happens there.

Did they say what type of mine it was by chance? Type of mine.

I don't know. Oh, I know they're looking for sediment at the bottom. They're not.

Sediments and gravel. And it's a vertical extractive material versus an open pit. Yeah.

All right. The Nisqually River Council Education Project is a group that provides kids with hands-on opportunities to learn about water quality, also about carcass tossing, which I had never heard of before, but I said last week I'm going to try it. They provide them with all kinds of field trips, and they were asking for a $10,000 grant to expand the program, and I voted with the council to support their application. Also the critical area ordinance is being updated. That's the set of rules that help people understand how close they can build to wildlife. So they're in the process of doing that. So that's for the River Council, Nisqually River Council. As far as TRPC, I met with the ED last Friday to have my orientation. We have been playing And so we finally got it done. I really enjoyed the visit. So I'm working through that. Also, any time I get invitations as a council member, I try to attend because it's my way of keeping in touch with people and with organizations that help to shape LACI. So to that end, I attended the Thurston County Chamber Luncheon, learned a lot about why it's important for businesses to work with the military. Also attended the South Sound Military and Communities Partnership. It was my first time there. Definitely learned a lot there about how all of the groups work together around JBLM. So that's my report.

Thank you. Thank you for attending that. I don't have any council reports, but I did attend the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Celebration. THIS LAST SATURDAY. IT WAS PRETTY AWESOME. WE HAD DANCERS AND SINGING GROUPS FROM ALL REPRESENTING PACIFIC ISLANDS, HAWAII AND SOUTHEAST ASIA AND EAST ASIA. THE FOOD WAS AMAZING. IT WAS JUST SO MUCH FUN. I ENCOURAGE THEM TO APPLY FOR A one of our grants from the Equity Commission next year so hopefully we can continue to have that here in Lacey and we can continue to grow it and hopefully it can expand and then the last thing as we were talking earlier about solar and battery storage I just wanted to highlight from the TCMC last week was that that's a discussion that's currently coming up at the Tom Water City Council and I believe, and so that's a thing to kind of keep an eye on as they're having that discussion. We can keep an ear out and hopefully take some notes.

Thank you.

Mr. Ranger? Yes, just a quick informational thing. As I think Council's aware, we have the last final meeting of the Lacey Academy this Thursday, and several of you have indicated you will be attending. Just want to let you be aware that Ginny Bowersfield, who's been coordinating the academy this year, will be sending you an email, kind of giving you information about what to expect on the agenda. The meeting starts at six and ends at eight. And just a quick high level, the idea would be each of the councillors that attend, you have an opportunity to introduce yourself, kind of go through a few questions while you're on council. Then there will be like a world cloud icebreaker activity with the group with the first word that comes to mind when you think of local government. Then there will be a meeting rotation where each of the councillors can rotate around the different tables and have conversations and ask their questions. And then finally have an ask us anything forum where the academy cohort members will have an opportunity to just ask questions and have a forum with the councillors to talk about what your experiences are. So it should be really informal, valuable to the participants in our academy to have that opportunity with the council members. Yeah, if you have any questions, let me know. But also, Jenny will be sending out, or will be sending out an email with more information by tomorrow for preparation for Thursday night.

Okay.

With that, we have reached the end of our agenda. So, without objection, I will call this work session meeting to an end. And it is 7.51. And as always, keep it classy, Lacey.