City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Kent City Council meeting for Tuesday, 04/21/2026. If you could all please rise and join me in the flag salute. All right Kim could you please call the roll? Thank you. Mayor Ralph? Here. Council President Kaur? Here. Council Member Boyce?

Here.

Council Member Boyd?

Here.

Council Member Larmer? Here. Council Member Michaud? Here. Council Member Schocher?

Here.

Council Member Troutner? Here. Thank you. Thank you. Item number three on our agenda is the approval of the agenda. Is there any changes this evening?

No changes from staff, your honor.

All right, seeing none, a motion would be in order to approve the agenda as published.

So move. Second.

Got a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries, seven zero. That brings us down to public communications. This is the largest portion of our agenda this evening, and we have quite a few good things happening tonight. We're gonna start out item number one is recognition of our newest neighborhood council. So I'm going to ask Tracy Taylor to come on up and introduce us to Kent Shires.

Good evening mayor, council, council president. Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to give you a little quick update about our neighborhood program and welcome our newest recognized neighborhood. Kentshire's Condominiums has joined the program, adding about 200 households to our program. And with that, we're now at 59 recognized neighborhoods across the city. Now this program is really about helping neighbors connect and give them a clear path to working with the city and whether that's identifying priorities, organizing around safety, or bringing forward some ideas to improve their community.

There's also some built in supports as well, like access to neighborhood grants, opportunities to connect us through programs like drinks in the driveway, and workshops that help connect to neighbors and stay informed and engaged. So with further ado, I'd like to call up Kentshire's Neighborhood Condominium's President and Vice President, if they wouldn't mind. And Mayor, I will hand you their certificate their certificate of recognition. Mayor?

I was in the

I left the next item on the agenda upstairs, I was asking Toby to come up get it. Sorry about that. So we are very, excited that you guys are officially a neighborhood with a swap in front. We'll do a quick picture. Councilmember Boyce, feel like you have a question to ask Tracy.

Yes, I do, Madam Mayor. Tracy, where are we at right now on our total?

59 recognized neighborhoods. I would like to say though, when I started in this program and in my role, we were at 52. So we continue to see steady growth. And I'm excited to say that we had a couple of new applications come in. So we will see more coming up here in the next couple of council meetings.

Well, you're doing a good job. The bar had raised, so 100 is where we're to go, right? So,

we'll get it.

You got time to do it. You don't have to do it overnight. You got time to get it done. Okay?

Thank you.

Well, good job. I really appreciate what you're doing with this. Great job.

Thank you, councilmember.

Appreciate it. Council President.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Tracy. And congratulations on making it to 59. My question is about the neighborhood grant and I know some of the neighborhoods have asked me about that. Is there do we share that with them or do we send out social media and how do they qualify and what they can use it for?

Great questions, council president. Thank you. Our grant program is very simple to apply. If you are a recognized neighborhood, you get tapped in on that. Essentially, you can reach out to me, ask questions about how that works, what that looks like. We have three tiers of grants. We have our matching grant where the city matches with sweat equity, which we have a very large stack to go through. The recognized neighborhoods apply for these matching grants, and then we bring them to a grant task force where they go through the applications, they take a good look at them, and essentially what it is is more along the lines of beautifications for neighborhoods. So very excited to see this stack this year, and so we will go through those. The deadline for the match matching grant was back on April 1.

Our second tier for grants is our mini grants, which is an opportunity for neighborhoods to have fun programs. Right? We see a lot of those applications come forward national night out. So if they wanted to throw a big barbecue or a big party where everybody gets involved, that's an opportunity for those recognized neighborhoods to apply for those. And then we have our communications grant as well, and that is just the the way they communicate with their neighborhood, whether it be with websites or email or printed, and it's an opportunity to get in on a little bit of that city money to help them advertise within their neighborhood community.

Do they have deadlines? The mini and the communication?

The mini grant is at the August, and then the communication grant ends in December, if I believe. Yeah.

Thank you.

All right, so Kent Shire, start thinking of a project. I know you have some in mind. We've talked about it. So, looking forward to that. All right, Tracy, we're going to go back to the normally agenda.

All right, the next item on our agenda is a proclamation, and this evening joining us is Commander Armstrong. Commander Armstrong, I'll have you come up. I'm going read the proclamation, and we will take a picture, then I'll ask you to say a few words. The proclamation says, whereas correctional officers are trained law enforcement professionals dedicated to maintaining safe correctional facilities and ensuring public safety, and whereas correctional facilities across The US, both civilian and military, public and private, adult and juvenile, are run by highly qualified and experienced individuals with a deep understanding of the challenges within the profession, and whereas correctional officers and employees are responsible for the custody, care, and rehabilitation of thousands of offenders every year, as well as the maintenance of safe and secure facilities, and whereas correctional officers and employees are resourceful, capable, committed, patient, and persistent professionals in criminal justice and our nation, and whereas correctional officers and employees serve admirably in many different capacities, including jail administrators, chaplains, nurses, supervisors, social workers, teachers, managers, and directors. And whereas correctional officers and employees teach, train, mentor, counsel, and treat thousands of offenders.

And whereas correctional officers and employees provide offenders with direction, hope, and a new focus while assisting with reentry, and whereas correctional officers and employees rise to meet any challenge and serve this honorable profession nobly and admirably. Now, therefore, I, mayor Dana Ralph, do proclaim the week of May 3 through May 9 as National Correctional Officers Week in the city of Kent and invite all residents to join me in honoring our corrections officers and employees. They deserve recognition for their service and should be commended as leaders and the public for their exceptional performance under difficult circumstances. So many things are so very true in this proclamation.

Very true.

It's important that we highlight that work.

I'll keep it short. Mayor, city council, thank you for your continuous support at the jail. I wish all 28 of the officers can come down here and get presented this. They work so hard. They do an incredible job behind the scenes. You don't see it every single day. They lead with compassion in the most difficult situations. I couldn't imagine some of the work and some of the stuff they deal with on a daily basis. And they truly are passionate about what they do. I'm amazed at what they do every single day.

I've been doing it for a long time, but I'm still amazed that they come every day and they do it and they deal with the heart and compassion and care that they tried to treat everybody with. So National Corrections Officers Week coming, they love to see leadership. So please come on down, say hi to them, they would appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Commander. All right. The next item on our agenda is recognition of our Kent one hundred one graduates. So Kent one hundred one is a civics academy for Kent residents. Really an opportunity for our residents to hear from every one of our departments here at the city, learn about the place that they live, and it's also a call to action.

How can you be involved, and what are the next steps in sort of that civic engagement? My favorite thing that we do every single year, I am so grateful for people that sign up and then spend every Thursday evening with us for a couple of months. It's a big commitment, but one of the most rewarding things I think that we do. Tracy, you want to come on up and recognize our graduates?

First off, I'm super grateful you give me the opportunity to be a part of this because, man, I learn something every single year, something new from each department. Good evening, mayor, council members. Tonight, have the privilege of recognizing the graduating class of our Kent 101 program. From the last nine weeks, this group has taken time to learn more about how their city works, meeting with the departments, asking thoughtful questions, and gaining a deeper understanding of the services that keep Kent running every single day. And, again, Kent one zero one isn't really about information.

It's actually more about connecting within your city and how each of them have shown up, stayed engaged, curious, and committed to the community. So I'm very excited to present to you, mayor and council, the graduating class of Kent one hundred one this spring. Come on up guys.

Do we have the graduation music to go?

Yeah, we're going throw our tassels back and our hats and everything too. So come on up. We're going

to take a

picture. Mayor, if you wouldn't mind coming down. We had 30 in this class this year or this spring, and we've continued to see that grow year after year. So very excited. Yeah. Can. Absolutely.

Yeah. Idea.

You could do so.

Yeah. Good idea.

In the middle ish.

Thank

you, guys.

I want to say thank you to all of the participants from CANT101. We had an amazing cohort. Lots of really good and thoughtful questions, and so it was a good nine weeks. So thank you so much for participating, and I hope you all took away some nuggets of information that you'll be able to share with your neighbors and your community. So thank you so much.

All right. We are going to move on to the next item on our agenda, and we have with us this evening a special guest to provide us with a legislative session update. Senator Kaufman, would you like to join us at the podium?

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you. I'm I'm real happy to be able to have the opportunity to provide a little update on on what all we did down the state legislature. Again, I'm Claudia Kaufman, state senator, the 47th Legislative District. I'm happy to continue to serve in the position of state senator. And we had a good session, was a short session, it was sixty days.

So imagine you doing all your work in sixty days. It's it's really go fast and and get things done as fast as you can. So it turned it turned out to be a great session. We had a lot of things done. In terms of, you know, my office, I received over 4,000 phone calls or emails, contacts from constituents of the 47th, which is amazing amount of folks who called in.

And so, you know, looking through all of those things, it was good to see that, you know, all this all the things that we did, it aligned with what people had called about. And, you know, many of them had called about looking about the importance of preserving our Medicaid services with all the federal cuts coming to Medicaid and understanding what Medicaid is. And so if you're on Apple Health, Medicaid. And so a lot of folks didn't see those two being combined. So understanding that and understanding how the system works.

And also on economic development was a top priority for constituents. Looking at how we can grow our economy in Washington State, but also locally. So moving forward on those things, there are some things that happened. One of the great things that we did was we expanded the senior citizen property tax relief program. So it creates a $7,500 standard deduction for those who qualify for state property tax.

And that really helps our seniors. It helps those with disabilities or disabled veterans so that they can maintain and keep their property. Another thing that we did because this is important to our district was around the flooding. Flooding is impacting so many folks. And in a mortgage, when you're buying a house, you know, they are required to tell you you're in a flood zone or you might have a flood here.

But as renters, they don't have that same protection. So one of the things we did was ensure that landlords inform someone who's gonna rent your house that you you could be in a flood zone here. You could have a potential for flooding. The other thing we did on flooding, myself and senator Orwell had partnered to create a flood caucus. So we could look at the issues around flooding and how we can work to address them.

It was such a significant event in December, not only for my district, but around the state. Whatcom County was another big one that had a lot of flooding, and then also down in Pacific. So those things were really important. And the state put in $41,000,000 to look at how we can address the flooding and protect our streets or repair and upgrade our streets that are impacted by the floods. I think it's 300,000 per county.

And then also looking at, There's various legislation that went out, but one of the things I was happy and thank you to Mayor Ralph for your cooperation and working with me on it was to get the $2,000,000 for the signature point levy, which was kind of a last minute, like we got two days to get it done. It

was a really good phone call to take, will tell you. I was very grateful, so.

Yeah, so that was one of the things that we did to ensure that we have that available for our local district here. Another great thing that came out of it was looking at the low income energy assistance programs. So that was also established the program for eligible low income households to help share the income families spread on utilities in partnership with both the gas and the electric utilities. The $2,000,000 for Kent was significant, but also in terms of the 47th Legislative District, we were able to secure $375,000 for the aquatic center in Covington, which is a few decades old. It needs to have some upgrades and repairs.

Looking at that, I've taken a tour of it. So those kind of things are important. In addition, we had $300,000 that went through the operating budget to look at economic development and stimulus and how if we have all these different industries in the state, we need to have like a statewide strategy behind what we're doing for economic development and how we can help support the increase in growth of the economy. When you look at these budget deficits, you know, we gotta You you really have to stimulate the economy and that's what keeps us moving. And it was important to have the support of so many businesses behind that.

It's really exciting to have that one done. The other thing we did was look at the space economy and having the space industry and partners to come down to Olympia to share with folks the importance of our space industry, which is really exciting because I wanna continue that work and I know that the city of Kent and and the partnerships with local industry, tech hubs, higher education, all the things that you do to This is a very fast growing industry. So all the things that you do to meet that need that we have, not only for the industry but for developing the workforce. Today's technology, you know, is really fast growing. That's another thing I want to continue to work with your office on.

So we hope we do that. In terms of developmental disabilities, we're able to continue to preserve the funding that was slated to be cut. Three thousand people with developmental disabilities were gonna cut off from services. Standing up in caucus and saying no, we don't wanna do that was something that, you know, I stand on my values. My values are preserving things that for our seniors, our disabled, for our economy.

These are things that I really worked hard on to do that. And then finally on transportation, I wanna talk about a few things on transportation. $15,000,000 for cities to respond to the floods. I'm not sure if you're aware of that. Came in through the transportation budget.

A million dollar safety grant for cities and towns to install illuminated crosswalks, which is good. And then also in my work, I serve as the leadership liaison to tribes. And so we did a tremendous amount of work in connecting with tribes. And one of the transportation projects was $500,000 grants for tribes on tribal traffic safety issues. The infrastructure or lighting or basic education and how we can move forward on improving the safety.

So those are some of my top 30,000 level foot review and I'm sure you'll have a much more detailed specific for your city, but I wanted you to know that we worked hard as a team, representatives and my colleagues down in Olympia. It was really great to get through this and come out with so many great things. So, I'll be happy to take

some questions.

Thank you. I wanna say thank you for your leadership on that that particularly on that that flood money. Absolutely important priority to this community and to the council, and so grateful for that partnership, and your willingness to answer the phone when we call. So thank you for that. Council, any questions for Senator Kaufman? Council President?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Senator Kaufman. I don't really have a question, but just grateful for your partnership and thank you for always taking a phone call or a text message when we hear from our constituents. So I appreciate your reply back and thank you for supporting the signature levy funding that's important to our community. So thank you and thank you for being here tonight.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Looks like you got away. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity again.

Thank you. Thank you. Senator Kaufman, do you want to come up and stand in the middle and we'll get a quick picture with counsel?

Thanks. Thank you.

All right. We are going to move into another legislative update. This evening, we've got Kyle Moore and Brianna Murray joining us to provide us with that Kent specific legislative update. Kyle, I will turn it over to you.

Thank you, Madam Mayer, counsel. It's so good to see you guys. I've been communicating a lot with you this legislative session. I probably spammed you with more emails than you probably are used to, but hopefully all the information we are giving you was very useful. I'm Kyle Moore, Government Affairs and Regional Policy Manager for the city and Brianna, you can

Thank you, Kyle. I'm Brianna Murray with Gordon Thomas Honeywell government relations and serve as the city's lobbyist.

So it's been my this is my first year serving the city of Kent. It's been my honor to serve counsel in the city. I've really enjoyed this session even though it was a sixty day session. It was seven days a week and it was a lot of work, it was good work. And so, I've really enjoyed it.

I know I've been working in Olympia for ten years and doing this this work and fortunately in South King County for eight years and all eight of those years with Brianna. So we've been like a team for eight years so it's been great. You know, first of all, you know, I started November. I'm really thankful for counsel for all your work to develop the legislative agenda before I got here because that would have been a mad scramble to try to get that done in the middle of flooding. It really provided a clear blueprint for me and for Brianna as we move through legislative session.

So thank you for all that work that you did. I know how hard that is. It really assured that we were aligned with Kent's priorities and the priorities of residents and businesses throughout the session. You know, working at the capital, you know, the work we do at the capital has a really direct effect on all our residents and businesses and so the work that you do really matters and thank you for for all that work. With hundreds of bills introduced each year, you know, it's so hard for residents.

Mean, there's sometimes thousands of bills to keep track of all of that, all the hearings. And so, all these bills have direct impact on all of our residents and so that's where Brianna and I are able to really work together to try to stay on top of as many of these bills as possible. We're able to step in, know, we're able to monitor, engage and really advocate for all of our Kent's interest. This session alone out of the Brianna will give you the full detail of how many bills, but we tracked actively 195 bills, which some of these bills were over a 100 pages long. So it's a lot of work that goes into this.

You know tonight we're gonna do a preview kind of an overview of our 2020 succession and how outcomes align with our legislative priorities. We're also going to highlight some of our key issues beyond our core priorities and how they impacted the city. Finally, we'll outline the next steps as we move into the interim and prepare for the next legislative session.

Thank you, Kyle. And, I'm gonna start with providing just a high level overview of the legislative session. You heard from senator Kaufman and from Kyle that we just finished a sixty day legislative session. The legislature does operate in a two year cycle and the sixty day session was the second year of that two year cycle. The democrats held strong majorities in both the house and the senate and the governor's office and as such democrats got to establish a lot of the agenda and major themes that would be given a lot of attention this session.

Those focus areas included responding to federal actions such as ensuring Medicaid continued to be funded as well as SNAP or food benefits. A second was affordability, something that I think was a bipartisan interest to make sure Washington remains affordable to live and work in. And, the final was tax and budget reform. The state's budget operates on a two year fiscal year that runs 07/01/2025 through 06/30/2027. During the 2025 legislative session, the legislature adopted those two year biennial budgets.

And in the 2026 session, they came in with the intention and and task of doing mid biennial adjustments through the adoption of supplemental budgets to make modifications for the cost of rising programs or adjust or changes in revenue. In addition to looking at budgets, the legislature also did a substantial amount of policy work. All bills that were introduced in the 2025 session that did not pass into automatically carry over for continued consideration in 2026. There were a couple thousand bills that fell into that category. In addition to those bills, another 1,238 bills were introduced.

So just a large number of bills to be tracking and paying attention to. You can appreciate the challenge that Senator Kaufman and her colleagues have in tracking all the details of all the bills. So we do appreciate the partnership that we have with our local legislators to help highlight those bills that have a significant impact on the city of Kent. This year, 268 of the bills that were considered passed into law. That is the lowest number of bills that have passed into law in about five years.

I think that is reflective of the fact that the legislature took on some very significant policy and budget issues this year that required a lot of floor debate and a Republican minority that was particularly energized to make procedural motions that slowed down the overall process. Which button do I click? The as I mentioned, one of the main themes from the majority party was to bring about tax and budget reform. We saw the legislature diversify the state budget in the 2025 session and enacting a series of of new taxes. That effort continued in the 2026 session with a significant bill that imposes a 9.9% tax on income over 1,000,000 This has been referred to as the millionaire's tax or the income tax on high earners.

However, notably the bill did not include only adjustments to income. It also included other offsets to try and rebalance the tax code including expanding the BNO tax credit so that there are more small businesses who will not be paying state b and o tax, expanding the working families tax credit so that more families are eligible to receive that tax credit and an intention to provide free lunch for all k through 12 students. The bill also provides that, sales tax exemptions should be put in place on diapers, hygiene products, over the counter medications, and some services that recently became subject to sales tax through a 2025 bill. The sales tax exemptions in the bill will have an impact on city revenues. The exemptions apply to both state and the local sales tax.

So the sales so the the sales tax receipts that the city receives are likely to go down when these exemptions go into effect. The the legislature recognized that impact and has allocated $200,000,000 out in future year in the 2729 biennium to compensate or mitigate for some of the lost revenue from these sales and use tax exemptions. The 200,000,000 is not guaranteed because it is in a future budget year and it is unclear how that funding would be distributed to cities, counties and other taxing districts. Whether that 200,000,000 will grow with time or be a set dollar amount, or whether it is even continuing or one time. So there are a lot of question marks around what the sales and use tax exemptions will mean for city budgets, But the good news is that we have some time to work with the legislature to get those questions answered.

The income tax proposal including the sales and use tax exemptions and the tax credits won't go into effect for some time. There has already been a legal challenge filed that will need to work its way through the legal process to determine whether or not this this proposal or this tax effort is constitutional. There are many who argue that income is property and therefore must be taxed uniformly and so this more progressive tax structure is in violation of the state's uniformity clause. As a counter to that, there's another belief that income is a stream of revenue that is transferred from like an employer to an employee and the taxes on that stream of revenue rather than on property being held by an individual and as such income is not considered

to be

property. The legal analysis on whether or not income is property has not been done since the nineteen thirties. And so the this will be an opportunity for the supreme court to to do that legal analysis with more current jurisprudence on the books. The the other thing that's notable about that is that there are several supreme court positions that are up for reelection just as the the discussion and decision on this proposal will be occurring. In addition to all of that on the millionaire's tax, one other notable tax revision that the legislature made this session is that you may recall in 2025, the legislature increased a state taxes, to be one of the highest in the nation.

This legislative session, the legislature recognized that that made Washington state an outlier in a state taxes, and they reversed the 2025 decision. And so we're back to what the estate tax was prior to the 2025 session. All of that is reflective of an ongoing effort to make the state budget more stable and oriented around progressive revenue streams. I will note that the city tax code continues to be more reliant on regressive revenue streams and more subject to instability in economic economic challenging times. So with all of those tax revisions, I wanna give some attention to the supplemental budgets that the legislature adopted.

Notably, the income tax revenues could not be used to balance the current twenty five-twenty seven budget because it is lingering in legal limbo. So the revenue for the twenty five-twenty seven budgets really didn't adjust a lot even with that tax proposal. The cost of providing and maintaining current services significantly increased between the conclusion of the 2025 session and the beginning of the 2026 session. So the legislature had a budget shortfall to grapple with just to maintain existing services. The supplemental budget did increase by 2,400,000,000 in order to maintain many of those services and particularly maintain some of the services that are likely to be impacted by actions at the federal level.

That $2,400,000,000 increase was largely comprised of some revenue from the budget stabilization account, the public works assistance account, which was later backfilled with bond revenues and a series of cuts to programs. Probably the one that's gotten the most media attention is related to the working families childcare program. The biggest expenditure in the operating budget was $1,000,000,000 allocated to address legal claims that had been filed against the state in order to pay victims who won their their settlements or lawsuits against the state for wrongdoings. Not too different from the many settlements that you all here at the city end up paying out for cases and claims that are brought against the city. The transportation budget was a fairly stable budget this legislative session.

The legislature chose to focus on preservation and maintenance of existing infrastructure rather than on funding or making modifications to existing projects or new projects. There was an additional $1,200,000,000 investment made in this budget for preservation and maintenance and that revenue was largely generated by bonding against tax revenues that were enacted during the 2025 legislative session. So no new taxes, but bonding against revenues that were new to the legislature starting in 2025. The final budget is the capital budget. The capital budget is funded with bonds that a percentage of the operating budget are dedicated to paying off.

Each year there's bond capacity reserved for the development of a supplemental budget. This year was no different. So we saw an $889,000,000 allocation of projects out of the capital budget with that bond capacity, a fairly traditional non controversial supplemental capital budget and that is the budget that funded the flooding project that Senator Kaufman spoke to earlier. Okay, I'm turning it over to Kyle.

So when it comes to funding outcomes, this is a really tough year for cities, really tough year for funding in general just due to the budget constraints that Brianna just spoke about. We had three major budget requests. We had our administrative services building, the decarbonization of that. We asked for 700,000. This is for LED lighting, window replacement, HVAC improvements.

We were not successful in getting that funding. However, we are still in the running for a grant from Department of Commerce that will be decided this week that fingers crossed that will help us to free some of these costs. We have the two hundred and twenty fourth corridor project with our public works department working hard on this. We originally got funded for over $20,000,000 over four years. We completed on time actually early $10,000,000 of it for twenty three-twenty five but last session they moved our twenty five-twenty seven money to twenty seven-twenty 9.

We wanted them to move it back. We did get success from senator Kaufman and representative Entenmann attempted to get that money back, but they were unwilling the legislators to move that money back to 2527. So that is gonna cause, I believe, some delays in that project. And so we will be hopefully, that funding will still be there next year. It was promised to us.

And so we wanna complete that project. It's very important East West Corridor through our city. Our online utility payment system, this was something we needed to modernize our online utilities so people don't have to come and write us checks anymore and could pay online which is long overdue. It's a $2,630,000 to improve customer service, improve our cyber security. We were unable to get funding for that and that was an important system.

Right now, I believe we are moving forward with that system without funding from the state. But, we did get the bonus bonus money which senator Kaufman talked about the 2,000,000 for the secured for the Green River Signature Point Levy, which is to strengthen our flood protection and this is a good we're already starting to work on that what our plan for that is and so that will help us a long term in the future.

Okay. So those were the city's main funding requests. In addition to the funding requests, there are a whole series of other issues that impact the city that the legislature considers. So we're just going to go through and provide an update on a few different categories starting first with impacts to the city finances. I already covered the impact of the income tax sales and use tax exemptions on your future revenue streams if that tax is held.

In addition to that, there are several different accounts that are state shared revenue accounts where the city receives revenue passed down from the state. On the whole, those state shared revenue accounts were honored and so that is good news. The one exception to that does not impact you all, but there was a reduction in the amount of revenue shared to those cities that received cannabis revenue sharing money. Additionally, the legislature approves approved house bill 2,442 which provided you with additional flexibility within your current revenue streams. In particular, you have the ability to use REIT revenues for nuisance abatements, the ability to have some more flexibility on fifteen ninety housing sales tax collections and fourteen oh six sales tax credit collections and how those revenues can be spent.

The most succinct way of articulating that flexibility is you can use those revenues to maintain existing affordable housing units, not as much of that revenue has to be spent on generating new housing units. That flexibility was largely granted due to anticipated reductions in housing funds that are coming down from the federal government to give you the flexibility to respond to those federal actions. There was also a new councilmanic sales tax authority authorized that has fairly broad uses that can be utilized if you were to choose to enact it. It's for children, youth, and families and can be spent on anything from rental assistance to after school programs to any other type of program that can be tied to children, youth, or families. The largest, or I would say one of the large cost drivers that we highlighted for the legislature was a cost driver that they themselves were facing and that was around liability and that $1,000,000,000 that they paid out in claims, legal claims this year.

There was a very robust discussion within the legislature to try and make policy changes in that space. Senator Dhingra, who is a member of the senate democrat leadership team, sponsored senate bill sixty two thirty nine to try and create an alternative tribunal for various claims to be brought forward and go through mediation prior to being litigated. Our assessment of that proposal was that while it was designed or intended to help cities manage liability that it may have actually made it worse. So we ask to be excluded from the bill prior to it advancing. Were cities were removed from the bill and then the bill died in the house.

So the legislature made no changes for themselves on liability and also made no changes or adjustments for cities or counties on liability. And I expect going into the twenty twenty seven legislative session that it will be a fairly robust discussion on whether to make changes. So that's what I have on finances. I'm gonna turn it to Kyle for the next slide. Thank you.

So our big bill, probably the bill we worked the hardest on, spent the most time on was our senate bill six zero zero two, which is automatic license plate readers. This was something that not only myself, but our staff, city attorney, our city administrator, our police chief, I mean, spent a lot of time working on this bill. This bill, originally, when it was first proposed, would have been very detrimental to the city. It would have limited the amount of time we could hold onto images to seventy two hours, eliminated any use for misdemeanor crimes, and it really had a lot of restrictions that basically made our camera system unusable for law enforcement purposes. We worked very hard on this bill.

There was one thing we wanted which was public disclosure protection from public disclosure and we did get that in the bill. But the bill did expand, got a little bit better, got to twenty one day retention for our images and allow some misdemeanor use for crimes. You know, it's interesting the bill sponsor waited till eight days before the end of session before stakeholder work was done on the bill. So, awc was working very hard on that. I know Brianna was involved in that.

I was involved in conversations. We were all working at the last minute eight days before session to try to improve this bill to get it across the finish line in a way that we could still work have it work in our city. There's one part there was they added some sensitive area restrictions, is a proximity to sensitive areas. There wasn't a really strict definition of that. And so it's created some operational challenges for our dashcams.

I know our police chief will be speaking a little bit later can talk more eloquently about those how that impacts our operations. It also established a potential criminal liability for officers and that is something that we worked really hard to try to eliminate out of the bill. In fact, we asked for a veto from the governor for to eliminate that very section. It was not granted. So right now that has some operational challenges for the police department.

Another bill that we worked on is our public defense funding. This is a huge crisis for not only us, for every city and county in the state. It's probably one of the most most significant unresolved financial issues for all of us and this is because the Washington Supreme Court ordered a two thirds reduction in public defense case loads over the next decade. This is going to require a huge increase in the amount of defense attorneys needed for cases and resources. We're estimating at today's dollars if we were fully implemented today, it would be more than $4,000,000 in today's dollars.

What that will mean in a few years as this moves on will be even more expensive. What happened to us is King County started gobbling up all the public defense contractors. So it caused a scarcity and so prices went up and we had to renegotiate our own contract. So is raising prices for every single city that is required to do public defense funding. We are working very hard in the interim on this issue because we understand that many states fund this at a 100% and we're one of the states that chooses not to fund it at a 100% and so that is something we're going to be asking the state to fund this new mandate that was basically an unfunded mandate.

We also there were a few bills that came out to attempt to deal with this issue. House Bill 2,163, Senate Bill 5,913 would have confirmed a ten year phased in timeline instead of a proposed three year timeline so that didn't pass. There was also Senate Bill 5,914 proposed a more equitable cost base funding distribution model that also did not move forward. And then late in session house bill fifteen ninety two was introduced. It would had a new funding model based on caseload for misdemeanors for cities.

It would eliminate the grant process and would added statewide reporting on caseload and capacity, but it didn't make it across the finish line. So right now, we're still kind of left holding the money bag for paying for this new state mandate that has no funding attached to it. So it's one of the high priority things that we'll be working on in our interim session.

Next is housing. I mentioned the flexibility that we were granted with existing housing revenues through 1406 and 1590. In addition to that, there were two land use oriented bills related to housing. The first one mandates that residential uses be allowed in all commercial and mixed use zones. It also states that any affordable housing project cannot, you cannot require that that project have ground floor commercial requirements.

The city consistently expressed concerns with that provision of the bill as it advanced through the legislative process And I encourage you all to be closely monitoring what the direct impacts of that policy are on the ongoing development of your downtown. There was an exemption added into the bill for main street areas. So with the exception of your main street area or corridor in Downtown Kent, if an affordable housing project is constructed, the city won't be able to require that the 1st Floor of that affordable housing project be commercial. That was concerning to the city's planning staff as you all are trying to build a walkable downtown and the Ground Floor commercial can often facilitate and be beneficial to that downtown. It also helps support sales tax revenue generators in your downtown to help balance out your local tax code.

So closely following implementation on that one and disappointed that that provision remained included. I would just say that I think we had a lot we had the listening ear of a lot of different legislators from throughout the state on that concern. However, that particular provision was a top priority for the bill sponsor, which made it very hard to modify. The second bill is, revisiting a statute that was put in place in 2021 that mandated how you all site and regulate shelter, transitional housing, emergency housing and permanent supportive housing. The earlier statute said that you all can adopt reasonable occupancy spacing and public health and safety regulations and operational controls.

The legislature found that as cities were implementing that rather broad flexibility in citing these housing types that there were some jurisdictions that were going too far with that that flexibility and the way it was being implemented was essentially resulting in a ban in those housing types in certain communities. So the legislature rewrote that statute this legislative session and changed where you can allow shelter transitional housing, emergency housing, permanent supportive housing and significantly limited the operating agreements or operating protocols that you can have oversight over on those facilities. There is an 18 timeline for implementation. So you all will need to be taking up an ordinance to update your code here in the near term. And next slide is Kyle's.

All right. So these are the additional legislative issues that we were working on. First of all, I wanna say, it's been great to work with the staff here at the city. We have amazing exceptional staff, our directors, everyone sitting up here, our city attorney, our city administrator, our city clerk, our police chief, public works, parks, everyone really came together during this legislative session. They all are very busy, but when I asked for some information, they dropped everything and jumped right on it.

It really made us a lot more nimble, lot more impactful this legislative session because we were able to do that quickly. My counterparts at other cities, it could take a week or two before they would get an answer back and we would have an answer within an hour or two. And it really made us a lot more successful this legislative session. So I say that and but we had a lot of challenges with some of the bills and we I did spend a big part of my time working behind the scenes on bills that would have very negative effects on the city and trying to either work to to change them or to work to make sure they did not make it across the finish line. One of them was 2489 the homeless we call it the homeless bill of rights this would have been significant significantly limit what the city could do to maintain encampments on public right of ways and this includes in our parks.

It reduces control to address public safety, health, and accessibility concerns. It created very large operational challenges for the city for maintaining safe and usable public spaces. It would have required just basically would have limited what we could do. So you know, I think it really would have taken the ability for the city to keep our parks open for all public and keep our sidewalks open. That bill fortunately a lot of cities felt the same way we did and spoke out against this bill and it's it did not make it across the finish line.

This is not the first time I believe this is the third time this bill has come up and we will continue to work in the interim on how we can work to work with the bill sponsor or work with others to make sure that the cities have local control and can maintain our spaces. Another one and this is I'm very thankful for our city attorney Tammy for this one because house bill 2,095 vulnerable roadway user liability, It it had good intent to basically try to create for bicyclists and others possible protections, but what it really did is expanded a huge amount of liability for the city creating a whole new class of claims even if a person was walking in an unimproved ditch and got hit by a car somehow the city could be liable for that even though it wasn't intent for people to walk. So it would have created a lot of legal exposure. Thanks to our city attorney's information, was able to get this information to ABC and they worked really hard and that bill did not make it across the finish line. We had another bill, house bill 2,389, juvenile sentencing revisions.

This bill would have really shifted our juvenile system toward a default community supervision even in more serious cases including felonies, raising some concerns about accountability. It required earlier release unless a high legal threshold is met or increasing a risk of which would increase a risk of repeat offenses. It reduced sentencing ranges for serious crimes, weakening deterrents and placing additional strain on local law enforcement courts and victim services without new resources. There was a large contingent of cities and others, prosecutors and others that believed the same way and we worked together that bill did not make it across the finish line. There was another bill that got introduced I believe on the house floor, this is house bill fourteen forty three and as Brianna referenced earlier, there were like 2,500 bills from last session that were still at play.

Normally, what happens is they go through the committee process again. This bill just appeared on the floor before we crossed chambers and kind of caught both Brianna and I by surprise and everyone else. The associate Washington City has called this bill the cousin Eddie bill named after the vacation movie. Basically, it would allow people to park two rvs in a backyard and call it housing without having any type of sanitation or storm water environmental hookups. It wouldn't require internal plumbing, creating enforcement challenges, public safety challenges, fire departments had real concerns about this that they, you know, propane without next to houses, this could create some fire risk.

And it also represented unfunded mandate requiring cities to allow and regulate these units without any additional resources. This bill also died before it made it across the finish line. There was one bill that we did work really hard on that did not make it across the finish line. I wish it did. Senate bill 6,343.

This is a bill proposed by the flood caucus by Senator Orwell of the thirty third giving tax relief to residents and businesses for reconstruction of their properties and extending the timelines on that. We made it almost to the finish line. We testified on that bill multiple times and it did not make it at the last minute. So that was something we tried to fight for but didn't make it across the finish line.

Okay. We're almost done. I just wanna note on this bad bills that died list, all of these bills died in the house and were all house initiated bills, which is I think a bit of a coincidence, but also just wanted to flag that for everyone. I wanna second Kyle's comments about engagement from city staff. It is very beneficial for our advocacy efforts to have city staff so engaged.

And I'll just note that not all cities have such an engaged city staff and that you all as a council are really well supported by a staff that provide really great analysis, to help form and shape some of this public policy. I also want to acknowledge and thank our legislative delegation who are often on the receiving end of the information that we develop and provide to all of them. Not all issues are realigned, but on many issues we can be aligned. And I think we were successful in finding those areas of common ground this session. As far as next steps, we flagged several different bills in our presentation that you all will need to implement in the coming months.

I actually have a list of bills that cities have to implement that is close to a 100 bills long. So while we touched on some of the high level items, there are several HR issues and other things that may not require a council code, but will require a shift in city processes in one department or another. The second is AWC engagement. You all have provided an active voice in the association of Washington cities with your other city partners. The AWC legislative priorities committee begins their 2027 legislative agenda setting process on May 1.

Council member Troutner is serving on that committee, and Kyle and I look forward to working with and advising her and staffing her throughout that committee. The mayor is also engaging in AWC. And if you have not already considered attending the AWC conference in June, I encourage you to and I encourage you to participate in some of the sessions they have scheduled on legislative issues and advocacy. The twenty twenty seven legislative session begins on January 11. One of my longtime mentors in learning how to lobby told me that bills are passed in July.

And it's a little bit tongue in cheek, but I think there is something to be said about planning and identifying what you want to accomplish in 2027 earlier rather than later, and using the interim months to educate and share on policy and perspectives rather than waiting until the fast paced days of the session. So we've already started, kicking around some different ideas and thoughts for the 2027 session. I don't think that that moniker of, bills passed in July means we'll bring in a be bringing a legislative agenda to you any earlier than we usually would. We'll wait until the fall. However, I think if you have different ideas or thoughts on what the city should be doing in 2027, now is the time to flag it for Kyle and myself.

Legislators are transitioning their attention to campaigns. All the members of the house and half the senate are up for reelection. It is anticipated to be a strong democrat year. So the anticipation is that democrats are likely to prevail in a lot of races. We are seeing a lot of Democrat on Democrat races, in the Puget Sound, which means the August primary will be, I think, very informative and perhaps fairly pivotal pivotal on what the respective Democrat caucuses look like going into the 2027 session.

And I I'll just add that I am always a resource and available to you all as is Kyle. So happy to answer any questions this evening, but also happy to be a resource for you as you're thinking about politics, policy, Olympia in any shape or form. Please don't hesitate to reach out.

Question? Okay. Alright. Thank you both. It's a lot of very sobering news.

I think, with the exception of some the 2,000,000 in flood money, there's a lot of asset the city made that we did not receive and we spent a lot of time really defending things that allow us to do our jobs to to protect our residents. Long list of things to be implemented did not come with a long list of resources to do that implementation. Significantly concerned about the impacts of a lot of things that happened this session. I can attest to it's a seven day a week situation and lots of work going on and very, very grateful for for Brianna and Kyle and all the work that they did and and all of of our city staff. I know that I talked to a lot of other cities and we there's not anywhere near that level of engagement.

It is going to continue to be important, I think. There's a lot of work ahead of us. Pat?

Thank you Madam Mayor. I just want to thank Kyle and Brianna for all the work they did this session. I also want to thank ECD, law, public works, police, the main departments, I think, who stepped up during this session. This is really important to us. It affects the city of Kent, I think, a lot more than it affects some of our bigger neighboring cities.

These issues that are decided in Olympia are consequential, and they're long term, and they take a tremendous amount of work for staff to to try to present our position and talk about the impacts. Unfortunately, our voices aren't loud enough because there's so much going on. I mean, that's just how it is. But we will continue to engage like we do. We always take a position of rationality and how it will impact the city of Kent.

That's what we always do. That's what we'll continue to do. And thank you for your support as we go through this. I also want to reiterate the importance of a united council when we're dealing with these issues. It is extremely important that our message is united and thoughtful and firm through Kyle and Brianna as they do their work. So, want to thank you as well, Counselor. That's all. Thanks.

All

right. Counsel, any questions for Brianna or Kyle?

Thank you.

No, thank you for the thorough report, and for keeping everyone updated as we went through the session, and here on the other side, I think this is just a lot of contemplation about the significant impacts that this session had on our city and how we're going to deal with those and what we do to combat them again next session. So thank you. All right, let's try and transition to something a little more positive, Council President and Community Events.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I have a list of events at Showwear Center, assessor Showwear Center. On May 1, there's a Bollywood concert called Dil Chautai Live in Concert. And on May 30 is Kent International Festival. On June 6, Paw Fest is back and you can get tickets for the concert at assosshowwearcenteredogot.com. Canada National Festival is a great community event that is free to public and it is usually 10AM to four ish pm. So I look forward to being there in attendance and hopefully our community will be able to join. With that, back to you Madam Mayor.

All right. We'll move on to the next item on our agenda, which is our public safety report, Chief Padilla.

Well, good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the City Council. It's my pleasure to bring you the public safety report for April. It seems weird to say we're in April, but it's April. So we'll get right into it. Start off with the sworn in.

If I could have officer Carina Baez come forward please. So our newest sworn in officer is Carina Baez and she is born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her education includes a BA in psychology and a minor in sociology and a master's in education school counseling. Before Camp PD, she worked at the Green River College as an advisor and she has been in the education system for over eight years doing different jobs such as advisor, counselor, and mentor. We asked her why she chose Kent.

She said she chose Camp PD because of the community engagement that the city had with its community members. She loved how much community events were occurring and how the officers didn't hesitate to get involved. She also noted that when she did a ride along, she saw that everyone was close to each other and it felt like family. Something note about notable and interesting about her is that she enjoys new food places. She's a foodie, self described foodie. So any new food places, new coffee shops, or anything involving food, she's there. And she likes to stay active. I'm a big fan of the gym. I I call her I just I'll add gym rat in there. And she enjoys hiking trails with her two retrievers whenever possible.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's my privilege to present officer Carina Baez. Mayor Ruff, will you do the honors, please?

Raise your right hand and repeat after me. I state your name. I, Karina Bayez. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear.

That I will bear true faith and allegiance.

That I will true bearing allegiance. To The United States Of America.

To The United States Of America.

The State of Washington. The State of Washington. And the City of Kent. And the City of Kent.

That I will uphold the constitution and laws.

That I will uphold the constitution and laws.

Of The United States. Of The United States.

And the State of Washington. And the state of Washington.

And that I will obey the rules and regulations

Of the Kansas State of the Kansas State Department. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Okay. We continue in the onesies and twosies for swearing ins. And while that sounds funny, it's a good thing. That means we stay pretty stable in our staffing. But I hope to change that. I think the record was we had nine up here at one point. I don't know if we'll break that, but I want multiple people before you're working hard on that. So thank you. All right, transition. Man, Kyle and Brianna did a fantastic job.

They stole like 90% of my thunder. And so some of this I'll go through in less detail because they've covered it pretty good. But there was also a lot of accolades about what took place and I want to echo that. You heard the names Mayor Ralph, Pat, CEO Pat Fitzpatrick, city attorney Tammy White, many staffers across departments. But a big, big kudos to Kyle Moore, our government affairs and policy manager.

The intensity of the legislative cycle felt like it was a little more this time, short session, but at the same time, I felt like we were more organized and we were more crisp and precise on where we needed to give input. And I think a lot of that came through the organization we got through Kyle. So thanks Kyle. So with that, the ALPR law, amongst the thousands of bills considered and the ones that were passed in the public safety realm, this was probably the biggest issue. I know that council members you have been receiving questions.

Why are we doing this? What are we doing? What are we not doing? So I thought it was important to come and bring you an update with where we are in Kent and provide and give you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have. As was noted before, there were some good things in the law that we think will ensure public safety and increase transparency and how we use the technology.

We also think there were some things that are simply, I'm just going to be blunt because that's, I'll be straightforward, it's going make it harder to do some of our law enforcement investigations and that's just simply how it is. With this law and many laws that we see that come out each year, it's not uncommon for the language in the law to lack clarity. And I assure you we have lots of full time work going. I'm looking over at city attorney Tammy White, trying to get some clarity and decipher what the law actually says and requires because we want to be exact in how we are meeting the standards. Tammy has provided some great initial guidance on that, and we are following her guidance.

At the same time, I want to know for the public, we are operating on our best knowledge at this time. As we receive more guidance, hopefully from the Washington Attorney General's office, we will be more precise and things will change. Lastly, before I get into the meat of what we're doing, I want our community to know that there is there should be no question or concern. Camp PD is going to absolutely comply with the letter of the law. At the same time, while different cities and organizations have taken different approaches to the law, I am committed that we are going to find solutions.

This technology is far too important for public safety for us to just kind of say, well, we'll just not use it anymore. And I can explain why here going forward. So background real quick. I do want to say just in case there's viewers out there that don't know what ALPR stands for. It stands for automatic license plate readers.

These are the machines on our roadways that capture license plates and save the data and reference the data in terms of who owns the car, if it's related to a missing person, if it's stolen, things of that nature. Something our community may not have known is that we've had ALPR since 2008. Then Chief Steve Strand and Sergeant Raf Padilla, he tapped me with bringing on our first ALPRs and we brought them on for the purpose of locating stolen vehicles. And that was the sole purpose at the time. Was pretty limited technology.

I took a lot of grief for how limited the technology worked at the time. But fast forward and we have developed and with the emergence of the technology has come on to be far more impactful. Our current systems we have two different types of systems I want to be clear on. We have fixed units that are mounted at different locations in the city at major traffic thoroughfares. Okay.

We also have mobile units. Those are on our dash cameras. So we have dash cameras that record video and they also simultaneously work as ALPRs. I'll note right now we turned off the ALPR function on our dash cameras, our mobile units and I'll explain why. And our ALPRs now are not just limited to vehicles.

We can we have found several missing people, vulnerable adults, amber alerts. We've solved several violent crimes including traffic crimes like hit and run, domestic violence things and so on. So much more capability now. So the impacts, you've heard me say before, this is a powerful public safety tool for us and it's not just Kent, it's our region, it's the state and at one point before the law, it was a national public safety tool. If someone from New Jersey with a warrant showed up in Kent and they came by our ALPRs and their vehicle was listed in the system, we would now know that the person from New Jersey was wanted and we'd have that opportunity because the information was shared across state lines.

That is one of the changes the law. We've seen significant crime reduction. You've heard me give credit to a couple of major things. But at the top of the list they're second only to filling our vacant positions. ALPRs have helped us reduce crime. And then of course the impacts are the results we get for our community, right? Justice for crime victims. So the new law Senate Bill six zero two was signed by governor Ferguson back in March 2026. The legislature enacted an emergency clause, which means the law became effective the day it was signed. That put a lot of pressure on us because technology doesn't pivot that quickly, but we got to work right away.

I turned off our mobile license plate readers a week before, a little maybe two weeks before the governor signed the order. So we didn't waste any time getting to adjusting to the law. There are some new restrictions as were noted to technology and it established some policy requirements and audit requirements, which I'll talk on briefly. It also identified locations where ALPRs are prohibited. So here are the locations.

They are prohibited for license plate readers are prohibited from capturing images at schools, place of worship, healthcare facilities, courts, food banks, any place that serves immigrant service providers. Okay? Most of those are pretty straightforward. Generally when a school is at a location, it stays there for many years. Places of worship. Well, healthcare facilities change a lot. Courts are pretty stable, food banks. And then immigrant services, that one's tricky. You can have a law firm that focuses say on litigation for traffic collisions and injury decide tomorrow we're gonna add to the practice and we're gonna do immigrant services. And guess what?

There's no way for the city to track that information. So we're working through some of those issues. On the restricted use, one of the primary points of the law was to ensure that we weren't using the data for immigration enforcement. That wasn't an issue for Kent, won't be an issue for Kent. All the cities, all the jurisdictions I should say in Washington are subject to the Keep Washington Working Act.

And it's been very clear since 2019 we are not allowed to share and assist government immigration authorities with their civil immigration. So this reinforced that. One of the parts that Kyle noted that we were pleased to see get added was it did away with public disclosure. And so for many of us we might think well why that's a good thing. The way that the system was allowed to be the information was allowed to be released to the public allowed for predators and violence offenders to track their victims basically.

They could get data from us and figure out where our car had been and use that as a launching point to locate a victim and that was a vulnerability that the law fixed and we're glad for it. The law restricted the use of ALPRs by law enforcement for felony and gross misdemeanor crimes only. Okay? And that we are very appreciative. We thank we we were glad that that got set that way because at one point it was felonies only.

And I'll talk to you why I'm still a little concerned about that in the next here coming up. And we also are allowed to use the system for missing persons including missing juveniles. We are required to get a warrant to get information from a private system, privately owned system. That one's a little confusing. That's one of the areas where we're seeking some clarity because as the law reads currently, it seems as though if you have were a victim of crime, in order for you to give me the data from your license plate reader, because there are there are some HOAs that have them in their communities, there's businesses that have them, I have to go get a warrant to help you with their crime.

So that's one of the points where we're kind of like, okay, we don't think that's what it meant, but we have to operate cautiously until we get clarification. Retention of data as Kyle said is set to twenty one days instead of our thirty day limit. We're gonna make this work but one of the things that I don't think is understood clearly in the community is that twenty one days is not a long time for someone to realize they've been the victim of a crime and to report it to us. The other part of it is even when they report it to us that that case has to be processed and there could be several days processing time before a detective even gets the case. And as you know, in our city, our detectives don't carry one case at a time.

This is not TV where they work one case until it's done. They generally have dozens of cases in their hopper. So while twenty one days seems like a lot, I will assure you it's a pretty tight timeline, but we're going to make it work. And then I already covered that one. Other restricted uses, we are no longer able to access national databases.

So that's that New Jersey example I gave you. But we're going to make that work. And data can't be sold or commercially shared, all right? So in the section that talks about it's restricted to felonies and gross misdemeanors, that means misdemeanor crimes are left out, the lowest level of crime. But what the community may not be aware is that includes things like reckless driving, drug possession, misdemeanor hit and run, driving while license suspended, shoplifting, trespassing, disorderly conduct and public nuisance, patronizing a prostitute, and several several other crimes that we cannot use the system to investigate.

Camera certification and policy requirements. The law establishes that the Attorney General's office will have a hundred and eighty days to establish a certification of ALPRs. We've been in I've been in direct contact with their office. I volunteered to be part of their stakeholder group to develop the policy and the certification process. We do not have a timeline for when this is to be done.

So we are operating as though everything has to be done now. And then the AGO, Attorney General's Office was tasked with developing a model policy and I must have forgot to write to the last two digits of that in 2027. Whoops. Let's go back. Okay.

Think there's requirements. As Kyle noted earlier, there are penalties for non compliance for law enforcement which includes a misdemeanor crime for knowingly and deliberately misusing and the law opens up the process for civil lawsuits for misuse of it as well. So liability is exposed there. Lastly, because something happened to my slides, I probably didn't save them correctly. The big question for you is what are we doing about it?

So currently we are still maintaining full operations of our fixed license plate readers because we have done an audit and we have verified they do not capture images in the prohibited areas. So we're solid there. The reason I shut off the mobile ALPRs is because our cars drive everywhere. We drive in the courts, we drive in the schools, we drive into healthcare facilities and we need to ensure we're in compliance with the law. There was no immediate way to configure the cameras to turn them off and on and so they're off for now.

We're working with the vendors. The two major vendors in this are Flock and Axon both as independently as a city and as a member of the Washington Association, the Sheriff's League we've been engaged. I've been in at least five meetings with that. I've spoken directly with the CEOs of both companies. They are rapidly trying to configure the systems to meet what we're going to call the Washington standard.

Our goal is to get one standard across the systems so that everybody's equally compliant. We don't want to have one agency with a different setup and have questions raised. We want everybody to have the same process. So that is occurring. And like I said, we are queued up to be in partnership with the AGO in developing the other parts of this. So with that, I'm hoping that the rest of my PowerPoint is still in there. I'll pause for questions.

Thank you, Madam President. Chief, thank you very much for explaining this to us. You talked about restricted use and needing a warranty to access private systems. Would that include like neighborhood ring cameras because I know people can sign up for something that says they will give access to their cameras if it would help in something?

We're a great question which again I want to say is not completely clarified but because it's not we're going to take the most restrictive definition of it which means if we need it from a private citizen we're going to get a warrant. We don't know that that aligns with how things would normally work, but until we get guidance, that's how we're operating.

All right. Thank you. Thank

you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Chief. My question is about the certification process. Is that just for the fixed or mobile as well?

It will be for all ALRs. And

we still our fixed ones that we have, they're still working?

They are working, yes.

Okay. We can still use those as we have in the past?

Correct. But

we can only store for twenty one days?

Twenty one days and then we have to make sure we're not using them for misdemeanor crimes.

Okay. Thank you.

Council member Schoker.

Thank you, mayor Ralph. And thank you chief for the presentation and your willingness to talk about this in community with us at council and answer all the questions about where we are. So since we're at the starting point of this law, are we going to do some outreach of where our current sensitive areas are? You mentioned that like those times are those kind of businesses and spaces are constantly changing. So do we know what that landscape looks like right now?

We have some picture, but it's not a complete picture. And so there's a couple of thoughts on how we would make sure that we're in compliance. On the technical side, the vendors are looking at the capability of the geo fence areas and make sure that we're not inadvertently capturing data where we shouldn't. The like looking at GIS and determining where things are, I think we could get pretty close to accurate. But there is no requirement for many of these businesses to let the city know what they're doing.

And that's so that's a vulnerability that again until we're sure we're gonna go super conservative and make sure that it can't happen. So not a great answer. I'll distill it down. We're trying to figure it out.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Council member Boyce.

Thank you madam mayor. I'm just curious the twenty one days, do that start on day one or does it start when a detective actually started working this case?

It's twenty one days from capture. From capture. When the image is captured and you raise a good opportunity to expound on one point that I think is important. I want to reaffirm that these license plate readers are restricted to capturing license plates and an image of part of the car. We have for years been prohibited from capturing images of passengers or drivers in a vehicle. These systems do not do that.

And just a follow-up to after twenty one days, I mean, did the data get destroyed? You might have said this better recall, it actually goes away.

It has to be destroyed. Has to Okay. Be

Thank you, sir.

And a different standard if the license plate data is captured for tolls. So if the state is collecting money, that data is retained for thirty days.

Interesting. The more you know.

Am just going to provide an opinion here, I will qualify it, is that House Bill 6,002 made our community less safe. Overnight, with the signing, our community became less safe, because it took away a very significant tool in our toolbox. The upside is, you've heard the chief say it multiple times, we will figure out a way to bring some of that, some of those tools back. I just I'm I'm extremely frustrated that you have heard the chief prior to this legislation being introduced talk about things like the number of stolen vehicles in our city have gone down significantly because of the implementation of of this technology. I am I am concerned that we that we lose that, the ability to find vulnerable people.

The the restriction of of what we can use it for, and things like needing a warrant from a private party. That is administrative burden. There is also a whole host of reports and data that we now are required to provide, which also did not come with any sort of resources on having someone have to pull all those reports together, and do that data reporting. So there's a lot of things to overcome. If there is a city that can do that, it is Kent. We have proven that over and over again, but I think it is extremely unfortunate that this is where we are, it takes focus off of the other work that we have to do. So that is an opinion statement, but feel compelled to say it out loud. Chief, I'll turn it back over to you.

Okay. Lastly, I want to end with an announcement to the community, an opportunity. We are having another drug take back day on Saturday, April 25 from 10AM to 2PM right here at the Kent Police Station at City Hall Campus. If the weather is good, it'll be pick up and drop off right here off of 4th. If the weather is bad, it'll be in the ground level of Centennial Undercover.

Access to unused prescription drugs remains a major reason why some of our youth are obtaining these harmful narcotics and doing things that we would rather they not do with them. So in addition to that, you want to be able to safely and securely and environmentally friendly way dispose of these drugs and we are giving everyone a free opportunity emphasis on the it's free to bring that no questions asked. We don't care where you got it, how you got it, we will take it and we will destroy it. So great opportunity coming up. And with that, Mayor Ralph, I will take any additional questions.

All right. Counsel, any additional questions for the Chief? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we are going to move on to reports. Opportunity for everyone up here on the dais to report out to the community on work that they are doing outside of the council meetings that are on the first and third Tuesdays of each month. Council all they represent your voice in regional and statewide conversations regarding policy funding and just making sure that Kent's positions are being heard in those conversations. I'm gonna start. I will provide a brief report, given the length of time that we've had tonight.

I want to highlight an opportunity that I had last week with the US Conference of Mayors to attend a leadership training at the National Medal of Honor Museum. Very, very powerful museum in and of itself. We've got only in the history of our military, only 3,500 officer or soldiers, officers, looking at my people, veterans that have received this award, and it is grounded in commitment, courage, the doing the right thing in that split second. Seeing those stories extremely powerful. The training that went along with it was really about implementing those same values, courage, commitment, integrity, into how we lead.

Had the opportunity to be a part of an 18 member mayor cohort at the museum, and really grateful for that opportunity, and looking forward to sharing some of the things that I learned over that couple of days. Met medal of honor recipient, and he shared his story. He was a French immigrant that joined the military and was in Afghanistan in 2012, and took some really heroic effort to stop a suicide bomber. A very, very powerful story. So, that was last week.

Grateful for that chance. I want to highlight a couple of upcoming things. Tomorrow at Woods Coffee out on East Hill, we've got a Coffee and Conversation, so that is from starts at 09:00, just a chance to gather and have a conversation, bring your questions. We will provide the coffee and hope to see you there tomorrow morning. Lastly, Friday is our first meeting of the King County Flood Control Advisory Board.

I chair that group. It's a group of electeds from all around King County. We come together every year to provide input and recommendations to the King County Flood Control District. As you can imagine, this conversation will take on a little bit of a different urgency this year. We have been working with the King County Flood Control District on improvements that are needed, investment in the system and prioritization of those projects, and we will continue that work starting on Friday. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Pat Fitzpatrick.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm going to refer to my report that is in the agenda packet. Thank you.

Alright. Council President.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Earlier tonight, we had a rental housing inspection program great presentation during our council workshop and that is available on Kent TV twenty one or our city's Facebook page. I serve on growth management policy board with Puget Sound Regional Council and my report on that will be in our council newsletter that comes out tomorrow. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and get started with Councilmember Troutner.

Thank you, Council President. I will keep my report short as well. I sit on the Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority Governance Board. We met April 15. That report is in the council newsletter. I was also busy attending a few events this past week and those are highlighted there as well.

That's all I have. Thank you councilmember Troutner. Councilmember Boyd.

Thank you council president. I'm gonna keep mine short as well. I I sit on the Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority, governor's board also with council member Kautner and Larimer. And it's something I just want to bring to a lot of people's attention. Our past meeting, chief Gordon brought us out a, a paper copy dashboard of the the emergency responses that the fire department deals with.

And he showed us this one was just for the month of March. And it showed that the Puget Sound Fire Department has 1,797 encounters within the the month of March alone. And that just goes to show that they do a lot of work. And a lot of times people don't recognize them for what they do. And and I I like to applaud them.

I want everybody to know that what they do is is is a marvelous job. And also too, we, one of our seatmates, a former council member from Tuckwila and Jovita McConnell last year suffered a medical issue, and she's been really fighting back through recovery. And on May 3, we're gonna be having a a run walk event to help her with her recovery bills. It'll be held at the Tukwila Tukwila Community Center at starts at 08:00 in the morning. So if you could come out, please do and support her. She's a real great person. And that's end of my report. Thank you.

Councilmember Boyd. Councilmember Boyce.

Thank you, Madam President. I will go with the floor and I will keep mine short as well too. Last meeting we talked about when I was here as a member of the Pit Sound City Association, we talked about the proposed sewer rate in King County, So we're going to meet a week from Wednesday. I've been working with Kyle and we've been putting some recommendation in to hopefully have heard our voices heard. So I think I shared with you where we were at last time. I think we're pretty much all on the same page here. So Kyle and I are working on some amendments. Once we get those solidified, I will just send the e mail out to you and you have any concerns, you can let me know. Okay. Thank you.

Council Member of Board, Council Member the Board. Thank you Council President. I will also be short because due to ongoing staffing at King County, the King County Growth Management Committee meeting has been pushed another month. So I think this is my third time saying that. Hopefully someday we will meet And that

ends my report for now.

Thank you, Council Member Larimore. Council Member Michelle.

Thank you, Madam President. I have a more thorough report in the council newsletter as everyone else. But I do serve as a Human Services Commission Council liaison. I just want to let everyone know that the city received about $9,500,000 in funding requests across 200 applications. That's the highest level that we have ever seen.

The city, you know, we have about $1,300,000 available in grant dollars. So right now, Services Commission or sorry, the Human Services staff is going through all those applications, checking for completeness, do they meet our needs, and then they will take out all the ones that don't meet those and divvy them up between the commissioners and the reviewers and start that process, which I have outlined in the council newsletter.

Thank you, Councilmember Schroker.

Thank you, Council President. I don't sit on the committees yet, but I did get the opportunity to go to Clark Lake Park for Earth Day, I know that Council President and Council Member Schroker were also there. It was great to see so many young people there volunteering their time, so I really encourage people to stay up to date with the city's communication and get

involved. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Schrocker. With that, we're back to you, Madam Mayor.

Alright, thank you. Item number six is a public hearing. We do not have one this evening. Item number seven is public comment. Kim, do we have anyone signed up? We do not. Alright. We'll move on to the consent calendar. The consent calendar is a compilation of items that the council has worked on through both workshop and committee of the whole. Had an opportunity to have conversation, ask questions, and, again, discussion. These items have passed out of committee of the whole without controversy. This evening, we have consent calendar items a through j. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

So move. Second.

We've got

a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries seven zero. We do not have any other business this evening, so that brings us down to bids. We have one bid, 2026 chip seal project award. And joining us tonight is Chad Beerron, our public works director.

Good evening, council, good to see you. One bid tonight, as you mentioned, the 2026 crack seal project, this is where we go out and or excuse me, crack seal was last time, is the chip seal project, go out and apply rock and asphalt to the roadway. It's kind of a more cost effective way to put down an overlay. So we put down a chip, a couple layers of chip and then a fog seal and then repaint the roadway. We have two stretches, one on West Valley Highway and then out on Clark Lake through the Clark Springs area.

I say Clark Lakes, Clark Springs out on Dean Kangway. So we have received two bids. Low bid was from Sierra Santa Fe Corporation out of Richfield for just over $537,000 Engineer's estimate was $851,000 and we recommend award.

All right, counsel. Any questions? Okay. A motion would be in order.

Madam Mayor, I move to award the 2026 Chip Seal Project to Sierra Santa Fe Corporation in the amount of 537,007 and $77 and authorize the mayor to sign all necessary documents subject to final terms and conditions acceptable to the city attorney and public works director.

Second. We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries seven zero. Thank you, Chad. We do not have an executive session this evening, so that brings us down to the bottom of our agenda. I wanna say thank you to everyone who joined us this evening. Thank you, counsel. And with that, we are adjourned.