City Council - workshop

It is Tuesday, July 28th, 2026 at 6 p.m. And I'm called this Lacey City Council work session to order. As you can tell, Council Member Dunning is attending remotely, but all other council is present. So I'd like to acknowledge that we, the City of Lacey, are on the ancestral land of the tribal people of the Treaty of Medicine Creek, including the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Squawks Indian Tribe. There has been a revised agenda that went out earlier today that ended up removing the public art policy. So can I get a motion to approve the revised agenda, which was published earlier this afternoon?

Move to approve the revised agenda.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of that motion, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye. Is there anyone opposed? That motion unanimously carries. We've approved our revised agenda.

Before we move on, our policy is moved to a future agenda for the public's sake. Do you know which agenda that is?

Yes. We're looking at tentatively August 3rd, the council meeting on Monday, August 3rd as a work session component. Okay, so that'll be next Monday.

And for the record that we will be meeting next Monday since next Tuesday is obviously a voting day. And so hopefully everyone has gotten their ballots in. With that, let's go to our public comment. We did receive public written comments, 10 written public comments. And then we have several people who have signed up here in person. Let's go with the first one, Margaret.

Okay.

Margaret Green. I live in the Lacey Jubilee community. I am not an official spokesperson for the Jubilee HOA, but speak for myself. I have stated here in the past that I support the sidewalk repair project. I merely ask Council to direct staff to study and delve deeper to choose sustainable solutions for the project to leave the maximum number of trees intact. The choice is not between people and trees, as I have heard spoken recently. It is to include trees in people's lives for the benefits they provide. Your comp plan, ordinances, and policies prove you acknowledge the research and facts upholding the value of trees. Your ordinances put rigid rules on tree removal and required replacement. This brings me to a puzzle, and that is the question of the SEPA review. I understand that the city has determined this project falls under SEPA exemption because it is a maintenance project. However, it is not the sidewalk or panel maintenance that will cause the most and long-lived impacts, but the tree removal. Under WAC 197-11-305-1BII, a proposal cannot be exempt if it includes actions that together may have a probable significant adverse environmental impact. If you look at the SEPA checklist, you find many significant impacts that apply to this project. My written comments reflect the specifics, but at least seven checklist items are impacted. In this project, it appears Lacey is expecting an exemption that is not allowed for private property owners to meet DOE requirements. The intent of the law is to reduce environmental impacts that affect people and wild spaces. Even if an exemption requirement can be met, It is keeping within the spirit of the law that matters to citizens. It is confusing and becomes very disappointing if the supposedly exempt activity still causes significant impact. Given the potential for substantial environmental impact caused by the removal of over 120 mature shade trees from our neighborhood, I ask the council to consider a SEPA environmental impact study before proceeding with this project. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, I think it's John? Mr. Green?

Good evening. Could I ask a favor of the mayor? Can you speak into the microphone a little? We have a hard time. We're old people. We don't hear too much anyway. Thank you. My name is John Green and I'm a citizen of Lacey, which is a tree city by the way. In fact, that's one of the reasons we moved here because of the tree city designation and all your wonderful trees. My comments are mine only and do not represent any organization or HOA. The trees in the Jubilee community were planted 20 years ago and within the city of limit guidelines at the time. Today they are healthy, mature trees providing much needed shade during our increasingly hot summers, cleaning air and storm water, providing beauty and enhancing property values within the community, and they require no watering. As we mentioned before, the root pruning and barrier installation method has worked in other cities for repairing sidewalks. City staff has stated this method is not permanent, which is correct, but it's not a good reason to remove so many trees. Root pruning and adding root barriers to the current mature trees will certainly sustain the fix for a much longer time than the current LACI practice, which does not include root barrier additions during sidewalk repairs. Trees are living things and they continue to grow as they age, including their roots. Sidewalks as infrastructure require repair. It is a continuous process called maintenance and will always be ongoing. The current project includes replacing mature trees with saplings, but the sidewalks will still need maintenance. The saplings require 10 gallons of water per week for three years, which amounts to a million and a half gallons of water. This is a time when the state has declared we're in severe drought. Also, the DNR has concerns about future availability and reliability of water supplies. The homeowners will be responsible for watering and mulching the new trees for three years at owner's expense. The city budgets yearly to over $12 million for street and sidewalk repair. The budget should be used to accommodate our community's historic emphasis on neighborhood walkability and tree canopy. Flat sidewalks will always require repair. Please study and emphasize sustainable ways to repair the infrastructure, repair sidewalks without removing trees. It's been done successfully even in the city of Lacey. A resource which represents another valuable part of our livable urban landscape, especially in our warming climate, and it should be considered integral to the whole. Our community has reviewed the list of 130 trees, and there are at least 30 trees that we found that had a lift of less than one half inch. In some cases, there was no lift at all. The list was provided to our HOA board, and my understanding is that they will provide it to the city after tonight's meeting. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up is, is it Fred? Fred? Yeah?

Good evening. My name is Fred Kubisak, and I would like to express myself by saying that my wife and I have lived in Jubilee for 11 years. Can you hear me okay?

Yep.

Thank you. My wife and I have lived in Jubilee for 11 years, and we have been forced to listen to the debacle about tree removal and sidewalk repair for that long. with more than 90% of Jubilee residents voting in favor of removing approximately 130 problematic trees and sidewalk repair, along with our board of directors, who unanimously were supporting the entire project. This definitive action will reasonably assure sidewalk safety and liability reduction, along with the enjoyment of looking at newly planted replacement trees. To sum it up, now is our opportunity to do the paramount thing and continue moving forward, not backwards. And let's leave a legacy with positive results and not one continued with destruction of sidewalks and curbs, personal property, including irrigation systems. Let's finally put this project to rest once and for all. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Fred. The last person we have signed up is Charlene.

My name is Charlene McQuarrie, and I'm currently treasurer of the board of directors at Jubilee. As you know, we have sent in our letters. The board officially supports this project, and I'd like to also speak as kind of an owner and as a taxpayer. As an owner, I've moved, I've lived in Jubilee for about three and a half years, I'd like to live there for many more years, but have discovered that developers, because Jubilee was built out by two, sort of three developers, have kind of left us a legacy of incredibly inappropriate, incredibly, the trees are okay, but they're in a five foot wide parking strip, and they're totally inappropriate. They have grown out of control, and if we don't go and fix them now, we're gonna leave an ever beaker disaster going forward. This is a start. We have a lot more trees besides the 130 trees that will probably have to be trimmed out as time goes. As a taxpayer, I want to see our tax money spent in the most appropriate way, which means you fix the problem once. You don't just keep coming back year after year and say, okay, let's tweak this. So again, the board supports the project. A lot of Jubilee residents do. Nobody likes to see mature trees taken out. But if we don't invest today, we're just moving the problem down the road. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else wishing to address the City Council to see any? Seeing none, then let's go on to our first agenda item, which is our stormwater strategic plan.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council Members. My name is Royce Young, and I'm the City's Stormwater Permit Coordinator, and with me I have... Good evening, Council.

My name is Ryan Jewell. I am the Stormwater Engineering Manager.

I'm Vince McGowan, the Interim Public Works Director. Good evening.

I wanted to thank you for allowing us to come in and introduce to you our Stormwater Strategic Plan. This plan is an update to our 2020 stormwater comp plan. It has been renamed to the stormwater strategic plan so that it doesn't get confused with the city's overall comp plan with the utility comp plan. This plan uses the city's comprehensive plan goals to guide the long-term goals of our stormwater utility. Some of those elements in the city's comp plan that we use to guide our long-term goals are climate resilience, transportation, land use, parks and recreation and shoreline element. We use this plan to plan and guide our stormwater utilities programs, activities and CIP projects and personnel. It helps keep us in compliance with the ever evolving state requirements It helps us address water quality and flooding issues and allows us to provide information and be transparent with our community. To get here, we've done tons of public engagement. We had two briefings with the Planning Commission, once in March and once in June. Last week, we held our public hearing on July 22nd. We didn't have any public comments at the public hearing, and the Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend to approve the plan to the council. We had an open house in April. We developed a story map for the stormwater strategic plan that introduced the plan, gave some history and background, and it also introduced all of our projects. We had a stormwater survey the community was able to fill out at the beginning of the year, which provided us some great insight on some Things we need to do to educate our community on what the stormwater utility is. We had articles in Lacey Weekly, Lacey Life and Stream Team. We also had announcements on the city's website and Facebook page. Plus we had articles in the Jolt. Just to give you a little bit of background on the stormwater utility. It was established in 1985 to handle the 50 plus inches of rain we get here in the city of Lacey every year. There were two major components back then that drive to the utility. One was water quality. The other one was water quantity. So water quality is to protect our surface waters and our groundwaters and water quality is to prevent flooding and address erosion. That utility, our stormwater utility offers many activities that serve our community. The biggest one is designing, constructing, operating and maintaining the city's stormwater drainage. You can see that in the purple on the map there on the slide. Our stormwater utility has over 7,000 storm inlets or catch basins, 150 miles of conveyance pipe, over 50 stormwater regional facilities. We have numerous dry wells, infiltration trenches, and outfalls. And last year, we swept over 9,000 curb miles of roadway. But not only that, this utility offers other activities for the community. We have education, events, and stewardship opportunities. We, as you saw, street sweeping. We do spill response and cleanup. We abate flooding. We manage and regulate a runoff from construction site development and redevelopment. We inspect private infrastructure facilities to make sure they're being maintained. We map our stormwater system that includes public and private, and we also offer pollution prevention assistance to our local businesses. In 2007, the Department of Ecology issued our first stormwater permit, the Western Washington Phase II municipal permit. It's part of the Clean Water Act, which is also part of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. It applies to over 90 cities and five counties. It's the same for all jurisdictions, from the small Steilacoom to the large Bellevue. That means all jurisdictions, including those small ones, have to implement the same permit. That's one of the reasons why this plan for Lacey aligns with the city comprehensive plan, which may go beyond permit requirements to provide a level of service that Lacey residents have come to expect from us. It authorizes discharges out of our stormwater system into surface waters, and it requires us to have a programmatic approach to water pollution and water quality. Currently right now, we're in the permit cycle of 2024, 2029. Every five years, the permit renews, so we get new requirements every five years. Requirements do not go away, they just add more. And those requirements are phased out throughout the permit term. It requires us to develop and implement a stormwater management program, which has specific component programs to reduce pollutant discharges from our stormwater system. In those component programs, each one has certain activities that must be completed by a certain date. Those programs consist of public education and outreach, public participation and involvement, illicit discharge, detection and elimination, stormwater mapping and documentation, controlling runoff from development, redevelopment and construction site, stormwater management for existing development. This is a whole new program this year. Source control for existing development and operations and maintenance. But not only do we have those nine programs, but we also have three TMDLs, which are water improvement plans for impaired water bodies. We are part of three, Henderson Inlet, Deschutes River, and Budd Inlet, which requires additional activities that the city must complete. We pay into the Ecology's monitoring fund for monitoring assessment. So instead of going out and sampling 64 outfalls every year, we pay into this fund. And we also have annual reporting, which is due March 31st of every year. We have new hot topics for this year. The water quality retrofits, which is basically doing water quality for existing development that doesn't have it. addressing 6-PBD quinone, which I'm not sure if you've all heard, but it's a tire additive that changes chemical composition when it mixes with ozone, and when it runs off into surface water, it kills salmon. We have to address firefighting foam that has PFAS, PCBs in building materials, not only in publicly owned buildings, but educating owners of buildings that were built between 1950 and 1980. We have enhanced source control we have to address, more mapping, we have controlling runoff on smaller sites, environmental justice and overburdened community things we have to do, and tree canopy goals and policies. This plan takes all of those things that we just talked about, our stormwater utilities, long-term goals, the permit regulations, not only this permit cycle, but what we believe will be coming in the next permit cycle, We do a gap analysis on our programs that we have now to ensure that we're going to hit all of those permit requirements and we have CIP projects. We do look at all of those and develop two levels of service. One is required, one is recommended. The required level of service makes us in compliance with just the 2024-2029 permit requirements. It keeps our existing programs and only implements those critical CIP projects. It does not take in consideration the city's long-term goals, the 10-year planning horizon or any future permit requirements that may come. The recommended level of service allows the city to grow those programs so that we're more in line with those long-term goals of the city, implements all of our CIP projects And it allows us to look at that longer planning horizon that includes the next permit cycle and prepares us for those permit requirements. It develops recommendations for programs and staffing. Currently, we have seven staff underwater resources. One of them is our manager. It is recommending from 2026 to 2035 to hire two and a half new staff. In operations, which includes the folks that maintain and clean out all of those catch basins and the lines and all of that, it has seven and a half staff. The half FTE is the manager. It is recommending three and a half FTE in that 10-year planning horizon. We do have some new programs that are, some of them are required, some of them are recommended. Overburden Communities Pet Waste Program and allowing those communities opportunities to give their input on the development of plans and programs and projects. We need a new vector truck so that we can clean out all 7,000 catch basins on a two-year cycle. We would like to rent a street sweeper. Our sweepers do an amazing job on our main thoroughfares, but those neighborhoods often get left behind. The ditch and culvert maintenance would be cleaning out all of the sediment in those ditch and culverts in which we did have a public comment during the public comment period about whose responsibility that is. The catch basin grout program is repairing the grout inside those catch basins so that we don't have sinkholes on the side of them. This is a maintenance standard and it's also something we're asking private facility owners to do. And the stormwater conveyance assessment rehabilitation and replacement right at the moment. We don't know what kind of life we have in those lines. And so being able to assess these lines will allow us to address issues before catastrophic failure occurs. So I'm gonna touch on the stormwater rate analysis just a little bit. We will be back on August 25th to dive much deeper into the rates. I wanna touch on this just a little bit. The Stormwater Utility Fund funds all of our programs, compliance activities, and capital projects. It is a standalone service fee. It is not part of the general fund tax. You can see it on the utility bill there on the right-hand side. And our financial consultant, FCS, took our revenues, our expenditures, our operating reserves, and those levels of services and conducted a rate analysis. Again, we'll be back on August 25th to address all of that, but I wanted to kind of give you a little bit of example of what you're going to see. So the bar graph that you see on the TV is 2026 single family home rates. It has rates from communities of similar size throughout the region. The blue rates are on other communities. So Olympia, Tumwater, Shelton, Puyallup are all above us. Yelm, Lakewood, and Centralia are all below us. That brown bar that's on the graph that you see is Lacey's current rate at $15.46. And the two yellow bars are the two recommended scenarios. Now we have two scenarios. I'm going to touch on them just a little bit. The grant funded scenario would be having a few of our capital projects apply for grants from the department of ecology. These grants are competitive and they're based off water quality benefit and construction readiness. If we go the grant funded route, If we don't get the grant, those projects don't get built. If we go the non-grant funded route, we will still apply for those grants, but doesn't matter if we get them or not, we'll still build those projects. So those two rates grant funded is 9.5% increase, which is $1.46, or an 11% increase, which is $1.70. And you can see both those yellow bars still keep us in relative placement with addressing growing obligations. Apparently right now we're here to just introduce the plan to you and get you familiar with that. It did change from August 11th to August 25th for the rate analysis discussion. And then we're going to adopt with the citywide comprehensive plan amendments, which is probably going to be in September.

Any questions? Go ahead.

Can you go back to the rate screen that you were on there? This one? Absolutely. So just a quick question. If you went the non-grant funded, and as you said, you'd still apply for the grants, and we got the grants, what would that do to the rates? Would the rates be adjusted from that?

No, the rates would stay the same, but it would give us opportunities to either address new flooding concerns or other projects that we didn't put in the plan. Because we have a list of projects and we only can choose 10 or 12 of them. And so we picked the top 10 or 12 that we thought were really important. Some of them very critical. Some of them are just ones that we need to repair. We have some facilities that our liners have failed to Just like much HOAs out there where their liners have failed, we have ponds where our liners have failed. So we'd like to get those water quality benefits back. So it wouldn't adjust those, but it would give us the funding to do other projects. Great. Thank you.

So how are the stormwater rates calculated for commercial properties?

Stormwater rates for commercial multifamily and mobile home parks, Are broken into seven different categories that vary depending on the amount of impervious surface on that parcel There are percentage thresholds for how much of the parcels covered by impervious surface Once the parcel is broken into a category. It has a set per acre rate So then you multiply that rate by the total acreage of the parcel and get their stormwater feed that way so are you

considering a 9% and 11% fee on top of the, across the board for them as well?

Across the board, correct.

Okay. Anyone else? Go ahead. The grants you mentioned, do they typically have a match component?

They do. They have a 15% match component typically. Okay.

And then, sorry, can you just talk about give us kind of an illustration of the path of stormwater as it's collected from rooftops, from street surfaces, from impervious surfaces into its final destination. Is that?

So it kind of depends on where you're located and what kind of infrastructure you have, but the typical is it runs off It runs into the storm drain. It follows the conveyance system. Some of those go into a pond. It could be a wet pond or a dry pond that infiltrates and then that water overflows into a surface water or it infiltrates into our groundwater. Then there are areas where there are no ponds or water quality treatment where it flows directly into our surface waters And those are those required stormwater management for existing development programs where those areas that have no treatment were required to give them treatment now so for example Ryan and 37th the neighborhood on Ryan 37th that water runs directly into that wetland with no water quality treatment

Do we have any major stormwater that's going into Woodland Creek anymore? Have we?

We do, actually, right at Woodland Creek and Martin Way. There's some stormwater running there. Oh, you're right. Our Woodland Creek region. That's really, yeah. And we have a giant pipe that comes from Tanglewild that discharges there as well. Then we have the Woodland Creek facility, but it does get treatment. We do have some pretreatment. Then it goes into the whole big pond before it overflows directly into there.

And that's made a huge difference because I know as soon as we completed that, they were finally – had a huge downstream effects and we're, you know, cause that goes all into Henderson inlet. And so, yeah. Yeah.

We also have one pipe on seventh that discharges directly to the Creek without any water quality treatment that goes right between two homes. That's next to Lake Lois Park.

I know exactly where you're talking about. Yep.

So going back to this slide here, so if we did the 11% rate increase, that would probably increase the likelihood of us getting those grants because it creates us as more ready to do those projects. Is that correct from what I heard earlier?

I don't think selecting the 11% rate will increase the probability of us being awarded those grants. That's a set likelihood. Yeah, the construction readiness wouldn't be entirely dependent on which rate is selected. It's more how far along a project is, how much design work you've done, where in the project's life you're applying for the grant.

Okay, it's in the project's life. It's not necessarily the matching funds aspect.

And the impact that the project is creating in Forest Storm. Multiple things. Yes, multiple things.

I know grants have gotten to be even more competitive these days. Do you know what the story is at Ecology with the federal funds that they have to work with here, state and federal?

Yeah, I could speak to that a little bit. So the stormwater grant funding is primarily state funding. So it's Model Toxics Control Act funding. For quite a while, it's been about $30 million a biennium, so $30 million every two years available. And, you know, what happens in the next session, we'll have to see. They'll get the forecast. But that program has been around for a long time. That account has been dedicated to stormwater. So we anticipate there'll be some funds, but it's hard to say, you know, how much that, you know, $15 million a year will go up or down.

I did have one question about your... your kind of rate sheet up there with, most of those cities, Centralia, Lakewood, Yelm, Shelton, Tumwater, Olympia, I don't know about Puyallup, but most of them have a smaller population than the city of Lacey, it seems.

I actually have that right here. And the closest one is Lakewood at 63,600, and we're at 60,300. Okay. The rest of them, besides Olympia, who's about 3,000, all the rest of them are below us.

Okay.

So even Shelton at 10,700. Paying more than us.

Paying more than us, yeah. Interesting.

Are you optimistic about getting a grant?

I actually am very optimistic because if we can do projects that are related to our TMDLs, if we could do those water quality projects that will improve water quality, I really am optimistic. But then again, I always try to ride that side of life.

We've done a very good job over the years and we've had some really impactful projects, too, which has really helped. But, you know, it's like everything else. It's a competitive process out there. Anyone else? This was great work. Thank you so much. Really, really appreciate your update. Thank you. So next up on our agenda is our sidewalk repair project overview.

Good evening, council. I'm Aubrey Collier, your city engineer, and I'm here tonight with Jamie Connor. She's the engineer who has worked on this project.

I'm Kevin McFarland. I'm your contracted tree protection professional with the city.

So I'm here tonight to give you a briefing on the 2026 sidewalk repair project. So to start out before I get into the details of the specific project, I just wanted to quickly go over what the city's approach is on sidewalk repairs and some of the policies we have in place surrounding this topic. To start out with, we did a sidewalk survey in 2023 to assess what all the offsets were throughout the city so that we could come up with a plan for how to start repairing those. That survey showed that we had over 18,000 offsets citywide. We plan to repeat that every five years to see our progress and how things are progressing with the ones that we're not able to get to. We also have a sidewalk damage warning marking policy that was executed last year. This is a process that took us a few years to get through this policy, but it's a process for how we're going to survey, inspect, document, and install warning markings for all the offsets because we don't have the ability to just take care of them all at once. And then we also have a tree replacement policy for sidewalk replacement projects. And this is a policy that came about because it came to our attention that sometimes when we were planting new trees that the owners, the homeowners in front of those trees didn't know how to take care of the tree. Because of that, sometimes the trees were dying. We put together this policy that determines if there's trees that homeowners really don't want us to replace because they're not willing to care for them or water them. In some of those cases, we won't replant a tree because we don't want it to die. But it also provides them resources such as tree watering bags if they need it, if they don't have an irrigation system in place. and we provide them a tree care guide so that they know what the requirements are to take care of the tree. So the city has a three-tiered approach when it comes to sidewalk safety. We have visual mitigations that are performed by city staff. We have temporary repairs, which are also done by city staff. And we have permanent repairs, which we contract out. And so I'm gonna go in a little bit more detail over what these three approaches are. So visual mitigation is our first tier response. So this is primarily focused on mitigating safety concerns by improving the visibility of the hazards. So we do this in two ways. We do sidewalk markings such as the picture on the bottom there to highlight the difference to help someone see it. And then we also at times install asphalt wedges if the offset is really severe. And that acts as not only a visual warning but a little bit helps ease the tripping hazard a little bit. Our second tier approach involves doing temporary repairs. So for very minor repairs we can sometimes grind the sidewalks. We don't do this very often because once you grind the sidewalk you're committed to that approach because each time you grind it you're making that concrete thinner and thinner and when we do that it it makes it to where we're not able to then lift the panel and use the sidewalk sucker because the sidewalk panel will break. So that's occasionally you'll see that but most often what we do is the sidewalk sucker which is a vacuum technology that lifts the panel up in the air and then just at the surface level we trim off the roots, do a little bit of compacting there and then set the panel back down. So in this case, we do not install root barrier because we're not excavating down. We're just doing that surface level trimming of the roots. So to expand on that, why we don't install root barriers as part of this temporary repair that we do. So installation of a root barrier, the root barriers are about two feet deep. And so that would require us to excavate down two feet, which not only is a lot more work, but it requires us to then trim two feet of roots. So this extensive root trimming can cause a risk to tree health. It can also cause structural issues with the tree and a higher chance of the tree blowing over if we have a windstorm. And this larger disturbed area also causes more risk to running into utility conflicts, irrigation systems, and other infrastructure. And so this creates a really significant cost increase, which brings it up in the same range of doing the full sidewalk repair. And it also is something that then city staff don't have the resources to do, so we'd have to contract that work out. Do any of you have any questions?

Yeah, so how often, when do you make a decision to do the sidewalk sucker and just do a temporary fix or not? You know, what's the decision making there?

So both the permanent fixes, the temporary, you know, they both kind of run on parallel paths. We work together with the operations and maintenance team. And, you know, essentially... Some of the really the larger lifts are not necessarily gonna be appropriate for the sidewalk sucker if we really have like extensive damage. So we try to focus the permanent repairs on kind of the worst locations that have the really extensive lifts. So a lot of the ones we've done so far in the permanent repairs have been sometimes we've had lifts like over six inches that we've been repairing with most of those. At this point we've gotten through most of those really extreme and we're kind of working our way down. And so the sidewalk sucker program, they're also trying to take care of the worst ones first, but they're working side by side with us to see so the permanent repairs are doing the worst locations and then I would say the temporary repairs are kind of like the second tier after that once we figure out which ones we can take care of each year with the permanent fix.

So how long does the temporary repairs usually last? So you, um, you know, identify area that, that has, you know, uh, that you can use a sidewalk secondary, you take it off, you, you, um, grind down the roots. Um, but you don't go down far enough to kill the tree, but you grind the roots and then you put it down. How long does that usually last?

It really varies, and I might ask our tree expert here to give a, but I don't know that I can consistently say, it kind of just depends on the tree, how fast those roots start growing again, but.

Do you have any experience, so is it completely, there's no specific timeline that we usually see, or is it totally dependent on the tree and the area, or?

All of those things. In general, I would say my experience with observation following some repair work like that, probably three years, the root system puts back what it lost and you start seeing slight lift or heave of the repaired or replaced section of sidewalk.

Okay, so three-ish years. Yep, yes.

So our third tier approach focuses on, again, the worst first approach. And this is what we consider a permanent repair. And this is what we're proposing for the Jubilee neighborhood project. So this one includes removing the entire tree including the root ball. We remove and replace the sidewalk. And then before we install a new tree, we install two-foot deep root barrier and then install a new tree, repair any irrigation lines, do a lot of lawn and landscape restoration. There are occasions where we don't install a new tree and that's where sometimes we see a tree that was planted without consideration to a utility right next to it. So we've had cases where like a utility box is right next to the tree and then you open up the utility box and the roots are completely wrapped around everything in there. Occasionally we don't install a new tree if there's those kind of conflicts or in some cases if there's no commitment to water a tree, but that's been pretty rare that we haven't had that commitment now that we've started the public outreach and the tree care guide.

I know over the years we've gone through a lot of iterations of street trees and what it means and lessons learned. Obviously, 25 years ago plus, we didn't have the same knowledge that we do on what trees should be planted and what shouldn't. It sort of left it up to the contractor at the time to plant trees, not thinking what's gonna happen 30 years later. When did we start requiring that there's be root barriers next to sidewalks, you know, with sidewalk trees and was it like 2018, 19 where we then completely changed the type of tree that's allowed next to the sidewalk as well? How much influence do we have on what trees are planted next to sidewalks and what isn't?

I've been here for 13 years, and we've been doing it in that whole time, so I couldn't answer to when we actually made that change. I don't know if Rick knows.

I was here. I just don't remember when.

Roughly, tree root barriers were starting to be in our details somewhere in the 2005-2007 range. Oh, even that long ago. What we see here, we've had several iterations of urban forestry plans over the years. We had a one that was done, very basic one done in the mid-90s. We updated that in the early 2000s based on what type of tree species would be appropriate in different locations. One of the challenges was you look at new varieties and they'd say these are going to be deep-rooted, not horizontal-rooted, those type of things, and we would plant those, and then, of course, as those hybrids would, or new varieties would grow, then we'd find that sometimes that wasn't always the case. So it's been a constant update and evolution of our specifications for what type of trees go in what certain locations in the street, in the street corridors, and it goes into consideration for general planter width, spacing, but also what's overhead too, because you don't want trees growing in the power lines, those type of things. I think Kevin could probably speak to a little bit more about some of those updates to those tree specifications.

I do remember going through major updates on this, I just don't remember.

when 2021 was the last update for the approved street tree list. And it probably should be revisited. I'd say every five years, six years, something like that.

Yeah.

Okay, so now to give you some more detail on the 2026 sidewalk project. So this is consistent with our Tier 3 permanent repairs plan. So this includes removal of existing trees, including stumps and root systems, removal and reconstruction of the sidewalk, repair and replacement of curb, gutter, curb ramps, driveway entrances where needed. repair of all the irrigation systems, installation of new street trees that are approved and appropriate for the planter strips, installation of new root barrier, restoration of topsoil, lawn and landscape restoration. And in this case, it's 128 trees in the Jubilee neighborhood and 57 trees on Merrywood Drive that are included in this project. And so to give you a history on this project, We've been working with Jubilee for quite some time with some concerns that have been brought to us for many years on sidewalk offsets. So after we completed the sidewalk survey in 2023, in 2024 we put in a budget request to do the Jubilee sidewalk repair project the following year. In January 25, we were finalizing the design of that project. The project manager was out on site and was approached by members of the Jubilee community who were from the tree committee who were expressing concerns about the removal of the trees. And so after meeting with, after that staff member met with those individuals, we agreed to cancel the project at that time. So a couple months later, the board of, the HOA board for Jubilee reached out to us because they became aware that this had occurred and asked to meet with us and expressed that those tree committee did not represent the, they did not have the decision making authority for that and asked us in the future that we coordinate all of the project work with the HOA board, not with that committee. So we agreed to that and agreed to, at that point it was too late to do the project in the year so we agreed to budget it and work on the project the following year. So also in that time period we adopted the sidewalk damage and warning marking policy that was in August of 2025. And at that time, that's when the policy basically says that we're gonna do a worst first approach to all sidewalk repairs and markings, because we have so many across the city, we need to prioritize how we're gonna take care of those. So going forward in the past, our approach was to do neighborhoods at a time and going forward, our approach was going to do citywide worse first to make sure that we're being equitable in how we are getting the work done throughout the city. So first quarter of 2026, we did resume the Jubilee sidewalk repair project. Once we had all the plans completed in August of, or I'm sorry, April, April 3rd, 2026, we reached out to the board again to just confirm that they still wanted us to move forward with the project, gave them a lot more detailed information about exactly which trees we were gonna be removing, and the areas that were going to be repaired. And then over the next month and a half, they reviewed it. On May 18th, they gave us a list of about 56 questions related to the project. So we answered all of their questions and then asked for them to give us a response by the end of May. So that was May 21st. So we asked in that 10-day period to give us a response on whether or not they wanted us to proceed with the project. They asked us to come in and meet with them, so Jamie and I went out and met with two representatives on May 27th, and at that time they asked us for some additional time, so we agreed. to extend the deadline to June 11th for a decision and at that time we also gave them additional options so we told them we can either do the full project as planned or we gave them an option of doing a more limited scope and just taking care of the worst locations in their neighborhood because that worked within our policy that we had just written, and so we said we could reduce the scope, just do the worst of these, or we could not do any of these as permanent repairs, and we can put this neighborhood back into the queue with all the other offsets in the city, and they would be taken care of based on a worst-first approach from our maintenance team with the temporary repairs. So on June 11th, the Jubilee HOA board reached out to us and said that they were in support of moving forward the project. They told us that they had sent a survey to the community and that they had 90% support of their community and wanted us to move forward with the full project. So on June 23rd, we advertised the project. We opened bids on July 9th, and bids came in at just under 1.1 million. Our engineer's estimate was, I think, closer to 1.4 million. So we got some really good bids on the project. So as far as next steps, city staff will be bringing the project to the council meeting on August 3rd, requesting council to approve a ward of the project. You will have two options that night. It'll be to either award the project to the low bidder or reject all bids. And then if that project is awarded, then we will sign a contract. Once we have the contract signed, then the contractor will have a pre-construction meeting with them. We'll get a schedule. Once we have a full schedule for the work, then we'll have a public meeting with the Jubilee community. to give them an update on when the work will be occurring and how it will impact them and information on the project. So we anticipate construction to begin late summer, typically from the date it's awarded. It's usually approximately 30 to 45 days before construction starts. And then we anticipate trees to be replanted over the winter.

So we're talking about replacing the mature trees with very, very young trees, and then it will take them a couple of decades to become mature. What is the possibility of planting, say, a little older tree, and then how long would it take them to mature?

I'll ask first for Kevin to...

So older trees, one, they take longer to establish. Actually, younger trees or smaller diameter trees actually can, if you will, catch up to the size of, like, say, a 3-inch or a 4-inch caliper larger tree that was bought from a nursery. They can actually grow quite quickly after they become established. Larger trees take a lot longer to become established. and availability of larger trees is a lot more difficult. In fact, it's tough to even find two-inch caliper trees, to be honest with you. The demand's there, and it's outstripped the production. Those are the main two reasons, really. I wouldn't really go with a larger.

And the younger trees will take 20 years, or how long?

I'm talking about initially when they've been planted. So a three- or four-inch caliper tree if you will, will sit there for like three to five years and not really put on any growth, very good growth on it. A younger tree will get established quickly and get to size much quicker. So back to your question about maturity. So we keep mentioning mature trees here in the Jubilee, for instance, this scenario or this situation. Those trees are not mature. They have a long way to go until they're mature. They're about 27 to maybe 30 years old. That's counting the time that they're in the nursery, grown for about seven years, dug or moved out because they've gotten to size for sale. And then when they're put in the ground, they're about maybe a 7 to 10-year-old tree. And then now we're talking about 20 years these trees have been in the ground or a little bit more at Jubilee. These trees, if you will, the red oak trees, the green ash and the white ash trees, for example, there are quite a few of those in Jubilee. They're not going to be mature in maybe 50, 60 years from now. So that's one thing to consider. It'll take a while.

Thank you. Just a question. So if our policy now is to do worst first, How was the exception made to do the Jubilee neighborhood as a whole rather than that fitting into the policy for the rest of the city?

So this project was planned before we established that policy. And so if this project was canceled going forward, we wouldn't do this type of project where we're doing a whole entire neighborhood at once. So this is really kind of the last project that was left over in that queue of projects where we were going neighborhood to neighborhood. And in general, it is more efficient for us to do a whole neighborhood at a time, but then we're not really taking care of the worst needs throughout the city. We feel that the new approach of taking care of the worst first throughout the city is overall a better approach, even though it's not quite as efficient as doing one neighborhood at a time.

Thank you.

When you're doing the full replacement like what we're considering right now, are we looking again at another 20 years or so before we have to potentially do even just some maintenance trimming on those routes, especially with the newer root blocks as well as the newer species of trees? Like how long do we expect this to stay before we have to come back and revisit, I guess, maintenance on this?

Well, so two things, you know, the root barrier that we're, we are installing root barrier, which will help. Root barrier is not 100% guaranteed. Sometimes roots still find a way, but also we are planting a tree that is more appropriate for the space that it's being planted in. So our hope is the combination of those two things will prevent that. So again, it's not 100% guaranteed, but we have a much better chance of having no issues than the current situation.

Thank you. I guess that was my question too. Was that just the wrong tree that they planned, the ash trees were just the wrong tree to be planted next to sidewalks.

Yes, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and so I worked with the group here for replacement trees that would be more appropriate for that size. And unfortunately, many of them are not going to be of like a red oak or a white ash in terms of that large, large canopy because they are fit to that size and the site constraints for where they're planted. And that was not considered, I guess, in the early days when oak and ash were planted for the street trees. Sure.

So what kind of trees are you going to?

What's that?

What kind of trees are you going to replace?

They vary. There's one that's called a Persian Ironwood that actually gets pretty good size and it has, if you will, more well-behaved roots or a deeper root growth to them. There's another one that's called a Rocky Mountain Glow Maple and it matures at a size about 25 to 30 feet tall. And there's just various ones. I don't know how many.

We have 15 different varieties of trees on the schedule. So if you're interested, I can send you the tree list. I can email that.

So I looked at those to try to fit that site constraint and anticipation of what to expect. And hopefully, they'll be a lot better. Go ahead.

Well, actually two. Could you clarify on root barriers? Because you had one slide that says why we don't use them, and then you have another slide that says we use them. And so what are the conditions in which they're placed?

So anytime we're doing... That will help with pollinators. And with regards to native, they're really...

What we would like to suggest to the council is that we take our sidewalk maintenance costs that are currently being paid out of our street fund and align those with the transportation benefit district which is really dedicated to preservation of streets and sidewalks as well as maintenance for those facilities as well. So this is a 20-year history or so of how much we have invested from general fund dollars into sidewalk repairs. You can see a pretty big jump up in 2019. That coincidentally is the year that we bought the sidewalk sucker equipment and dedicated a fund to that particular maintenance so you could see a jump up in annual costs for a sidewalk maintenance. So we would like to take transportation benefit district dollars and fund this sidewalk maintenance going forward. We probably could have done that back in 2019 as we saw that ramp up, but we continue to fund that from general fund revenues. So we would like to shift these expenditures to transportation benefit district and take those general fund dollars and dedicate that to sidewalk gap and infill going forward. So right around 300,000 per year. We think there's some advantages to that we'd like to share with council. One, this would be a dedicated set of funds going towards sidewalk infill. And I think that's important because I think that will be a more consistent funding source for sidewalk infill. Right now, it competes with street overlay, as an example. As staff makes its evaluation in terms of proposals to council each year, we take a look at a lot of different factors in terms of what is presented to council. You talk about sidewalk repair, looking at the worst condition facilities. That might happen in asphalt. That might take precedence over sidewalk so this would definitely be a more consistent funding source for that. I also think it's more flexible in terms of being able to address these opportunities as they arise because we'll have a pot of money that's dedicated to that again it won't be in competition with other projects so as we see those opportunities as we coordinate with street overlay projects Utility projects will have that monies available so we could actually address these as they arise So again, it's our recommendation that we dedicate general fund dollars In the tune of about 300,000 per year for this program and those general fund dollars are coming from the more motor vehicle excise tax No you know those funds are really should be used for what they call highway purposes. So that's the RCW definition. So this would be general fund dollars, which if you want to point to a source, I would point to utility tax because historically we've funded street maintenance from utility tax. So again, that's a much more flexible source of revenue.

Utility tax.

For the city, you don't have those same restrictions that you have on motor vehicle excess tax, as an example, or fuel tax. Of course, yeah.

the arterial Street fund Cash balance being where it's at are those interest-bearing funds They are they are and annually. What are we what are we looking at oh?

Well in terms of dollars I got the top of my head here make me do some math here late in the evening But we're getting about 4% right now on this balance, so it's it's significant Is it possible that we could take?

some of those dollars and make up the $300,000 from the interest-bearing dollars?

We could, but we're looking at, you just considered and adopted your transit station improvement plan last week. That's near $200 million. We have a whole queue of projects that would be in competition for that, but You know, again, our recommendation is general fund just because of the flexibility we have there. All right.

Okay. Is there any questions, other questions from council? So I definitely think we should go forward with, you know, the big thing for me when we're talking about the renewal for the transportation benefit district is, you know, we've had these small gaps in our community going back as long as I've I've born and raised here and that gap on Holman Drive has been there my entire life. Like I rode my bike to Lacey Elementary and they didn't have a sidewalk gap there and there would never be a sidewalk there ever period if we didn't do what we just did and do have a temporary exemption and use $70 to fill in a place where people and kids walk all the time to get to school. And so this is what I've been, it's been so frustrating for me. It's like we have to find a better way of filling these small gaps and not just straight going to the Taj Mahal that makes it impossible to fill. In the meantime, we need some standards that at least make sense, and that's why I think this should go through the Planning Commission. Let's see what they come back, and then we can go from there. But in the meantime, let's set this $300,000 aside and start going down this path. But if we don't change our design standards, we can't build anything worth $300,000. You have to do both. You have to set money aside and then you're gonna have to look strategically in certain places on where we can do it. And it makes sense to match this up with transportation benefit district projects and see how we can go from there. And so, yeah, let's go forward in my opinion and then let's refer it to the Planning Commission and we can go from there to see what after the recommendation is.

You want to go first? Yeah. So the project that I was talking about on 54th, there is a school right there. It's a spire. Yeah. Right. I know exactly what you're talking about. And then there's a Thornberry Park right there. But there is still in then the the the people who purchase the the. the piece that doesn't have any frontage chose to go through another road so they didn't have to do any frontage. So you know what I'm talking about. So now this, I don't know if we wanna consider this really development, right? Because I understand what you're saying is if we don't have to do it, why should they have to do it, right? And so in this case, I don't think we're talking about full development. We're just talking about patching, right? So that for the safety of children who are going to school, people using the park, people wanting to access the road or whatever the case may be. We know it's temporary. It's probably not temporary, but okay.

it and it could it could end up being a little more than temporary but but is it is it better to to fill that in um uh without the full development or just leave it there yeah i think that means to be seen right that's why it's going to go to the planning commission and i have no issue with that i do have an issue with coming after that though where you're you're basically giving the go ahead and i didn't hear a council give a go ahead i heard andy give a go ahead which there's seven of us, but that's harsh. Secondly, I don't think there's any go ahead with money until after the planning commission process. We don't start funding this before the process. It's not a fund it now and then do the work. That seems to me a little bit ass backwards. You can't fund it before, I mean, don't we need the decision before we start funding things? Like, doesn't it have to go through a planning commission process first?

What we would, we're looking for tonight is just, are we on the right track for a strategy for funding gaps or infill project for sidewalks? If we're on the right track to move forward, any funding changes would be incorporated within the budget process. I'm looking at Troy that says, so that's where the, the funding decisions will be incorporated, and then of course you have the development guideline process that would be paralleling that in amendments, and then the third thing is the future update to the Ped Bike Plan. What we're looking for tonight is this approach that council would like us to start moving forward with to bring back with more clarity on some of the, like for instance, the potential amendments to the guidelines to allow a certain type of exception provided there is a defined public benefit for that.

Council? In terms of that timeline that you just laid out, we're not looking at really being able to make a full decision on this for like another year because the study's not going to be done until 2027, you were saying?

Well, the... The Ped Bike Plan, yes, that's gonna start in 2027, but I think the immediate is the funding strategy and the exception in the guidelines. That would happen sooner. The Ped Bike Plan will catch up later as we have the time to do the inventory and develop an entire list of what we have, but in the interim, we would approach project planning by looking for these type of circumstances within the scope of the project that we're currently working in the capital project team that Aubrey will be leading, to identify those on a project by project basis, but we wouldn't have that data point to be able to do a proactive look until we did the pet bike plan update.

Okay, thank you.

If we were to approve this strategy, is it possible that we could start with something like pathways to schools and places where, you know, prioritize places where kids and seniors have higher traffic?

So what we're asking for is really to formalize a process that the city already does. So currently, we take a holistic approach to projects. So whenever we're doing a city project, whether it's utilities or an overlay project, we're not just looking at that one siloed project. piece of infrastructure. So for example, any time we're doing an overlay, we are coordinating with the utility department. We're making sure that we're not going to overlay a road. And then they also have a water line replacement planned two years later. And so we already take just this holistic approach when we're looking at an area to say, what is all the work that this area needs to make sure that we're being responsible with the dollars that we're spending. And so the example of the Homan project, this is already an approach we're taking. We're just looking to... formalize this and currently we kind of just look within the project limits. We're looking to maybe expand that to say okay, we're not just gonna look right within the project limits, we're also gonna look at areas directly adjacent to the project that would still be within a reasonable distance to include with the project. So formalize it, expand it a little bit and then But that wouldn't, so that's something we already do. As far as future projects, there aren't any current projects that are part of this current budget process that have any of these type of sidewalk gaps that are included in them. So we're not asking for... this decision on the city design standards for any existing projects that are currently in the process. This is something we're looking forward to. So as we start our budgeting process a year from now, for those 2028 projects, to see if that's something we want to look at at that time. So we have, this is nothing that we're asking for as like an immediate decision. Either way, we're moving forward with our survey of sidewalks to identify the gaps and the deficiencies in our sidewalks because that builds into our pedestrian bike plan update. So those pieces that we're already doing.

So Deputy Mayor, to get to your point, Yes, as we look at the Ped Bike Plan and that inventory and we identify throughout the city where there are these gaps, then we can prioritize their improvement based on pedestrian and tractors and generators, schools, parks, those type of things. But in the interim, we're looking at providing a strategy to the council of how we would set up a dedicated fund to address those issues as Aubrey just mentioned, on a project by project basis as we plan these projects before we get to that update to that Ped Bike Plan.

Okay, so you're looking for 300,000 not to be used unless or until we come back and solidify a strategy that we can use going forward.

Well, it would be used as an example. We would have used these funds for if we had this strategy in place for the Holman situation. But if we have a project in 2028 that identified a gap, we'd be able to use these funds to fund that until we get to the point of updating the ped bike plan.

It's not separate projects.

It's projects that we're already doing. I get it. I mean, yeah. I mean, obviously, we have already made an exemption to our own standards as we did on Holman Drive, right? What we're saying is let's refer this back to the Planning Commission and have it be a little more strategic. So that actually goes into a development guidelines going forward, then instead of just by project by project exemptions within, you know, project. more strategic this way by going, by having an actual plan. As opposed to doing the one here, one-offs. Yeah, one-offs as they may or may not arise.

If you recall from the previous conversation with the council, we were talking about the Ped Bike Plan being that opportunity, but there was a desire for council to do something sooner until we could have the time to develop that plan. plan and strategies. This is the bridge or strategy to finance these projects as we come across as Aubrey's team identifies them. Got it.

I mentioned earlier, I'm all in favor of this. Where's the rest of the council?

I absolutely agree. I think safety first. And I think about situations with moms with strollers, elderly people, kids riding their bikes to school.

and you hit a muddy patch what are you going to do go out into the street and it's just not a good situation i think we can we can all point to so many different circumstances throughout our community where we've seen you know a 15 20 foot gap and you're like how you know people are kids are walking down to a ditch and it's like this is not safe this is not good um so i'm i'm really happy that you know we're finally getting to the point where we can we can take a look at this and i'm I look forward to what the Planning Commission has to say about this and will report back to us. But most of us feel good about going forward on this strategy.

I feel good about going forward with the strategy, safety first. What I'm not completely sure I understand is if we take $300,000 from the transportation benefit, District does that take money away from other projects that we're going to be allocated under?

The idea is right now we fund out of the utility tax in the journal fund about $300,000 of sidewalk repair and maintenance We're looking to shift those expenses into the transportation benefit district so we can free that dollar be a dedicated account that we can apply towards the sidewalk infill projects this would be a new fund within the transportation benefit district but coming from a

Different revenue source to be general fund from Yeah Yeah, that was the reason yeah, it's not it's not fun within it's just in coats coincide with projects within the transformation plan for district

Correct. We'll coordinate with all projects, but yeah, we'll, we'll find an appropriate place to keep the funds going forward. Yeah.

Okay.

Uh, is, is council member Dunning still with us or is that sound good to you?

Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I mean, I'm glad that we're trying to think outside the box and do things in kind of a different way. I know there's going to be some struggles, I think, with that at the beginning, but I'm pretty confident we can get to a place that everybody...

So Rick, I appreciate what you've done here. Staff came to us and said, we really want to leave the ballot language alone. And we really want to not mess with it because we have a greater chance of success if we just leave the ballot language the way it was. And what we said to you was, you need to come up with a plan to patch sidewalks, to make this happen. And so I appreciate you guys doing the work and coming back to us and saying, hey, if we leave the ballot language alone, here's our plan to make these sidewalk gaps full, right? And so you did what we asked and I'm glad that you did and I don't think we can ask a whole lot more than that. So I'll go in favor with this because we asked you to do this.

Absolutely. So great work. I think this is a great start and I'm looking forward to the process continuing and and actually us being a little more strategic and using these funds. Of course, it's really important that if we do come up with a set aside that we look to spend the set aside, because there's nothing worse than it being an account that doesn't get spent. And so that's a big part of this process as well, is then we have to be active about where are we gonna look at and do these projects at. Okay, everyone good? Then with that, we can go to council reports. Does anyone have a major council report to give out?

I don't have a committee report, but I did want to just mention a couple of things. We did our first coffee with council. Yes. Council member.

Yes.

Turner and myself did it. It was fantastic. Staff did a great job putting it together. We had an... Surprisingly large turnout. I don't know, I didn't, I don't know if we had a head count. I don't know. Shannon may know how many. 15, 20, something there. Yeah, it was packed. I mean, it was, it was great. They, right from the minute, right from the minute we started, we had a full table. We had to work on some of the logistics. There was, it was a little difficult, multiple conversations going on at the same time, people talking over each other, that kind of thing. But I think we actually spoke about it right before the meeting and we were both super pleased with it. It was a great opportunity to have direct conversation with our residents. So it really went very well.

Love it. And let's continue and move around the town and get out there and continue that. That's wonderful.

The other event I wanted to mention was Lacey Fire District 3 did their first symposium. It was insurance, resilience type stuff. It was about resilience in major catastrophic type stuff, but a lot of it focused on insurance. A lot of it comes from the information they've come to us about with their new program that they're gonna be doing, the business inspections. and they're trying to get the insurance community on board because that's who's going to talk to their customers about how this may help their business, right? So I was asked to be the keynote speaker at that. It was a really nice first-time event. I think it will get bigger and better as they continue to do it, but had a couple of different panels of people to answer questions. I was on one of those panels as well, and just a really well-done event by Fire District 3. Perfect.

So I gave Rick a full report after the conversation that we had in the community, which was fabulous. And I think the pairing between the two of us was really great. You had somebody who's new, somebody who's very well established. And so we had different perspectives. To a person, they all were like, this is great. This is wonderful. And one of the suggestions that I have is that in addition to making sure we're not in such a noisy environment, is maybe put up a listening board so when people come in, if they don't want to sit down and talk or they don't have time, they could at least still participate. Something that says, you know, the Lacey City Council is here. What do you think about whatever, yes, no? You know, something so that we can get even more full participation. But my recommendation is that we do this every year, every quarter. It was very well received. I gave Rick a whole list of things that came up and I made the vow to, you know, put them on the table with the full council and I will do that.

Great. Anyone else? I think Council Member Dunning, do you have a report out?

Yes, I did. So we had the Regional Housing Council last week and there were two bigger issues that we talked about. One was There's been kind of a push for some better long-term funding and some reserve funding, which is something that hasn't been done or at least hasn't been a big part of the process. So one of the advisory boards was tasked with looking at the opportunity fund, which if you guys remember the opportunity fund, we talked about this. probably a month, maybe a month and a half ago, dealing with the mobile home parks and a way to keep low AMI, low income properties, you know, long term. So their thought is taking excess money from that and then using that as a reserve fund. I had a little bit of hesitancy with that because we can't just take from one pot just to fulfill another pot as a long-term strategy. We actually need some more. So I requested that that not be the only thing That that kind of starts putting together a reserve fund long term. So they're going to come back with more on that. It was just a presentation on that at this time. There was no, no action being taken. The city, and the rest of the members of the on that, and then trying to develop some better long term funding strategy for the. The second one issue we did talk about was some approval for funding the jungle encampment removal process. And it was about $290,000 that would be utilized to help get a kind of a specific project coordinator and also funding that allows non-traditional Justin. Members of that Community who have difficulty accessing funding or accessing programs like reunification or if they have certain criminal histories that prevent certain types of housing getting them into housing. Justin. This turned into a much. bigger issue than I had anticipated. It seemed like there was some kind of delay and stall tactics from getting this funding out, I think, as a way to delay the process. But in the end, we did vote to move that funding forward. The RHC will definitely be involved in That process and probably you know additionally helping fund the entire process long term, so this is really just a start and the city is all of them. And the county and the team they put together for the encampment kind of closed down process has really been. working hard and getting a lot of involvement from the from the different partners. And I think we in Lacey really appreciate being at that table. And I think the others do as well. So it'll be it'll be good to see that committed Justin. Actions that that that committee takes to present information to us moving forward and along this process, because I think they are making a solid attempt to be as transparent as possible, the one key about this funding, it was it was one time funding meaning. Um, the funding couldn't go to things that would create long-term services. So it's just like, we have this money right now and, you know, we can't establish things that are going to need funding in the future. And I think that's the biggest conversation out there is like, um, which projects are we going to fund long-term and, and, and are they going to add services or add costs that we don't anticipate having a resource for? Uh, so I think that was part of the discussion as well too. Um, you know, Rick was there as well as some other members from, um, the city so if there's any more added input or clarification on that would welcome those comments as well.

I think the only thing I would add is in that funding request for the $290,000 portion of that was $150,000 to hire a housing navigator and I think I've talked with some of the council members about most of the council members about this that this is a position that it's not to necessarily to navigate people from the streets into shelter. It's to navigate people that have stabilized in shelters and are ready for that next stage of housing and somebody to go out and help them find that right housing choice for them in order to create turnover in those shelter beds so we can continue to create, start that stair step, if you will, for individuals and get people more access to available beds that are coming off the streets.

When you and I had talked about this in our one-on-one meeting, you were going to check into how they were going to do that. So was this going to be a county employee or a contract, or were they going to be contracting with one of the providers, one of the services?

And that was discussed at the RHC. And one thing I would admit, this is a year pilot program, so that is really to see if this does make a difference, then that should be a strategy we'd be thinking as a region to fund long-term. And to your question, Council Member Greenstein, with the ramp up period to get somebody up and trained as an employee, it was decided or presented to the RHC that this would be looking at a service provider to be able to facilitate that opportunity and then look at long-term if that pilot probe, if there's success there.

Because there's... That was my one big concern with this because as we've seen, the service providers have not been a great way to go about this type of stuff. I mean, I don't know which service provider they're using, but we've all seen the results of Lehigh as an example and the work they've done. That's why I said the only way I could support it, I think it's a good idea, but I could only support it if it were a contract with the county or that type of thing, but to use one of the service providers, I think is a huge mistake.

Yeah, I think that, I think as we talk about this as the planning stage, that that will be brought up to the table and assurance there's some accountability and performance basis to it. But that is something we'll make sure we raise up.

I thought that was made full court, too.

And then, let's see, the other piece of this is going forward as, this funding was allocated, then it gets back into the logistics of the plan and the details of the plan, and Olympia has committed at the conversation there, I see that they'll have engagement with stakeholders in the community and could include people or committees with lived experience as well as other stakeholders to get feedback before they implement the plan to make sure, and to your point on that component, those are further conversations that there will be engaging with us to scope it out.

And just just for reference to that's the exact question I had asked, not only because if that position is successful, it's not necessarily one time dollars. You wouldn't want to get rid of somebody who's making the process much better, much easier. And so that's why I had asked specifically to the city manager of Olympia if this would be a. a county run program and independent running program or Olympia position. And even they felt it would probably be best to do a third party nationwide search to find someone who's very specifically geared towards the mission that they are trying to accomplish. I don't think we have that in-house or within any of the service providers currently, but that was specifically addressed and they were very I think they were really on the same page with your thoughts as well, too.

Okay. Anyone else have a report out? No? I guess I only have one small report out. Yesterday I was here for about three or four hours to go over the youth council interviews. And so it was a another interview process and I look forward to presenting our recommendation and it will be next Monday. I always really cherish the time I get to talk to all the youth applicants who are really, we had over 30 applicants apply and we only had like eight positions and so Uh, and we interviewed about, you know, 15 people as well. So we whittled it down to that.

Um, basically, um, since we only have about 32% of terms of funding that we have, um, dedicated to arterial street fund projects. So, um, you could see the, we have about 400,000, 410,000 or so that's coming into this fund, um, in 2000, uh, 26. We used to have all that real estate excise tax going into this fund as well. So basically any projects that exceed that $400,000 are coming out of cash. So you could see we have a pretty significant drop in cash, but all planned. You could see that we peaked in 2023 with about almost $48 million in cash available. Um, at the end of 2025, we had about $31 million. Um, a lot of that went towards, uh, the police station, about 18 million, 18 million or so 18 that we took out. Right. So, um, again, plan draw down, but in 2026, um, if we spend the allotted budget for capital projects in this fund, That's about a $6 million drawdown, so that's actual transportation projects. To give you a quick preview on what we're seeing for 2027, take a quick look at the suggested projects that are going to be coming before you through the budget process. That'll draw cash down about another $5 million or so. So we'll have to keep that in mind as we consider those real estate excise taxes that are in that separate fund. probably have to look at this fund if we want to kind of maintain that investment in our streets. So to get to your answer, you know, Rick gave a little bit of a preview, but what we would like to suggest to the council is that we take our sidewalk maintenance costs that are currently being paid out of our street fund and align those with the transportation benefit district, which is really dedicated to preservation of streets and sidewalks as well as maintenance for those facilities as well. So this is a 20 year history or so of how much we have invested from general fund dollars into sidewalk repairs. You can see a pretty big jump up in 2019. That coincidentally is the year that we bought the sidewalk sucker equipment. I'm dedicated a fund to that particular maintenance. So you could see a jump up in annual costs for a sidewalk maintenance. So we would like to take transportation benefit district dollars and fund this sidewalk maintenance going forward. We probably could have done that back in 2019 as we saw that ramp up, but we continue to fund that from general fund revenues. So we would like to shift these expenditures to transportation benefit district and take those general fund dollars and dedicate that to sidewalk gap and infill going forward so right around 300,000 per year and we think there's some advantages to that we'd like to share with council one this would be a dedicated set of funds going towards sidewalk infill And I think that's important because I think that will be a more consistent funding source for sidewalk infill. Right now it competes with street overlay as an example. So as staff makes its evaluation in terms of proposals to council each year, we take a look at a lot of different factors in terms of what is presented to council. I mean, you talk about sidewalk repair, looking at the worst condition, facilities. That might happen in asphalt. That might take precedence over sidewalks. So this would definitely be a more consistent funding source for that. I also think it's more flexible in terms of being able to address these opportunities as they arise because we'll have a pot of money that's dedicated to that. Again, it won't be in competition with other projects. As we see those opportunities, as we coordinate with street overlay projects, utility projects, we'll have that monies available so we could actually address these as they arise. So again, it's our recommendation that we dedicate general fund dollars in the tune of about $300,000 per year for this program.

And those general fund dollars are coming from the motor vehicle excise tax?

No. You know, those funds are really... should be used for what they call highway purposes. So that's the RCW definition. So this would be general fund dollars, which if you want to point to a source, I would point to utility tax because historically we've funded street maintenance from utility tax. So again, that's a much more flexible source of revenue. For the city, you don't have those same restrictions that you have on motor vehicle excess tax, as an example, or fuel tax, right?

the arterial Street fund Cash balance being where it's at are those interest-bearing funds They are they are and annually. What are we what are we looking at oh?

Well in terms of dollars like got the top of my head here make me do some math here late in the evening But we're getting about 4% right now on this balance, so it's it's significant is it possible that we could take a

some of those dollars and make up the $300,000 from the interest-bearing dollars?

Yeah. We could, but we're looking at you just considered and adopted your transit station improvement plan last week. That's near $200 million. We have a whole queue of projects that would be in competition for that, but Again, our recommendation is general fund just because of the flexibility we have there.

All right. Okay. Is there any other questions from council? I definitely think we should go forward. The big thing for me when we're talking about the renewal for the Transition Benefit District is we've had these small gaps in our community going back as long as I've I was born and raised here and that gap on home and drive has been there my entire life. Like I rode my bike to Lacey Elementary and they didn't have a sidewalk gap there and there would never be a sidewalk there ever period if we didn't do what we just did and do have a temporary exemption and use $70 to fill in a place where people and kids walk all the time to get to school. And so this is what I've been, it's been so frustrating for me. It's like we have to find a better way of filling these small gaps and not just straight going to the Taj Mahal that makes it impossible to fill. In the meantime, we need some standards that at least make sense, and that's why I think this should go through the Planning Commission. Let's see what they come back, and then we can go from there. But in the meantime, let's set this $300,000 aside and start going down this path. But if we don't change our design standards, we can't build anything worth $300,000. You have to do both. You have to set money aside, and then you're going to have to look strategically in certain places on where we can do it. And it makes sense to match this up with transportation benefit district projects and see how we can go from there. And so, yeah, let's go forward, in my opinion, and then let's refer it to the Planning Commission, and we can go from there to see what the recommendation is.

You want to go first? Yeah. So the project that I was talking about on 54th, there is a school right there. It's a spire. Yeah. Right. I know exactly what you're talking about. And then there's a Thornberry Park right there. But there is still... And then the people who purchase the... the piece that doesn't have any frontage chose to go through another road so they didn't have to do any frontage. So you know what I'm talking about. So now this, I don't know if we want to consider this, you know, really development, right? Because I understand what you're saying is if we don't have to do it, why should they have to do it, right? And so in this case, I don't think we're talking about full development. We're just talking about patching, right? So that for the safety of children who are going to school, people using the park, people wanting to access the road or whatever the case may be. We know it's temporary. Temporary? Okay.

it and it could it could end up being a little more than temporary but but is it is it better to to fill that in um uh without the full development or just leave it there yeah i think that means to be seen right that's why it's going to go to the planning commission and i have no issue with that i do have an issue with coming after that though where you're you're basically giving the go ahead and i didn't hear a council give a go ahead i heard andy give a go ahead which there's seven of us, but that's harsh. But secondly, I don't think there's any go ahead with money until after the planning commission process. We don't start funding this before the process. It's not a fund it now and then do the work. That seems to me a little bit ass backwards. You can't fund it before, I mean, don't we need the decision before we start funding things? Like, doesn't it have to go through a planning commission process first?

What we would, what we would, we're looking for tonight is just, are we on the right track for a strategy for funding gaps or infill project for sidewalks? If we're on the right track to move forward, any funding changes would be incorporated within the budget process. I'm looking at Troy that says, so that's where the funding decisions will be incorporated and then of course you have the development guideline process that would be paralleling that in amendments and then the third thing is the future update to the Ped Bike Plan. What we're looking for tonight is this approach that council would like us to start moving forward with to bring back with more clarity on some of the, like for instance, the potential amendments to the guidelines to allow a certain type of exception, provided there's a defined public benefit for that.

Council? In terms of that timeline that you just laid out, we're not looking at really being able to make a full decision on this for like another year because the study's not going to be done until 2027, you were saying?

Well, the... The Ped Bike Plan, yes, that's gonna start in 2027, but I think the immediate is the funding strategy and the exception in the guidelines. That would happen sooner. The Ped Bike Plan will catch up later as we have the time to do the inventory and develop an entire list of what we have, but in the interim, we would approach project planning by looking for these type of circumstances within the scope of the project that we're currently working in the capital project team that Aubrey will be leading, to identify those on a project by project basis, but we wouldn't have that data point to be able to do a proactive look until we did the Ped Bike Plan update.

Okay, thank you.

If we were to approve this strategy, is it possible that we could start with something like pathways to schools and places where, you know, prioritize places where kids and seniors have higher traffic?

So what we're asking for is really to formalize a process that the city already does. So currently, we take a holistic approach to projects. So whenever we're doing a city project, whether it's utilities or an overlay project, we're not just looking at that one siloed project. piece of infrastructure. So for example, anytime we're doing an overlay, we are coordinating with the utility department. We're making sure that we're not going to overlay a road. And then they also have a water line replacement planned two years later. And so we already take just this holistic approach when we're looking at an area to say, what is all the work that this area needs to make sure that we're being responsible with the dollars that we're spending. And so the example of the Homan project, this is already an approach we're taking. We're just looking to formalize this and currently we kind of just look within the project limits. we're looking to maybe expand that to say okay we're not just going to look right within the project limits we're also going to look at areas directly adjacent to the project that would still be within a reasonable distance to include with the project so formalize it expand it a little bit and then but but that wouldn't so that's something we already do as far as future projects There aren't any current projects that are part of this current budget process that have any of these type of sidewalk gaps that are included in them. So we're not asking for this decision on the city design standards for any existing projects that are currently in the process. This is something we're looking forward to. So as we start our budgeting process a year from now for those 2028 projects, to see if that's something we want to look at at that time. So we have, this is nothing that we're asking for as like an immediate decision. Either way, we're moving forward with our survey of sidewalks to identify the gaps and the deficiencies in our sidewalks because that builds into our pedestrian bike plan update. So those pieces that we're already doing.

So Deputy Mayor, to get to your point, Yes, as we look at the ped bike plan and that inventory and we identify throughout the city where there are these gaps, then we can prioritize their improvement based on pedestrian tractors and generators, schools, parks, those type of things. But in the interim, we're looking at providing a strategy to the council of how we would set up a dedicated fund to address those issues as Aubrey just mentioned, on a project by project basis as we plan these projects before we get to that update to that Ped Bike Plan.

Okay, so you're looking for 300,000 not to be used unless or until we come back and solidify a strategy that we can use going forward.

Well, it would be used as an example. We would have used these funds for if we had this strategy in place for the Holman situation. But if we have a project in 2028 that identified a gap, we'd be able to use these funds to fund that until we get to the point of updating the ped bike plan.

It's not separate projects.

It's projects that we're already doing. I get it. I mean, yeah. I mean, obviously, we have already made an exemption to our own standards as we did on Holman Drive, right? What we're saying is let's refer this back to the Planning Commission and be a little more strategic. So that actually goes into a development guidelines going forward, instead of just by project by project exemptions within a project. more strategic this way by going, by having an actual plan. As opposed to doing the one here, one-offs. Yeah, one-offs as they may or may not arise.

If you recall from the previous conversation with the council, we were talking about the Ped Bike Plan being that opportunity, but there was a desire for council to do something sooner until we could have the time to develop that plan. plan and strategies. This is the bridge or strategy to finance these projects as we come across as Aubrey's team identifies them. Got it.

I mentioned earlier, I'm all in favor of this. Where's the rest of the council?

I think I absolutely agree. I think safety first. And I think about situations with moms with strollers, elderly people, kids riding their bikes to school. and you hit a muddy patch, what are you going to do? Go out into the street. And it's just not a good situation.

I think we can all point to so many different circumstances throughout our community where we've seen a 15, 20 foot gap and you're like how kids are walking down to a ditch and it's like, this is not safe. This is not good. So I'm really happy that we're finally getting to the point where we can take a look at this and I'm I look forward to what the Planning Commission has to say about this and will report back to us. But most of us feel good about going forward on this strategy.

I feel good about going forward with the strategy, safety first. What I'm not completely sure I understand is if we take $300,000 from the transportation benefits, District does that take money away from other projects that we're going to be allocated under?

The idea is right now we fund out of the utility tax in the journal fund about $300,000 of sidewalk repair and maintenance We're looking to shift those expenses into the transportation benefit district so we can free that dollar be a dedicated account that we can apply towards the sidewalk infill projects this would be a new fund within the transportation benefit district but coming from a

Different revenue source to be general fund from Yeah Yeah, that was the reason yeah, it's not it's not fun within it's just in coats coincide with projects within the transformation plan for district

Correct. We'll coordinate with all projects, but yeah, we'll, we'll find an appropriate place to keep the funds going forward. Yeah.

Okay.

Uh, is, is council member Dunning still with us or is that sound good to you?

Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I mean, I'm glad that we're trying to think outside the box and do things in kind of a different way. I know there's going to be some struggles, I think, with that at the beginning, but I'm pretty confident we can get to a place that everybody's happy to move forward.

And so, Rick, I appreciate what you've done here. Staff came to us and said, we really want to leave the ballot language alone. And we really want to not mess with it because we have a greater chance of success if we just leave the ballot language the way it was. And what we said to you was you need to come up with a plan to patch sidewalks. to make this happen. And so I appreciate you guys doing the work and coming back to us and saying, hey, if we leave the ballot language alone, here's our plan to make these sidewalk gaps full. And so you did what we asked and I'm glad that you did and I don't think we can ask a whole lot more than that. So I'll go in favor with this because we asked you to do this.

Absolutely. And great work. I think this is a great start, and I'm looking forward to the process continuing and actually us being a little more strategic in using these funds. Of course, it's really important that if we do come up with a set-aside, that we look to spend the set-aside, because there's nothing worse than it being an account that doesn't get spent. And so that's a big part of this process as well, is then we have to be active about where where are we going to look at and do these projects at. Okay. Everyone good? Then with that, we can go to council reports. Does anyone have a major council report to give out?

I don't have a committee report, but I did want to just mention a couple of things. We did our first Coffee with Council. Yes. A council member.

Yes.

Turner and myself did it. It was fantastic. Staff did a great job putting it together. We had a... Surprisingly large turnout. I don't know if we had a head count. I don't know. Shannon may know how many. 15, 20, something there. Yeah, it was packed. I mean, it was great. Right from the minute we started, we had a full table. We had to work on some of the logistics. It was a little difficult, multiple conversations going on at the same time, people talking over each other, that kind of thing. But I think we actually spoke about it right before the meeting, and we were both super pleased with it. It was a great opportunity to have direct conversation with our residents, so it really went very well.

Love it, and let's continue and move around the town and get out there and continue that. That's wonderful.

The other event I wanted to mention was Lacey Fire District 3 did their first symposium. It was... Insurance, resilience type stuff, it was about resilience in major catastrophic type stuff, but a lot of it focused on insurance. A lot of it comes from the information they've come to us about with their new program that they're gonna be doing, the business inspections. and they're trying to get the insurance community on board because that's who's going to talk to their customers about how this may help their business, right? So I was asked to be the keynote speaker at that. It was a really nice first-time event. I think it will get bigger and better as they continue to do it, but had a couple of different panels of people to answer questions. I was on one of those panels as well, and just a really well-done event by Fire District 3. Perfect.

So I gave Rick a full report after the conversation that we had in the community, which was fabulous. And I think the pairing between the two of us was really great. You had somebody who's new, somebody who's very well established. And so we had different perspectives. To a person, they all were like, this is great. This is wonderful. And one of the suggestions that I have is that in addition to making sure we're not in such a noisy environment, is maybe put up a listening board so when people come in, if they don't want to sit down and talk or they don't have time, they could at least still participate. Something that says, you know, the Lacey City Council is here. What do you think about whatever, yes, no? You know, something so that we can get even more full participation. But my recommendation is that we do this every year, every quarter. It was very well received. I gave Rick a whole list of things that came up and I made the vow to, you know, put them on the table with the full council and I will do that.

Great. Anyone else? I think Councilmember Dunning, do you have a report out?

Yes, I did. So we had the Regional Housing Council last week and there were two bigger issues that we talked about. One was There's been kind of a push for some better long-term funding and some reserve funding, which is something that hasn't been done or at least hasn't been a big part of the process. So one of the advisory boards was tasked with looking at the Opportunity Fund, which if you guys remember the Opportunity Fund, we talked about this. probably a month, maybe a month and a half ago, dealing with the mobile home parks and a way to keep low AMI, low income properties for the long term. So their thought is taking excess money from that and then using that as a reserve fund. I had a little bit of hesitancy with that because we can't just take from one pot just to fulfill another pot as a long-term strategy. We actually need some more. So I requested that that not be the only thing That that kind of starts putting together a reserve fund long term. So they're going to come back with more on that. It was just a presentation on that at this time. There was no, no action being taken. The city, and the rest of the members of the on that, and then trying to develop some better long term funding strategy for the. The second one issue we did talk about was some approval for funding the jungle encampment removal process. And it was about $290,000 that would be utilized to help get a kind of a specific project coordinator and also funding that allows non-traditional members of that community who have difficulty accessing funding or accessing programs like reunification or if they have certain criminal histories that prevent certain types of housing getting them into housing. This turned into a much bigger issue than I had anticipated. It seemed like there was some kind of delay and stall tactics from getting this funding out, I think, as a way to delay the process. But in the end, we did vote to move that funding forward. The RHC will definitely be involved in uh, that process and probably, you know, additionally helping fund the entire process, um, long-term. So this is really just a start and the cities, all of them, um, and the county and the team they put together for the encampment, um, kind of closed down process has really been, um, working hard and getting a lot of involvement from the, um, Justin. From the different partners, and I think we in lacey really appreciate being at that table, and I think the others do as well, so it'll be it'll be good to see that committed. Justin. Actions that that that committee takes to present information to us moving forward and along this process, because I think they are making a solid attempt to be as transparent as possible, the one key about this funding, it was it was one time funding meaning. Um, of the funding couldn't go to things that would create long-term services. So it's just like, we have this money right now and you know, we can't establish things that are going to need funding in the future. And I think that's the biggest conversation out there is like, which projects are we going to fund long-term and are they going to add services or add costs that we don't anticipate having a resource for? So I think that was part of the discussion as well too. You know, Rick was there as well as some other members from the city. So if there's any more added input or clarification on that, I would welcome those comments as well.

I think the only thing I would add is in that funding request for the A portion of that was $150,000 to hire a housing navigator. And I think I've talked with some of the council members about, most of the council members about this, that this is a position that it's not necessarily to navigate people from the streets into shelter. It's to navigate people that have stabilized in shelters and are ready for that next stage of housing. and somebody to go out and help them find that right housing choice for them in order to create turnover in those shelter beds so we can continue to create, start that stair step, if you will, for individuals and get people more access to available beds that are coming off the streets.

When you and I had talked about this in our one-on-one meeting, you were gonna check into how they were gonna do that. So was this gonna be a county employee, or a contract, or were they gonna be contracting with one of the providers, one of the services?

And that was discussed at the RHC, and one thing I would, this is a year pilot program, so that is really to see if this does make a difference, then that should be a strategy we'd be thinking as a region to fund long term. And to your question, Council Member Greenstein, With the ramp up period to get somebody up and trained as an employee, it was decided or presented to the RHC that this would be looking at a service provider to be able to facilitate that opportunity, and then look at long-term if that pilot probe, if there's success there.

Because there's... That was my one big concern with this, because as we've seen, the service providers have not been a great way to go about this type of stuff. I mean, I don't know which service provider they're using, but we've all seen the results of Lehigh, as an example, and the work they've done. That's why I said the only way I could support it, I think it's a good idea, but I could only support it if it were a contract with the county or that type of thing, but to use one of the service providers, I think is a huge mistake.

Yeah, I think that, I think as we talk about this as the planning stage, that that will be brought up to the table and assurance there's some accountability and performance basis to it. But that is something we'll make sure we raise up.

I thought that was a full court too.

Yeah. And then, let's see, the other piece of this is going forward as, this funding was allocated, then it gets back into the logistics of the plan and the details of the plan and Olympia has committed at the conversation there I see that they'll have engagement with stakeholders in the community and could include people or committees with lived experience as well as other stakeholders to get feedback before they implement the plan to make sure and to your point on that component that those are further conversations that there will be engaging with us to scope it out.

And just just for reference to that's the exact question I had asked, not only because if that position is successful, it's not necessarily one time dollars. You wouldn't want to get rid of somebody who's making the process much better, much easier. And so that's why I had asked specifically to the city manager of Olympia if this would be a. a county run program and independent running program or Olympia position. And even they felt it would probably be best to do a third party nationwide search to find someone who's very specifically geared towards the mission that they are trying to accomplish. I don't think we have that in-house or within any of the service providers currently, but that was specifically addressed and they were very I think they were really on the same page with your thoughts as well, too.

Okay. Anyone else have a report out? No? I guess I only have one small report out. Yesterday, I was here for about three or four hours to go over the Youth Council interviews, and so it was a another interview process and I look forward to presenting our recommendation. It will be next Monday. I always really cherish the time I get to talk to all the youth applicants who are really, we had over 30 applicants apply and we, only had, you know, like eight positions, and so, and we interviewed about, you know, 15 people as well, so we whittled it down to that, but to be able to sit and listen to these youth members talk about their, you know, their hopes and dreams and their thoughts about our community and the challenges they face, you know, it's changed a little bit, you know, over the years, but one of the things that continues to come out as, you know, talk about what's sort of the biggest stresses on your life. And if you could be, you know, could do anything, what would you do in our community for our youth and for families? You know, the common theme was that this this generation in particular feel so isolated compared to when we grow up. Where now, especially here in the city of Lacey, when I was growing up, during my summers, I'd leave in the morning, and I'd be gone all day, and I'd come back 10 o'clock at night. And my parents had no idea where I was at, and that was just totally acceptable. You know, now, you know, I ask this, like, so how many kids here have a tracker on your person? Everyone has a tracker. So their parents know where they're at at all times on their device. And so, but one of the things that came up is they're continued. One of the reasons why they're isolated is it's not easy to get across the city. And part of that is because we've groaned. so much as a community. You know, back when I was their age, you know, our city was less than half the size of it is today. And, you know, you can sort of get around and feel safe. Now they, you know, are not riding bikes and going around the community because they don't feel as safe because our community has grown so much. This is why I have been so passionate for such a long time about making sure we have safe, you know, sidewalks and connections because I remember what it was like to be a kid in this community and how much our community has changed. Those gaps are really significant in the lives of these kids. The other thing that they brought up, and I went through three different interview panels, was that none of the teenagers, for whatever reason, feel safe going on intercity transit. And that was brand new news to me. And it's like, well, it's so expensive and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, we have a free transit system that goes throughout our communities. And they're like, I would never go on intercity transit. And I was like, really? That was shocking. And so for whatever reason, whether it's a perceived threat or a real threat. And that is something that we need to have more conversations with our youth council on issues like this so we can come up with solutions. And so I hear all these big things during these interview processes. A sort of year goes by, and then I hear a whole new set of things. But that was brand new to me. And so I felt like, wow, I need to share that with my council, that our teenagers in our community are not using interstate transit because they don't feel safe, which is leading to why they're being so isolated, stuck at home, and not communicating with each other in person and doing stuff. And so I just thought that was fascinating. you know, report that out. And, and also it should be a call to action on, on what can we do to sit with our youth and do they need a navigator on a regular basis where I don't know, but it's just, it's something that I thought about, you know, it's not good.

That's worth looking into to find out more about why delve into like, is it, is there a real issue or is it more perception?

Three different groups from all different. We're all saying. So I was like, wow. That is something. Anyway, okay, with that, I have reached the end of my agenda. I also want to give a quick shout out to the Lacey Fire District 3 family. They just lost a firefighter, and it is absolutely heartbreaking what our local firefighters are having to deal with right now, losing one of their own. a very young man and, uh, I know everyone's hurting and, and, and all the, all the provider, you know, every one of the emergency services around, um, heart is going out and is broken over, over this news. And so, um, I just, uh, want to let the fire district know that, you know, um, our hearts with them and, and it's, um, so sorry for this, uh, this tragedy that they are experiencing and our whole community is experiencing with this. loss of this amazing young man. And so with that, we've reached the end of our agenda. And without objection, I'll call this meeting adjourned. And as always, you keep it classy, Lacey.