City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, it's 6 o'clock, so we're going to get started. Um, your Lake Stevens City Council meeting tonight, April 28th, 2026. We're at the mill in downtown Lake Stevens. And so I'd like to call this meeting to order. Please stand with me for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nationisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Could we please get a roll call? Absolutely. Council member Arias here. Council member McManis

present. Council member Donahghue present. Council member Shipman present. Council member George online. I am present. Council member Edwards present. And council member Hawker here. Thank you. Could I get an approval of the agenda? Kelly, did you have something to add? I do have something to add. So with council approval tonight, we'd like to add a discussion item which is the status update on the finance director recruitment. No action, but we'd like to add that as the addition as a second discussion item. Do we need a motion? Yes. To approve the agenda with that amendment if you're in agreement. So moved. Second. All those in favor or discussion? All those in favor? I

I opposed. Okay. So we have an agenda. Um first we'll start with citizens comments. Do we have anyone online? There is nobody online. Okay. So, we do have one green sheet. It's Rachel her. Rachel. Yep.

Okay. Um, good evening council members. My name is Rachel her and I'm here on behalf of Lake Stevens Rowing Club to share a brief recap of our annual spring sprints regata and the impact it had on the community. This year, this year's event brought 765 rowers to Lake Stevens with youth racing Saturday and masters on Sunday. The athletes represented 25 clubs and nearly 485 entries, making it the largest spring riata in the Pacific Northwest. For context, comparable events like Green Lake Spring Riata is around 260 entries and even multi-day events like Covered Bridge, which is over three days, is only 366 entries. So beyond participation, the community impact was significant. Using conservative estimates of about 2500 attendees and an average spend of $25, we think the regata generated roughly $62,500 in direct local um economic activity just in one weekend, including 6,500 in sales tax, which should have generated about $2,500 giving back to the city of Lake Stevens. Our local businesses also confirmed what the numbers suggest. They're extremely busy, some with lines out the door, and overall feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Uh events like this don't just happen in one weekend. They position um Lake Stevens as a destination for youth and amateur sports, which brings repeat visitors and ongoing economic value. And from an organizational standpoint, we're proud to share that Briata will exceed last year's proceeds, but the financials will follow because all of our expenses aren't in yet. As part of our debrief, I also want to briefly highlight a couple operational lessons learned. One, the sprinklers went off in the middle of the night with all of our shells stored all over. So, we'll turn those off next year. And then the wood dock condition actually during launching uh a piece of the dock came

away with one of the boats and was like, so the boers were like hang, you know, the rowers are hanging onto the dock and the boat and it's all breaking away. So, anyway, Scott and Chris went and fixed that really quick. Luckily, we had hardware on hand. Um, we've alerted Tanya and her team and so they're going to go look at that and I know that it's under review as far as being repaired. Uh, most importantly, the experience was exceptional. Athletes, coaches, and families consistently shared how much they love being here. It's great racing, strong volunteer support, and a very welcoming community. Um, truly created positive energy across the city, and we see a great opportunity to expand it going forward. So, I want to thank you for your continued support and partnership. Events like this are a reflection of what we can accomplish together. And in closing, I want to introduce Jacob Vila. He is our new external vice president for the Lake Stevens Rowing Club, and he's going to be your point of contact going forward. Thank you.

Great to be here. Thank you. Okay, so tonight um we do have a public hearing a couple of them. The Dawson reszone I think we have consent agenda first. Oh, do we have Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought we had already approved that. Um, could I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Any discussion? Okay, the motion passes. Thank you. Okay. So, now moving on to the public hearing. Um, we didn't vote on that to pass the consent agenda. Oh, okay. All those in favor? I.

Those opposed? I guess now we have an agenda. Thank you. Third time's a charm. Um I guess I really want to get to this public hearing. Chomping at the bit over here. Um so the first one's um the Dawson Rezone public hearing. Um and David um Levitton is in charge of that. And are we just continuing that to May 19th without a presentation today? Okay. So you will Yes. The request is just

The request is just for continuence to leave the public hearing open and I believe that is until May 19th. Okay. Do we need a motion? Correct. You officially open it. Okay. So I'll officially open the public hearing. Dawson Reszone public hearing and you'll look for a motion to continue the hearing to May 19th, 2026. Okay. Could I get a motion to continue the hearing to May 19th, 2026? I move to continue the hearing to May 19th, 2026. Second. All those in favor? I I.

Anyone opposed? Okay, the motion passes. And so the next public hearing is the same thing. We're looking to continue it to May 19th. It's for Riper, if I'm saying that correctly, reszone public hearing. Um, and if you could confirm once again, we're just looking for a motion to move that to the 19th. Officially open the hearing and then look for a motion. Okay. I would like to officially open the public hearing for the Ripinger Reszone public hearing. And again, we're looking for a motion to continue it to May 19th, 2026.

I'll move to continue the Ruper Reszone public hearing to May 19th. Second. All those in favor. And could we have time for discussion? Oh, sure. Um, can I get a second first? Second. Okay, let's go ahead and open it up to discussion. Council member Jordad, thank you so much. Could we just get uh um just an update about why the um public hearings are being uh moved or left open till the May date? Okay, David is online. So, let me just bring him into the meeting real quick.

While we're waiting for David, let me just remind you when we do these public hearings, they're both closed record reviews. And remember what that means is it's entirely on the record. So the comments that you should receive at the public hearing should be based upon the record before the hearing examiner. They're not allowed to bring in new things, new evidence that was not brought before the hearing examiner. So, it's it's probably good reason that you look at if you're you're interested in this these two reszones, look at the record so you're acquainted with what it says also, but remember they're closed record hearings.

Principal planner uh David Levitan, can you speak to um Mayor Prom Georgestad's question about why these are getting continued?

Yeah, I can do that. So, David Levitan, principal planner. So, this being a type four land use application, uh, both of these being the Rip Bridger Reszone and the Dawson rezone or type four land use applications that involve a recommendation from the hearing examiner. And then, that recommendation is considered by the city council following a public hearing that was originally scheduled for this evening. It was noticed publicly noticed, I believe, on April 17th. Um, in the time between the date that it was noticed on April 17th and tonight, there was a request for reconsideration filed by a party of record. So, that basically stops the process and kind of remands it back to the hearing examiner so that they can consider the points raised in the reconsideration request. Um, so staff is recommending tonight instead of reviewing and taking action on something that still requires a rec that's processing a reconsideration request for the Dawson reszone, we're requesting that both of them just be opened and immediately continued to a date certain of May 19th because these two reszones are tied together by the development agreement that was uh authorized for signature by the council for the mayor to sign back at the end of 2025. So we didn't want to have discussions. The record uh presented from the hearing examiner may be changing. So the entire record may be supplemented uh by this reconsideration decision. So we didn't want to have initial discussion before that reconsideration decision was made by the hearing examiner.

Thank you David. That explanation was um very helpful and much appreciated. Yeah no problem. Any other discussion? Okay. Um, we've got a motion and a second. All those in favor? I I

Anyone opposed? Okay. So, the motion passes. We do have one action item tonight. Um, it's our emergency contract award. Um, resolution number 20265. We all received a copy of the resolution tonight. Um that wasn't in your original packet. Um so you might want to take a look at it. And um it looks like Aaron Halverson, our director, is going to speak on that.

Yes. Thank you, Council Member Shipman. Aaron Halverson, public works director. Um so uh this uh agenda item is in regards to Frontier Heights Park uh improvements which are partially constructed. Uh the original contractor was terminated recently for default and that has left the site unstable with open trenches and storm deep storm water structures with unsecured lids. As a result, it is in the city's best interest to use state law and our local uh the uh city's procurement policy to execute an emergency contract award to hire a new contractor to complete the project. Once the current uh the original contractor was terminated, the city quickly solicited bids from the other biders on the original advertisement and received a low bid from Diverse Earthworks for 1,112,613. Uh that is consistent with the adopted budget. We don't foresee uh any issues with the budget for this project moving forward. So, uh, what we ask of the council is to make, uh, approve the resolution 2026-05, uh, that will allow the city to use the emergency procurement uh, laws uh, and the the the city's procurement policy to uh, award this contract to Diverse Earthworks to complete the Frontier Heights project. Any questions? have a question. Um, so our decision to do this, uh, is, I'll say, independent of whether or not there's potential litigation from the previous contract holder. If they were content to walk away, we'd take the same

course of action. If they choose to sue us, we take the same course of action. This is just a matter of the status of the lot and our desire to prevent any injury harm and make sure that that gets rectified quickly. it it's our desire to make the the property safe and to complete the project in accordance with local and state law. So your statement is correct though this is independent of the termination uh the satisfaction of the sunset grill with that and if we would do the same whether or not they choose to follow some sort of appeal process or they don't.

That's correct. Thank you. And just to give a little more context, um so the proposed budget was 1.28 and this is coming in at 1.1. Um so uh it doesn't look like there will be any kind of increased cost. Um and no changes in the budget. Um it looks like most of these funds are coming from grants. Um, and so am I missing anything or does that sound pretty That's That's accurate. Thank you. Any other questions?

I'll make a motion to pass resolution number 20265. Second that. Any discussion? All those in favor? I I Anyone opposed? Okay, the motion passes. All right, we have a couple discussion items. Um, director Sarah is going to discuss law enforcement dock project.

Thank you, council. Sarah Garc, parks and recreation director. Uh, we do of course have uh Dean Thomas here with the police department. um chief is here on site as well as fire department if there's any questions or items that they want to add through the presentation. I've um told them to pipe up anytime um or if you have direct questions for them as we come along with the presentation. I wanted to start talking about the law enforcement dock project and going back in history to give you a full concept of how long we've been talking about the need for the law enforcement dock. Um, this conversation came back way back in 2017 by the police department. Um, in 2021, there was an actual evaluation done on several different sites to say where should the next law enforcement dock go? Um, I'll go over some history here in another slide that shows you the development of North Cove Park and how that area was not activated and you could not access the beach um, several years ago. uh Londinine was their first choice, but that wasn't feasible with costs. In order to do a motorized dock there, we would have to put in additional pilings um and decking and so it would have been very expensive to do a solo dock just for law enforcement at Londinine. Davies became the next preferred location way back in 2021. In 2022, this entered the capital budget for the first time with $54,000 budgeted uh to relocate the Ellie dock to Davies. This was then carried over in 2023, 24, and 2025. Um, in 2023, the doc still wasn't progressing. We've had a lot of capital projects for several years. And you will see um through history and as we continue through this year that some things just can't always move forward with the staff that we have or perhaps grants or other funding isn't secured. So, sometimes you'll you'll see them roll over due to those things. Um in 2023, Davey's Pier was realized that it needs to be fully resurfaced. That's

actually a project moving forward this year. Um with that and also looking at the North Cove Marina being um brought up at that time, we decided to split the lock the Ellie dock away from Davies and to pair it up with the North Cove Marina project. Like all projects, they take a lot longer than we would like. um the North Cove Marina um project when the Ellie dock split off that $54,000 carried over. That's funded out of REIT. When you look at the actual budget items, it's not a general fund. Um with the budget in 2025, North Cove was not able to secure a contract to move forward with the engineering. That's what we're doing actually this year in 2026. Davies Beach had u the money last year to do the resurfacing, but we only got as far as a structural um analysis to make sure that those underneath pilings were sound and secure and we don't need new pilings at Davies, which they are. So, this year we're proceeding with just redoing the deck. Um they're old wooden boards and the hardware needs to continually be tightened. Um it sometimes has jagged parts coming up and we continually nail those nails and and screw the screws back in to make sure nobody stubs their toes over at Davies. Um so that is the current status of both projects. The current law enforcement dock is right here in the swim area of North Cove. This is not an ideal project um project location for them. Um, we would like to move law enforcement sooner than later. Um, if any of you have been down here on a sunny day at North Cove Park, especially midsummer, you'll see how many people are in this swimming area. And the number one rule about swimmers and recreation is they do not mix with boat motors. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of care for both

the fire and the police department to have somebody watch and verbally direct um swimmers to be far enough back. Um they have obstructions such as swimming lines and other things they have to maneuver around. It's a very tight area as you can see from the dock where they have to back up into the swim area and then pull out. If they were responding to an urgent need, this would delay their response. And so it it's okay while they're just getting in for their normal routines, but it is something that is on the top of their mind every year. And it's why I'm here today is to talk about how can we do this sooner than later. Um, we also have with the proximity of swimming instances where kids have swam over and thought it was fun to jump off boats or the Ellie dock. It is secured with a gate in front, but of course you can get around that. um they are susceptible to vandalism and have had a few instances that have had to been rectified. Um the existing North Cove Marina DAW was built back in 1990. Um as you heard from a comment today, it is depreciated. It is on the schedule for replacement and we also are tightening um the hardware and making sure that that dock is good to go. It it gets inspections frequently. Um, but when it was built in 1990, it was actually built for 14 different boats. And if you could imagine the size of boats today and going and standing on that dock, it cannot hold 14. Currently, when we redesign this dock, we know that we need to get at least 8 to 12 boat slips for public use. Um, and with the size of today's boats, that is creating a lot of surface space. Um, all of these pilings need to be replaced at the North Cove Marina dock. Um, which is part of that $4 million capital project moving forward in the budget. Um, saying that we're in the design phase. The design phase is covered by grants. Once we get to the capital build phase, we have a

lot more money to be raising. Um, as in addition to the 8 to 12 boat slips that need to be there, if law enforcement was to stay at the North Cove Marina, they require four boat slips. um two for their boats. There is a third law enforcement boat that can join that dog. Um but that third slip as well as the fourth slip will also be used for when they need to recover um jet skis or boats or other items. Sometimes we have motor failure. Sometimes we have other issues where they need to be secured uh by law enforcement temporarily. Um so with that, we need to have at least a gate fencing on the front. Do our best to keep people out of that area. Um the existing boat lift will be moved to the law enforcement location and they require electricity. The North Cove Marina dock portion doesn't have electricity or the capacity to um upgrade without adding electrical engineering and some other high costs which will drive to the cost of the North Cove Marina if they stay there. Um the first open house for the North Cove Marina happened just a couple of weeks ago. Um the public is requesting more than 12 slots for boating. This is one of two public boat areas and as you can imagine it's very busy in the summer. This is a location we would love people to u moore their boats for an hour or two, go down to a restaurant, enjoy the park. Um so we heard that feedback in the last meeting. Um with recreation and law enforcement requirements, this dock would need to exp ex expand two to three times the current footprint. And as you look at aerial maps, that means going quite a bit ways into the lake or trying to configure in a way um that allows people to launch to come in and maneuver around the area. Um you'll see the first concept plan here on my right hand screen. Um what you see just to the north is the row dock that is extended only out to the portion of where the

Ellie dock currently is. um which is just past the neighbors dock and how far this would need to expand in order to really get the public use that we need out of it. Um these concept plans will be delivered tomorrow night at the next openhouse meeting for the North Cove Marina. If we decide tonight that law enforcement can instead go over to Davies, we're going to work with the consultant to remove the law enforcement piece out of these before tomorrow night's meeting in order to present it only as the public element. Um, but for more information on this specific project tomorrow night, 5:30 right here in this building. We would love to see anybody and everybody. Comments are important for the Ellie Dock relocation. As we're looking at both North Cove and Davies, we wanted to point out that the North Cove Marina, it is two plus years out. Realistically, it's closer to 3 years. We need to raise nearly $4 million for construction. That's going to look like going after a $1 million grant from boating dollars with um RCO, who is our parks and wreck money up at the state. Uh we'll be looking for legislative funding as well as other grants and of course talking to um the new finance director and council about REIT dollars and how to move all of that project money around. Specifically um the recreational use in the LE mix at this location is creating a lot of potential conflicts and issues especially with the length out into the water as well as um use on site. Uh the electrical was only being added to North Cove because of the Ellie portion with Davies Beach as we came back to the table and and met just two weeks ago to say, "Hey, what is the preferred location for law enforce enforcement for both police and fire? If you had a choice, where would you be? Davies or North Cove?" And they said Davies. It's a centralized location. It creates a

faster response for both the police's main building and the other location of fire just down the road from Davies. Um they could relocate this year as soon as we get the decking done which permits are ready to be issued. We're ready to go to contract and have that piece done. We would be able to finish the pieces to get law enforcement over there. It would immediately reduce the risk um the conflict with swimming area and the fishing line issues and public access. Um the electrical structure does exist at Davies. Uh we would just need to hire an electrical contractor trench and bring that power down to the dock which is absolutely feasible. Um overall it's a lower cost at Davies because we don't need to add new pilings or decking. So in the long term this will reduce the cost of uh the law enforcement portion that has to be contributed to the project which would far exceed $54,000 um as a budget to go to Davies Beach. I have that right here. Uh we're still estimating it to be about $54,000. Although costs for a lot of things have increased, the basic budget that needs to happen is we need to relocate the boat lift for the police. We just received an updated quote that came in just under $5,000. We received a real quote from for fencing. Um one of the options is just under $27,000. We're still working on options to see what's going to fit best there. We do still need to get a formal quote for electrical, but right now we've placeholded that at $19,000. We do not need a meter or any of the things that really drive up the cost of electric. Uh lighting, we can drop a couple lights in for $1,000 once we bring in electric. And we can add one more security camera to our existing system for $2,000. Um with this, uh fire department does have a budget to pay for their portion. So, we would be looking at that split as we go on. And if the project was to exe exceed the $54,000

already budgeted, it really would be due to the fencing material choice um or the electrical. Um but the 54,000 is expenses that doesn't account for any reimbursements for the fire portion. Um so I do feel confident that this wouldn't cost the city um in more than $54,000. Uh we would need to advance that. We didn't want to start getting electrical quotes unless we have the okay for council to proceed. A lot of people think what would this look like? We don't want to take away the recreational use from Davies. Davies is also heavily used. And as we look at placement of the fence, there's been discussions about if it should be right down the middle of the deck to split it in half. But the preferred alignment is actually on the edge of the dock just as you see here with four different gates, one to each finger that the law enforcement would then motoriize their boats. The swimming area is protected. Uh we actually don't want swimmers swimming anywhere out past this pier because you are mixing with boats and deeper water. Um it would be a 6ft high gate and it really wouldn't obstruct the view. There's some different options. Uh the wire works fence, which is really a lot more seethrough, nearly invisible when you're looking at certain angles, um came in at about $26,000, 26 and a half. And the picket fence came in at 28,000. This was one company's quote. This was put together very quick in only 3 days. There are other fencing options. For instance, we were unable to get the quote for the aluminum fencing. And there are other styles available, but we know realistically today we could choose one of these and come in right at that $27,000 mark. So, we wouldn't be impacting the recreation in a major way. It would have minimal impact and we would be protecting the view out there at Davies. This is the approved capital budget for the parks portion. Um, right here I've highlighted the Davies Beach pier resurfacing as well as the North Cove uh feasibility and marine unit. Essentially, we would just take the

$54,000 out of North Cove and we would just add one more line item to separate the Ellie dock at Davies is how that would look and another button. Um, this just explains what REI is in case anybody is unfamiliar. Um, RE is real estate exercise tax. Whenever real estate sells, there is a tax that is collected and the cities get to use that for very specific reason and those reasons are planning, acquisition, construction, reconstruction, repair, replacement, rehabilitation or improvement of specific capital projects. Right now, the city has refunding the museum and city hall for instance as two major projects. That is the end of my presentations. I'm happy to have Lis or Fire add anything if they would like at this time or to open up questions and discussion from council.

I'll I'll start it off by the main concern for us obviously at um North Cove here is safety. Um I wish the curtains were open. It was it's obvious to see when it's busy back there. um you know is stuff we can't of account for is what's under our boat as well, right? Um so when we are hurrying we we do have an extra spotter checking and checking again. And then when we leave, especially um in the summertime when that dock is uh crowded with kids, boats don't have breaks. So, um, we really have to go super slow out of there. Um, and, you know, hope nobody jumps in front or behind us as as we're leaving. Um, security is another one. Obviously, at North Cove here, it now it it sits in the middle of a swim area essentially. Um we've had two pontoons um uh vandalized, slashed, and then a broken window. Um so that that would be a continuous uh concern for us leaving it here. Um it's, you know, it we didn't scout this location. It was just happened to be there because the police department was situated in the middle of the lawn out here in a in a house and that was the that was the dock that our first boat was placed at. So there wasn't a whole lot of scouting and the work that uh former day Sarah did to uh locate that dock. So we are um working on a very old plan. I have a couple of questions. Um, did

you in your first public outreach for um, North Cove, did you receive any comments um, about the law enforcement dock as part of this project or was was it I guess did the public not like this configuration or did they have any kinds of comments on colllocating the law enforcement at North Cove? The main concerns that we heard from the public was that it was expanding

far out into the water, which is going to create other issues as people are boating or paddle path or or swimming around there. Additionally, we're going to run into some permitting issues with how far we can go out into the water as it's going to be triple the size of our neighbors. You're supposed to try to stay in uniform with those. Um, I know fire had some great interactions with the public um while there, but I don't know that we we were not asking them should law enforcement go or stay. We just told them it had to go here. Okay. Yeah.

Um, the second question I had, the the slips at Davies that you would be taking over, are those currently public um or public use? Is that going to be an issue or are people going to be upset about removing that from public use or are they going to be replaced? The number of slips here would be replaced in the North Cove or is that a concern? Um, these four slips are very rarely used by the public.

Okay. Um the docks that we have for motorized on either side of the actual ramp, that is typically where people pull up to and tie off. Um the dock at Davey's, the wooden one, the pier, it's rather high. And so there's a step and that wood is so aged there were never tie downs in that location. We only just added the first tie down there, I think a year ago. Perhaps it did back in the day and they had worn off. Um but last year we had added um tie- offs to one of the slips of the at the request of law enforcement so they had a temporary location when they were on this side of the lake. Thank you. Yeah. Just to expand on that really quick. When we say used by the public or not, are we talking about boats or are we talking about just people going out onto the dock?

Boats. That specific one I interpreted as boats since it was the question of replacement. Um as far as the public goes, you can see right here in this aerial photo that some people were sunbathing. Um, absolutely. There will be just a little portion of square footage that is no longer able to be accessed for sunbathing. Um, however, there's still a good amount of space out at this location. Um, we anticipate many people will just move to the inside of this. U, we'll likely just have to paint sections around the doors to say no no standing, sleeping, sunbathing. inevitably it may happen, but um I imagine when police or fire are running at you that you'll get out of the way pretty quickly.

Okay. And kind of a follow on to that, I just want to make sure that um if there's sunbathing there, I'm assuming there's some swimming that goes on there. Um any any plans to make sure we don't run into the same issues where people are still trying to swim on that side of the dock and the police still have to spot and and make sure there's no one there. I think inevitably people will always swim where they want to. Um it is not intended to swim out past this point. Um but the proximity and alignment of dock doesn't favor individuals swimming past this point once we have that gate up. Okay.

What we do envision is the recreational users will use the area to the left of the covered area and they may walk out on the motorized dock and can be on that area. Um but it it really is unsafe to be that far out in the water and we would advise um everyone talk to their children about that and be aware. We don't want to lose any lives um during the summer months. Swimming is is prohibited there. I'm in that open water area going up to the boat launch anyway. Um as opposed to here in north north north cove it is the swim area is advertised as such um in front of that dock. So, um, that's the main difference.

Okay. Thank you.

I I just would like to make a couple comments. Um, first of all, thank you Sarah. That was an excellent presentation. Um, and as someone who uses the lake, this is, I think, a very good idea for a couple of reasons. Number one, I like the use of saving money instead of spending money where we could otherwise save it. Um but also here at um North Cove Dock, we have a very large no wake zone um as you enter the dock. And in that no wake zone, you see people laying down on their paddle boards all the time. So, as we've got emergency vehicles going through a no wakeake zone that's quite large before they hit the open water and you've got people laying down on their boards, that's a safety hazard I haven't heard discussed yet. That's very real. These aren't swimmers. They're literally laying down on their paddle boards and they're not usually brightly colored either. They blend in pretty good. If it's choppy at all, you don't see them. Um, very good reason why there's no wake zone until you get out to the open water. Where with Davey's Beach, you're right there at the open water. They can hop on their boats and zoom wherever they need to go. So, I really like this both as a safety and also I like the the use of our citizens funds. It sounds like this is a better use of their funds and hopefully we'll get some grants too. So

Sarah, what's going to happen to the old dock once this is moved? The law enforcement old dock um is going to be used for mitigation, which means anytime like the North Cove Marina is going to expand. We have to do mitigation. So that's removing old docks or planting new vegetation. And so it will be demoed.

Okay, good. Um I think there's nothing wrong with having more police presence at Davies. Just completely agree with that. And I also think there's a couple things to to in addition to what Councilman Shipman said. We also have to think about, you know, unfortunately recovery and ambulance access, law enforcement access, firefighter access is a lot better at Davies Beach and it's you mentioned before the proximity to two stations. So I like it. Thank you.

I was just going to second um Council Member Mc Manis on the safety. I was thinking about that, too. Um, the other thing that I was thinking before you got into the budget aspect, Sarah, was um, man, that would be great if we could keep it at that 54K. Um, because my next question was going to be, um, what would that look like, uh, you know, in the supplemental budget? Um, but I was here when we had that open house and um, I remember looking at all of the diagrams that um, citizens had drawn and put together of those boat docks and there wasn't a single really good one with all of the slips and and and the police um, watercrafts and stuff there. So, um, if this does go forward, I'm I'm anxious to see um the progress of what North Cove um, will become. Um, but yeah, thank you for your explanations. I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Can you talk about the need for four slips ultimately? I'm just concerned about the lack of recreational use of those fingers on the dock. Your current LE doc only has two slips. I mean, do you need four? What percentage of time are you actually going to use all four of those? So, um, four were forgetting a fireboat there as well. Full-time fireboat there. Um, we have two boats in the summer full-time on the water and then a and then the fourth one would be for a recovery slip essentially for towed vessels um, property that we have to tow in. So four is kind of the the magic mark.

And again, I'm really just trying to find a way to help our youth, for example, use those fingers because I know they're used all the time, right? So again, what's the what percentage of the summer do you think that recovery slip is needed? Could you get away with using only three and leaving one of those fingers open and then Yeah, if you need a place for your recovery boats, you you find another place for it because it's not that frequent. I mean, well, the issue is if we if we don't have it, we would have to put a recovery vessel like near the launch itself and we would gum up that area. What do you do now though? Where where do those vehicles go now? We we have to put it at the launch and it causes issues.

Yeah. And so I guess I'm just wondering what's the the what's the better result, right? that you occasionally gum up a a launch with a recovery boat versus occasionally or full-time uh keeping up that uh finger open for kids to play and recreate and sunbathe and things like that. So,

right, it again like I kind of re reiterated at the beginning, it's a safety major safety issue. I I want to k keep um people off those finger docks because a lot of times they're just not laying and sitting there. they're jumping off of there. Um, so that's a that's just a major uh issue for us. And when we met about this proposal with fire and Sarah and myself and Sergeant Barnes, who's in uh kind of oversees our marine program, we were very cognizant of we don't want to take up we don't want to bogart this dock from the public, right? Um, that's why we moved it the fence line to the very edge. We were talking about moving moving it back some to give us more room, but we still want this primarily as a public dock. We recognize that um this is a huge draw and we want to take away from that. So,

good. And then just the other comment as you look at fencing. Yeah. Is there a way to somehow make it compatible with the rest of that fencing that goes over the covered area? I know it it'll be difficult to do, but yeah, I'm just concerned about the transition and it changes from a what could look like a nice public dock to then a police fence, which is not going to be no matter what you do, it's not going to look beautiful unless you're great and creative, but I'm eager to see what that looks like.

The current fencing at Davies has a top and bottom rail and it has some wavy sections in between. That would have to be handwelded. It is a customuilt fence and you're looking at anywhere between two to three times the cost if not more. I'm happy to get a quote for it, but we will be paying for the look. Um, one of the things I I put on here I didn't verbalize is artistic or interpretive panels could be added later. And what I mean by that is my vision for an artistic panel here is when you stand at certain locations there's a beautiful mountain range. And if you were to have a um cutout welded panel, which we couldn't get from a a CNC cutter, you can do the outlay of the mountains and do some interpretive things and do some really creative artwork to kind of help it. Um, but as you can see from this wire works one, it's it's pretty open. They actually have this at one of the high school uh the high school, I believe, locally. I can give you the exact location if you want to go and see it in person. Um although nobody loves the look of of a fence, we were mindful about keeping it open. it was not going to be chain link. We were not going to get the slats to go in them. Um, so we do have some more quotes coming in and we'll certainly keep that in mind. Preserving the look is important to us as well.

Okay. Thank you. Absolutely.

And I just wanted to add as far as safety because safety is really a focus here. Um, I I live a mile down the road and I don't have a big watercraft. I just have a little seed do and I launch over here at North Cove Park and one of the residents there uh sent me an email and some photos. It was an every weekend thing um teenagers jumping off that dock right where people are pulling into the slips um where people are launching. I mean right around those propellers as they're spinning. I pulled up into one of the slips and thankfully I saw the person jump in first before so I didn't pull in on top of him. He was literally at one of the slips looking for his cell phone or his friend's cell phone that got dropped there the day before. Um, no one spotting for him, no one waving off boats. Had I not seen him jump in, I literally would have probably went right over where he was under the water. So, I really like the idea of a fence, not only to secure our emergency vehicles, but you know, kids are risktakers and um I certainly don't want a tragedy off one of our docks. Absolutely. Um Parks does have some educational material that we're coming out with. It's a lake map to show where the safe swim zone is, the paddle path, and we're zooming in on each of our water locations to show that in detail. Um they should be ready in about two weeks, and I'll send them out to council to show you. Um, for today's meeting, we're really just looking for consensus. Um, if you all agree that we can move forward with taking this to Davies, we'll get to work on our part and in the next supplemental budget that finance brings, uh, you'll just see the line item of $54,000 move into a new line for the capital project.

Were there any other questions? Was there any specific kind of feedback you were looking or do you have what you feel you needed? No, just put that. Okay, no vote. It sounds like everybody's in agreeance. Nobody wants to hold it up. Perfect. Thank you so much. We'll we'll get to work on this and we'll include it in the next supplemental. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you. Great job. Okay, moving on. We do have a city department report. We have the Lake Stevens Police 2025 annual report. Actually, just reminding you of the discussion item we added tonight on the recruitment status. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yes. So, we did have a walk-on item. It's a status update on the finance director recruitment.

Thank you so much. I'm excited to bring this to you tonight. I've got some really exciting news on this position. A bit of history for the public. About a month ago, our finance director of 17 years resigned or is resigning in June from the position and so the city went out to uh solicit applications to refill this position. It is one of the most important positions in my mind of the city. Finance director is in charge of all the finances of the city, payroll, uh, uh, paying all the bills, you name it, related to that. Uh, and we're audited every year by the state auditor on all of our operations as it relates to finances. In addition, the finance director is responsible for investing the city's money into investment accounts. So, they have to have that back knowledge. Uh we posted the position and as of today was our first uh go through of the applications. We have 38 applications. So really excited about that. Um I've yet to go through them and start reading them, but I will start that tomorrow. Uh, as a bit of history on this, during the 2026 budget process, the city council reviewed the budget schedule for or salary schedule for all of the positions and that was part of the approval process um of the 2026 budget. That salary schedule was put together by a consultant and the city staff worked with the consultants to uh decide where a good salary range would be. we went to the 60th percentile on that and that was a council action at that time and so that's how the salaries were established for all the positions. Uh the next step in the hiring process like I say will be going through the applications and uh scheduling some interviews tonight. And I understand there might be some questions about the salary, how we uh maybe some more detail

how we arrived at that. And so Anya is here to speak to any of your questions and help with the kind of the history of the um pay for this position.

So I guess uh I can jump in then since I I'm the one that requested this discussion. Um so yeah, everything Jean said uh I agree with completely. this the salary range for this position was established through a formal process um with approval of counsel. That said, you know, and shame on me. Um I I guess when I was thinking about that approval, I wasn't thinking of, you know, one of the most senior director positions in our city um suddenly becoming vacant and having to advertise that and any discussion that the council might want to have going forward um about pay range. And so, uh, I had some great discussions last week with Gan and with Greg. And really, I just I wanted to open this up to a discussion with the council because I know we've been pretty budget focused as of late. Again, this is, you know, one of the more senior director positions within our city. And so, I thought it would at least be prudent if we could discuss any salary that would be attached to an open position before any offers go out versus talking about someone who's already here, whether that position needs to exist, that sort of discussion. Um, so kind of where I landed with Jean is and and with Greg, um, if if we the threshold issue is do we want to offer any input on this? If the council does, my understanding is we basically have two options. One is we could make this an action item and by motion change the salary range. Um, that is messy. We've already advertised the position. We'd have to readvertise it. Cance would have to reapply. Uh, I agree with comments Gan made to me that that sort of policy level discussion is probably better suited to a larger budget discussion later on the year. More informally, what we could do is offer Gan guidance, that email he sent out where we've got the the steps for the director level pay. Um, we could offer him, you know, our thoughts and opinions on what step is

appropriate as far as extending offers and then he could go from there. So, with that, I'll be quiet and kind of leave it to everyone else to chime in if they want. When you're talking about what steps though, that steps is uh I'm understanding is dependent on that individual's qualifications, right? So, if you're looking at someone who this is the first time they're in a director position, would likely be hired in a lower step. If they've been a director of finance in another city for 15 years, then they would inherently come in at one of those higher steps. Is that correct?

That's correct. And currently we have a policy where we hire between step A and C typically and if they have additional uh experience from another position in another city or wherever they may be uh we can offer above that uh certain criteria level would be the HR director would approve that and then even higher I would approve that. Uh and I I apologize. I believe I spoke out of turn a bit when I suggested that maybe the council could pick where the top of the hiring process um or hiring level would be. Um there's rules around that and that's why I have an HR director. So I was corrected on that and so I'll let uh the director of HR Ana Warrington speak to that if she would.

Yeah. Uh there are seven steps in the range and we do have a policy um that regulates where we hire and an approval process on if we hire above step three, the HR director and the department director has to gain approval um with justification on why they're hiring above an entry- level step. And then since this is a finance director position and the hiring manager is the city administrator, there is that balance that any approval above step three would have to also be justified. Um, and a paper trail and approved through me as well or have consensus with me. Um and about setting a requirement from council or an informal suggestion could be problematic because we have advertise the position at a certain range already. And so if you were to come and tell us that we can't hire above a certain step, then that would be falsely advertising the range to the current candidates. And that may be problematic with the EPOA, which is the Equal Pay Opportunities Act. It's a law in Washington state that requires pay transparency and equity of pay across um employment. Um I think you can probably make some suggestions and say some wishes um that you wish we follow and be very prudent with the budget and only hire people and offer steps that really meet the qualifications. And I think that our um hiring team and we are very frugal and also want to give the candidate like what would convince them to come to Lake Stevens. So this is a you know a two-way street. We're trying to convince them that we're a great place to work and they're trying to convince us that they're the best candidate for the job. And it's um a negotiation process at the end of the day on pay and benefits and a total compensation package, which is why we have a range, which is why we have qualifications. And if a candidate exceeds those qualifications, then

certainly they maybe have more negotiation um capability than someone with um little or no experience. So I just want to make sure I Oh, sorry. Yeah, I just want to make sure that helps answer your question if you have any further questions. Yes, I do. Um, so I just want to make sure that I understand that there they could have all the experience in the world, but we are not obligated to offer a higher step. Correct. That is purely a negotiating function of how this is set up. Yeah, this is a range. We're not obligated to offer the top of the step by any means. Okay. So while technically available, council can convey its wishes um and that that would still be acceptable. Correct?

Yes.

Okay. Because I guess the scenario I'm trying to avoid here, like I said, is if we can discuss this and make a decision as a group, if assuming we want to make one about an outgoing offer, that to me is much cleaner, much easier than someone getting in the position. And then we go back later and we're looking at the budget. and we say actually we want to line item that knock it down. Now we've got an employee. It's an actual person in the role. Um and that just seems a lot messier to me. So uh in an ideal world, we I I would have liked to have pushed this out, but because as you said, the position is already advertised, application review is set to start today. Um I feel like that kind of forces our hand if we want to be proactive about this. I will say too that um if you were to try to direct the city administrator to set an offer in a certain way, I think that's within his administrative like capabilities right now and that might be overstepping the council's like authority because you've already set the salary. Now it's within purview and policy for us to set it.

Understood. And so I actually asked Greg for clarification on this and the situation I'm trying to avoid is where the council exercises its authority and light items the budget and reduces the range um as a one-off because that you know all the work that went into this with the consultant all the discussions um I don't want to throw that away. I'm just I'm trying to find that middle ground here where the council doesn't have to go to that extent you know within its purview in the budget and we can find a way to make this work. Can I have a comment real real quick? Uh, Mayor Prom George Sad has her hand up.

Thank you, Councilwoman Shipman. I appreciate that. Anya, I appreciate your your just recent comments. Um, because I was going to comment sort of along those lines. I think it's a really bad idea um for council to get involved in employment offers on this granular granular level. I think that our role is to look at the budget during budget season and set the budget and listen to both consultants which we have and department heads and our city administrator around what salary ranges make sense for the work that's being done by our both directors and and you know all staff. Um I think if we are I don't think it's our place to get involved at that level in terms of what step people are being hired. I think we have a very skilled HR department. We have very skilled department directors. I trust them to work within the budget that we have set to offer salaries based on what types of skills and abilities somebody is bringing to the table. That's not our business as far as I'm concerned. And so I understand that there are folks on the council that really want to kind of dive into what we're paying folks. And I think there's a time and place for that during budget session. I don't think the time is in the midst of hiring specific individuals. So just that's my two cents. That's where I stand on the issue. Um thanks for the opportunity to say a few words.

Yeah. Let me amplify just a little bit of what Anya said with respect to Washington state law. Uh over the past few legislative sessions, our legislature has gotten very tough with respect to uh the advertisement uh and disclosure of salaries for positions that governmental entities are offering. And we are required by state statute to list the compensation. If we don't follow that, those same laws provide applicants to sue us for damages. if if we induce somebody to to apply, but we're not going to offer really offer them that even if they're qualified, uh we're putting ourselves in a potentially lious situation for liability uh to that or other applicants who may be in a similar situation. And so we have to be very careful that we put out a job out announcement with a salary range, you know, of A through F and and you can qualify for, you know, DE and F if you you blah blah blah. We have to mean that. We we we have to mean that. And if there are there's evidence to show that we're not really being honest with that, um, that puts the city in a difficult situation. So, that's that's the that's the problem we're trying to mess with this stuff.

I I don't want to get too into the weeds application, but I'm curious what what damage would an applicant suffer if no offer has been extended. I I understand that, you know, we don't want to falsely advertise, but what what's what are the damages in that scenario? They can get very creative. Let's put it this way.

Well, I mean, I guess in that that puts us, you know, it depends. Again, I just want to bring this up for discussion, but um what the council's appetite is there. I to sum it up. I feel there's an opportunity here to potentially reduce salary expenditure on an open position without having to discuss an active employee. Again, you know, I would have liked to have had this discussion later on, but the timeline and when this was posted kind of sped up the clock on that. Um, so it may be that our option if council wants to take some sort of action on this is to line it line item, the budget item, which as I understand we have the authority to tonight. That's messy. So, um, yeah, really I just want to hear from my fellow council members what they're thinking, if they want to go that extreme or if they just want to let it ride or what where we're at. I I can finally add a comment. Um I agree with uh Council President Georgead in that um I feel very uncomfortable um having a setting a precedent in offer um or setting an offer amount. Um those are hiring decisions that are within the purview of administration and I would be very hesitant to get into that. I I don't feel comfortable with that. So I think um it's also appropriate to look at uh salary bands and I would suggest that we are typically don't go down in our salary bands. It's really unfair to hire someone and then tell them oh your salary band will go down this year. Um I think that's a very tough thing to do. I think the salary are typic salary bands are usually set for new positions and that's when really we should evaluate um or if the position changes in any way. Um, and typically director positions are aligned. So I would I would be very hesitant in in judging one position alone that has similar positions.

I agree with council President George said as well. I think while I would love to have a proactive approach at this Ryan to your point, I think that ship sailed. I do think however um to Jean's point, it is a critical role for the city and you get what you pay for, right? So we want to make sure we're getting the absolute best person in that role. And I think the salary range is probably adequate for that. Um, so I don't think there's any action we can take as far as trying to reverse it now. But I do think we want to look at that for next year. And I'm pretty confident that there's several other places we can cut the budget next year to gain savings on the annual cost versus salaries. So I'm in favor of moving forward that is and trust you and staff to do the

I have um just a couple clarifying um I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So the job posting is put out for the new finance director between tiers one and three for pay. Is that correct? No, it's put out for between the one to seven. Yes. Okay. Okay.

I guess the only Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no. I was just going to say I appreciate uh the focus on the budget and I appreciate everyone u not everyone but often us um looking to pull back on the budget and be conservative with the budget um with our economic times right now. Uh I agree with Mayor Perim Georgestad in this is outside of what our responsibilities are as city council and this particular position when you think how long our previous finance director was in that position. all of the experience and knowledge that she had, you know, moving forward year after year after year, looking for a replacement that's going to step into that role, I think is going to be very challenging. And I think we need to give our um our staff leeway to do what they need to do to fill that very important position. And then as mentioned during the next budget session if we need to pull back if we still feel like you know we're over budget and we need to cut you know look for places then but for now these are this is a very important position and very big shoes to fill within it. We're not filling this position because the prior person didn't do a good job. She did an outstanding job and had many years of service be you know behind her leading up to her resignation. So, I just would like to say let's let the city and our administrators move forward on this.

Well, I welcome additional comment that's for people not in favor of moving forward. So, that that settles the issue as far as I'm concerned. I agree with the others. I'm not sure this is the right place to have that discussion. I trust the city administrator and the HR director to be conscientious of budget as part of their decision-making process. But clearly, you're going to have to go pay someone to fill this role. and if we find the right qualifications, we'll need to pay what we need to pay to make sure that we get the right position there and then we'll go from there.

Yeah. I I also just want to second that I think um our finance department is probably pretty budget um aware and so I think that you know going into these applicants working with Gan um I'm confident that our our department heads and and Gan will will find the right person with the right uh salary scale within our parameters that will make the best choice for for our city um and for our residents. So thank you. There we go. Okay, are we ready to move forward? All right, so now we have a city department report. We have the Lake Stevens Police 2025 annual report.

Thank you. This uh just to introduce myself, I'm Chief Jeff Bazizo. I'm your police chief here in Lake Stevens and I'm honored to be so beside me on my right hand side is my deputy chief Dean Thomas and to my left is my administrative manager, Julie Yubert. and together we're going to give you the 2025 annual report for the police department. So, I've shared my screen and it should pop up here in just a second to get started. So, all right. So, uh starting off is our mission. We always believe in our mission and what we're doing here with our partners like the fire department that's here tonight and our school district who is here tonight. Um, we serve the Lake Stevens community by enhancing public safety and the quality of life through professional police services. Uh, partnerships are organizational excellence and community interaction. Uh, table of contents. We'll go through here. This is my letter. I'm not going to read it because I'm here tonight talking about it, but this is going to be out in the public um here shortly on our website. So, this is our current staffing as of December 31st. Um, this is kind of where we're at. We have four vacancies. You'll see two patrol officers on the bottom, one detective position and one traffic officer. Our goal is to move those detective and traffic officers because we have to hire, train them, put them through the academy is keep them in the patrol area. Um, deputy chief and myself have been looking at our stats um and looking at what it what it would take to put a swing shift in place because most of our calls for service we see between the hours of about 2 to 3:00 until about 1 or 2:00 in the morning. So, we'd like to adjust maybe one of these officers to kind of work a swing shift to help out with covers and calls. And we'll get in that a little bit later when Dean talks about staffing. Um, our functional chart, as we spoke about at your guys' first retreat, how we're broken down within the police department. I have the office of the chief. I am responsible for those things under my queue. We have the deputy chief who is overseeing his own managing of uh different task but he also has the operations division which are the boots on the ground the patrol

unit and support services you under investigations and support services support services for those students in the room that's your school resource officer falls underneath that your animal control your crime uh crime prevention traffic program marine program and all that good stuff under Julie's house she's administrative division she has all those things she takes care of she's our important person she does accreditation and our budget management, which are the two biggest things we have to deal with along with public records. Um, under that, Julie has a record unit and that's what they're all responsible for. Um, some of the highlights this year we got to do is number one is we achieved accreditation in 2020 and every year we have to um provide proofs up to the fourth year we get reacredititated. So in 2024 and then again in 2028 um we'll be there. One of the biggest accomplishment was Deputy Chief Dean Thomas. He completed a 22-week course with Northwest Police School of Police Staff and Command. He's the first one in Lake Stevens to go through this school, which should be an honor and a privilege, and I'm very happy for him and his accomplishments on that. He did a really great job. It took him a lot. He's a single dad and he spent many hours doing book work and writing a lot a lot of papers. The second thing here is um administrative manager Julie Uubert who was accepted into the six month six-month Northwest Women's Leadership Academy which concluded in March. And with that, I'm going to turn this mic over to Ana Warrington who's going to present Julie with her plaque.

I didn't tell Julia this was great.

Fortunately, Unfortunately, Julie was unable to make the graduation. and I am on the the Northwest women's leadership board as the board secretary and a co-curriculum chair. So, I was helping uh run the curriculum for the Northwest women's leadership academy. And if you don't know what the Northwest Women's Leadership Academy is, is it's um an academy that's associated with the Washington City County Managers Association. And it is mission is to help uh women and build women's leadership in government roles to create create equity balance in uh uh government roles, local government and um especially in the city manager and leadership positions. And so Julie was accepted into a very competitive program this year and she graduated in March and she was unfortunately not available to come to the graduation. So I couldn't embarrass her there. So, I'm going to embarrass her here and present her with the plaque. And she did a great job. And uh they do a competition in the academy uh where they have to present a conference pitch and it's 36 people um in this academy and there's six groups that compete to pitch at the WCMA conference in August and her group won. So, she is invited to come present at the city manager conference in August as well. So, great job, Julie. embarrassing. I'm sure I will pay for that shortly. Uh to go on a little bit more on our successes is our partnership. Like I said earlier, the fire department here, they are the backbones of us and how we keep our community safe. And the partnership that we have is just absolutely wonderful. I was with their assistant chief all day over at Snow 911. And you can see in the crowd here, they're here to support us and be a part of us. And they're also part of the dock decisions and stuff like that. So the

commissioner and uh assistant chief, right, or deputy chief now, he he gets promoted so often. Yes, but Ron, he has been great and he's been a great partner. Superintendent, thank you so much for your leadership and all the partnership that we have to keep our schools safe. Um, one of the other things we did is our commander came in, he decided to do a statistical dashboard, was working with PowerBI, so he worked with Mary'sville Zach over at um, it developed an live updated stats that come out of our CAD system and we can see when our calls for service are happening, the days of the week, the hours, the response times, what our officers are doing. Yes, they're going to a lot of collisions. They still will, and Dean will talk about that shortly, but we get to see that in real time, and that's a real big benefit for us for deploying our officers strategically around the city to keep it safe. The other thing we implemented was our hiring process was guardian software. This helps us with our backgrounds. We cut our background investigations by 50%. From about 40 hours down to about 20 hours because it's all automated. From the time that HR puts a candidate into the system and invites them, they have 10 days to respond. We get to review their background uh PHQ which is personal history um questionnaire. We decide if we can bring them into command interview. If we do we get the command interview done and then if we move them into polygraph if they succeed through that and then if they succeed through that we move them into background and then into medical and psychological and then we can hire them. Last year we processed 281 candidates in 2025 and we moved 14 into background and we hired six of those. So that was a great accomplishment by our background investigators and the staff. training hours. You can see we're invested. In 2024, we had a big turnover in staff. Out of 50, we have four openings right now. Out of that, you have 26 that have less than three years on and 11 of us can walk out the door any day. So, you have about nine hour or nine officers and staff that are in the middle of that. So, this is this is not about me and my success here. This is about us future succession planning and making

sure that you guys can sustain this the safety and the community keeping them safe with the people that we have in the future and now that we're hiring. So this is all about the future with that took over 5,000s of training hours. Um the average was 106 per employee commission site. We have to have 24 hours um by RCW. So we exceed that to make sure that we are hiring, we're training our staff, we're working on their professional development so they can be the best of the best. We also implemented a Axon VR system which gives us live scenarios with the taser and handgun. It is the funnest thing in the world to do except for when your training officer turns it on and you're 30 feet up on the building, you're not looking at it and you look straight down, you think you're going to fall. that that does not help very good with uh my equilibrium. Um building a complex power application to SharePoint and uh training process. We're working on that right now. Julia is working with Vanessa over at it and working on that workflow. So we have training requests coming in. It's all automated. It tracks all of our costs. We can keep up to date on the costs that we're spending for our training and all that good stuff. Quartermaster, we implemented the same online work form. It's working great. We're keeping track of all the equipment coming in. We know how much we're spending. people put their request in. They know exactly where it's at, when it's been um ordered, and when they expect the shipment, and when they receive the shipment. And then we track what equipment they get. And records management. I can't say more than what Julie and her staff does do. Um they're their champion of our whole SharePoint and writing policies, getting the central records done and the retention to do the reduce the risk. Um Julie can talk about this a little bit later about the great work that they're doing. Right now, I'm going to turn it over to Dean and talk about his operation division. Thank you, Chief. Uh, like Chief had previously stated, uh, patrol is the backbone. I know he just said fire was the backbone, but come on, guys. Um, patrol is the the backbone of our um of our operation. It's why we're we are us

three are all here. Um, right now we're sitting at 39 uh commissioned officers. That still puts us below the state average of 1.18. Um it's not unique to us. Every everybody is most everybody in the county. I think there's only one agency that is um not looking for bodies right now. Um Washington state still ranks dead last in the nation for law enforcement officers per 10,000 um citizens. Um, our use of force stats. As you can see, in 2025, almost 25,000 incidents our officers either got called to or, uh, proactively went to, and out of 25,000, we had six uses of force. So, um, as you can see, that is a very, very small number. Um, what is not a small number is 709 collisions for 2025. Um, I'd love to say that wasn't roundabout related, but um, it was roundabout related. So, um, the the learning curve has been steep um, from the last two years, but um, I'm confident that it's going to be figured out. Right, Aaron? Um, okay. All right. 2025, we held our citizens academy. um again from September, November. Um again, if you guys ever hear of anybody that's interested in going to that is fantastic. Um this coming year, Sergeant Bryant will be putting on the academy. Uh current commander Hingen has been putting it on in years past. Um I know uh Tasha has went through it and I it's it's a great thing for the citizens to come to just to kind of get a glimpse of

what we're about. um our training. There's some fun stuff in there. Um it's an eye openening experience to to a lot. Couple uh recognitions with officer Lanto was recognized by um Snowish Regional Fire and Rescue with first responder award in 2025 for a lifesaving event. Um officer Sheruis continued her work with the LEAD program. The lead program is a law enforcement assisted diversion program that we are a part of in Snowomish County. What that does is allow us to instead of um charging somebody for a a I'll say a petty crime like a theft or a trespass um if it's narcotics related, which it most likely is, we can um set them up with a uh lead program u manager. And what they do is they work with them to set up doctor's appointments, give them a phone, um give, you know, get their driver's license, any anything that they can um to help them kind of bridge that gap of let's see if we can get them on their feet first. There's no um unlike other programs, there's no um drug testing or anything like that. They're on their own pace. So, we're trying to build them up from kind of the the foundation up um to see if they can do it on their own. Um she uh Officer Shuis also had uh kind of spearheaded the Blue Ridge Alliance and what that is is um each patrol officer gets a credit card type of thing. Um this is all brought in by donations. is Blue Bridge Alliance. Um, what we can use that for is paying for

somebody's gas that ran out of gas. Um, paying for a car seat if we see somebody without a car seat or a faulty car seat. Um, or a hotel room for that DV victim that would like to leave but can't leave. Um, in years past, officers were just paying out of their pocket. So, um, in many cases they were paying out of their pocket. So, uh, we started that program program up and and, uh, so far it's it's a success. Um, I'll go to our investigations unit. It is a sergeant and three investigators. Um, currently we are a general investigators. So that means we're not big enough to have like homicide investigators and uh sexual assault investigators and and property crime investigators. So everybody is crossrained on everything. Um 114 cases were reviewed, 66 cases were accepted, 17 cases were uh sent to the felony prosecutor. One big one is that was highlighted here in the 2024. It was a multi-convicted predator that we made the arrest in 25. This was a multi-jurisdictional arrest. This was a big one. Um, detective Corporal Parnell was a big part of this. Uh, she um spent many hours just this case alone. So when you're talking about, you know, three and a sergeant, it, you know, it's case loads could be from, you know, 10 cases each person, but somebody may be having a case that they're working on it literally for a year. Um, our uh in uh investigators are also part of some of them are part of the Snowish County

multi- agency response team. um the smart team that uh responds to officer involved shootings and uh crimes against children task force IA support services. This like the chief pointed out this our canine officers, school resource officers, uh and our marine unit K9. I has council met CIA. Yes, everybody's met Sea. I can't believe CIA is 10. I know. I met her at the citizens academy. Okay, maybe we need to bring CIA.

I would love to have CIA come to a meeting.

Perfect. I just volunteered Officer Dreer to bring CIA to council. Um well, see obvious as you uh see this $282,000 worth of uh street valued um dope um and seizures from money as well. Uh she was the first fentanyl detection dog in the state. We spearheaded that uh effort when a lot of agencies were kind of hesitant to do it. They're waiting for CJTC to come out with policy and along with um our attorneys and and our willingness to to do it, it spearheaded it. Now she's one of many many throughout the state. We have two uh school resource officers. Officer Carter and Officer Kilroy. Um they're much more than officers as you guys know is they are mentors. Um when I was just approached last night by a member of fire and his kids go to the school, he said, "Man, I think it's so cool that they just run up to your officers like they're buddies." So that's really cool to hear. Um, we're our marine program. We talked about that a little bit today about the safety aspect. Um, we run through the end of May, so basically Memorial Day to Labor Day with uh two full-time boat guys and that is Officer Carter, Officer Kilroy. So, they transition from the school to our marine program. Um this year we are gonna use our csos also as um kind of um first mates on our

on our boats with a commissioned um marine officer as well to alleviate some overtime on on the water. Um but as as you can imagine we are the biggest lake in the county and people flock to us. So just floating around out there is a big deterrent. our CSOS. Um they do so much more than the top bullet point of animal related calls which was a lot 585. Um they also do our parking. Um and they have now started more engaging in the parks. Uh we had hired um CSO Vic uh Maxwell Vic um latter part of yeah last year. Um if you see the black truck um the Colorado out here, he is always in the in the parks doing checks. Um he he is doing um awesome. And obviously a lot of you know Margaret and she is um a regional trainer as well. super knowledgeable. We are lucky to have both of them. Evidence. Um we have a evidence tech um Deb Smith uh who processes about 1,800 items annually. Um this is a lot of stuff. Um dispose of 3 and a2 pounds and over 1,000 pills of illegal drugs. We um the big one here is the three vehicles per month held for search warrants. Um that is a a reflection of our patrol officers out there being proactive getting guns and drugs off the

off the road, but also um to Deb Smith who tracks everything um that we do in that in that evidence room. um is is crucial for prosecution. Uh we deposited $6,700 in seizure funds and we had received and tracked $187 firearms for safekeeping, recovery or evidence and seizures. And with that, I'll turn over to Julie.

Thanks. Well, while these guys would say that patrol is the backbone of the department, I of course am here to tell you that I think that the administrative and records unit is the backbone of the department. At least at least for our uh records and information management, the records unit really ensures that everything that patrol does and and commissioned officers do is handled securely, accurately, and in full compliance with state law. They do so much coordination with the courts and with the prosecutor's offices to make sure that everything that's supposed to be there is there to help ensure a smooth uh prosecution process. Um, and handle all of our records through when they're first created all the way through until we can get rid of things. Um, which is always a good day in our office. Um from from the stats here you can see that it is been a very very busy time for records. Um the workload that goes through that unit increases the more commission staff that we bring on uh the more programs we bring on because of the fact that everything we do creates records. Um the biggest program that we've taken on um in recent years obviously is our digital media program um our body warn cameras and things like that which has grown exponentially over the years. Um we we have at the end of 25 we had almost 100,000 pieces of digital records in our program that includes um body warn camera uh audio video or audio files recordings um photographs things like that um which is a 35% increase over 24 in addition to all the other workload that um that's increased as well. I'm not going to go through all of the

percentages for you. Um, the big ones that I can I love to talk about is our public records request and it's there in the chart. Uh, at the end of 23, we actually had some turnover in the records unit. The first time we'd had turnover in a really long time. And so in 24, you can see that the time that we spent on records requests increased significantly. And that was due to the fact that we spent the entire year in a training and we were hiring and training new people on how to process records requests, how to process body warn camera video. Um, and in addition in 24 uh we actually brought on a full-time employee to be processing that digital media on a a full-time basis. And so in 24 things always kind of slow down when you're training and teaching people. And so in 25 I am proud to say that the unit we reduced the time that we spent um processing these requests significantly because we had everybody trained and and up to speed and u proficient with our programs. Um these numbers that you see here really only reflect a portion of of a lot of the work that they do. Um all the record staff, they're busy from the moment they come in to the second they leave. They're busy all day long, but they do it with a smile on their face and happy to help every time officers come down and or anyone from the city come in and um and and stop to say hello. So, I'm really proud of the work that they do and the things that we're able to accomplish and and what the future looks like.

So, Julie always remembers what I say, officers, what you do uphill affects what happens downhill. Don't make the chief mad. So I always always threaten them to say I'm going to do cross trainining and evidence and records and that stops everything from happening. So um some of the strategic priorities that we have focused on for 2026 through 2028 is our strategic plan which we gave to you earlier is to continue work on crime reduction and prevention. That's the number one backbone of anything when it comes to law enforcement and making sure our community is safe. Last year in 20 2025 we were the 10th safest city. 2024 we're the fifth safest city in Washington. So that's the commitment that our officers and our staff have to keeping our community safe. Community engagement again is that's our our number one thing too is we love being out here in the public. Um now as deputy chief has told you he will bring CA in. So um that is a great um community interaction thing. We do do national night out second Tuesday of every um in August. We have the softball game that we do um guns and hoses against the fire department. It's always a great time and a fun experience with them once we can wake them up out of their easy chairs and stuff like that. So, um, and then we were winning until we went into extra innings. So, um, so and it's then Aqua Fest, too. Aqua Fest is always a community interaction event, but we're now working towards leveraging our technology a little bit more. Um, we talked about this today at our um, Snow 911 dispatch center is about all the different databases and stuff and trying to make it into one and making it safer for officers and staff because they're getting multiple software that they got to work with and trying to get to the scene and those things and it becomes a distraction. So, and then the training and development as we are always continuing to work on our professional development plan and our career advancement within the department. I've been doing this job 34 years now and it's been just a blessing. I I say every day I come. It's a hobby now and because I just enjoy what I do. I followed in my father's footsteps. And that's one of

the things I'm going to say right here. Students, listen up. Every one of you students, look at me. All right, you're all ready here. So, this is join the Lake Stevens Police Department. Why I'm looking at every one of you is because the people that we're hiring are kids that went to Lake Stevens High School that have come back and want to work with the Lake Stevens Police Department or the fire department. Don't go to the fire department. No police department. So think about a career in law enforcement. This is what you can come back and gift back to your community and make your community the best of the best. And it's because of people like you in the future that's going to make that difference. So think about a career in law enforcement. Make sure you come and talk to us so we can keep you on the right path. Don't go don't go do something dumb because that will keep you from being here. We would really love to see you in the future because that is what keeps our communities going is the service that we give back that you've learned for so many years, the last 13 years at Lake Steven School District. Um, it's continuing that out here and the service that we have. We hire at 20 and a half so we can get you through the process and into the academy by 2021. Okay, everybody listening, you wrote that down. Make sure I get that back from your teacher. Okay, I expect the comments back. Thank you. All right. And then one last thing I'm going to say is our actually second last thing I'm going to say is our foundation. We got our fi foundation up here. One of the council members is our board president. Thank you very much Mr. Mcmanis for helping us with this foundation program. This has been started by Lake Forest Park and Mil Creek and we had the honor of joining a couple years ago is aqua and Mercer Island is now part of it too. This is where we get donations. we put it towards professional development, wellness, um drone programs, equipment, and stuff like that where the community come can give a 501c3 donation. Um and then it can help us continue the work that we're doing. The last thing I'm going to say, cuz you all ask me, what do you see as the future of this Lake Stevens Police Department? So, here's the org chart that I started back in 2021 when I started as a chief and we've been working through. My predecessor actually started this and we've continued to work through this. this is

what we see where we should be at given the the the size of our city. Um but we're still working towards it right now. On the bottom side on the lefthand side is the operations. That's where our police department, our police officers are. Um we'd like to have two more officers so we can finish off that last row. That gives us uh a sergeant, a corporal, and five officers per shift per squad. We work 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Um right now we have one sergeant and two officers is minimum staffing. That's not enough for this size of a city. We need to continue to grow on that. Um, deputy chief has been working really hard to try to make sure that we have staff out there, especially come this during the summer when it gets busy. We have investigations right now. He told you we had a sergeant and three detectives. We have a one vacant detective position, but we also need to add one for what's a regional task force. We have um DOTF. We have Snowcat, which is our autotheft program. We have property crimes. Um, we have regional collision teams that we're trying to develop and stuff like that. So, that would be an extra benefit for us to help with our regional partnerships that we have and smart team and all those. Um, the next thing over is our um support services. We'd like to split that up and Sergeant Barnes does a great job managing all those folks, but he also manages our fleet. He manages our training. He manages our facility. I mean, this guy is busy day in and day out. He also does our SRO's, marine program, all those kinds of things. We'd like to split it up, make another proact sergeant, get another traffic officer in there. So, we have two traffic officers, a K9 and our two CSOs under the supervision of that. That would mean we need another commander and then another assistant to help that side of the house be able to help manage all that. And then Julie staff, like she says, you guys could see we've had such huge increases with the digital records and the um digital evidence and the processing PDRs. is we need to divide her side up, make another supervisor, and then take everybody on the lefthand side, which I call our evidence platform um and PDR, public um PDR place, is to

have our people that do our body warrant cameras, our public records um disclosures and um crime analyst and all those different split them up with the evidence officer because all those people work together day in and day out to do all the public disclosure requests and process evidence. They're all the same unit. And then on the other side is our record specialists that meet you at the door, greet you, do all the good stuff about doing the cases and make sure they babysit the police officers and tell them what to do, right? Um, and process the case files. So that's our future. We've been working on this since I've been here and we're continuing to work on that. And that's where we see this growth needs to come. So thank you for tonight. I appreciate it. I appreciate the leadership these two are have next to me. I couldn't do this job without them. They they Dean has been here since September as a deputy chief and he's done an outstanding job and Julie's been with me ever since I started and God bless her. She's put up with me for five years. So I I am really enjoying this. So thank you and it's an honor and a privilege to be your police chief.

Thank you. Does anyone have any questions? I I just want to say that I'm really excited to hear about the Blue Bridge Alliance. I think that's fantastic. As someone who's an educator, I totally know what it feels like to pay for things out of my pocket um for those in need. And so I just appreciate whoever's behind um doing that and making that happen in our community. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. You bet.

Okay, moving on to council business. Um I would like to start with Mayor Prom Georgead online. Good evening, council. I don't have anything for this evening. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Packer.

Yeah. Two items. Uh last Tuesday, Tuesday before that, uh Council Member George said and I were at the Snomish County Cities and Towns event. Um we had a very interesting presentation from the folks in charge of the FIFA event. So, not actually FIFA reps, but the Seattle area and then the Everett area. um basically the people that are just coordinating that and getting the city ready. So really interesting stuff. If you haven't looked into it, uh it is going to be very expensive to go to any of the matches, but they are trying to do a lot to make fan zones all around Seattle and and in particular down at Everett at the waterfront. And so uh great opportunities there. I don't know uh director Garco if Angie talked to you yet about if the city's intending to do anything if we can explore opportunities to make North Cove a fan zone. Uh of course local businesses have opportunities to pursue licenses and and do things in that space as well. So it's a unique opportunity. We should at least consider um things that we can do in the city to create an opportunity for people to feel like they're a part of that. So, uh, the other one was, um, just this morning was Snomish County Commission Committee for Improved Transportation. Another conversation today about, um, uh, an announcement recently about community transit and Everett Transit uh, forming a coalition or intending to, uh, sync or merge or something to that effect. I don't I didn't get a lot of the details, but ultimately lots of discussion around improving the transportation in the region. Uh ideas for future improvements to the light rail and uh some changes that they're going to have to make from the original plan. And so they are looking for feedback from community about where the region should spend those calories uh to improve light rail.

So lots of interesting things happening in that space. Thank you, Council Member Edwards.

Yeah. So, um I have a a few things that I just want to mention really quick. Um I haven't been able to do council business in a few weeks and so earlier this month I did go to the Lake Stevens um school district board meeting and I was there during the Apple Awards and council member Shippen, you were absolutely correct. I don't think there was a dry eye in the house. Some of these high school seniors are absolutely incredible. um the adversity and the challenges that they overcome um just really makes you have some big hope for uh the future um with our youth. I mean they're just absolutely incredible. Um and then second is I did actually get to go to the Lake Stevens Rowing Riotta which was incredible. Blew my mind. I could not believe how big of an event that was. And those boats I was like I couldn't believe there was one one person carrying this 12ft boat around. Um, so that was fantastic and it it impressed me even to see how many people come from all over, not just in Washington. There were people from Canada and other states and everything. It's a really really big deal. So, um, that was really cool. Um, and then lastly, um, I got to participate at Ever Community College, um, their advanced manufacturing center. Every year they do what's called um manufacturing day and they take local high school students and they bring them down to the advanced manufacturing center. And one of the things that I get to do is I get to volunteer to be a tour guide. So I do that with my class I teach every quarter anyways. And so I'm very well verssed in in the CT options down there. And so I got to host some Lakes students um down there for the advanced manufacturing day. And that was really really cool to see the excitement for all of these students um to get them in the rooms with employers so they can see what the opportunities are out there for employment especially in things like precision machining and composits. Um the industry in those uh those areas is

just exploding. Um and there was a lot of really big excitement from our LSSD students. So thank you for for um giving them the opportunity and for the school district to bring those students down to that event. So that's it. Thank you, Council Member Donahghue. Nothing for me. Thank you, Council Member McManis.

Yeah, thank you. So, I had a great meeting um with the Snowish County Council, engaged them to kind of connect dots and see how their work affects our work and vice versa. So, I met with Nate Nearing for about an hour after that, had a great discussion with him, kind of cleared up a few things I had questions on in my head of how everything worked. And then, uh this past week attended a sewer commission meeting, their their weekly event. Um, nothing really big there. They just had some basic maintenance things. You talking about the membranes and how much time we have left on those. I've actually done a great job of maintaining the membrane. Uh, it's gotten a couple extra years versus what its lifespan has been and it's in good shape. So, no need to replace right now. So, it was interesting to see them getting to work on what they're doing and how they process their meetings. So, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Aria.

Thank you. I have a couple of items. I'll be a little bit lengthy on the second one. So thank you for bearing with me. Um first the rowing riata. Thank you Rachel for updating uh and providing some some numbers there. U I enjoyed it very much. I attended for a brief period on Sunday and I got to see all the excitements and I was um like council member Edwards. I was very impressed um and enjoyed the festivities and did not enjoy the line at the biscuit and bean but went to Jay's market and grabbed a few things. Um secondly, um about the news about uh community transit in the city of Everett. Um as you may have heard last Wednesday, there was an announcement that the city of Everett and community transit will engage in drafting a consolidation proposal that would extend community transit's jurisdiction to include Everett and to be the service provider for transit and paratransit services in Everett. Uh currently the city of Everett has its own department called Everett Transit. The proposal will include provisions for the transition of employees, assets, facilities, and service. It would also add Everett on CT's board of directors as a large city. The process will include public outreach once a draft proposal is finalized and more information will be available on that from both parties um later this summer. As you know, I am currently serving um as the Lake Stevens representative on the CT board. We have an alternate seat in the large cities category, which means we don't vote unless a member of the large cities is absent. I'm also the assistant director forever transit. Um, in that role, my responsibilities direct me to align my work to be ready for this potential transition um and annexation if the city uh city council for Everett and CT's board of directors vote in favor of the transaction.

Um, this will be a very complex process. Um, in the likely scenario where a large city board member is absent when the vote on the CT board takes place on this particular matter, I will recuse myself from voting. Um, I will say that from the perspective of Lake Stevens residents and the service that CT provides to our community, uh, there's no anticipated impact in either taxes or service provided. Um the proposal would only increase the sales tax in the city of Everett by 610. There is a benefit to adding the approximate $60 million anticipated revenue from Everett to community transit. Uh we expect levels of service to increase as a result for the system overall. So um I would also acknowledge that there are many Evertransit employees in our community um and the next few months might be a little bit challenging. Um, Ever Transit employees are exceptional, an exceptional group of people. Um, and of transit professionals. I am I feel incredibly proud of the work we've done and continue to do and extremely thankful for our director Mike Schmeer's leadership and dedication. Um, from the two decades I spent in transit, two and a half of those also have been with community transit. Um, I have very many friends and colleagues that I care for and respect in their ranks. At the same time, I have also been a vocal advocate for transit employees and service when the CT CEO had fired a significant number of drivers and other employees in 2022 without a vote of the CT board and subsequently severe service cuts followed that year and into 2023. I trust that lessons learned in that process will influence a better approach in this historical decision. This was in big part what prompted me to

run for city council and I appreciate all of you who value the services our community pays for and enjoys and demands accountability from those providers. Um I will say that public transportation is a necessity and it is critical in our future growth. We all can see that infrastructure expansion is costly and limited. There's only so much we can build and transit will continue to be a part of the solution in our region. whether you personally use it or not or your neighbors do. So, I urge my fellow CT board members to ensure that a yes vote on a consolidation proposal will include adequate provisions for both employees and services. Um, I trust that our elected leaders will prioritize the long-term benefits of our communities and I urge the public to be informed, ask questions, and provide feedback. Um, and I'm open on conversations and we'll share any feedback with the CT board. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And I just have a few things. Um, first, I'd like to thank all of our high schoolers that I see here tonight. I'm assuming an assignment is due. Um, we don't usually have this many happy, thrilled faces looking back at us. So, thank you for coming and also thank you to our community members that I see sitting out there in the chairs. We appreciate your presence. We always welcome your feedback and it's good to see you here. Um, I had the privilege of doing a tour of the new library with Antonette. Um, she's with Snowy Libraries and I don't want to give too much information because they're going to have a big reveal and I don't want to don't want to give up any of their secrets. Um, but it was hard hat and safety vest day and I was out there with the general contractor who works with Noel Library and all I can say is wow. Beautiful, beautiful building. lots of natural light. Um what an asset to our

community. Um so they're they're still pretty much on time. We're hoping by the end of the summer to be open. They're going to be starting on the landscaping soon. I was excited. This isn't a big secret that the big huge glacier boulder is still there and was worked into the plans, but wow, what a huge asset to our city. Um and then also I wanted to give a shout out to Lake Stevens Public Works. Um, I was walking I walked my dog down um, Katherine Drive often and I kept seeing all of the vehicles on Katherine Drive and I was busy. I didn't have time. So, finally, I think it was just yesterday, I stopped and said, "Hey, what are you guys up to?" I had no idea as often as I walked back and forth on that sidewalk, which is often in the last 25 years, long time. I had no idea there was a retention pond back there. It was so overgrown. I had no idea it was there. I saw the city signs, but I didn't know there was a retention pond back there. The hard work that that department put in to clear out all that debris. It's looking like a little bit of a fresh haircut, you know, that needs to grow a little bit. Um, but wow, what a job and a lot of hard work. So, I just wanted to give them a shout out um for the good work they did on that project. And that's all I have. And so, um, as we're moving forward, we have an executive session. So, about how long are we going to need for that?

10 minutes. Yeah, 10 minutes. Okay. So, let's try and, uh, do this as quickly as we can because I know we got to clear out the room. So, we'll just take a couple minutes to clear out the room. Uh, 10 minutes for executive session, potential litigation or litigation 423110. No action expected to follow. Also, council, no workshop next week. It's canceled. back at 8:00. You

Welcome back. Could I get a motion to adjurnn? Make a motion to adjurnn. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? I