City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, there we go. Good evening everybody. Welcome to our Tuesday, April 21st, 2026 regular council meeting. Uh it is 6 pm and we're meeting live in chambers as well as broadcasting online. Um we are going to go ahead and start tonight with the invocation followed by the pledge of allegiance. If you would please join me. Dear father, thank you for bringing us together today. Thank you for watching out for all our citizens, our council members, our staff, our first responders, and all those who put themselves in harm's way to protect us each and every day. We are more grateful than words can say for for the protections that we are afforded as citizens here in the United States. Please be with everybody here tonight as we discuss our city business. um guide our our words and our actions and to the best interest of our residents in the city here. Amen.

Ice to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, go ahead and call the meeting to order and we'll start off with roll call. Council member Darrow here. Council member Severs present. Council member Ball here. Mayor Promdan happy to be here. Council member Curts present. Council member Fischer here. And council member Klinger is out on personal um business. So if we can have a motion to excuse him. I move to excuse council member Klinger. Second. Okay. We have a motion by council member Severs and a second by Mayor Pro Tim. Those in favor of excusing council member Klinger, please say I.

I. Any opposed? All right. Motion passes 70. All right. Right, we are up to agenda approval. Do we have any 6, excuse me? Um, do we have any requested changes to tonight's agenda? Okay, not hearing any. Madame Mayor, I move the agenda as presented. Thank you. Second. We have a motion and a second. Do we um all those in favor of approving the agenda as presented, please say I. I. I.

Any opposed? Right. Motion passes 6. Okay, we're up to citizen comments. Uh tonight we do have an item on the agenda um that we may have people here um ready to comment on. That would be agenda item on getting there. U item 12D, we are going to reserve because that is um a public hearing, we are going to reserve any comments regarding that item on our agenda to that item. So, for now for citizen comments, if anybody in chambers or online has a comment on anything except item 12D, which is the public hearing on the code of ethics complaint, um please feel free to fill out a sheet um that's on the table by the door. Hand it over to Rochelle at the end of the table. Um if there's anybody online, please send a note to our meeting host in the chat feature. And if we have anybody who'd like to speak, I'll then go into more rules, but I don't see anybody currently. There anybody online? Okay. So, just remember there will be also be another um opportunity farther in the agenda for additional citizen comments. All right. We are moving up to item 7A, appointments. This is the confirmation of Amy Miller to the position of community development director.

Madame Mayor, I move the appointment of Amy Molier to position of community development director.

Second. I'll kind of second but we want to claim for that. Relle, take your pick. Okay. All right. Um before we um before we move to a vote, um does anybody want I mean I really happy that Amy um came through our our uh competitive process for our director position. She's been in the role since January and she's been doing an amazing job. Great feedback from our outside um contacts and at the staff and we're really proud to have her. I don't know if you want to say anything Amy. I know you're not about um trying to do the self-promotion thing, but I'll give you a chance if you'd like to say anything. No. Okay. All right. Okay. Go ahead.

I just want to recognize uh Amy for voicing and word use in a lot of the opinions in the writing. I think words matter and it it really does um yeah, I'm grateful for what you bring to this office. All right. Anybody else? Okay. Not hearing any. Those in favor of confirming the appointment of Amy Miller Lyle to the position of community development director, please say I. I. Any opposed? All right. Motion passes 6. Welcome officially. Is it possible to get a photograph before we move on to 7B with you, me, and Amy? Sure. All right. I think David's ready. And then and then Michelle's going to swear in.

Okay. Oh, that's right. We have to do that. Yeah, let's see that. So, did you think I was going to squish down for you and make it look

Oh, no. That wasn't Oh, you don't need me. Go ahead.

Okay. Not that I faithfully, but I will To the best of my ability, perform the duties of the office development director. The duties of the office of self and all other rules and policies that the cityul Okay. All right. Moving on. We have 7B.

U Madame Mayor, um I move the appointments to the C city council committees as uh as provided. Second. Right. We have a motion and a second. Um I sent out the note to everybody. I didn't receive any um any concerns back. So, um, that's what we're we're moving forward to requesting for you to guys to approve. Uh, and each committee then will get together and figure out along with the, uh, the staff member figure out what those dates and times are for your individual meetings. So, is there any, uh, questions or comments on this item?

Uh, I for one, I'm grateful to see this now be um, really brought into fruition. Um, specifically tonight, I think there's analysis of the forecast on general fund that'll be taken up by the finance committee. Yes. And I look forward to that team uh specifically deep dive and then be able to provide back reports and findings. Thanks. Thank you. Anybody else? All right. Not hearing any. Those in favor of um confirming the appointments to the city council meetings, city council committees, excuse me, please say I. I. Any opposed? All right. Motion passes 6. All right. Up next, we have the annual report from Scraps. Welcome.

So, Mayor, I'd like to introduce uh Scraps' new director, Ronnie Schlabs, and he's going to provide you with the uh report of Scraps' activity. So, Ronnie, take it away.

Good evening, everybody. Thank you for having me here this evening. Uh for those of you that aren't familiar, um as I said, I am the new director of Scraps. I took over Scraps in December of the 2025. Uh I am not a local Washingtonian. I am from the Midwest. I have been in the animal welfare industry for almost 20 years now. So, I'm happy to be here. I've been having a blast so far. There are definitely challenges, but uh so far it's been very welcoming. So, I thank you for that. Uh what I have for you this evening is a report on the first quarter of 2026. Um what I'm going to do next slide, please, is go over the numbers, uh statistics, things of that nature. Uh, a big focus of my talk this evening is going to be our Parvo outbreak that happened late December, early January that shut us down for a few weeks. I know there's a lot of public concern regarding that. So, I want to just kind of explain what that was, what Parvo is, and how we work to prevent that from happening again. And, uh, my last uh, topic of the evening, I'm going to give an update on the dog park. I know there's been a lot of concern about its future, its status, and where we're going on that. So, uh, although I don't oversee the dog park, I'm going to give a little update as to where the county is on that at present time. Next slide, please. So, this slide uh has the first quarter statistics from scraps. Uh, that is January 1 of 2026 through March 31 of 2026. Uh, specifically regarding Liberty Lake, as you can see, we had uh 18, I'm sorry, 15 calls for service, uh, five impounds, one emergency call, um, which totaled uh 088% of our total activity in the first quarter. Um I didn't print it out, but this fairly on par for how many calls we generally get for Liberty Lake. Nothing stood out as surprising or concerning as of yet. Um along with that, everybody always likes to know how the animals do once we do get them. As you see, we've picked up five animals from Liberty Lake so far this year. I am very happy to report that of those five, four of them had happy endings. Unfortunately, one

dog uh did show a high level of aggression and was not suitable for adoption. He was wanted to bite things and was very unfriendly. So, unfortunately, we could not adopt him out, but the other four have all uh found placement. Next slide, please. Uh licensing statistics are going to be very important to all of the municipalities that scraps contracts with going forward. Um, as you know, we entered into new ILAS with all of our municipalities. And part of the billing process and the way that uh payments are applied is licensing revenue generated from the individual municipalities is applied towards your monthly fees. So, I just wanted to show you uh where we're at so far this year. Uh, we've had 55 total pet licenses purchased for Liberty Lake so far in 2026, which generated $1,440 of revenue. So when the monthly bills come out each month we look at the revenue from licensing that gets applied to the amount owed and deducted and then there's a remainder. What I want to point out is we would love to see licensing numbers much higher across the county. Um we don't have a great compliance rate. Um that's one of the projects I want to try to tackle this year is to find ways to hit compliance and help people understand that by licensing their pet they're supporting services like scraps that provide lost animals and abused animals somewhere to go. And they also help their pets find their way home because with that license tag the animal now has identification. Uh the license tags scraps issues actually have QR codes on them. Now we've entered the high-tech licensing erith. So when you license your pet and your pet has that QR code, if somebody finds your pet, they can scan that code with their phone and get instantly connected with you. They can depending on how you set it up, they can get your phone number, address, you can text them, you can do all kinds of fun things like that. So compliance equals keeping animals in the home and not in the shelter. Next slide please. Our parvo outbreak which I know that was

a very hot topic right after I started. Helped me get my feet wet really fast. So in a weird way that was a good thing. So I first want to start off by describing what parvo virus is for those that aren't familiar with it. Not everybody has pets or is familiar with some of the diseases that pets have to endure. um all the data that I'm going to share as far as medical is from the American Veterinary Medical Association. So, parvo virus is um a virus that attacks the white blood cells and gastrial intestinal tract of dogs and other canines. Um all dogs are at risk for this virus. Um particularly puppies and young dogs. So, six to 20 weeks are the most susceptible to the disease. Um and they're for some reason unknown to science at this time. Uh, I have a list of certain dog breeds that are more susceptible as well. They don't really know why, but these breeds seem to contract it more than others. The symptoms of parvo are kind of wide ranging. They are lethargy, loss of appetite, vomiting, severe and often bloody diarrhea. That's one of the easiest tells of concern of parvo is that aspect of it, bloating and abdominal pain, uh fever or even low body temperature and um excessive drooling because of the nausea. Next slide please. So how does parvo spread? Parvo is extremely contagious. Um it can be spread by direct contact from one infected dog to another through contact with feces or even contact with contaminated surfaces such as kennel, flooring, food bowls, clothing and hands of staff members or people interacting with animals. Um, the other part of parvo is that this virus is very resistant. Uh, I apologize for the typo. It's supposed to be heat, cold, humidity. Um, and even drying. This virus can survive in the environment for an extremely long time. There are some

studies suggesting that parvo can survive in the dirt for up to two years. So, protocol would dictate that infected or suspected infected dogs are immediately moved to isolation to prevent the spread. Thorough cleaning and disinfecting protocols are key. Next uh slide, please. So, how do you treat parbo? It's a virus. It's not like a bacterial infection where you give antibiotics and it gets better. Parvo virus is treated through supportive care. So once it's diagnosed, the animal that is uh sick with parvo will require intensive treatment and monitoring often involving hospitalization, IV fluids, and there's several other uh care and supportive care protocols depending on what the specific animal needs that would be prescribed by a licensed veterinarian. Good news, parvo is preventable. Everybody who has a dog, their vet will ask them every year, you want to get your dog's vaccines boosted. One of those vaccines is always parvo vaccine. However, uh parvo vaccination requires an initial dose and then at least one booster um about two weeks later. Young puppies often get a series of three shots. It depends on their age. The problem with that, and I'll get into with scraps specifically or any other animal control uh environment, is vaccines take time to offer full protection. Um, and even with a vaccine, the animal is still going to be susceptible to the virus until the full vaccine protocol, meaning the boosters are all uh have all been injected. And it's generally another 20 days before they have full protection. And it's also important to note like with any vaccine, you're not 100% protected. It is a preventative vaccine. It is not a cure. So what do we do? We practice good hygiene. We have um in our isolation ward staff wear protective equipment.

They wear gowns, they wear booties, gloves, masks. We change them out in between things. Our isolation ward is the last area that we clean every day because you don't want to go into your sick room and then go see all the happy puppies and clean them because you've been around all the germs. Make sense? So, next slide. The specific outbreak of scraps. It actually happened on my first day. So that was a great first experience. So on December 10th, my first day of the building, staff came to me and let me know we just had an animal pass away and we tested it and it was parvo positive. So initially that room that that dog was in went on uh what's called parvo protocol. Signs get hung on the door. It's restricted access. We have PPE stations outside the door. Um extra cleaning protocols are put in place. our um sanitation chemical which is called rescue which is an activated hydrogen peroxide. It gets used at a different concentration and what you have to do is wait it out and hope that nobody else becomes ill because the incubation period for parvo virus is anywhere from 1 to 14 days

which means an animal could be incubating the virus and not showing any symptoms for up to two weeks. So you have an animal that appears perfectly healthy. It theoretically could still be spreading the virus and you don't even know it's sick. So you lock everybody down for two weeks. That way everybody that's been in close proximity with that animal is no longer out in the playyards going walks through the buildings so we can make sure we have all the germs contained. Unfortunately it had spread. So we did our first twoe lockdown. We were almost at the end of the lockdown and we had a couple more animals get sick. So, we consulted with our veterinarian that confirmed we were doing all safety protocols correctly. We had everything in place that we were supposed to have. Unfortunately, somebody was still incubating and it's called they popped, they broke with the disease. So, we did another twoe isolation. Happy to report that next two weeks nobody else got sick. We were able to reopen. So the ultimate uh impact of that was we did have a total of 10 dogs at scraps become ill and I'm happy to say seven of them survived which for a disease like parable that's a very good margin. 70% is good. Next slide please. So our big takeaways is that we wanted to remind everybody that when animals come into scraps, we do have an intake protocol and animals are given a baseline of vaccines because most animals enter scraps are strays. We have no idea where they came from. We have no idea what their veterary history is and we don't know what they've been into running around on the street. They could have been in contaminated water sources digging through trash cans that raccoons have been in spreading who knows what diseases. So when they come in all dogs get a cocktail of vaccines including kennopov distemper and parvo virus. Um the unfortunate thing is going back to how this virus can incubate for two weeks. If the animal's already been

exposed and is incubating the virus, they may appear perfectly healthy at intake. Even though they've gotten the vaccine, they're already sick with the virus. So it's impossible to always know what they have. One thing that we have put in place um as an additional protective measure for our population, since puppies are the most susceptible to the virus, any animal that comes to any dog that we assess to be 6 months or under, we're giving a preemptive parvo test to. We're actually running the test. Now, that's not a catch-all. Even if you're incubating it, that doesn't mean they're shedding it, which means they'll test negative even though they're sick. But it's letting us know if somebody's far enough along where they're transmitting the virus, we should catch them and can isolate them immediately. But again, that doesn't mean that a sick animal still doesn't come through our doors. So, we have to be diligent. Our staff is very, very watchful, especially after this last outbreak. Um, there have been other animals that have entered our doors that were sick almost immediately. There was a litter of puppies that had paro. They were immediately put in isolation. Um, it was a litter of seven. Five of the seven survived. Again, puppies, they're young, their immune systems aren't as strong. So, five out of seven is still a good recovery number. Additionally, with the uh testing of the six-month and under puppies, we've also trained all of our protection officers on how to conduct the Barvo test. So, if they're working after hours, as you all know, they respond to calls 24 hours a day. If somebody calls in a sick or injured dog in the middle of the night and the dog is showing the symptoms of parvo, they can run the test with the animal still on their truck before it even gets introduced to our population. So they know if it needs to be isolated or not right away. So the big takeaway from this is it was tragic. Luckily the staff was on top of it. They rallied. They worked extremely hard. They put in long hours. Uh and we have come out of it better. Next slide, please.

My final topic of the evening is the dog park. I know that has been a very very high point of concern for a lot of residents in Spokane County, especially on this side. I want to give just a little context uh from what I learned because this all was set in motion well before I even arrived in the state is when the county was going through their budget uh process for this for 2026 uh they had to make some cuts. They had to tighten the belt, which a lot of us have to do. And we all know that hurts when that happens, and the parks department and the county board had elected to um terminate their lease agreement with the state out of uh Stan Park. Um unfortunately, that included the dog park area. And as we approached April, which is when actually today would have been the date that uh we would have officially terminated the lease. That would have been the effective date. Uh a lot of citizens are raising concern. They didn't want to lose their dog park. I can understand that. I have dogs myself. I'm sure most of you do. It's very nice to have a place to go, let them run around, interact, socialize, and get their exercise. So, what ended up happening is we looked into a lot of different options. We had some conversations with the state. And what was decided to do was to rescend the intent to terminate for now. The park is going to be operated for another year. And during that time, the county is going to be searching for um some alternative solutions to find ways to maintain a dog park in this area. What those are, I could not speak to at this time because again, that's run by the parks department. Um Scraps' role at the dog park is I get to pay for the dumpster that removes all the waste and I have some volunteers to go out there and help keep things clean. As far as the actual running of the park, that's not under my umbrella of uh authority, but the county is working to find a way to keep a dog park in this area. It may not be at the same location. They're looking at all options right now. Could end up being, you know, hypotheticals will be a new agreement with the state that alter how much area we take care of

out there. We may find an alternative location. Everything's kind of everything's on the table at this point. Where is it? Uh park done at state lines. Oh, that one. Yes, ma'am. So, next slide. Uh that concludes the first quarter report. Um we didn't have any large cases in Liberty Lake. Luckily, you know, no nothing of I guess I like real. Everything is fairly routine for us so far. Um but I am happy that you know of the animals we picked up, almost all of them found happy endings. And at this time, if anybody has any questions or want me to expand on what I've discussed, I'm happy to answer them.

Council member Fall. Okay. Well, you you've kind of make sure you get close to your mic. You put my mind at ease a little about that Parville outbreak because my question coming here tonight was how did it even get through your door because I toured the facility when Jesse was still the director and um they said every dog at intake, you know, is thoroughly examined. So I thought, how did it even get in? But is it because it hadn't shown yet in Exactly. in the 14day thing? Right. Correct. So unfortunately because of the unknown status of most of the animals that walk in, you know, we catch an a dog on the road, an officer picks it up, it has no ID, no tags, we have no idea how long it's been loose,

has it been sharing a water source with wildlife or other sick animals, right? You know, we just have no idea what they've been exposed to. So, we give those intake vaccines and we just have to keep an eye on them as best we can. We watch for the signs of illness and if somebody's showing signs of illness, we start testing right away and we isolate as quickly as possible. Well, okay. So, all right. So, you give them these intake uh vaccines, but what if they've already had them all? I mean, is it going to is it harmful to double dose them? No. Every veterinarian I've ever worked with across this is now my fifth state uh say that there's really no danger in a in a extra booster. Okay. But you don't do rabies, of course. We don't do rabies until they become available for adoption and it's age appropriate. Yeah. Okay.

So, and um let's see. Okay. I think that's all I had since I am now, you know, like I said, a little relaxed about how it got in there. So, yeah, I'm glad I could answer that for you. Yeah. And thanks for coming and yeah, maybe I'll come to her again. There every day. Thank you, Council Member Darl. Thanks very much for your presentation. Um, uh, the QR code you mentioned on the licenses, is that, um, something that's retroactive for somebody who has an existing license or only for newly issued ones? Could someone get a replacement one with that?

That's a great question. So, when you renew your annual license, if you've got one of the old metal tags, you can come in and we will replace it with a new one for no charge. If you lose it after you've been given the new one, you call and say, "Hey, I lost my tag. I need another one." Then there's a $5 fee because we do have to pay to stock those and get them. So, we provide the first one and if you lose one, then then there's a little fee for it. But awesome. Thank you. You're welcome. Anybody else? Hey, I do appreciate the update on the dog park and I recognize it's not in your jurisdiction. It was a great big community outcry as the county made the decision and I'm grateful that they were able to reconsider. So I can I tell you I had uh an exploding inbox for the last few weeks. Hold on. Let's make sure nobody else has anybody else have any

Go ahead, Council. I have one more. Can cats get parvo? Parvo? No, there is a version of there's a a a different strain of the virus that's similar to cats can get, but this is specifically K9 parvo virus. uh feline strains that are similar in disease are not nearly as common. And is parvo transmittable to humans? No, it is not. Okay. Thank you. I'd also add just for peace of mind, parvo virus exists all the way across the country. It's in every state. What does what? Parvo. Oh, yeah. It is nationwide. It's everywhere, right? Yeah.

Just a couple things. Um, personally, I'm appreciative of the dog park staying open. Made sure I made the rounds and thanked all the commissioners. I'm there two or three times a week myself because my grassy area in my yard is all of 12 by 25 ft. So, um the the dog park is a wonderful outlet uh for for my canines. Um but with regards to trying to get um our residents who have dogs and cats more compliant with registration, do you have any um flyers with the registration information that we can have that we could put at the at the farmers market? Because there are tons of dogs at the farmers market. I would love to hand every dog owner one. I don't have anything like that with me, but I I can definitely provide some. Yeah,

perfect. If you can get, you know, get them here somehow. Um, our farmers market opens miday. Um, that would be I would I can get a second half officer drop them off while they're out. Great. Love to hand those out. Happy to do it. Yeah, great Tim. And I would just say we are partnered for compliance. If there's something that we can do as a jurisdiction to support and to further um help, uh, we're all ears. Yeah, we are coming up with plans. Unfortunately, I don't really have a marketing budget, per se. Um, but we're trying to come up with ideas to get proactive and get the word out. So, if Liberty Lake has any ideas or anything that they would like to do, uh, even if it's as simple as social media post, we're happy to tag and share, uh, do anything we can to get the word out.

We've been known to do a little public service announcement featuring the dogs of our of our staff. Maybe we with regards to another topic, maybe we need to resurrect that. We could we could time together. There you go. Awesome. All right. Thank you. Oh, Linda, you have another one. Do you have a a social media page anywhere? Absolutely. I have a a Facebook account. Oh, okay. Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for being here. Um, welcome. Sorry your first several weeks or month or so was so terrible. Um, but we're glad you're you were here to manage it. It was an unfortunate situation, but it kind of required me to hit the ground running. I mean, learn the ropes really fast. So, I appreciate your time tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here.

All right. Next up, we have uh city council reports and inquiries. Does anybody have a report? May prom. Uh last night was the Spokane Scholars Foundation 34th uh annual um award event for scholars throughout the Spokane region and I attended um it Ridgeline High School was well represented. It was great to see and to learn more about the students in our midst and their achievements. So um yeah, our school fares well throughout the camp throughout the region.

Great. You have anybody else? Thank you. Um, Council Member Fischer, this past weekend they had the bikes swap down at the uh at the fairgrounds and Rotary we had our booth there because we promote Rim Ride, which is the big race. And I was so when you know we have Liberty Lake Centennial on our on our our tent and everyone that came by and talked about uh Liberty Lake, they just had amazing things to say about it. And there was just so much positivity and I was just so glad that number when I was Rotary number two I was able to represent the city and I was just so glad to see so much positivity in in everyone that stopped by and talked about Libya Lake. But I can tell you there was a bike there that cost $12,000 and we we didn't come home with it but there was little bikes and really expensive bikes. So Thank you for that. Appreciate it. Um, Council Member Ball.

Um, well, yeah, I started Today was the first day of my next C class. It's called Training the Trainer. So, um, I'm learning to be a trainer and, um, I'm really tired. It was a long day. Um, but what I'm hoping to do, um, once I get up to speed, so Arlene would be a good contact with Rotary, you with Kowanas, I'd like to go to these organizations and make a presentation about it and um, get more people interested and involved. And I found out today, right now, there's 300 who have now been trained in Spokane County. That's amazing. That's Yeah. So, it's starting to cook, right?

Yeah. For those who don't know what that is, it's sort community community emergency response team. So, um I will be on the team. I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to be chopping down trees or anything, but there's a place for everybody on aert team, even if it's handing out snacks. Oh, perfect. Thank you for the update. Anybody else? Right. Not hearing any. Um my uh report is short since we were just here seven days ago. Mark and I and along with Amy and um Lance, we uh met with Spokane Valley uh yesterday on the sub area. Was that just yesterday? Yes, sorry. Um sub area transportation plan. Uh we'll be seeing that uh at some point here in the future with regards to um helping to mitigate the costs with regards to increased costs of you know some of our intersections and things across the region and we're continuing to work together on how to fund some some of that. So look for that. Um it's a very large report and um we'll bring that to you uh when when ready. Um and then the other thing I don't think I mentioned last week, next week is the uh Chase Youth Awards and so I've been invited to that and we'll be sitting with a group of teenagers from uh from Ridgeline. It'll be um know there's a representative from every school going to be there. So I'm looking forward to see uh those awards and who uh who are the recipients. So that's it for me for tonight. I'll turn it over to Mark for city administrator.

All right. Thank you, mayor. Uh members of the council and visiting uh residents both here in the chamber and online, we've got just a couple of reminders uh to bring before you and then uh a handful of reports. And so, as Shane is pulling that up, um the first one on the list is going to be a reminder about the community meeting that is taking place at the library on Thursday the 23rd. That's a day after tomorrow uh at 6:30 p.m. to talk about the logo refresh that we touched on during last week's council meeting. And so uh the objective there is just to um invite members of the community to come and talk to us about what that means, what it doesn't mean, and how we would propose to move that forward. And so that's uh Thursday at the library at 6:30. Um, a couple of days beyond that, Saturday, April 25th out at Town Square Park is our annual clean green and bulky waste cleanup that is sponsored by Waste Management. If you are a garbage and recycling subscriber and live in the city of Liberty Lake, um, you should have received a ticket in your statement that you can bring. um and any of those things that it lists uh to bring and also keeping in mind those things that it lists uh to not bring. Um and this is your opportunity to uh clean garages, clean sheds, clean houses of things that have accumulated and are ready to go somewhere else. Um, beyond that, a week from tonight, over at the Trail Head Rotary Room, we have our community town hall that the police department is um facilitating to talk about ebikes, motorized scooters, and golf carts. Uh, so we look forward to um welcoming the community into that discussion, and you'll see many more um advertisements uh promoting that event as we lead up to it a week from tonight. And then

finally, uh, few days after that, Thursday, April the 30th, again, in the Trail Head Rotary room. This time from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., we're going to have the safety and resilience fair. And so, a lot of what will be discussed at the safety and resilience fair will have uh some alignment with uh the workshop that we have on the agenda later this evening with uh hazard mitigation, um emergency preparedness, all of those types of topics. And so we'll have uh reps from the city, a Vista, the conservation district, I believe the fire department, and maybe some others. And so if you're interested in that kind of thing and want to learn more about making your own property more resilient uh and and helping the community be as safe uh as it can possibly be in that regard, come out and join us on April 30th. And so before I move on to the reports, are there any questions about those items? Council member Bolt, what was the topic of the one on the 23rd?

The 23rd is the community meeting to discuss the logo refresh. Okay. Okay. Anybody else? And so with that, I'm going to invite Kyle up to the podium to deliver to you the quarter first quarter financial report. Kyle.

Thanks, Mark. Mayor uh Council Shane is uh pulling that up. It's it's important to uh touch base quarterly uh to let you know how how our finances are doing. Uh first quarter touch point uh we have three months of data. So we're not going to make any drastic course corrections based on three months of of revenues and expenses outside of any major um changes to to our to our core revenues. And so we'll we'll touch more on revenues for the first quarter. We'll expand that a little bit um once we're 6 months in and obviously by the by the third quarter we'll have a pretty good feel for um for for how 2026 played out and is going to play out. So with that uh Shane let's go to the next slide. Uh we'll start with property tax uh revenues. And so our 2026 total general levy 3.28 28 million. Uh and then just under that first line is our TIFF contribution. Um we've had references to that a couple of times a year uh that we contribute uh as a co-sponsoring jurisdiction with Spokane County and the Spokane Valley Fire Department uh towards uh economic development um and uh community uh development um consortium of sorts. And so we kick in 500,000 between the other two co-sponsoring jurisdictions. They kick in $500,000. That $1 million gets matched by the state and that is uh um that is uh set aside for infrastructure improvements for economic development. U and so as you can see that third line is the uh general fund portion of Liberty Lakes property tax revenue. Uh so that's going to be 2.78 million. And as you can see, why we don't make any major decisions uh on revenues is that we've collected 1.9% of that so far. And so uh

we're going to collect about half of that entire general fund allocation in second quarter. Um and so you'll see uh you'll see that bounce back obviously um as we progress through uh through the year. Uh next slide please. So really this is going to be revenueheavy for the first quarter. expenses. We do tend to frontload annual subscriptions, equipment, and so you'll see kind of an outsized impact in Q1 on some of our expense lines as we do see those one-time costs come through in the first part of the year. Sales and use tax is our single biggest revenue source. In 2026, we're budgeting 7.1 million. We do see uh a little bit of a regression from 2025 in uh January, February, and March collections. February outpaced 2025 by quite a bit, but the other two lagged. Um, and so we're we're not going to make any major course corrections on this. We finished 2025 on a very strong note. Um, and so we would anticipate as the construction season kicks in uh that that we're going to see um increases in this. Um, and if it does, then then we'll we'll respond accordingly. But uh but there isn't any indication to anticipate that we're going to see major regression for the whole of 2026. Next slide please. Kind of along the same lines with community development revenue. So our permits plan review uh licensing. And so again we hammer on this a lot. This is purely a cost recovery mechanism. Um, and so our user fees uh absorb the expenses that gen are generated by the community development department. Um, and as you can see, I mean, this is this is solely based on a lot of major activity. And so we have probably three or four projects that are kind of in neutral at the moment. And so once once

those um are are able to um proceed, we we'll see a spike in this revenue as well. Uh and so um again this is one where we know what we know what's in the pipeline uh and and we anticipate um increased collections through through 2026. Next slide please. Streets fund revenue. Uh so as you all are probably aware in 2023 uh heading into 2024 uh we transitioned from a utility tax model to fund street operations to a TBD sales tax and that is our major source of revenue for the streets fund. um we did um transition that knowing uh that there would be a little bit of a delta on our um capacity for that revenue. And so our utility tax is generating at 3% about 1.2 million a year. We're seeing about uh 850,000 for the TBD sales tax. Um and so that's obviously and that's augmented again by um some of the state shared revenues that we see uh for motor vehicle fuel tax. And so you can see that dip from 2024 to 2025 is when we started collecting uh the TBD sales tax and transitioned away from the utility tax. We did see a little bit of a dip there. We anticipated that. Um and so but you do see kind of that that slow climb uh from 2025 to 2026. We would anticipate seeing um a little bit of an increased revenue for the TBD sales tax going forward for uh for streets. Uh next slide, please. So, we talked about this. I apologize for those in the audience. This is hard to see. And so, we put out a monthly report that identifies revenues and expenses for all of our major cost centers. Um, and so, again, first quarter, this is really early on. Um, we wouldn't anticipate to see um anything jump out at us. Again, we're a little bit heavy on the expense side just due

to those onetime costs for equipment and annual subscription, things like that. But on the far right hand you can see total general fund and public works expenses 17% uh of the total budget for the year. We're obviously over a quarter of the way through the year. So no major um alarm bells going off on the expense side. Next slide please. So you are going to get sick of me telling you this but uh general fund ending balance we are going to draw down our balances this year to fund our capital improvements uh for 2026. And so this is completely expected. Um, as we as we identified in the first slide, uh, we're going to see $1.5 million in property tax revenue in in the second quarter. So, you're going to see this line trend up as we get into uh, quarter two. And so, but as we as we draw those down with our capital expenses, we'll um, we will see 2026 year ending uh, with um, with this balance drawn down. And so with that, I mean, I ran through that pretty quick. Is there any questions on any of that, um, again, we'll we'll bring this back to you on a quarterly basis. Um, to give you a feel for where we're at at each touch point throughout the year. We'll focus a little bit more on expenses maybe in the second quarter and to make sure that we're we're hitting our marks where where we're supposed to be. But with that, I'll stand for questions.

Any questions? All right. Not hearing. Thank you. Well, hold on. No, I'm grateful for the update, pal. I I recognize that that it's difficult to create any um prog prognostication out of this. Um we're in first quarter and we'll look for more results and trending in the next quarter. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you.

Thanks, Kyle. The next item on the reports council is uh just a quick preview of some upcoming uh capital project starts. Uh before last meeting, you all received the quarterly capital facilities plan update that Ben provided in addition to the information that he distributed uh on the 20-year capital facilities plan. And so those reports in combination have a lot of information that help round out the picture of the full capital facilities plan. Tonight's uh briefing is really just to give you some heads up on some project starts that will that you will see over the next say six weeks. One of them and I'm going to go through the list of these. Ben is available online if you have any questions about these um and he can answer those in more detail. But one uh the first project that you've already seen some activity taking place out at the uh former Legacy Church building is the city hall renovation that started uh on April the 13th. Uh coming up here on April the 27th, we're going to start the Mission Avenue Grind and Overlay. So out here uh right across from Trail Head where Mission and Country Vista uh intersect all the way out to Molar uh is that project um area. You'll see that happening between next week and roughly the second week in June. A little bit downstream of that, uh we will be starting the Nland Avenue storm water improvements project. Um, and then a week beyond that, or I'm sorry, a month roughly beyond that, the 1 of June, uh, we'll be starting the pavilion parking lot resurfacing and restriping project. And then the next day, the library parking lot repair and resurfacing project. And so those are the starts that are coming up over say the next six weeks. If you have specific questions about those, Ben is available to answer them. Uh, but I would also refer you to those two reports that I mentioned as well.

Anybody? All right. Um, moving on to the last item on the city administrator's report this week uh is National Library Week. And so I wanted to take the opportunity um and I believe Jandy is on um and she can speak uh to this as well, but the the way that they break National Library Week down uh is each day they have a different theme. And today's theme for the 21st happens to be library workers day. And so I I wanted to take the opportunity just to kind of call out the dedication and service that our library staff provides to the community. Uh both our our patrons are made up of both residents and non-residents. And so we see people from all over the place. The library uh as a city facility is the single most visited uh facility in the city. And so we have a group of 13 or 14 folks that work very hard to keep all of those services going and to keep people plugged into the services that they do provide. And as you all know over the last couple of years, there's been some tumultuous conversations happening that have involved the library. And that uh kind of thing is is difficult on staff. And so just to make sure that they know that um we really do uh appreciate what they do on a day-to-day basis. Uh we have a very um active friends of the library group. We have a very active library board of trustees. All of these people are volunteering in those spots because they care about the community in the library. And so just for uh the sake of uh calling these folks out individually and I see one of them is is here. Um uh Lynn is in the back. Uh but we've got Aaron, Donna, Adrien, Rhonda, Chelsea, Rebecca, Jandy, Stephanie, Jill, Michaela, Jordan, Geette, and Jessica that round out our staff. And so I just wanted to make a special point of

acknowledging those folks. And if we can give them a round of applause. Yeah, they they really do tremendously. And so Jandy, I don't know if you want to add anything to that. Uh but if you do, feel free.

I just want to echo what Mark was saying and I am incredibly grateful for the staff that we have at the library daytoday. We have a staff of 10 and we also have some incredible substitutes as well as volunteers. Um, we have about 10 volunteers who come into the library each week and volunteer their time, shelving books, placing holds, that sort of thing. Usually throughout the year, they put in over 600 hours of community volunteer time, and we couldn't do it without them. So, I'm incredibly grateful for my staff and um all the volunteers who keep our library running so smoothly and wonderfully. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Jandy. Mayor, that concludes my report. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Sure. Next up, we have the Spokane Valley Fire Department. Welcome, James Hayden, uh, deputy chief administrator. Nice to meet you.

Uh, for the record, I my name is James Hayden. I am the deputy chief of administration for Spokane Valley Fire. Uh, I just recently moved here in December, uh, from Florida. So, I did that. Uh, I couldn't have moved further away. Uh, but so far it's been an amazing experience and everybody here has been very welcoming. So, uh, thank you all for having me. Uh, I'm going to go over a couple of, uh, fun facts about what Spokane Valley Fire Department is doing over the last quarter. Uh, before I get into those, just a couple of honorable mentions. Um, prevention division reported 195 annual business inspections this last quarter with 137 violations noted. uh and 75 of those violations have been uh since corrected. All right, next slide. Uh this quarter we netted out uh 6,158 uh incidents that we responded to. Uh the advanced life support uh call type uh leads the way followed by the um basic life support. All the other call types uh run below that with following by motor vehicle accidents. Uh next slide as a boundary in total. So Spokane Valley Fire District um in entirety you'll see the heat map where most of the calls are generated from um this is based on that same well actually this is last month. So in one month this is the heat map that shows all the incidents within the entire boundary. And next slide. So here we're going to look at total responses. Total responses compared to the initial number of incidents just means that there is more than one uh responding unit to that same incident. Uh so

uh when we look at this total responses by frontline apparatus last month would be that top uh graph. The bottom graph would be total responses by frontline apparatus for the quarter. And you can see they pretty much trend the same uh with Valley Engine 7 leading the way. Uh you'll notice Valley Engine 3 towards the middle u represents the city of Liberty Lake. Uh next slide. This just shows by location. Station 8 uh is more in the core represents the highest call volume. Uh this again is last month compared to last quarter as well. And you can see the trend is pretty much the same where you can see station three uh represents between six and 7% of total call lane and then total responses I'm sorry next slide total responses from south uh or from I'm from South Florida from uh Spokane Valley um into another district. So this just this is showing that we go into Spokane City 85 times uh fire district 870 and fire district 9 68 times and that was last quarter. Conversely, responses from other districts from uh our ILAS either mutual aid or automatic aid agreements. So fire district 8 will come into Spokane Valley uh in the entire district 268 times, city of Spokane 135 times, and district 92 times. Uh, next slide. Year-over-year. This is just going to show you that it's been the busiest first quarter on record with the busiest March. Uh, overall, um, Valley Fire is about a little less than 1% ahead of last year's total call volume.

And this breaks it down by call type. on the second graph. Um from years 22 to 26 you can see the upward trend. Uh next slide. So we get into just specific to uh Liberty Lake. It's going to follow the same sort of map. Uh next slide. 304 total incidents uh with again ALS being the leader followed by BLS and then this one is uh building alarms automatic building alarms would be third. Next slide. This will show your visual of city boundaries and where the most activity takes place with the 37 being up in that northeast corner uh and being new. I was told that that's largely um some um assisted living facilities and things of that nature that are up in that area. I don't know what's there so you have to forgive me.

Yeah, there's a 55 and up senior community there. Yeah, but not assisted there. Okay. Can you hold it till the end? Yeah.

Uh next slide, please. And finally, this uh not finally, but this is the response summary for total responses. Similar to the last slide where uh 326 total responses in the city limits. Um all of them you know the bulk of that with valley engine 3 which is your primary response engine followed by valley engine 4. Uh next slide. And again same same uh concept here. Busiest March on record. Uh overall, Liberty Lake is six below 6% below last year's call volume in total. Uh and you can see on that bottom graph that trend has been sort of up and down. Um but last quarter, we ended up um about 50 calls less than we did um just four years ago. And with that, I'm happy to take questions.

Okay. I know Council Member Ball has a question. Yes, ma'am. So on this uh map with the 37, the big orange 37. I know you don't know exactly what happened there, but that's that's not uh Guardian Angels. No, I said that's Talon Hills. That's 55 and up senior community. I said it's not assisted living. We have higher density. Mistake on the assisted living. I didn't. So you don't know what the other orange one is. I know that that's guardian angels. So you don't know what occurred there though. Uh not specifically by call type. No, not not according to this. This just all this is just a graphic to show you the activity and where where our units are mostly uh uh concentrated most of the time. Okay. Thanks.

Sure. Anybody else? No, we really appreciate the Well, thank you all for having me. I appreciate it. I have a real quick question. What part of Florida are you from? I am from Fort Myers. My son My son lives in Clear Water. Oh, really? Yeah. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful city. It is. All right. Well, thank you very much. Humidity very much for being um we typically don't no thank you. We can we can take that comment at the end and follow up.

All right. Next up, Li Sew and Water District. I don't see anybody here. Do we have anybody online from Lakes Sew and Water? I don't think I saw anybody on the attendee list. Nope. All right, we'll move on to parks and arts commission. Nancy Hill, welcome. Thank you very much and good evening everyone. Uh slides will be pulled up, but I'm as usual, we're going through our ongoing projects and we have a few updates. Uh most stuff is still in progress. uh waiting on weather, but I think next month they'll be doing the signal box wraps um at the entrance to Legacy and um the uh

by the apartments there. Kramer, thank you. Kramer Parkway. And uh yeah, we're waiting on some other stuff and 70 degrees for the fused glass at the sculpture. So I think probably has to be more than just one day of 70, but we're getting there. But those are the projects we're working on and just trying to keep you updated on that. Next slide, please. Couple things I want to make sure that you have on your calendars and that's uh kind of following up to um what uh Commissioner Fischer said u council member Fischer about bikes. We're going to have our park ride and that's going to be Sunday, May 31st. And you'll see they're gathering in Orchard Park and taking off from there. But the goal is to visit our three major parks, do a loop, find out where it's safe to ride and how to safely ride through Liberty Lake, and we're hoping for a really good turnout. We're hoping for good, really good weather. But even if you don't ride, you could come and wave everybody off or wave as they go through the park near your house. But I think it's going to be fun. It's led by our Katie Ferris from the Parks and Arts Commission who is just super on bike safety. and I know she's going to be involved uh to some extent, I'm sure, at the town hall that PD is doing. So, we're excited about that and making sure everyone is safe on bikes and the timing is because we're almost school out. So, we're hoping to get the kids in the right spot before they're released for summer. Next slide. The other exciting project I want on your calendar is Wednesday, June 3rd at 1 PM. That is a little bit of a weird time, but it's that because there'll be school participation. Um, if you recall, that's the rock garden that's sponsored by Liberty Lake Better Together that will include our first goat sculpture. I thought parks and arts was going to get it, but they beat us to it. And uh the school uh is all the schools in the area

are participating in the uh the rock painting uh to place and there's going to be a lot of kids I think as part of that day. So we're really hoping that some of council can maybe take a a late or delayed lunch and join us for that. I s I saw they were breaking ground to uh to install uh the little display coming up. So it'll be it'll be a fun day in June. Next slide. Probably our biggest project of the year is going to be uh the city hall art and we're focusing on the interior. Uh I have a couple slides here. Um we're going to be looking at the public areas. And one thing that we're going to be doing is installing what um our art consultant would call portable art, which makes sense. Something that might hang on the wall, a small sculpture, something that not bolted to the ground that you can never move. So if ever needs change or we want to rotate something out and something else in, we'll have that capability. But we want uh the public areas to be welcoming to public and to kind of show off the city of Liberty Lake. Next slide. So you see that view kind of I call it the lobby and that's looking the other way. The artist concept drawings here. You can see they've drawn in some art on the wall. not necessarily knowing what ours is going to look like because part of the process of this is to go for first for a call for qualifications. We'll have artists submit their resumes, examples of their work. Um we just had that for the Rocky Hill basketball court. I just finished an evaluation of those and so we're going through that same similar selection process for this and then we'll probably do a stipen uh for some of those to be developed farther. Next slide, please. So you can see another view. We have some blank wall space. We don't want to overcrowd it, but again, we want it to feel like you're entering um city hall.

So that brings us to the big announcement. We've chosen a theme for city hall. And next slide, please. Past, present, and future. And we think that pretty much covers everything. We can show off our past, talk about the present, and look to the future. I have no idea what artists are going to submit to that, but that would be the direction that we would give them as they go through the qualification and submitt process, but we wanted to keep it broad. We wanted to keep it focused on our city and we thought this was a great theme. So, my main reason for being here today is I want your feedback. I don't want to go way down a road and and you guys are like, "Oh, I don't know." So, what are you thinking about past, present, and future? Does that sound like a good theme for our city hall?

Yeah, I like it. We've got plenty of representations of past. That's for sure. But it'll be interesting to see what people come up with. Council, I would say yes, for sure. Nancy, I think that has enough breadth and ability to try and arrange and and bring in lots of different subjects. So, I appreciate the theme. Great. Anybody else? Council member Fischer. Um, I agree. I think that's just wonderful. And I just want to say, Nancy, I look forward to your presentations all the time. Parks has always been my favorite. It's It's the happy place. It is. It is. It's the happy place. So, thank you. That's why a retired person is standing here because we want to be happy. Council member Severs.

Love it. Nancy, and thanks for the presentation. Uh, I guess one question for you, if now's a good time for it, is is it common to use one single artist for the entire building? No, not necessarily. It will probably be multiple submissions. Oh, gotcha. Because I I think, you know, we we want it to not look all the same. So, maybe we'll have a little sculpture, maybe we'll have some photography, maybe we'll have watercolor or an oil painting. I I think I missed the sky's the limit, but yeah, we don't want everything to look like one artist. I think that's interesting for one for a whole building.

Yeah. No, that is a very good question. But no, it will be multiple artists and it it's I'm so glad uh that in the budget it was authorized for the art consultant because we're volunteers and we're a little out of this is a big project and we want to make sure we get it right. And she's done similar uh projects. So, I think she's really going to help guide us and to help us through the artist selection and working with these different artists to make sure we get it right. And you know, it's a big push. We're really busy on this right now, but we don't want to do one more thing until we got your feedback because our goal is to have it done and in before the grand opening. One more quick um there was a citizen comment I think at council meeting last week about and I think this might fit your theme of past, present and future about pictures of important people to the city of Liberty Lake.

Oh, and I just want to make sure that made its way to the parks and arts commission is not a recommendation from me. I just want to make sure you guys heard that. Um and maybe we can look back at at that. Mark Saba, if you want to talk touch base with them. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's interesting that you say that. I didn't I wasn't aware of that comment, but we do have another small project um that we're still flushing out at Pavilion Park and that actually came up that whether we would have uh you know a nod to people that were important to the city. So, it's it it it's very timely. Yep. Citizen comment. Want to make sure got to you guys. Thanks for sharing. Thank you. All right. Anybody else?

Right. That concludes my report. Thank you. And we do have um Liberty Lake Water Sewer. Um up sorry I didn't uh not I didn't see you before. So it is uh your turn. Excellent. Sorry about that. I wasn't sure what the protocol was or how to tell you I was here. Can you hear me now? Okay, we can.

Excellent. Sorry. I'm in Chicago, Illinois. Otherwise, I'd be there in person. Just a really quick update. This is uh Katy Naraj with Libert Water District. Um one is don't forget that uh it's time to get your backflow prevention device tested. I know everybody loves to do that. Um it's a pain, but please do it. It helps keep all of our water safe. Uh just another heads up, we are starting to also um have people at least report back to the district if anyone's um backflow prevention device is installed improperly, either in the wrong place where it won't do any good. So, it's functioning correctly, but it's on the wrong side and so it could still push contaminated water back into the system or if it's just not installed properly. And just for the record, we um had ours inspected about two years ago and the guy said, "You know, yours is installed vertically and it officially has never been certified for vertical installation." I said, "What does that mean?" He goes, "Well, it's only been tested for horizontal installation. It's pressurized water, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter." But officially, it wasn't certified for vertical installation. So, I had to have a guy come out and uninstall it and reinstall it horizontally. Um, so we're not going to go that far with people, but we do want to make sure these are at least in the right place. So just be aware of that. Uh second thing is that we do have a contractor on board for the Kenny Wellhouse. That's the one over by Ace Hardware there. So um that we are working with uh the city on landscaping and architecture reviews and that construction should hopefully start up this summer for the the building around that goes over the wellhouse itself. And then finally, um we did uh get uh the Department of Ecology approved uh some municipal rights and some instantaneous pumping rights for east side and Green Ridge. So that'll give us a little more flexibility on high demand times to pump water through. Uh kind of an esoteric thing, but it was a we're glad that Department of Ecology gave us that approval. So that's all I had.

You have any questions? No. Thanks. Well, enjoy your time in Chicago. Thank you. The weather's beautiful. It's from meeting catching a baseball game or something. No, it's all work, but thank you. You guys have a good meeting. Thanks. Great. Thanks. All right. Uh, that concludes our reports. Um, so up next is our workshop. So, we'll start off with the capital investment workshop and hand the hand the mic over to Mark and Kyle. Thank you, Mayor. I'm gonna immediately hand it over to Kyle who's at the podium. I know Kyle looked like he was running for the door. So,

well, thank you both of you. So, um last spring um uh back in March of 2025, uh we presented kind of what we would call the first iteration of the city's capital investment strategy. Uh and so while Shane pulls that up, we're all, I think, really familiar with the information that Ben uh delivered to us last Tuesday. um pretty eye-opening figures. We've obviously never had 20-year capital facilities plan, so the numbers were always going to be large. We kind of look at it through the lens truly for us, it's one year at a time. We have a six-year capital facilities plan, but really only funding things one year at a time. And so to look at it through the 20-year lens is eye opening, but it's also just incredibly necessary for us to start to lay the groundwork now for how we're going to fund uh these major capital infrastructure requirements over the course of the next two decades. And so, uh, with that, um, Shane, uh, next slide, please, real briefly. So, this is just a snapshot of what Ben, uh, submitted to us last week. And so that total that grand total down there at the bottom in the blue is 131 million and change over the next 20 years. And so we have all of our asset classes uh defined there. Um through the lens of today, we have no idea how we're going to pay for this, right? And so that's the discussion uh that we're going to lay the groundwork for tonight. And I think it's really timely that we're establishing committees because then the finance committee can dive a little bit deeper on some potential recommendations to bring back uh for how we want to tackle this. Um and and and trying to tackle all of this 20 years worth of improvements now isn't going to happen. So we're going to slice this up into little pieces to see um what the best execution is going to be in the short term that potentially will lay the groundwork for the long-term execution.

So, next slide please, Shane. Um, and so we had this uh so this is just an updated version of what we presented last year uh for the 2026 budget going ahead total of six years including 2026. And so your far left column there, that 2026 budget, we're frontloaded there because we have we have identified those are what we have allocated for capital expenses in 2026. Uh and what is available and so uh we have 12.6 million roughly available for capital expenses in 2026. Those will carry over. We're not we're not spending that full amount in 2026. We're going to carry over that chunk into 2027, but 2027 and beyond is new revenue generated dedicated to capital improvements. And so um as you can see, there isn't much space in uh the general fund to fund ongoing capital improvements. Um and and so what we'll look at a little bit further downstream is how we can balance the resources that we have with the need that we know we have. And so that far bottom right hand cell says uh 20.7 million. So that is uh the forecasted amount that we have dedicated to capital improvements over the next 6 years. Go ahead.

I just want to make sure I understand your table correctly. The far left 2026 budgeted is the projected year in balance. That's not actually the revenue for the year. Is that right? So that's that is that's resources that we have dedicated to capital improvements, but we're going to carry over some of that. Looks like all 12.5 million.

Uh so we're going to spend down a little bit of the general fund there for city hall. And so that full amount won't carry over. Um but this is our budgeted amount that we have for reserves. And so so that will get drawn down based on the capital improvements that we have budgeted for 2026. And so if we just project 2027 and beyond, uh that amount on the far right hand column there, the 20.7 is going to be reduced by quite a bit. Gotcha. Thank you. Yeah. Any other questions before we move on on from this slide? Would you prefer everybody to hold their questions to the end? Oh, sure. Yeah. Or not? I mean, it's up to you. So it's it's completely I guess we'll I'll we'll free form it I guess as much as we can

because I think because I know as we go through there some of the questions that one would not have been answered but if you feel the question will be answered later on if we can't ask then we might defer the answer just so everybody knows right. Yeah that sounds great. Next slide please Shane.

And so this gives us a snapshot of our needs over the next six years by asset class. And then what we can see down there uh the total for our uh capital revenue forecast. So this that far that that bottom column there gives us the funding gap that we first identified last year um that we're going to use to kind of inform our decision-m um going forward. And so we have a funding gap of 18.8 million over the next six years. And we need to figure out where that money is going to come from. And Shane, if you could back up uh let's see one slide real quick. So you'll notice uh in this um in this sheet uh at the bottom we have grants and so we have we have local state and federal agencies identified. We don't have anything populated past 2026. Do we think that's going to happen? Absolutely not. We will get grants that will reduce that gap. um but we don't have them secured yet and so we're not accounting for them right now and so that is going to play a major role in how we reduce that gap going forward is our aggressiveness towards grants and ones that we know we have a really good shot at and so go ahead

so is the uh one from SRTC for for mission yes okay and then the other one what's that going to uh we have a couple different mission projects We have Mission Avenue overlay and then Mission Avenue frontage improvements. Oh, the safe schools one grant, right? It's not safe routes. So, there's a commerce grant. One came from Yeah, one from came through Leonard Christian. That's the one on the north side of the freeway. It came from where? Leonard Christian pushed for that at the state. So, that's that's the 1.2, correct? I believe.

So, the SRTC one is uh 980. So, the 1.2. So there so the commerce grant is 999,000 and then we have other grants that are smaller uh for some design. Oh, so this one for 980 is I thought it says here SRTC though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One for SRTC, one for commerce. Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. Okay.

All right. Let's advance a couple of slides, Shane. Um, perfect. Okay. And so uh let's discuss some options to address this gap. We touched on grants. Obviously that is going to be at the forefront of our efforts is to secure as many grants as we can to reduce that gap. Um we do will have to look at additional revenue at some point uh to balance out what we have on the operational and capital side versus what our revenue mix is right now. And so we'll have to discuss different levers that we can pull uh to balance that out. Um we have a relatively simple revenue model right now. Um we have quite a bit in bank capacity. We'll touch on that here in a little bit. Uh we reduced our utility tax from 3% to 0% a couple years ago in lie of the TBD sales tax. And so we have all of these different options that we can consider when discussing how we're going to tackle uh eventually $131 million of projects. So, um, state loans are available. Um, we have the local program, public works trust fund. We'll get into those in a little bit. Um, that is not obviously exhaustive. There's other ones. We'll get into council manic bonds. Voter approved bonds. We will not touch on the levy lid lift tonight. Um, that is obviously a mechanism that cities use. City of Cheney did a levy lid lift, I believe, last year. Um but uh but that's not at the forefront of of anything that we're going to consider in the near term. Um and then eventually we're going to have to discuss um how we want this mix to look. Is it going to be purely additional revenue? Are there any are there any is there any potential for us to look at existing revenues? Can we reduce service anywhere? Can we cut costs somewhere to balance to help balance that out? And then ultimately we have the decision and you council have the ultimate decision of just not doing some of these capital projects. And so

that's always an option. We can defer we can eliminate some of these capital improvements is as we as we touched on right at the start of this presentation. Um, we budget a year at a time and staff and the mayor can recommend certain capital improvements, but ultimately it's council's decision on whether we execute those or not through the budget review and adoption process. So, we'll be looking at that um as well as we as we navigate what the uh what the long-term solution is going to be for tackling these capital improvements. Next slide, please. So, we touched on this a little bit. Um we're going to we're going to tackle a couple of levers that the city can pull um to generate additional revenue uh for for these activities. And so banks capacity is the annual calculation of the difference between the actual property tax levy and the amount uh available to levy. And so that's called the highest lawful limit by the assessor's office. And so this amount increases each time the city chooses not to take our statutory 1% annual increase. And I think we're going on five or six years with adopting a 0% increase. And so we've seen our bank capacity grow and grow and grow. And so I I I think there may have been a a little bit of um not miscommunication, but just I just want to clear up that bank capacity does not expire. It is a year-to-year calculation of what we levy and what our highest lawful limit is. And so if council chooses to call it recoup that banked capacity, it's a simple u ordinance that the city would pass instead of say adopting a 1% increase. Uh I think we're up to we can adopt call it like an 11.2% increase um to recover that bank's capacity. And so that's one of the levers that the city has um to consider. Next slide please.

additional options. I I think we're all familiar with the utility tax and how that transition happened a couple years ago. We have the TBD sales tax in place that generates about 850,000 a year. Our utility tax at 3% was generating about 1.2 million a year. And so, um we're one of very few cities that actually does not collect a utility tax. Um and so this is certainly something to consider as we look at u how we want to tackle that. And again as we just discussed uh the TBD sales tax we collect a 0.1% uh statutory limit is.3% um I believe airway heights put it to the voters a couple years ago to increase theirs from 0.1 to.3 so they are currently collecting the full um statutory limit of.3 um and so that is another tool that we can use. So anything above the 0.1 if council uh determines that this is a viable strateger strategy would have to go to the voters for approval.

Anything over 0.1 yeah correct 0.1. So so 0.1 is a council manic action. Anything above that so if I mean if you want to arbitrarily 1.1% that.1% has to go to the voters and so anything above the.1%.

Uh next slide please Shane. Uh so this is a lesser used revenue mechanism and it's a lot more narrowly construed and so local improvement districts are a means of financing capital improvements that will benefit a specific area. And so let's just call out the river district for if for whatever reason the river district wanted a um wanted to target sidewalks for some reason or wanted to target private residential streets for whatever reason. uh the property owners and the city can create a local improvement district whereby they pay via property tax for improvements to uh improve sidewalks, residential streets. Uh utilities are a proper are popular one for for local improvement districts. And so this is another one that we can consider. It's it's lesser used, but it's another tool in the toolbox that we can consider. And so this will be relatively timely. We're going to come back to you. I think Amy's going to come back to you uh in May with the sidewalk master plan results and so we'll discuss potential funding mechanisms for that as well. LID is going to be one of those on the list. So

next slide please. Yeah, go ahead. How how does a lid come to be? Uh so a lid is a joint effort between the property owners and the city. And so it acts think of think of how we created the transportation benefit district. And so we would essentially create adopted by ordinance. It would be ratified in some fashion by the property owners of that area. Thank you so go ahead. Yeah. Okay. So back to the L idea. So like for example the older areas of the city where some of the sidewalks are really janky. Yep. So you could create an LI just for that area.

Correct. Okay. And I I it people living in that affected area be paid for it. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I understand that. Yeah. I imagine it's a headache for the assessor, but they execute them and so it's a it's a why would it be held on the assessor because they be the property tax because it's a property tax not on the boundary of city of Liberty Lake. It's more narrowly construed than the city of Liberty Lake. So they're they're singling out single properties to place those assessments on rather than just the city of Liberty like Right. Gotcha. Council member Daryl. Um typically um does a lid stick around forever in

um so I don't know the answer to that off the top of my head. I would imagine that you would place a sunset on it of 10 or 20 years or so um to hopefully do what it was. you identify kind of this project plan and once that project plan has been executed um you would put build in kind of a natural sunset to that. I guess I was just curious about um current examples how that's kind of shaking out right now. So, so we do have some current examples and I think um we'll probably bring a couple of examples to you maybe on the heels of the sidewalk master plan to see exactly how that has worked because I think sidewalks is probably the best example um outside of utilities of a successful lit program.

Yeah. Uh so pivoting into state sponsored lowterest loans. Um, so the local loan program is funded by the state treasury and so you can get favorable terms uh for specific construction or acquisition related items spec uh specifically um equipment is uh is allowable through the local loan program. Uh so real estate acquisition and then new facility construction is also allowable under the local loan program. Um we we won't dive into our metrics versus other cities metrics too much tonight. Um but uh both the local loan program and the public works trust fund are um they're heavily scored for distressed communities of which we are not one. And so um it's certainly an option and we we can investigate it if if council determines that this is a proper course of action. Um but when we go to apply um and they use that scoring system, we're going to lose points on that. So, but that said, it's it's there. Um if we want to investigate it, we absolutely can. The public works trust fund, I think it's been very well documented. Um what was once a kind of a thriving loan program has been largely swept um by the state and so they still operate um but on a much smaller scale. And so that that one is available. I don't know how viable. So

receivers, what are the terms of the loan or or they v do they vary based on? So they vary. So distressed communities get a much lower rate. Non-distressed for um the local loan program right now is about 2 and a.5%. Uh public works trust fund for non-distress is about 2.2 I would say payoff period. Uh so anywhere between so it can't exceed the life of the of the acquisition. Gotcha. Um but I I believe it's anywhere between 20 or 10 and 30 years. Thank you. So thank you. Uh next slide please.

Uh so council manic bonds. Um so these may be issued by vote of the governing body. If we recall back to trailhead, trailhead was a council manic bond. Uh we pledged revenues uh from the real estate excise tax fund and the golf operations fund at the time to repay that. So there were no additional revenue sources generated from that council action. Uh voter approved bonds uh have a little bit of a higher threshold uh to uh pass at the ballot box. It's a 60% majority and then there's also an additional caveat with v voter approved bonds is the turnout has to be at least 40% of those who voted in the most recent general election. So you have to hit those two metrics for that voter approved bond to pass. And then the proceeds from those uh use are used to fund capital improvements but generate a revenue source uh most likely from property tax uh to fund those improvements. And so voter approved bonds uh residents are seeing an increase uh to their property tax uh in the amount to fund the debt service. Next slide please. And so we won't spend a ton of time on that. This is just current market conditions uh of um both council manic and voter approved bonds. Um and so um you can draw your attention a 10-year term uh if we're looking at project proceeds for $10 million would cost the city uh 12 million. So an additional um 2 million. And uh the 20-year term is going to be a lot more expensive. That's an additional 5 million on top of the $10 million proceeds. And so you can see the average annual debt service and the impact uh if this is a voter approved bond in those bottom cells there of of what the average household can expect per $500,000 of assessed value. Next slide, please. And so for now, that's a wrap. This is

kind of a first blush. This is a lot to to throw at you. Again, I'm going to kind of uh draw our attention to to the I mean, I am excited that we have a newly formed finance committee to really chew on this stuff and to come together, have the deeper discussions with that committee and and bring back some some additional ideas that potentially are not listed here to the council as we discuss how we um tackle these capital improvements going forward. So in summary, we can say that existing revenues and operations cannot support the capital infrastructure needs. Obviously, we're going to prioritize grants. That is a number one. Um to the extent that we can maximize that to close that gap, we're absolutely going to do that. We are going to have to evaluate existing revenues versus adding additional revenues. um are there programs, are there um services that we can reduce uh to create some additional revenue uh to fund some of these capital improvements? Uh low interest loans are available. We're likely not going to score very well, but we're still going to add them to our potential mix of of how we close that gap. Um and then um and then potential financing options for council manic and and voter approved bonds based on some of the revenue mix that we discuss uh and potentially push forward for greater discussion. So with that, yeah, I'll stand for

Yeah. So so just so if there are questions or comments on what was presented, we're not here to really talk about what you want to do, what you don't want to do, any of that. That's going to be go to finance committee. If you have any questions on what was presented, we'll go ahead and I know council member S's heard from you already. So is there anybody else who wants to jump in before we get back to council member Ball and then council member Severs. So just to be clear, this is six years whereas the whole Yeah. So so the dollar amounts you see in here are for the the next six years,

right? the discussions and the potential implementation of the additional revenue or evaluation of existing revenue will lay the groundwork for the full 20 years. But okay, but yeah, so we're just have we're just starting those discussions. Council member Severs and then Mayor Cotm

more just a couple comments. Kyle, I really appreciate the work you're putting into this. This is incredibly important for the city. It's been weighing on my mind a lot. I appreciate your forecasting, not using unknown funding sources at this time. And I appreciate the way you presented a number of different funding sources. I'm probably going to be recommending some additional all council education on a few of these, especially how levy rates work and the 1% works. It's very complex. It's hard to understand. It'd be good a nice refresher for all of us. Um, and I guess more of a comment to citizens, these this funding gap is a great example of when everybody comes up and gets hot and heated about we need a new library, it needs to be $14 million. Whatever number you put out there, these numbers are going to weigh very heavily on the future of the city and maybe in lie of nice roads and those are things that we need to really weigh out very carefully. So also very exciting for the finance committee. So thanks for leading the charge there. pools, dog parks, BMX tracks, all of those things this. Yes, we all want it all,

but there are there are essential things that we need to provide. Yes. Services. Yeah. Thank you, Mayor Pim. To the extent of more information, Kyle, I'm interested in the local improvement district and specifically as it applies to sidewalk like projects. Um, other examples regionally or, you know, other locations, how they have played out in practice, uh, would be helpful for us to understand. Great. Anybody else? Councilman Lord, Darl, Curt Spiser, anybody?

I just have a Sure. Um, for those of you who don't know, Kyle received an award here just recently and it I'm serious. I I've been in his world. It's like the Oscar of the awards. I'm not. So, congratulations, Kyle. And we're so lucky to have you here. Really? I mean, I know what that's like. So, thank you. I I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah. All right, council members Darl or Curts, anything? No, go ahead.

Yeah, just kind of what everyone else said. I think um some of the lack of questions is because you've presented this so clearly um and that's often the case. So, I really appreciate that and I'm looking forward to um find this committee and uh other workshops. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Thanks Kyle. Thank you. Thanks Kyle. Moving on to the 847 page Spokane County Hazard Mitigation Risk Plan. Thank you, M. Can we have a motion to extend the meeting to 3:00 a.m. next year? As as Shane is pulling up uh some slides that'll help kind of navigate through that. Um go ahead and open up. We're going to go through this page by page, line by line.

I'm just kidding.

Coffee is on. So for uh for four of you um you you may have seen or heard the discussion that we uh had with the council back in September of 2025 regarding the hazard mitigation plan. If you haven't that's okay. Um we'll talk about it here tonight. Um and Shane, if you can go back to the front of that uh presentation, we can we can get started. So, what the countywide hazard mitigation plan is is exactly what the title says. It's it's a it's a plan that allows for the county as a whole and then each of the municipalities inside of the county and other governing districts inside of the county to take a look at the most probable hazards that they could face and then put together some mitigation strategies uh to try to lessen the impacts of those down the road. Um, if you can go to the next slide, Shane, kind of the background of this whole process. And keep in mind, and we'll show you a slide at the end that shows where the hazard mitigation planning process is in the whole universe of the wider emergency management world. Um, and so you'll you'll get a sense of what this is and what it isn't. But the background is if you think back to uh 2000 uh the the Congress passed the disaster mitigation act and what the disaster mitigation act did was set up some requirements that are largely related to access to federal funding. And so um I'm not going to read all of these bullets, but it requires the act requires pre-planning. So, the hazard mitigation plan fits the description of pre-planning that qualifies the planning agency for access

to those grant funds. Um, you'll see there uh some other things there. REGGs require the plans to be monitored and updated. That's what the office of emergency management is doing on a periodic basis along with the planning partners. Uh, our own strategic plan prioritizes emergency management. That's another uh reason why we want to go through this exercise. And then as you'll see when we get to the mitigation strategies themselves, we're already underway in large part due to the planning that is occurring within the comprehensive plan update uh to uh move forward on some of these mitigation strategies already. And then the plan that is in place right now was adopted in 2020. And so the current uh planning that is happening once it's adopted will take that place and they tend to f refocus on these about every five to six years uh primarily because of that um monitoring and updating requirement that is associated with the disaster mitigation act. And so Shane if you can go to the next uh slide please. If you'll remember back uh to the um the September um briefing, uh we we talked about the plan structure and the two documents that you have that are in the packet. Volume one is the countywide element uh portion of the plan. And then volume two is all of the planning partner, what they are called annexes. That's just a chapter that deals with that particular um either municipality or um in most cases fire districts. but other governing bodies. The Liberty Lake chapter is chapter five. So, as you're looking through volume two, you really only need to be focused on chapter five. Uh, but you can see all of the other chapters. It's good to have familiarity with them, but the one that we're specifically focused on is chapter

5. And so, Shane, if you can go to the next slide, please. Um, and so from a phase perspective, if we look back over the whole timeline and then look forward at what's left, we've we've done all of these phases. As you can see, back starting in February of 25, we started the organizing and review phase. We went through updating the risk assessment. Um, and it was the risk assessment that we specifically talked with you about last September because we did some uh public outreach specifically to validate our ranking of the uh vulnerabilities. And I'll talk about that in just a minute. We had uh a public engagement process that again uh when aligned with our comprehensive plan update. We had dozens of opportunities for public engagement that um met the criteria of the hazard mitigation plan. Think of the climate resiliency um chapter in the comprehensive plan. Think of the greenhouse gas chapter that we talked about. Uh we had a group that was formed uh with the help of some folks at Ridgeline with some students to help us uh put together some of these uh planning phase ele uh planning elements that took place in this phase. Uh we had surveys, we had uh booths at Barefoot in the Park, we had other things. And so we had a pretty widespread and comprehensive public engagement effort. And then for the last several months, uh the county primarily has been assembling and updating the plan. Earlier this year, they put it out for public comment period. Um they are currently now in the process of presenting all of those comments to uh the county commission and we would expect at some point in the next 90 days or so for the commission to adopt this plan which would go into effect at that time and replace the one that was adopted in 2020. So that so

we're complete uh we're completely through each of these phases with the exception of adoption and again we're waiting for that and anticipate that that will occur in the next 90 days. Uh next slide chain. So just a couple of highlights um to and and again the essence of this plan is the risks the the hazards that are most likely to occur. In this case we're talking about Liberty Lake. And so what uh a important aspect and what we spent uh a lot of time as a staff going through and again this was the piece that we asked the community to help us validate was ranking these risks and our vulnerability to them. And so in this table you'll see the result of that exercise. And the higher the score, the higher the priority, the higher the rank. And when we put this out to the public, they validated this ranking. There were some uh examples of specific items like excessive temps that wasn't necessarily scored in the same way that we scored them, but the public feedback that we received validated this ranking. Um and so as a result of that, we submitted this ranking to the county as part of our annex. Shane, if you go to the next slide. and and that's represented in table five uh-8 in in the volume two chapter 5 that you have in front of you. The mitigation initiatives, these are the things that each community says we're going to do or are already doing to help mitigate the risk of the vulnerabilities that we just looked at in the previous list. And so I've gone ahead and included the number in there to make it easier to find when you go to tables 5-9 and 5-10. Um, but these are what they are. And I've got these um prioritized or grouped, excuse me,

grouped by priority. And so the first set of ones that you see there are in the high priority category and they're split about half and half. And you'll see that when we go to the next one, but you'll see also the ones that are underway. So, they're in some form of progress. And then the two up front, and council member Ball and I have recently had some conversations about these two. Um, these uh the development of a continuity of operations plan and the development of a comprehensive emergency management plan specifically for Liberty Lake have not yet started and we can talk more about that in the future. Shane, if you go to the next slide, we'll see the medium priority uh initiatives and you'll see most of these again uh or about half of these again are underway and the others not started. But these things include um items like updating the building code. We do that periodically anyway. Um we uh have a program in place to help underground vulnerable utilities. Um we do all of these things. We we think about and talk about all of these things on a regular basis. Um if you go back uh one slide chain, I want to point out something specific in back to the high priority initiatives. There you go. Right there. So in LL7 uh which is the fire resilient landscape that'll be covered in the resiliency uh workshop that is workshop is not the right word. uh fair that's happening out at trailhead that we talked about earlier. Managing the tree canopy. We talked a lot about that. We had the tree planting event this past weekend. Uh we'll have another one coming up on the 24th. Um and then the removing of hazardous trees. You've heard a lot about that recently. We've had a couple of instances where we've gone out and removed some trees that were hazardous for one reason or another. That in part is part of this hazardous mitigation

plan or hazard mitigation plan. So, that's something that is underway and we make evaluations on whether to do that uh on a case-byase basis. But I can assure you that we have uh and and you saw it last week when Ben presented the 20-year capital facilities plan. Trees are infrastructure. Trees are a category that we specifically have identified in the 20-year capital facilities plan and one that the investment to continue to promote our canopy and to make it healthy. um for the entire community is a high priority that we have. And so, uh Shane, if you could advance past the medium priorities to the emergency management. This is kind of the emergency management universe. Right now, we're just talking about the prevention and mitigation box, right? That that is one phase of the whole emergency management system that includes preparedness, response, and recovery. And it's in those three other boxes that frankly we have uh work to do and we're uh in the process of looking at how to do that work. It doesn't mean that nothing has been done or is being done but we have we have work to do in those boxes. Um again pointing back to our strategic plan. This is a high priority in our strategic plan. If you look at the survey results, we get mixed signals with the responses about how people feel we're prepared to uh recover and respond to disasters and emergencies. And so that's an area we definitely need to put some more attention into. Um but with respect to this hazard mitigation plan, like I said, we've submitted all of the required input to the plan. uh we've given comments during the comment period to make sure that some of the things that you saw in the initiatives and in the rankings were clarified and now we're waiting for the county commission

to adopt the plan so that we can start implementing. And so with that, that is the update that I have for you and I would be happy to answer any questions. And then I also want to talk about the ILA that I sent you a copy of earlier this morning. Any questions? Go ahead.

Well, since I'm the one that requested this, um I just I don't have maybe well question, comment, whatever, but okay. So, here's the first thing. Um and I can't find it right now in the packet, but I wrote it down. I have page 40 of the packet, and this is in the, you know, the lengthy document. As of this writing, the current presidential administration is reviewing the hazard mitigation guidelines with anticipated changes to that guidance to occur. So, that's not very helpful. This could all change.

As we've heard uh in this particular presidential administration, that is a likelihood. Um and but we won't know what those changes are until they're announced.

Okay. Okay. And then it said uh on the next page, some municipal planning partners did not participate as are developing standalone plans. I found that interesting. It's like it's like I have mentioned to you having our own plan too, you know, standalone plan for the city. That doesn't necessarily mean we can't be I I get it with the county. Um, but we do need to have, you know, some boots on the ground here. Some people, as I've mentioned before, who are um or an individual that is, what was the term we came up with on the phone today? uh an emergency, something to have like a um

so we talked about potentially looking into third-party assistance to help develop plans,

right? Yeah. To have a consultant or whatever develop our own plan for the city. And so I want to clarify for the for the council um in in this particular context the I I believe it was only the city of Medical Lake. I would have to confirm that, but the city of Medical Lake decided not to join the county in the hazard mitigation plan. They decided to create their own hazard mitigation plan. That doesn't mean that um they don't find value in the county's plan, but obviously they went through a very uh tragic disaster recently. So, they decided to uh do their own hazard mitigation plan. That doesn't mean that we should not continue to pursue developing a continuity of operations plan and a emergency operations plan for the city. But I would not recommend that we strike out on our own and develop our own hazard mitigation plan.

No, that's not what I'm suggesting. And I appreciate this report. Obviously, somebody has some a lot of people put a lot of work into this, but um um another thing I wrote down was um the DMA, and now I can't think of who that is, um the disaster mitigation act,

right, encourages state and local authorities to work together on pre- disaster planning. So that would mean local means us. Um okay. And then um it's no it's no secret we're in a wild line wildland urban interface. Um there's a there's a real high hazard potential according to some of the maps and charts I looked at south of the lake which could then of course move north. Um, then on page uh 293 there's something about non-veitated uninhabited hazmat. Do you know what that means?

I would have to look at that and get you a definitive answer. I don't know off the top of my head.

Okay. Okay. So, basically, um, you know, and I talked to you about this on the telephone. I would just like to make sure that we have the $300,000 um available that we will need in the because back to my conversation with Mayor Cooper of Medical Lake because they have gone through this. Um she said there's a lot of work put into this uh hazard mitigation, but nobody thinks about the aftermath. And so I would like to see what she recommended and have $300,000 put aside. Um if we have to make a budget amendment it's you know uh perhaps that would be what we have to do but you need that in the first 5 days accordingly.

We do keep 15% in our restricted reserve fund which is ex this would be a perfect example of what that money would be could be used for. Please correct me if I'm wrong Kyle. Good. Oh okay. Well and right now it's we're at 1.7 million in that fund. We can't touch it unless there's an emergency. Okay. So, we could conceivably if we need it take it out there. Yeah. And that would require council action.

Okay. Okay. Um and then the other thing and it's on the this is last the sixmon capital facility plan. Uh hang on. Kyle and I or not Kyle Mark and I talked about this too. So on next year's budget or on sorry long range planning capital projects comprehensive emergency management plan for Liberty Lake. So that's already in here for 2027 for $200,000. Is that enough?

It it it's hard to say specifically, but I I can't imagine that developing an emergency operations plan um would require more than that. In fact, I would estimate that it would be quite a bit less. Okay. And that would include like perhaps getting a consultant or an expert on emergency planning. Think of it as similar to the arrangement that we have for the parks master plan. We have a consultant engaged that helped us uh develop the plan. The plan itself once it gets adopted will be the city's plan, but we hired a third-party consultant to help us develop the plan. So it would be a similar type arrangement.

Okay. So you know how you and I once talked about you know like having um a plan for evacuation of the city for example. Would this include that? The comprehensive emergency management plan would likely include an evacuation plan. Part of that uh was discussed as part of our transportation resiliency uh chapter which was just I don't know several meetings ago. we had the briefing. So part of part of an evacuation plan is that that was put together for transportation resiliency. That's the backbone of it. But yes, it would include evacuation planning for sure.

Well, yeah, because that resiliency plan didn't really say, you know, north of Liber or north of the freeway, you go here. I mean, it didn't. Right. That itself is not an evacuation plan, but it it's certainly the foundation of that because it talks about the relative health and condition of your transportation system up to and including times when we're in a situation where we would have to use it to evacuate. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Mayor Pton,

without getting into sign significant details of the plan, Mark, are there any material actions or activities that we're not already doing? Is there something unusual in this that we haven't already encountered? I would say not unusual, but I would hearken back to the two items at the top of the initiatives, which are the two plans that we've talked about, the continuity of operations plan and the emergency the comprehensive emergency management plan. Those are two things that we need to complete. There's I there's no sugar coating that. Um but as council member Ball just pointed out, our plan was to as part of the 2027 budget development include uh hiring a third party to come in and assist us to develop both of those plans.

Thanks. Anybody else? Okay, not hearing any. Thank you very much. All right. Next up, we have general business consent agenda. Uh Madame Mayor, I move general business items 11 A through C. Do we have second? We have a motion and a second by council member Severs. All those in favor of approving general business consent agenda items 11 A through C, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes 6. Uh, Madame Mayor, I move general business 12A, appointment of the scraps advisory board, Mark Mackoy. Second.

Okay, the motion is second. Any questions? Uh, I do find it interesting that we have been relegated to remaining municipalities. Can I may make a clarification? So, so just so that everyone is aware, I had talked with uh Scott Simpson about this quite a while ago

and um the as far as I know, the cities of Airway Heights, Medical Lake, and Rockford have already taken action to to also nominate me. So, it takes all of them to do that. Um and they will along with ours send this to uh Scott so that this appointment can take place assuming that you're in favor of that. But to the mayor's point, we have one representative on the board for the remaining municipalities of which we are one.

Great. Go ahead. So is this kind of similar to how Dan is the little towns for the um the STA? Similar. Yes. But um in this case, this is this is a voting there are no exeicio members of this advisory board. So this is a fully voting board member position, but it's just representing multiple municipalities. Okay. Yeah. Whereas in STA, those municipalities come, but there's only one voting member out of those municipalities. Jurisdictions for small jurisdictions. Yeah. Right. Gotcha. Okay.

Any other questions? All right. Those in favor of nominating um Mark Mackoy to represent the remaining municipalities on the scraps advisory board, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes 6. Thank you for your service, Mark. U madam move item general business 12B recreation agreement with inclusive fitness. Second motion and a second by council member Severs. Any questions on this pretty much standard um recreation agreement that we've been seeing more and more of which is fantastic more things do around the city. Any questions? Go ahead.

I I just really appreciate the work of partnering with agencies for the providing of these services uh that we don't yet have significant staff and ability. This is a great way to provide it for for the community. Yep. Absolutely. All right. Not hearing any other questions or comments. Those in favor of authorizing mayor to sign a recreation agreement with inclusive fitness, please say I. I. Any opposed? Motion passes 60. Um, madame mayor, I move general business item 12 C, easement agreement between city of Liberty Lake and the Liberty Lake Internet Portal LLC.

Second motion to second. This is item we have we have discussed. If there's any further questions that um could not be asked or answered um in the in the executive sessions, please direct them to Sean. If you don't have any, then we had move to a vote. All right. Those in favor of approving um and authorizing the mayor to sign the easement agreement with the Liberty Lake internet portal, please say I. I. All right. Any opposed? Motion passes 6. This next one I'm going to hand over to Do you want to move it us to move it first or do you want to intro? Uh, no. I We'll do that later. So, I'll go first. Okay. Gotcha. Uh, Madame Mayor, I move general business. No, no, we're going to let Sean go first.

Okay. Yes.

Uh, thanks, Mayor. Um, tonight uh is the time and place for the city council's consideration of the hearing examiner's March 13, 2026 decision following formal investigation hearing in the matter of the code of ethics complaints uh by Miss Annie Kurts against former council members Chris Cargill and Wendy Van Orman. Uh the hearing tonight is pursuant to the city's code of ethics under Liberty Lake Municipal Code section 1-10-8. The city council has been provided with a copy uh of the hearings andor's decision. Uh the parties will have the opportunity to make statements if they so desire and they will each have up to five minutes for such statements. Uh as the complaintant, Miss Curts will have the opportunity to go first and then Mr. Cargill who I see is here in the audience will have the opportunity and if Miss Van Orman is online, she will have that same opportunity. Um, upon the conclusion of the party statements, um, I will ask that council member Curts excuse herself from, uh, the table, um, while the council has the opportunity to deliberate, uh, the hearing examiner's decision. Um once the uh deliberations are completed uh the code of ethics code of ethics provides that the council may either adopt reject amend or modify the hearing examiner's findings and conclusions and recommend uh recommendations or remand the matter back for further investigation and consideration by the hearing examiner. In the event the council decides to reject, amend, modify, or remand the matter back to the hearing examiner, it must set forth its specific reasoning and basis in written findings and conclusions supporting its decision. If the council adopts the hearing examiner's decision, it may do so by accepting the hearing examiner's findings and conclusions.

Are there any questions? Great. Um, at this point, I'll turn it over to Council Member Kurts to see if she has any statements that she would like to to make. And I would ask um if we could put five minutes up uh on the uh screens as far as the timing is concerned. I have a question. Should I be doing that from here or should I be doing that from there? You can do it from there. It's fine. Okay. Just wait till we get Hang on. Once we get the uh time up there. So sorry.

He's working on it. I think we have to adjust it from 3 to 5. Okay,

we'll be good to go. Right. Um, so I have a brief statement. Um, however, I cannot get into specifics other than to briefly provide you with general facts about my motivation to file these ethics complaints. Last year, I submitted two ethics complaints because there appeared to be inconsistencies between actions taken in moderation administration of a social media page when city matters were discussed, the city of Liberty Lake code of ethics, citizen complaints about censorship and records produced by respondents. These inconsistencies gave me great pause. I had a choice. The first one was to do nothing and the second one was to act. I could not ignore the information. So, I chose to act by seeking an objective assessment of all of the information. Filing an ethics complaint is serious. Addressing the concerns through this process was the least invasive and least expensive option to assess the questions objectively. I submitted the complaints and asked for an expedited review. When I turned the complaints into the city, I stated that if probable cause was not established by the hearing examiner, that I would adhere to and respect the decision. That was not the outcome. The hearing examiner determined that there was probable cause to believe that respondents had likely violated the city of Liberty Lake code of ethics and opened a formal investigation. A statement in the recommended disposition aligns with my intent in filing the original complaints. And I quote, "It is perilous for sitting

council members to be in a position where they are moderating discussions on city issues." End quote. Perilous is defined as full of grave risk, danger, or hazard. The word perilous describes situations or actions that are highly unsafe and likely to cause harm or injury. My primary concern and motivation for going through this entire process, which was nine months, was the tangible and intangible risk to the city. The hearing examiner summarized my concerns in one sentence. I accept the recommendation recommended disposition outlined by the hearing examiner. Thank you,

Mr. Cargill. Your opportunity, should you desire to say anything? No. Uh, is Miss Van Orman online? I did not see her, but let me double check again. Let me get Don't see anybody by that. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, this point, uh, Annie, if you'd step away and you just sit out in the audience, just double check. No.

No. Okay. At this point, um, council members have the opportunity to deliberate should they so desire, um, about the hearing examiner decision. Um, if there's anything in there that I can answer for you, I will do so. Um, otherwise, I'll leave it open to the floor if there's anyone that has any questions or comments that they want to make. And then we'll also have public comment as well. No, I was led to believe we So, we have another citizen comment item on the agenda. Oh, I thought we were including No, that's not part of the code. Okay. If someone wants to make a citizen comment, they can do so at that time. Okay. But I was told that we would not accept them during the first citizen comment period. That's correct. Correct.

Okay. And that's only because we had not had the hearing yet. Okay. So, that's so I didn't screw up. Yeah. No. Okay. Well, I want to make sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's all right. Does anybody have any comments or questions? I don't see any.

Seeing none. Okay. At this point, um, as I said, the the council can adopt the hearing examiner's findings, conclusions, and recommended disposition. Um, or, um, if there's something different, then, um, we can certainly get into that. But assuming I'm not hearing anything, I'll just assume at this point that's the fill of the council. So, if someone wants to make a motion um to accept the hearing examiner's findings, conclusions, and recommended dis disposition, I'll stop right there. I move to accept the hearing examiner's findings. Second. Have a motion in a second. Any further discussion?

Um member for discussion. The word perilous is underscored by the hearing examiner to me is important and I think uh underscores not actions specific to these characters and the situation but the future actions of council members. I believe confidently that our rules and procedures need to be amended to eliminate the ability for council members to host or operate social platforms. Um I believe the as I read through the hearing examiner's inability to understand precisely what has happened the I guess murky I seen as descriptive words uh creates situations that I think are untenable. The words and the information contributed by electeds are the property of the people. They're not mine. They're not yours. Uh they need to be kept in places that are safe. and the words of the hearing examiner in my opinion bring forward clearly that no social platform is ever safe from deletion by forces beyond the control of anybody who calls themsself an administrator. So my my pursuit is to um not take action to accept this hearing examiner's recommendation but to mend our procedural rules. Thanks.

Thank you. That is coming up. Go ahead. Um unless I'm sorry. Go ahead, Linda. Oh, I just want to say and that's why I've been kind of um encourage encouraging us to get back to the governance manual and so forth because this does need social media needs to be addressed. Um and I would like to say that the site that this lived on still exists and it's a very toxic place to go to. Thank you. Any other comments on this on the findings? Not anything beyond that.

I guess I'll I'll let it rest. I don't actually go beyond that. Um I just want to clarify with regard to findings, you're also including the hearing examiners with that conclusions and disposition. Is that accurate? Correct. Okay. Okay. Comments. Yeah. Anything else? Okay. All right. Those in favor of moving to accept the findings, conclusions, and disposition. All right. Um, uh, please say I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Motion passes four to one. When with Council Member Curt's excused, how do we note that since she's not part of the vote?

Yeah. No, she obviously as an interested party, um, she would not vote. So, we'll we'll make a notation of that. So, perfect. From that standpoint, um the last step then is I will bring back um at the next council meeting um a decision uh that memorializes the decision of the council tonight um for approval and we'll be finished. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Council Member Curts. All right. Um All right. We looks like we'll have a public comment here in just a moment. Um we are back to council comments. Any additional council comments? or today. What was the date again for that um parks ride that um the 31st, I believe? 31st.

Okay. Nance talked about. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Okay. Any other council comments? All right. Not hearing any. We have no public hearings or appeals. We do have a resolution 26-285, I believe, if I read that correctly. It wasn't on the agenda, but did I get it right? Great. Thank you. Uh, resolution number 26285, a resolution of the city of Liberty Lake, Washington adopting the qualifications for the community development director position. Okay, thank you. Do we have a motion? U, Madame Mayor, I move the resolution as stated. Second.

Okay, motion is second. Any discussion? Just a reminder, this is just re re um revamping um the community director um job description um now that we didn't have it for community development director. The title had changed, some duties had changed. U so this is getting getting things updated to today's requirements and standards. Anything else you need to add? No, I think you said it perfectly. All right. Any questions or comments? Go ahead. Are we paying her enough to do all of this? She's here. I don't think we say that out loud.

All that is adopted as the TW through the budgeting process. Let's see. All right. Anybody else? All right. Not hearing any. We do have for um on resolutions, we do have an option for public comment. Is there anybody would like to comment on this resolution and specifically either here or online? Amy, I'm kidding. All right. Um so we have no public comments. Uh so we'll go ahead and go to a vote. Those in favor of approving resolution 26-285, please say I. I.

Any opposed? Motion passes 6. We do not have any ordinances. We have no emergency ordinances. Upcoming agenda items, we do have your spreadsheet in front of you. Um, no, no real changes since we went over this last week. Um, we will be looking at a date for the review of draft of the comprehensive plan. I was talking with Amy a little bit on this yesterday. The schedule's really packed between now and then. So the question is going to be do we do we try to set a special meeting or do we do schedule a longer longer workshop during a meeting? We still need to work work through some of that. So Amy and I are going to follow up together along with with Mark. So just kind of keep those dates open. Sidewalk master plan parks plan update coming up. Governance manual special meeting coming up. Um and then um then we do have the new one with regards to establishing um committees for the for and against for the public safety sales tax ballot measure. Mark, do you want to touch on anything on that one since it's new?

So this is similar to the discussion we had when we were preparing for the advisory measure. we have to put together these two committees and and go through the process of taking uh volunteers and then if not getting those nominating folks to sit on those committees to write the foreign against statement for the voters pamphlet. So that's what that item is intended to do.

All right. Anybody did I miss we miss any upcoming workshops? I think we've covered most everything and next thing you know we're going to be in budget season. comes by fast. All right. Uh, next up we have citizen comments. So, we do have one citizen comment here in chambers. So, while we're getting ready to get that start, if there's anybody online who'd like to make a citizen comment, please send a note to the meeting host in chat. Just a reminder, let us know uh if you live in the city limits or not, give us your name. Uh, and you're limited to three minutes. Uh, comments only. If we need to follow up, we will have someone from staff follow you up. So Jed Spencer, welcome back.

Mayor and Council, it's good to see you guys. Now, by by show of hands, who who all read every last page of that agenda? I I can't I can't Mark gets the gold star. Um control it.

Yeah. Yeah. I It looks like I got out just in time because gosh, that was that was a beast, it looked like. So, um I just wanted to comment on on this public hearing. Um I I wanted to read a few things and I'm glad that that it turned out the the vote turned out the way uh I believe it should have. Um towards the end of the uh the hearing examiner's findings um he talked about the general use of social media. He said as has been stated numerous times by the hearing examiner throughout the process the advent of social media has created a vast new gray area that is continuing to be delineated in courts and which will likely continue into the foreseeable future. On the one hand, yes, of city officials have duties and responsibilities under the various levels of laws um governing governing public records. On the other hand, elected officials have broad rights and some would say responsibilities to interact with the public, gather information and feedback and communicate with the public as well as their broader first amendment rights. As this case is also unfortunately illustrate illustrative of squables from behind screens and keyboards can bleed over into the real world in a way that would not have occurred without the perverting effects of social media use. After full and thorough investigation into the particulars of this case, the hearing examiner can't help but view the entirety of this process as a p as a petty Facebook quarrel that metastasized into enormous waste of city resources. Um, and then just going into that paragraph, um, Council Member Curts, uh, read briefly from that. It starts out, "The hearing examiner finds based on a preponderance of the evidence in the record that neither Mr. Cargill nor Ms." Van Orman violated the city's code of ethics. And then it goes on to talk about the the uh the fact that it, you know, it could be potentially perilous um getting involved there. But then he then he follows up and says, "Yet elected officials can and should engage in public discussion, interface with the

public, seek input, and disseminate information." And the reality is that much of this can and will take place on social media. And I just want to say, you know, it is it is a tricky situation being an elected official. Um, I largely stayed out of it because frankly, I don't know how many public records requests uh I had personally and I don't know if they were just against me or uh you know, everybody else uh who was on the council at the time, but it's a pain in the rear to have to go through all of those those things. And so I think we need to find strike a balance between uh these these, you know, petty issues that we find on social media and give our elected officials the ability to engage with the public. And yeah, sometimes that's going to look a little messy, but I I think it's I think it's worth uh you know, seriously considering how we try and manage that on the council. Thank you guys.

Well timed. Thank you for being here. Okay. Uh are there any other citizen comments either here or online? Nobody. Okay. Um we have no executive session. So if there's no further business before the council, I'm not seeing any. We will adjourn 8:13. All right. Thanks everybody.