City Council - Regular Meeting

It's 7 p.m. on Monday, July 20th, 2026, and I call this regular City Council meeting to order. And Councilmember Roberts, would you lead us in the flag salute?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands,

All right, for the record, Councilmember Cedar is absent tonight. Does anybody like to make a motion to excuse him? Yes, Councilmember Poer. I move to excuse Councilmember Cedar.

I second.

It's been moved and seconded to excuse Councilmember Cedar from tonight's meeting. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes. Also present this evening is Planning Manager Stallnicker, Public Works Director Madden, Finance Director Robeck, and Police Chief Hernandez. All right, the next item on the agenda this evening is citizen participation. The purpose of the public comment period at this meeting is for those wishing to address the Council on any matter. It is not intended for debate and discussion with the public. Please state your name and city for the record. Lastly, we kindly remind you to limit your comments to three minutes. There's nobody on the sign-in sheet. We have... She doesn't, okay. All right, then we will move on to additions and deletions. Are there any requested additions or deletions to this agenda? Seeing none, we'll move on to the Consent Agenda. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless the Councilmember requests in which event the item will be removed from the Consent Agenda and considered immediately following the Consent Agenda. All items listed are considered routine by the Milton City Council and will be enacted in one motion. May I get a motion to approve the Consent Agenda? Yes.

I would like to make a motion to correct the minutes from July 13th. I'll just continue. I'd like to propose a correction to the minutes on Monday, July 13th.

So let's remove that item from the agenda, and then we'll vote on the rest of the consent agenda, and then we'll have a discussion about it.

That works, thank you.

Any other items to remove from the consent agenda? Okay, would you like to revise your motion? I'm sorry, who made the motion to accept the consent agenda?

I don't think there was one yet.

Okay, then.

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda minus the minutes from July 13th.

OK, it's been moved by Council Member McNally-Martinez. Is there a second? Second. OK, it's been moved by Council Member McNally-Martinez and seconded by Council Member Hall. All in favour?

Aye.

Any opposed? OK, so let's discuss your issue with the minutes.

OK, thank you, I appreciate it. I'd like to propose a correction to the minutes for the Monday, July 13th, 2026. They currently state the Washington State Department of Natural Resources representative provided information regarding the importance and benefits of the trees in the community, but they don't reflect Council members also expressed specific concerns regarding the proposal of the ordinance. Since these are summary minutes rather than action-only minutes, I'd like the minutes to include a summary of those concerns so that they more accurately reflect the discussion that evening. Therefore, I make a motion to edit the minutes to add the following language after the sentence ending with benefit of trees to the community. It would state, council members discuss concerns and questions regarding private property rights, data support and regulations, cost burden on residents, as well as neighboring jurisdiction comparisons.

Is there anyone else that would like to second that?

I second that.

OK.

Yes, I have it in writing.

OK. All right, is there any, I'm sorry, would you like to, Councilmember McNally-Martinez, would you like to speak to your motion?

Sure, sure. If the minutes are going to note the discussion about the importance of the trees, to me it's only proper that the Council concerns also be noted. I feel currently the summary can be perceived as a bit one-sided and doesn't properly summarize the dynamics of the discussion.

Okay. Would you, Council Member Roberts, would you like to speak

Yeah, I appreciate Council Member McNally-Martinez bringing that up. We do want the minutes to reflect what was actually discussed in the meetings and be balanced and fair reporting. If we need to do any type of amendment for how we record the meeting minutes going forward, maybe we can discuss that also at a instead of summary reporting, maybe more detailed minutes so that the city residents know what's going on.

OK. Any further discussion? All right, it's been moved by Councilmember McNally-Martinez and seconded by Councilmember Mounts to make the requested change to the study session minutes of July 13th, 2026. All in favour? Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. The next item on the agenda is a public hearing. On page 21 of your packet. on the PLN2026-0003 amendments to Chapter 17.44. And our planning manager, Stallnecker, will be introducing this item.

So this item is on for public hearing right now, and then it'll be on for discussion later on in the meeting. Just a summary before the public hearing. When the update was adopted in 2025 for the zoning code use table, there were several footprints or footnotes that said refer to 1744 MMC general use regulations. At the time, those amendments were not ready yet. And so currently, if you look at the use table, there is no item to be referenced. So these would fix that missing section. So basically in the use table, there are two, there are outdoor sales, outdoor storage and drive-thrus that are all allowed as what's called accessory uses. So you have to have like a restaurant and then you can add a drive-thru. You have to have a store, then you can add sales. So the drive-through and the outdoor sales are allowed in the zoning that have commercial-type uses. Outdoor storage is only allowed in the manufacturing and the community facilities. And so what is before you basically is language that talks about, you know, the idea is that it's secondary, so it needs to have... There's certain size limits, certain screening requirements when it comes to drive-thrus, certain volume and, again, screening and stuff, especially if it's next to residential. And then the fourth item is with the changing of the adoption of the animal section coming back into Milton, our code when it comes to things like shelters, kennels, pet shops and grooming parlors all reference Sumner's. It needs to reference Milton's so that on page 25 is just replacing that language there. So again, it's open for public hearing. It's on for public hearing tonight. And that is the end of the brief presentation.

All right. Well, I will open the public hearing at 7.09. Is there anyone from the audience that would like to speak on this issue? Seeing none, I will close the public hearing at 7.09. All right, the next item on the agenda is Item 7A, the Milton Municipal Code 17.44 Amendment Ordinance 2143-26. Discussion on page 27 in your packet. And Planning Manager Stahlnecker again.

Agenda summary is still the same. The Planning Commission did hold its public hearing on June 10th, made the recommendation on June 10th. They had discussed it for, I believe, at least two meetings. Again, it had previously discussed it in 2024 and 2025. So at that point, no further presentation.

All right, any discussion? Yes, Council Member Mounts.

Thank you. For having this in here. I tried really hard to go through it and. We'd like to know if it's possible to put live links in our electronic notes or attach exhibits so that we can understand exactly what's being discussed. It was very difficult to go on the city website and try to find And then I realized, oh, well, these are new. We're adding things. So I probably wouldn't be able to find them. But I also couldn't find definitions. So as just a citizen and resident, I really don't know what outdoor storage entails or if and when it would apply to a homeowner or a resident. So if there could always be definitions included in... in what we're considering, that would be very helpful to us before we make a determination on it. And then I did notice also on pages 25 and 31, there's a typo I can get with you later on that. And then on item 7A, page 31, section four, It reads, oh, this is the example that I was just speaking to. It reads that the animal shelters, et cetera, shall be in compliance with Chapter 6.04 MMC. I could not find that on our website, on the city website anywhere, so a live link in there that would take us directly to the ordinance would be very helpful. Thank you.

And just so you know, the live links will be in the agenda starting next month. Okay. Did you have any? Okay. Yes, Council Member Roberts.

Thank you, Mayor. So on the animal shelter, kennel and pet shops for Chapter 6.04 MMMC, that was the fee schedule from what I saw. Is that pertinent though? Is it pertinent to this? Does that apply?

So 6.04 is the animal control chapter that the council adopted what a month or two ago in preparation for the animal services coming back into Milton.

Correct, I recall that. But my question is where it's referencing 6.04 MMC. Is that pertinent? Because I saw the actual portion of it. Is it applicable? Because it just seemed like a fee schedule. So I was just curious. Is that the intention?

No. So 6.04 is animal control. So it has all the details for dog licensing, animal shelters, animal shelter kennels. So maybe.

Well, there was costs associated with it, too. There was like a penalty amount.

Yeah, it's linking it there because that is here. I have, you know what, let's do this. Since I have it on my computer. So this is 6.04. So it's looking at here. So it links it to all of the, and maybe I'm misunderstanding, but here all of the rules for general standard indoor facilities at four. So if someone wants to have a animal shelter or a kennel or a pen shop, one, it has to be in the correct zoning. The zoning table would say it's allowed in these zones. And then they would come here to determine how. And then if you click on like indoor facilities, it has all the rules of what they have to do to make it be compliant. So right now it says go to Sumner's and look at Sumner's. This is saying you can stay in ours, you don't have to go to Sumner's. Does that clarify?

Yeah, I'm not questioning reference. I just wanted to ensure it was accurate and correct. Yes. Okay.

Yep.

Any further questions or discussion?

Yes.

Thank you, Mayor.

One other consideration. So with the outdoor sales, some of the verbiage for, let's see here, I believe it's section B. Yeah, the temp sidewalks. So it is not... I guess really outrightly stated about any kind of duration. It just kind of gives limits based on like holiday weekend sale, et cetera. So technically somebody could have an outdoor sale in the entire year based on some of this vernacular. Could we potentially add like a maximum amount of days per year you can allow this or more precise wording? That's not so vague.

Um, there was a little bit of intention of that. Um, the idea being that temporary sidewalk, it depends on how we want to categorize it. You know, it could be like Safeway who is sort of always having something and it changes. Um, you know, it's watermelon season, it's pumpkin season. So that was sort of that, like, um, you know, that limited in product that it's something that's always changing. Um, but we could look at either a timeframe or maybe a specific minimum size of space or something. It was sort of trying to differentiate from the permanent outdoor, which is more like maybe car sales or something that is a permanent outside. That's the majority of what they're doing with their office.

Yeah, that's understood. But the thing is, this could be done in any zone, I think, based on this method of selling. So any zone could pertain to this. And again, based on that fact, somebody could potentially abuse it, I guess, if somebody wanted to do that. I'm not being a stickler to it and say, hey, we got to do that. But it's just a concern that somebody could do that if they felt like it and kind of work around the system a little bit?

So again, just to clarify and happy to answer questions. So on the temporary one, it has to be adjacent to an indoor retail use. So it's only going to be next to a store. It can't be a house because it has to be adjacent to an indoor use. That's if... And again, the retail use would have to be in a zone that allows that. And the idea was, again, the intention was to leave it sort of a little bit flexibility for those kind of minimalist things. So if the council feels like there needs to be some tightening up, we can do that. Versus, like I said, in the permanent use, Again, so our zoning code, since that was one of the questions is trying to put these pieces together is in our use table, there's what's called accessory use category. So in here is things like, drive-throughs, outdoor sales, outdoor storage. You go across, you find out what zones they're allowed in. So in this case, outdoor sales is allowed in the TCMX, UMX, business, NC, M1. Outdoor storage, again, outdoor storage is assuming you're sort of, it's more, you know, kind of like what our public works does or something that's more just items that are just there. Maybe they tend to be more unsightly. Those are only allowed in M1 and community facilities. And again, drive-throughs are in our commercial zones. So, and again, these are not dealing, I mean, these are dealing with the commercial ends of stuff, so. And I can provide, like I said, I will provide a link to the use table as well as I can provide a hard copy of that for the next time as well. And just for future reference, if you're on our website, anything that's code, MMC code is this dot right here. It's gonna take you right to our code and then those things can be found, so. Councillor Schell. Okay, so I will bring some of that stuff back next time.

All right, thank you. Yes, Councilmember Mouse.

Councillor Schell. Thank you for showing everybody where the code button is at the bottom. And just a disclaimer that the search function is not helpful. But I had a question on our zoning map. And as it pertains to if the outdoor sales only apply adjacent to an indoor retail use, how would that work for like if one of the churches wanted to have a bake sale outdoors? Is that because it's in residential zoning? The churches are in residential zoning, which I wonder how some of the ordinances then are applied to them if they're not technically residential, nobody lives full-time at the church. maybe that's a conversation we can have later, but specifically for this, if they're not a business or garage sales or things like that, would this apply?

Code allows certain exemptions from like, I believe it somewhere there it talks about, I think you can have X number of yard sales a year. Obviously, a church cannot be actively in the business of selling, but if they're having some sort of fundraiser, those are all incidental that are sort of covered as exemptions within the business license section of the code.

Even though they're residential, that's... Yeah. Thank you.

Any further questions or discussion? All right. Planning Manager Dahlnecker, is this scheduled to come back for the first meeting?

Yes, whatever's the first meeting in August.

OK. The third, August 3rd? OK. All right. Moving on to Item B on page 33. The appointment. Through the Public Works Community Development Public Safety Committee. Councilmember Whalen was a member of the Public Safety Committee until his resignation from the Council earlier this year. There is currently an opening on the committee and newly appointed Councilmember McNally-Martinez has expressed interest in filling the role for the remainder of the current year. The staff liaison for this committee will consist of Chief Hernandez, Public Works Director Madden, and Planning Manager Stalnicker. The committee meets the second Tuesday of each month from 11 to 12 p.m. Would anyone like to make a motion? Yes, Council Member Roberts.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to appoint Jill McNally-Martinez to the Public Works Community Development Public Safety Committee for the remainder of the year 2026.

It's been moved by Council Member Roberts and seconded by Council Member Hall. Council Member Roberts, would you like to speak to your motion?

Yes. So with Council Member Whelan stepping down, I think Council Member Martinez will be a great fit.

Council Member Hall, would you like to speak to your second?

I think she'll be a wonderful fit. I'm just wondering why we're doing it this way, because normally at the end of the year, we just volunteer for it. Is there a reason why we have to nominate her? when she already volunteered?

This is the process.

OK. And later in the year, it's the process?

OK. We could formalize it more at the beginning of the year, I suppose.

Yeah, that's fine. Just curious.

All right. Any discussion? All right, this is an action item. Any comments from the audience this evening? Seeing none, it's been moved by Councilmember Roberts and seconded by Councilmember Hall to appoint Jim McNally-Martinez to the Public Works Community Development Public Safety Committee for the remainder of the year 2026. All in favour?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Next item on the agenda is the Purchasing Policy Discussion on page 35 of your packet. And Finance Director Robach. will be telling us all about this.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. The purchasing policy section of the employee handbook provides the guidelines for expenditures of the city. The attached updates to the policy incorporate additional guidelines for federal awards and add a new federal award standards section. These updates are intended to help the city manage federal awards in compliance with uniform administrative requirements, cost principles, and audit requirements for federal awards. The city doesn't receive a lot of federal awards, but this was recommended by the auditor's office as well. And this is just a discussion item only, so any questions are welcome.

Yes, Council Member Roberts.

Thank you, Mayor. So I'm going to ask you if you could kind of compare and contrast if you had a federally funded project versus a not federally funded project. What is the difference with that? What kind of documentation potentially

Oh, that's a good question. It could vary in a lot of ways. I think probably the biggest is the threshold, or in my opinion, the most obvious and biggest are the thresholds. Most of our thresholds align with the federal thresholds. but in instances where our thresholds are higher than the federal, we're required, under a federal grant, we're required to follow those federal thresholds. So by adding this into the, adding these edits into the policy, I think it makes it more visible to all employees who are looking at the purchasing policy that it primarily affects services. Like I said, our other thresholds match the federal thresholds. There's also There's several other things. A big one that auditors bring up a lot is suspension and debarment. There's a wage-related, I think it's called Davis-Bacon. I might be wrong. But there's certain other smaller things like that that to pay a certain amount of wages and check that entities that you're contracting with are not debarred, suspended or debarred from working with the federal government. Those are the biggest ones. There are other minor differences, but the thresholds and things like suspension and debarment are, yeah.

Thank you for asking. Thank you for doing this. It's great. And in addition to the suspension and debarment, there's Buy American and prompt pay and a lot of other rules. When I was reading through this, I had just a couple of comments. This would apply to the city if any federal funds were received, even if it was a pass-through grant from the state. Correct. And so we do have an adequate accounting code to identify federal funds so that we know when to apply.

I feel like we do. Just speaking for myself, when I learn of a grant, and most grants of any size would come to Council for approval, so that's when they'd be immediately on my radar, or someone's calling me like, hey, we got this money, and my first question is, where's it coming from? Because we need to know that in order to know what BARS code to assign to it, because that's Indirect and direct federal grants even have different BARS codes from state grants. And we're also required to separately report federal awards received on a Schedule 16 for the auditor's office. And you need what's called a CFDA number or an assistance AS. I've always called it CFDA, but I know that ALN, I think, is the new acronym. So those are the two questions that I ask immediately, like where's the money coming from and what's the CFDA number? And that would trigger me to direct anyone purchasing under that or contracting under that to follow these guidelines, these guidelines in here. And to add to that, our public works administrative assistant has a checklist for federal awards to check for the things like the Buy American, the suspension and debarment, the wages that he uses in conjunction with. We work together on those and he's always been involved in the audits. So I feel like for the most part we have some checks and balances in there to make sure that we're properly accounting and recording these.

So for the language that we're looking at tonight, it seems restrictive to just say we're getting a federal award, but those things really apply if there's any federal funds attached. So maybe could we add a definition to incorporate that instead of just federal award? anytime that there are federal funds coming to us through that instead of just a direct from the feds to us. I think that would help with clarity. And I also wonder if we could just leave it at we're going to comply with 2 CFR 200 and not just specifically call out 318-200.327. I mean, it's great to call it out, but Really, we need to comply with the whole super circular. And this almost reads, I would defer to you, I guess. It almost reads like we're only going to follow that section. And really, we need to follow all of it.

We certainly could just update that to just follow all of that. When putting this together, I was drawing from MRSC, the state auditor's office. The city of Anacortes and the city of Kirkland, I felt, had some good policies that I drew from as well. They all just referred to the little sections. But you're right, I don't see any harm in referring to the whole thing.

Thank you for that.

Any additional questions or discussion? All right. Seeing none, Director Rovick, is this coming back on August 3rd as well?

Yes.

It is, okay.

Yeah, it is coming.

All right. All right. The next item on the agenda is the Public Safety Sales Tax Discussion, and it's going to be Is it you, Director Roback, that's gonna be starting with this?

I think that Chief Hernandez will be starting it off and will be doing a PowerPoint that I'll mostly be initially presenting with possible interjections from the Chief or others.

Okay, Chief. Good evening, Council. Tonight's discussion item is a public safety tax. At the current budget levels of revenues and expenditures, fund balances in the general fund will fall below the targeted amount of at least 8% of the budget operating expenditure by the end of 2028. In order to sustain the Police Department public safety at the levels which meet the community's expectations, the city will need additional funds to supplement existing general fund revenues which are applied for these purposes. One new source of revenues has been identified, specifically targeted for police department operations and the public safety sales tax. And so with that, the leadership team got together and we, with the mayor, and we have a presentation for you tonight to kind of go on, talk about why we're having this discussion now. And so with that, we'll go ahead and start our presentation.

Thank you, Anjali. So on the first slide, Milton is financially healthy today. The city currently maintains a stable financial position supported by healthy general fund reserves, strong recent sales tax performance, successful economic development, responsible budgeting, and financially stable utility operations. So we did want to really point that out that Milton is currently financially healthy. And during this discussion, we are talking about discussing mostly just the general fund. So given that, there are several long-term trends that deserve attention, such as one-time development revenues are slowing, operational costs continue to increase, public safety expenses continue to grow, Streets and infrastructure continue to age. And revenue growth is expected to moderate. So why are we having this discussion? Because several trends are converging. Development related revenues are declining as major projects conclude. Public safety costs continue to increase. Aging streets require continued investment. Inflation has increased the cost of providing every city service. The Sound Transit construction will reduce sales tax along the SR-99 corridor during construction and force some impacted businesses to leave the city, resulting in permanent loss of sales tax and property tax. Also, state law limits many general fund revenue options. Labor costs continue to grow. And we've also, in particular, the police department has been affected by legislation with unfunded mandates. None of these items individually create an immediate concern, but taken together, they warrant thoughtful long-term planning. So what happens if we do nothing? As revenues level off and costs continue to rise, general fund reserves will gradually decline. Without additional sustainable revenue, reserve levels may fall below city policy. Future councils may face difficult decisions. These decisions could include hiring freezes, delayed equipment replacement, reduced capital improvements, service reductions, and deferred maintenance. And on the next page is a graph that was derived from actuals for 2019 to 2025. And you'll see the green line is estimated annual expenditures. Those are increasing. The yellow line is general fund balance which you can see is decreasing. And the orange line is the 8% general fund reserve that we've set as our goal for the general fund. And that's also increasing because as general fund expenditures increase, that 8% comes to a higher amount. So while these do, and these are, this graph is based on actuals from 19 to 25, but at current budgeted levels of revenues and expenditures, we estimate that fund balance in the general fund will likely fall below the targeted amount of at least eight, sorry, 8% of budgeted operating expenditures around the end of 2028. And please stop me if anyone has any questions or thoughts, concerns. The next slide is assumptions that were used for the presentation and the slides. And the key idea with these is that inflation compounds over time. A two to 3% increase each year may sound small, but after several years, it has a significant impact. especially when sales taxes and property taxes are increasing at a lower rate than inflation. So what does this mean? An item that costs $100 in 2019 would cost about $132 to $133 in 2027. Under these assumptions, that's roughly a 32% increase over eight years. To provide a municipal example, suppose the city purchased a police radio for $5,000 in 2019. Using the same inflation assumptions, that would be approximately $6,625 in 2027. The city hasn't purchased a better radio, it simply costs more because of inflation. And the same applies to every other labor good material that the city uses. And you may have noticed that today many Washington communities are facing budget challenges. Many jurisdictions have recently discussed budget deficits, hiring freezes, layoffs, delayed hiring, service reductions, deferred maintenance, reduced capital spending, but Milton has the opportunity to avoid or mitigate these situations through early planning. Different funds on the next slide shows the different types of revenue for the different types of funds because different funds do have different types of legal authorities and require different financial strategies. The distinction is critical because enterprise funds can generally be supported through utility rate adjustments while the general fund relies on revenue sources authorized and limited by state law. And the largest of those, especially for the city of Milton, are sales taxes and property taxes. So the general fund supports essential services, the type of services that most citizens associate with a municipality, police, streets, parks. a court, planning and community development, IT, administration, finance, legal services, and emergency management. The general fund supports the services residents rely on every day. When general fund revenues are constrained, all of these services compete for the same limited dollars. So looking ahead, Milton has an opportunity, not because we face a financial crisis today, but because we recognize future challenges early, and we can address these issues through long-term financial planning, responsible stewardship, maintaining strong reserves, and protecting community services at current levels into the future. So tonight we were just hoping to, the staff is just hoping to seek input from council regarding the submission of a proposal in the next general legend for a public safety sales tax.

Yes, Council Member Roberts.

Can we comment, discuss? Of course. OK, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Very, very helpful, very useful. Have other alternatives been looked at besides this particular tax?

That's a great idea. We have, as a leadership team, discussed all the other alternatives and we've talked about many times. We have some time, and that's why we're kind of starting these discussions now. But we've looked at other revenue alternatives and other expenditure, reducing expenditure alternatives. For instance, the animal control was one way to save some general fund monies. And we are looking at other ways to save general fund monies as well. Right now, I think we feel that the service level is appreciated and important to the citizens. So I guess as a leadership team, we were seeking additional revenue services before cutting expenditures and affecting that service level that we're providing to the public. We were trying to take those steps first and then possibly look at reducing expenditures.

Do we currently have a B&O tax?

We don't, that was one, we don't have a local business and occupation tax. That was one of the items that we looked at. We decided to bring this to you all first because we estimate that the revenue generating power of a business and occupation tax and the public safety sales tax would be roughly about the same amount of revenue or fairly close. However, under a local business and occupation tax, we as a city would be required to administer that We're not sure how much of a person's time that would take. My guess would possibly up to, to properly implement it and administer it, it could be up to .5 of an FTE, thereby kind of reducing what's coming into the general fund. I don't think that my department has some ability to absorb some extra resources. I don't think that we would be able to, it would be difficult to fully absorb a local B&O tag just with the staffing that we have. I feel like we would possibly need to outsource some of that and do some in-house, would still come at a cost and thereby, like I said, reducing the amount that's actually contributing to that general fund balance.

All right, thanks for that information, appreciate it.

Council Member Ternes.

I just want to thank you so much for being this one step ahead of what I feel like is going to be a huge change, especially economically on the State Route 99 specifically in that sound transit coming in. There's a lot of business revenue that comes in from that particular stretch of city. So I'm thankful that you're looking ahead and trying to figure out the solution because it's going to affect our city a lot. So thank you. I appreciate that. I don't know if it's millions, but I picture it because there's some significant businesses down there.

There are. And so we did look at what that was for businesses. We went with the, we received the list of Sound Transit displaced businesses and we looked at what we received in 2025 for the whole year for those businesses. And in sales taxes, it came out to about $114,000. In property taxes, it was about $12,000.

Wow, all right, thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Council Member Mouse.

Thank you for coming up with options. That's great. I like that this would go before the public for a vote. Yes. And I would think that if for some reason the public voted down the tax, then we could revisit things like the B&O, and we'd still be ahead of the game because of the preplanning. So thank you.

Councillor Stroud. Councillor McNally-Martinez.

Because this is law enforcement-based, can you explain to us, because I know people will ask, the cameras and the revenue that hit the media, where does that money go and how is that used?

Thank you for asking that because I think that is a question that a lot of people or a lot of residents and business owners will have is, well, what about these cameras? They must be bringing in a lot of revenue. Unfortunately, that camera revenue is very restricted. It can only be used for the construction of traffic safety features. It cannot be used to support police officers or police vehicles or police operations. It can only be used to build... things that relate to safe streets such as sidewalks or bike lanes or roundabouts, speed humps. So it can't be used in the general fund at all.

Unfortunately, we were too late. And so our program was implemented about a year after the time where the legislators changed the law. And for whatever reason, they said, the cities can have this revenue. They even said the police department doesn't even have to manage the program. And trust me, I tried to give it to Public Works, but they wouldn't take it. And so it's still in the police department. We're only allowed to recover our costs for the actual service to manage the program. And that's the same thing with the courts. And then, like she said, that revenue goes into a special fund. And that special fund is very specific on how that money can be spent. but that is money that will help improve the infrastructure in the city because it's supposed to be used to make public safety improvements to multimodal traffic throughout the city. So we can do environmental design, we can do traffic calming. And so right now we're still waiting to see what our final revenue from that is going to be. And then that in next year, we'll be going to Dustin Madden this year, but for planning and then council, And you guys will be making decisions on how that money is going to be spent in the city under the rules of the current law. So that's not something that could not change. And so that's one of the things as we talk about this tonight, our picture could change. I call it our event horizon, which is that red line that says in about 28, we're going to start running out of money. That line could slide along if there are legislative changes, if there are unfunded mandates that the legislators say, no, we want to help the small cities. We want to help them be able to facilitate the legislative changes that we've implemented, such as patrol tactics, which is now one week requirement that is, if you weren't in the academy, you have to send your department through that. There's certain diversity inclusion programs that have also come out of the state that said you will do these programs. And so again, it's increased the cost to the city. But unfortunately, the reality has been since 2009 when we had the first economic downturn, which I knew at the time because I was an elected official myself, is that slowly since 2009 in the economic downturn, federal subsidies to state and the state then trickling it down to the jurisdictions has been slowly been turned off. And basically they've said, it's up to the jurisdictions to figure out their revenue problems and how they're going to provide basic services. And so it makes it very challenging. We're in a fortunate position that when the new mayor came in, the leadership team sat down and said, hey, we've got something that's coming, which is look at Jefferson County, look at Federal or Tacoma, Federal Way, any other jurisdiction, a lot of them in Washington, and you can see that they're having to make these tough choices because they're having all these budget shortfalls. What we're trying to do is not be in that position. And so we're trying to slowly put our brains together and look at and have this discussion of what are potential revenue opportunities that we might be able to slowly bring into the city's revenue portfolio. But we also know, like everybody, we're dealing with tax fatigue because people, everything is more expensive. And then to just hear that you're going to get one more tax, it's the breaking point. I mean, it's enough just to get gas. Uh, this morning I was shocked because my personal vehicle, I put gas in it and put gas in it. $107. I just about fell out of my credit card and out of my truck when I was doing it and was thinking, man, I'm going to start riding an e-bike. But, um, So, and again, anyways, we are struggling with that. And then you get people who go, what the heck? You're getting a million dollars in traffic revenue. What are you doing with it? Can't you use that for the police? No, we can't. And that's a great thing for people to rally around and call Olympia and solicit their legislators and tell them, hey, we need to change this because as a small city, we're trying to provide basic services. And the reality is as public safety is 60%, when you add up the courts and the dispatch and the jail, and how do we do it? We have an average population of about three and a half people in custody at any given time. We just had a person that was sentenced to 300 days. We got to pay for that. And so we are constantly exercising the lien processes in the city. And what I mean by that is we're always trying to audit, hey, how can we cut costs? So for example, this person that was sentenced to 300 days, they went to Sunnyside. We send them to Eastern Washington because it's half the cost of what it costs to house them here in Pierce County. So we're making those efforts. And for some of them, we really get a lot of pushback. Animal services. You saw that that was a very sensitive subject for some people. But we can save $80,000 or $90,000, and the police officers are willing to step up and provide that extra level of service without any compensation right now. We are constantly looking at these things. And another example of a legislative mandate that came down is that we used to have 14 days when we had someone in custody to arraign them. That was cut to three. Three. How do you take a cut like that and think about the exponential costs that ripple through the criminal justice system? And on top of that, we've had some other unfunded mandates that have come down to the courts with public defenders. and that they can only carry a certain caseload. And basically they added about 75% to our costs because they're saying that they cannot give adequate defense, therefore they have to cut their caseloads. That's on the public defender side. It hasn't hit on the prosecutor's side, but we know that that's coming too. And that's being phased in. So that's also, as we go through this process of trying to push the 28 in our, economic portfolio forward, we're going to be bringing these things so that you can see exponentially how our costs have increased. And so we're trying to get creative. And then we get this hit, unexpected, because we kept telling transit, we don't want it to go down SR-90, we want it to go down the freeway because that'll be the least impact. Well, here we are today and we're going to lose, what was it, $16,000, $17,000 in revenue?

Oh, more than that annually.

A year, yeah.

Yeah, annually it's about 100, thank you.

130, 130,000. Well, that's half of a police officer. So we've got to, as this legislative body and as the leadership team and the community, it's about service level. And at one slide, it's about quality of life. And we are under siege. And from all of the, Metropolitan pressure that's squeezing the life out of the city of Milton because we're a small city with big city problems. The example is we had a shooting this weekend. We have the suspect in custody. Good news, as I was gonna give it in my report earlier, our murder that we had two years ago, that person finally pled guilty, 22 years for murder. We had a DUI, serious collision accident this weekend. We had an e-bike, serious injury collision this weekend. you know, we are doing death investigations. So again, and we're proactively out there doing traffic enforcement. You've seen us out there. So we've got to figure out how we get through this, because I've been here for going on 13 years now, and this community is one of the best little communities. It's this little special island in the middle of this metropolitan, highly dense area, and if we want to continue to have the way of life that we have, which some people are multi-generational and that's why they chose to stay here. And then there are people that have just come to our jurisdiction because they want to live this kind of life that we live. And so we have to figure out how we're going to get through this and how we're going to pay for these basic services so we can preserve the way of life that we have here in the city of Milton.

Council Member Hall.

So with this tax, can we see something that it would include for the police?

$200,000 is the projected revenue. So you just put that into figuring out, okay, we don't have to lay a police officer off this year. Or not this year, but in 28 when we start having the act. Because when you start getting into economic distress as a jurisdiction, you can nickel and dime all you want. But I know from personal experience as being in the elected seat myself when I was a sheriff and they told me, you've got to cut $400,000 in a week. That's people. You can't cut $5,000 or $10,000 here. And you can't hold things together with Band-Aids and bubble gum.

And it can't be used for anything else. It has to be used. Is there a code that tells you exactly what it can be used for?

The RCW.

Residents are going to ask.

For the public safety tax? Yes. I thought I'd quote, I thought, let's see. One, at least one third of the revenues must be used solely for criminal justice purposes as defined by RCW 82.14.340. Eight point, what was that? It's actually in at the second to last sentence on the agenda bill. Yeah, there's a couple of, yeah.

And what we're asking for is to start with the discussion, which this is what we're doing, and then give us permission to put it on the ballot. and let the public decide. And then in the interim, we will be starting a public education campaign to reach out to the community to make them aware of what we're doing. And it'll happen in many different veins of communication. We just did an e-bike video, if anybody was looking at Facebook. So we're now, and that video was made by one of our officers with a cell phone. And he's a very talented young man. And he has apparently worked in the film industry. And so it was one of those things we just didn't know. We had this diamond in the rough sitting within our department. And so he was able to put that together himself. And so we are going to continue to make public education videos like that. And we would certainly do one on this to educate the public. And we would be doing it in writing and different various ways of communicating to get the word out.

Thank you.

Yep. Yes.

I just wanted to follow up. I 100% support the law enforcement, and I'm really glad to hear you say the education process because I think a lot of people don't even have a clue of what challenges that you deal with, and especially with the news, you know, that went out a few months ago about that revenue. We definitely would have to do a lot of education on it just for the average citizen, I think, to really understand it. I think if they understand it, they would support it. It's just a matter of the education. Yeah, no.

And then with the new mayor, it was letting him know, hey, we've got something we've got to start working on right now, and we need to start letting the community and the council know so that we can gather the village and figure out how to get this done.

And I think you kind of already touched on it, but I just wanted to clarify, kind of going back to yours as well regarding the camera revenue.