City Council - Regular Meeting

Does my chair seem short? No?

But if it feels short to you, then you would know more.

Of course, I don't want to be up like I'm on my little tippy toes. OK. There. Yeah.

Recording in progress.

Good evening and welcome to the Federal Way City Council meeting for August 11th of 2026. Would you all please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Welcome everybody. It's great to see everybody here on a beautiful August day. We've got Pretty good size agenda this evening. We'll start off with the update from Reach Out Shelter, Red Lion. Erica Esqueda, the Acting Deputy Director for King County Housing and Community Development. Erica? Erica?

Good evening, council and mayor. Thank you for having us today. My name is Erica Esqueda. I am the acting deputy director for housing community development with King County Department of Community Human Services. I'm going to provide a very brief overview of the reach out shelter, and then I'm going to pass it on to our facilities management to provide a brief update on construction status. And then we will provide Catholic community services to talk about more of the operations. Before I get into kind of the update of the program, I do want to extend gratitude to the city of Fetaway for partnering with us again on another project and for you hosting a project addressing such a significant need in our region. And I want to make a shout out to your staff as well. This has been a project long coming and they've been incredible and responsive and great partners. So I just want to make sure we start by saying thank you. Sorry, that's my lunch. The reach out shelter, which is formerly known as the red lion was operating as a de-intensification shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic. And it was purchased in 2021. It has 84 units. and 81 beds which will be double occupancy and then three of those will be office spaces. I do want to mention also that this will be the only adult shelter in South King County and so that's why I feel like it's really important to express the gratitude of hosting such a significant critical response to homelessness in our region. um right now the contract is fully executed between the king county regional homelessness authority and catholic community services but as of 2027 that contract will transition over to dshs for our oversight that is the end of my brief overview so before i transition it back over to our facilities management team i just want to stop and see if you have any questions maybe when we're all done but thank you erica great thank you okay thanks

Good evening, everyone. Drew Zimmerman. I'm the Deputy Director for the Facilities Management Division with King County. I'm also joined here with Hill Pierce, who's our project manager on this project. And he's done a really fantastic job taking this on last November, really, for us. And since then, in nine months, we have really gotten to the point where the update tonight is all good news. We are anticipating a certificate of occupancy this month. which is a really exciting milestone for this project. And it's been many years coming for us. And we are hoping for an October 2026 shelter opening just in time for the colder winter season in particular. Some final things to wrap up on the project is really painting and a lot of cosmetic issues on it and some other minor flooring. But we are pleased that all of the plumbing in the building has been completely updated and replaced as well as the hot water system. We feel like it's going to be a very safe and excellent place for folks to seek shelter. Great.

Hi, thank you for having me. My name is Jennifer Newman. I am the Director of Homeless Services with Catholic Community Services. So just a little bit about us. We are one of the largest nonprofit human services organizations in the state of Washington. We've been running shelter and homeless services in our portfolio for decades. We have a lot of experience doing so. I looked up some numbers, and this last reporting year, we had about 641 enrollments into shelter with Catholic Community Services in King County. Of our exits, 82% were to permanent housing. And that's pretty significant because if you look at all of King County, all of the service providers together, they're at about a 27% to permanent housing. So we're sheltering folks well, and we're having positive outcomes into stable housing. We're at a 90% utilization rate and only a 6% return to homelessness. And again, for the region, that's an 11%. So we're doing the work and we're doing it well. Um, what is reach out, reach out to program of Catholic community services, um, located at the former red lion. We're going to offer safe shelter, uh, really individualized housing focused, uh, you know, housing focused and a culture of getting folks into housing as soon as they enter the shelter. will be open 24 hours. It's an enhanced shelter, so we're going to have wraparound services. Medical folks will come in and do outreach, housing navigation, behavioral health support. It's going to really have every sort of need that folks may have addressed. We're planning on opening this fall, hopefully October 1st. The first 50 beds will be prioritized Federal Way folks. They'll be coming through the day center. And that's how we'll get those first 50 beds full and then get to full occupancy in 2027. In 2027, we will start having some of the referrals come through the coordinated entry. uh, services. And so I think there will still, there'll be a prioritization on South King County folks. We're really committed to maintaining a safe environment. Um, we see ourselves as a part of this community and the people staying at the shelter are also a part of this community. And so we really want to make sure that everyone is safe. Uh, the visitors, our guests, the staff and the community. We do have good neighbor policies, which we will be following. And I'd be interested if there's key stakeholders at some of our shelters. We have quarterly meetings with those folks and we would definitely be open to that. We want to build strong relationships with the stakeholders and the community members. We plan on having church partnerships and parish partnerships that will come in and do volunteerism and that sort of thing. We want to actively collaborate with the Federal Way Police Department to ensure that Any public safety issues are addressed timely and effectively. Uh, we're committed to ensuring both the, you know, that the staff and guests feel safe and supported and connected questions. Thank you.

What is full occupancy?

uh it's once 162. 162. and quick math that is every room in the building be taken advantage of yeah there's some of the rooms are going to be office space but yeah there's all of the rooms except the office spaces will be used for that and how long can someone stay We want to keep people in shelter until they're housed. So there's language in our contracts about 90 days. And so you may have heard this 90 day number. We know that there's not enough housing available. There's not enough low income housing to get folks out typically in 90 days. But we want to work towards that.

Are animals welcome? Animals? Like dogs? Yeah. Awesome. And so you will be providing the food?

Three meals a day. Yeah.

Awesome. And has anyone talked about the day center relocation over there?

That's definitely something that we would like to partner with Federal Way on doing. I think that sustainability for the day center that that is a good move in a lot of ways but we would need to be in a fiscal partnership with you to make that happen all right well thank you for being here and I'm excited to see this open thank you thank you very good thank you cancer Hamilton

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Erica, for coming and sharing. I have a couple of comments and maybe some questions. I saw a slide that said that King County Regional Homelessness Authority was the contract oversight, but then it sounds like they will not be involved after 2027. Was that correct?

That's correct.

Okay, that's probably a good thing. Okay, and then... really appreciate the commitment to building the good relationships with neighbors i think that that will be paramount to the success of the red lion and i think we're all wanting to see this finally open it's been a long time coming and we have a lot of people who need this service so i'm happy to see that the taxpayers are getting what they invested in thank you all right thank you and um uh councilmember stephen dawson

Yeah, I also wanted to say thank you. This has been a long time coming. And so it's great. I happen to work for Housing Authority. people being unhoused is not okay. And so I think it's a human right issue. So I'm glad that the 90 day is really flexible because otherwise we're gonna see people back on the streets. And so I do appreciate that it's 90 days but loose. I do have a question. Do you have any kind of agreement or partnership with either transitional housing or permanent housing where people could transition into from your program?

Well, we have a lot of permanent supportive housing within Catholic Community Services itself. And we definitely partner with Plymouth and DESC and sort of all of the players that are around. The process to get into permanent supportive housing also goes through CEA. So the partnerships are important, but that is a process in and of itself.

So is there any kind of an MOU or anything in place with the other parties if Catholic Community Services doesn't have a spot?

Well, to get into permanent supportive housing, the units, they get posted through coordinated entry. And so then there's a referral process that case managers, housing navigators will refer to said units. And then they have a different list of criteria to decide who gets that unit.

So there's a referral process or is it self-referral?

No, it's a referral process through a case manager. Thank you.

Okay, Council Member Coachmark.

So we're looking, thank you very much. I appreciate all of you coming this evening. We're looking at housing for emergency shelter when it's extremely cold. And so can they be referred by an officer, police officer, brought in?

the streets rather than through a case manager into the shelter mm-hmm if there's an opening sure yeah so you expect to have that entirely filled with people on a regular basis up to 90 days I I do want to say that people will stay longer than 90 days the 90 days is sort of is a is a benchmark in our contracts It typically takes folks more than 90 days to get housed. But yes, it's the only single adult shelter in South King County. So there's a high demand and need for it. I do imagine that we'll stay full.

I thought we considered the extended stay Booker House as a single adult shelter.

We do. Actually, I think the council president has a question that's going to follow up on this.

Okay. One other question real quick. Absolutely. There's some portables sitting on the property. Are those going to be moved, or what are they doing there?

Those are being stored there. My understanding is that King County is working on having those relocated at some point.

It's been there, been there for a little while, right?

I don't work for King County.

OK, that's right, that's right. I know I said all of you kind of gets up in the Jennifer with the Catholic Community Services. We get that Jennifer. Thank you and maybe we can have other folks come up as the questions arise. Council President Honda.

so i'd like to follow up on council member coachmar's question let's say you have all 50 beds taken and we have snow and wind and horrible conditions will you not open your doors to people to come in at that point yeah i i don't believe that we'll have space to do overflow shelter in that location um i i would like to

have the possibility of potentially relocating the day center and being able to use that space as overflow for inclement weather.

so that we still have to have space available for those really horrible nights.

Yeah, I think it was really anticipated. Maybe we can have some of the county people. Thank you, Jennifer. But I think it was really, and maybe some of the county representatives can assist as well. I think it was our understanding that some of the emergent need would be carried out by this facility, meaning cold weather shelter when it's an emergency. Erica, is that... What are your thoughts and if you have any suggestions?

Ideally, if we did have resources, we could use some of the other space available to do severe weather response. I think right now we're trying to just maintain focus on getting the shelter open, and then we're open to having some further conversations about how we can address additional need to do that.

I can tell you, just as someone who oversees this, and we've got our emergency manager in the back of the room, and something that becomes emergent. When we know in the next 48 hours, it's going to drop very low. I think probably the number one need in this community is to make sure people do not freeze to death. Now, what we've been doing is utilizing fusion resources on Pacifica. And I know that's your goal too, right? We're all in the same business to help people. And, you know, maybe something to look at and to think about is, you know, coordinating with us to make sure that there's some space available. Because I think one of the things that we've been seeing probably per night is about 25 individuals per night that we need to get out of the extreme cold just to save their lives. And so that's something we would put out there. Council Member Coachman, I see you've got something.

These people are just doing their jobs. And I don't falter for that. You're doing wonderful. But we were promised when that Red Lion was sold that that was going to be our temporary shelter for overnight stays for cold weather.

think that may have been the you know what I think we probably need to have some follow-up meetings on this and really you know game out and we will be in touch to talk about that issue to where you know I'm just so impressed you know number one fusion has really been there for us as a community I want to say that first but our own personnel our human services personnel, Angelina and Layla, and also our emergency manager, on a Friday at like four o'clock in the afternoon, when it was apparent that we were gonna have freezing temperatures, they really made sure that that was not a life and death situation. So why don't we follow up and have a conversation about that?

And ask them, too, who they will be serving, people from Seattle or people from here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's really, thank you very much, Council Member. Council Member Asafodossin.

Yeah. I think this is an issue that's very dear and near to my heart. So I will again push back to us trying to define where people are coming from. If you're homeless, you're homeless. If you're experiencing, if you're unhoused, You're in-house. So that is not, to me, it's irrelevant. In terms of emergency shelter as in extreme cold weather, if there's, I mean, I don't think they can hold a room just in case we need it. And how many people are you going to serve with one space or one room? So I think it'd be like somebody said, maybe there's a space or, you know, like a lobby or whatever that I can understand. But I think holding a space for emergency such as... EXTREME COLD WEATHER, I DON'T THINK IS LOGICAL. HOWEVER, THERE COULD BE SOME LEVEL OF, YOU KNOW, SOME SPACE THAT COULD BE UTILIZED. LIKE YOU SAID, FUSION, I DON'T THINK FUSION HOLDS A UNIT FOR EMERGENCIES.

NO. AND I THINK WE'RE TALKING ABOUT, YOU KNOW, FOR EMERGENT BASIS, A LARGER OPEN SPACE FOR COTS. RIGHT. AND THAT'S SORT OF A DIFFERENT USAGE AS OPPOSED TO BEING ASSIGNED A ROOM. COUNCIL PRESIDENT. RIGHT.

AND I THINK THAT'S WHAT SHE BROUGHT UP. I THINK I HEARD YOU SAY THAT RIGHT.

So that's what I was going to say. So the pool house, has a pool been removed? So the pool is still there?

Correct. That would be the financial partnership that we would need to discuss to be able to get some of that work done.

Yeah, I wouldn't anticipate that they would hold a room. I would anticipate they would have a big space where people could come in.

Yeah, just like they have a fusion, and we we have that available to us as an emergency basis over at the community center that has some operational definite operational impacts on the community center but life safety is obviously more important obviously much more discussed very good news on on on this front about getting making sure that facility is open it's a lot of folks you guys are going to help council any other questions okay we're going to follow up with that oh council member Hamilton sorry

thank you mayor yeah I just wanted to note that I too also was under the impression that there would be some emergency type cold weather housing available with this and now it does sound like that's not the case and so I think we do need to discuss you know where the breakdown of communication happened there but also so then if this is not that then is this is this permanent supportive housing or how how is it defined

This is an enhanced shelter. So people that are experiencing homelessness outside come into shelter and then work with the team on site to find permanent housing solutions.

Okay, thank you, and I will look into enhanced shelter because I don't think I've heard that term before.

The difference is emergency shelter is typically just overnight, and so enhanced shelter is 24 hours and offers other services, so housing, navigation, case management. As I said, we'll have medical staff that come in and do outreach as well as behavior management and that kind of thing.

OK. And then also, I do appreciate very much Councilmember Assefa-Dawson's comments about where people are coming from. but I will push back a little also just because I think Mr. Harold Booker brought up something very important when he spoke last time and that was that when people are placed in a shelter where they do have ties to that community it's that much easier to get them into recovery if that's what they need because they have that family support that community support

that they you know need for that and so I think that that's the relevancy there with the ties to the community but but I also appreciate thank you I'm not gonna push back but I would say they clearly said that priority is given to by the way and they're gonna come from the day center so I think we'll still have the majority of Sir, but when this is the only facility in South King County, I think it's hard for us to make that determination.

Thank you. And I think that distinction breaks down completely or is completely irrelevant with regard to emergent or emergency shelter or emergency cold weather shelter. I think you can kind of see. We're working our way through this just like you are. We're very grateful and looking forward to getting this open for the community. Council Member?

There are taxpayer money that's going into this shelter from our citizens in this city, and they have certain expectations, and I think that we need to be arguing on behalf of our citizens.

Absolutely. Thank you. All right, anything else from King County or from Catholic Community Services? We want to say on behalf of everybody here and everybody in Federal Way, thank you for the work you do.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right. Okay, item B. Our friends at Waste Management are here. Han Kirkland, Waste Management Senior Account Executive. And I see you brought a friend. And Han, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Council. Thank you for the opportunity to present tonight our annual report. My name is Hon Kirkland, and as you said, I have a very fancy long title, but basically I oversee the Federal Way contract, and I have been doing that for the last almost six years. With me tonight, I have Priscilla Tran, our Outreach and Education Coordinator, who you'll hear from later on. But before I go into the annual report, I just wanted to do a quick recap of the current solid waste contract for our new council members. So they have kind of a frame of reference of where we're at. So the 10-year contract started on September 1st, 2020. During implementation, we delivered almost 54,000 new carts, 1,000 steel containers, and deployed 23 shiny brand new CNG trucks. to service the community. The contract included dedicated outreach and education staff and multiple channels to reach us, including a dedicated Federal Way phone number, email, live chat, and a virtual assistant. We gave away $156,000 in Green for Grant community grants to three sustainable organizations in Federal Way. Unfortunately, the Federal Alternative Field Tax Credit that funded this program was discontinued at the beginning of last year. But if it comes back, we'll continue that program. And lastly, the contract also added the annual curbside bulky waste program for residential customers. So what that is, is on an annual basis, you can set out three bulky waste items, such as appliances or furniture, and up to a cubic yard of bagged trash. at no additional charge. So this is something that is in the contract. It's an annual benefit. So please feel free to go through your house if you're needing to get rid of stuff. So now, moving on to the annual report. Last year, we provided reliable and responsive service to roughly 20,000 Federal Way customers. We had a small reroute in January that affected about 1700 customers. It was originally planned for the end of 2024, but Algona was doing some upgrades, so we pushed that out to the beginning of 2025. King County had a pilot program that lasted about three months that was a bit challenging to navigate around, but we soldiered on. And in December, the city declared a storm event which allowed yard waste subscribers to set out an additional 96 gallons of yard waste for the following two weeks at no charge. So that is part of the contract. And at the end of the year, Federal Way had about 80% of customers who had online profiles with us. So, oh, there is a clicker. I forgot about this. So that was page one. And now we're on to page two, diversion. So as part of the contract, we're required to report out on how much tonnage we collect from the community. So it's broken down by the lines of business commodity. recycling, organics, or trash, and then by the sector, residential, multifamily, or commercial. So a lot of variables here. So the diversion rate is the amount of material that we keep out of the landfill. So these materials are sent to recycling centers or organic composters, processors, to give it a second life. Overall, we collected about 64,638 tons of material. We had similar tonnage in 2024, and the overall diversion rate was 26.9. So we were slightly down from 27.3 in 2024. And all three sectors were slightly down, but we do have a bit of good news, which is the commercial organics, which grew to 265 tons up from 216 in 2024. And that could have been a result of the state's organics management law, that required businesses that produce at least four cubic yards of organic waste to arrange for it to be processed. So I know I helped set up the federal way public schools last year to make sure that their, their organic waste went to, um, uh, was diverted from the landfill. So this year, starting in 2026, the threshold was any businesses that generate 96 gallons of organics must be diverted. So with that, I will turn it over to Priscilla to talk a little bit about our outreach and education in a better way.

All right, first time using the clicker, and it works. Cool. Good evening, everyone, and it's great to meet you all. My name is Priscilla, and I'm the outreach coordinator for WM. And Federal Way holds a near and dear place in my heart because I grew up learning how to play soccer at the community center. So it's always fun to be back in a community that I kind of grew up in and was able to kind of know and love. So we have a bunch of different impactful outreach and education programs that we conduct for the city of Federal Way each year, and I'd love to go over a few and highlight them for you all tonight. The first one is our Clean Cart program, and this is where we provide close recycling support and monitoring for 105 residents throughout the year. For multifamily outreach, we utilize our Know Before You Throw program, where we provide three on-site waste audits. And then based off those waste audits, we work closely with property managers to help provide targeted support. So this can include delivering recycling tote bags to all the doorsteps of the residents of a property. It can also include increasing service levels or increasing container size, and then it can also include installing slotted lids and locks onto recycling containers to reduce illegal dumping or contamination, and so much more. Last year, we worked with Homestead Apartments, Villa Capri Apartments, and Cedar Gardens Apartments. And then for commercial work, we provided recycling and or composting outreach and education to 76 businesses across the city. And then this leads us to our Recycle Right All Stars program. And this is an awesome program where we get to celebrate with the pizza party. for property managers and business owners who show strong recycling habits, take the recycle right pledge, or show a significant improvement in waste sorting. And this is also offered to our residents, but this is in the form of free service for a month, which I think is kind of better, but I love pizza as well. Additionally, I worked closely with city staffer Adrian Kimbrough to help provide schools organics outreach and education for all of the high schools in the city of Federal Way, including Decatur High School, Todd Beamer High School, Thomas Jefferson High School, and Federal Way High School. And then my favorite part about my job is going to all of the awesome events in Federal Way. So last year, we attended Touch a Truck, Kids Day, Red, White, and Blues Day, and Tricks and Treat. And then lastly, we held our Recycle Right event at South King Tool Library. And this was an awesome event that allows us to help residents recycle their harder to recycle items in a more convenient manner. That's all I have for you all tonight. I'll pass it back over to Han, and then we'll answer any questions at the end. Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much, Priscilla.

Great.

So we're always looking for opportunities to be out in the community. So if you know of an event that could benefit from having us there promoting recycling and organics, let us know. And so, yeah, up next, it's our favorite, Food Drive. Flyers will be delivered to residential households the last week of September. And then that following first week of October, the driver, well, our operations managers drive around and collect the donations curbside. So I am really, really hoping to surpass last year's total, which was 8,330 pounds of food. And since this started in 2008, we've collected about 103 tons of food for that. And it just goes directly to the multi-service center. Also, if you want to ride along to pick up those donations, let me know. Or if you'd like a tour of the recycling facility, we're always happy to host staff. And speaking of, I wanted to shout out the Solid Waste staff. Environmental services, love them. They're wonderful to work with. And with that, thank you for giving us this time. I have immense gratitude for the privilege of being your service provider.

Thank you, .

And here's our information. Oh, shoot. OK, well, I had it there. But yeah, let me know if you want to do any of the above. And if you have any questions, let me know.

All right, thank you. Council Member Koshmar?

Well, thank you, Mayor. Han, you and Priscilla are the only people who could make garbage fun, so thank you very much. Thank you. Hey, one of the popular programs you have is the one where once a year or twice a year you can put things out for large bulk items for... Could you talk a little bit about that? Sure.

Yeah, that's the annual bulky waste curbside program. And so what it is is you'll just call in, and then if you haven't used it yet and you're a resident of Federal Way, you can schedule up to three large bulky items. So that could be a couch, an appliance, and then up to one cubic yard of trash. So that's about 15 bags or so. It does have to be bagged. And so we go out there, pick it up, and once the year is over, January 1, you can call in and use it again. So yeah. And that's at no additional charge to the residents.

That's great. Council President Hunded, did you have?

Yeah, thank you. On your slide where you showed recycling rates It looked like multifamily doesn't recycle as much as other businesses and single-family homes. Is that true?

Yeah. Multifamily recycling is always that kind of tough nut for us to crack. But the city does have an ordinance where multifamily properties have to provide the same level of service as they do garbage. And so oftentimes, it's the kids running out trash to the recycle. And our containers are labeled blue for recycling. We check the decals on a pretty frequent basis. So yeah, it's not just Federal Way that has the challenges with multifamily. But we deliver at least 3,000 of the reusable tote bags multifamily properties that are chosen to get extra support that year.

Okay, thank you. I just thought that was kind of interesting to see those numbers. Thank you.

Well, Han and Priscilla, the gratitude is all ours. Thank you very much. We're very grateful and thankful for the work you do and the manner in which you do it, always with a smile on your face. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Okay, now it's time for Mayor's Emerging Issues and Report. That was a picture from the National Night Out. We'll talk about here in a few minutes. Okay, we had the Kiwanis Salmon Bake. There's myself and King County Councilmember Pete Von Reichbauer. Boy, was it hot. Actually, Melissa was standing over the corn and it was really steaming and she says, I feel like I'm getting a facial. And it was really steaming. And then Susan was running around and helping out. And it was great to see almost every council member there and the community. And a big thanks to Kiwanis. And it was absolutely packed. It was a great event. And some of the best salmon I've ever had.

866 salmon dinners were served.

Wow.

And 49 hot dog dinners.

Wow. Oh, my gosh. That's great. Um, so, um, it was just, it was a lot of fun and it's just a great, um, you know, great to, when you've, when we finally got done, when Pete and I finally got done doing our shift, um, I do have to tell a funny story though. You guys ready for this? Okay. Just, just kind of telling myself. So when I stood there, Pete goes, get over here. And, and so, cause I wanted to serve next to Pete cause I've known him forever. And so I go over there, and I literally, there could be a number of reasons for this, but I could not tie my thing behind me. And I literally, yes, my apron, I couldn't figure out how, like, either coordinate it or whatever. And so I'm struggling, and everybody that's coming up, I'm doing this, but I keep going back. Finally, I'm like, Bill, Bill, get over here. And he ties my He ties my apron on, but he does it so hard in such a way that when my shift's over, I must have done something, and then I can't get it out. And now I'm walking around the picnic pulling on this thing, and people are like, is he okay? And finally, my neighbor, Don Hagen, finally has to come over, and it took him 10 minutes to undo this knot. I'm like, just get a pair of scissors.

He goes...

That's what Don said. So anyway, we saved an apron. Almost killed the mayor, but saved the apron. So thank you, Bill, for the assist. All right, that's the story behind the story. All right, next. Okay, we had honoring our first responders event. We've got great service clubs. We've got the Lions here today. The Rotary hosted the responding first responders event. This is really what I think is gonna be the second out of three or four events this year, and it was great to see. Actually, we had the fire chief from the city of Everett that was there. and we see our new Fire Chief, Chief Woody there, Police Chief Andy Wong and myself and you know, thank you. Like I said, all of our service groups do great service in our community and that was right when we got there and there were kids there and families there and really honoring our first responders. And then we had a big, speaking of people on Reich Bauer, uh, uh, we were there, the council and I, myself and our, our King County councilman, people on Reich Bauer, the, we were there for the, uh, featherweight national little league turf groundbreaking. Our King County councilman got a million dollars to turf two of those fields. They were then able to leverage that investment by King County. for another I think eight or nine hundred thousand dollars they're going to turf three or out of those four fields which would mean they can use them all year round and a huge you know you know first we did the lights and and you know they they have done phenomenal work over the years and so they um they felt so strongly and were so uh honored by the effort of our King County Councilman to get that resource that will that will will be there for generations to come and for countless number of families and kids, they renamed the field that we're standing on in honor of King County Councilman Pete von Reichbauer. So it was a real, we were honored to be there and it was great. It was great to see all the kids and they talked about the Challenger Division they have there and just, you know, it was really a nice event. All right, next. Okay, then we had the community sports camp at Decatur High School, Go Gators, and there was, gosh, a couple hundred people there, I think, from around the city, and it was just a lot of young people and adults. They had, you know, football, basketball, all kinds of outside and indoor events, you know, kids getting exercise and really just enjoying being out in the sun or being together. Then we've got one of the things that was, we saw the signage for a long time, Paris Baguette finally opened, and we had the ribbon cutting there. You guys want to hear something interesting. When we did the pre, just the soft opening, and we put that on Facebook, There were 100,000 people who saw that post. It was absolutely astounding. And I have to tell you, they've got a deep following in this community. They're over there in the parking lot with the Black Bear Cafe and sort of in that business park. right off of Pacific Highway. Anyway, it was great to see them and actually the owner actually had his father here in from Vietnam and it was fun to meet him and his business partners and the council was there as well. It was great. And they actually, they literally had to hire more staff and start, they bake their items, they were starting at about two o'clock in the morning, because it's all fresh. They had to, because they've had so many people work, or so many people show up there, they had to start that process two hours earlier, now at midnight, to facilitate all the business. Because they ran out of, they literally ran out of baking items, so many people showed up. So, including me and my wife and my son, and I think we're, you know, we're keeping them in business. But anyway, it was great to see them open. Next, we had the Federal Way Pride Festival at Town Square Park on August 1st, and while that looked like it had some, and it was a little rainy, it turned out to be a beautiful day that day. It was great to see so many people out in the community celebrating Pride, and again, That was on August 1st on Saturday. And then a few days later, National Night Out. That's the chief and some of the folks in his neighborhood. And we were actually, we went to, we were going to try to hit seven locations. We got to six. And it was really fun to see people from around the community and really talk to them about the issues that matter. All right, next. Next. This is myself and Dr. Danny Pfeiffer at the State of the Chamber Luncheon on August 5th, last week. It was great to hear from Becca Martin, the CEO and President of our Federal Chamber of Commerce. It was great to see or hear about the important work that they're doing to assist our local businesses. And then two days later, the Rainy Days Play Cafe. I know it's hard to imagine a rainy day now, but they're on our way. And we had the council members and a lot of folks out there. This is over there by Scoreboard Tavern, a couple doors down. Not right next door, but it was a couple doors down. It's in that little plaza there, right on 324th. And boy, a lot of people there, and the idea is to, they had play equipment for kids, and that was a lot of fun.

Okay, next.

Then we had, it's been a busy time, busy August. We had the community festival, busy in July as well. We had the community festival last Saturday. Big thanks to the Diversity Commission and it was really packed, a lot of folks there. Council was there and Diversity Commission did a great job. And Keith, thank you very much for your stewardship of the Diversity Commission and it was great to see everybody come from the community. And what was great was we had the farmer's market right next door, you know, on the street there, and, you know, it really mixed right there. And then before I end my report, I'll talk about the farmer's market. Well, then later that night with the Fusion Annual Gala, and we were at the city hosted a table, and there were, you know, a lot of folks there from the community and hundreds of folks that were there in support of Fusion and their mission. Okay, then we've got upcoming community events. We've got the drive-thru and recycling event at South King Tool Library on August 22nd. That's from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. And then we've got the back-to-school haircuts at noon. Bella Red Salon, Kristen and her folks at Bella Red Salon have agreed to do it again, and that's on August 25th. What day of the week is August 25th? Everybody, what day is that? Thursday.

No. Thursday.

Tuesday, Tuesday, August 25th. And so free haircuts ages five through, I need my glasses for this, five through 18. So what's that? School age. School age, five through 18. So come get a free haircut. About the farmer's market, we'll see, we have, it's been on the street right there at 316th, right in between Town Square Park and the Performing Arts and Events Center, starting on Saturday, September 5th. It's moving up for the four weeks that we have in September. And we're going to have it up there by the field and one of the food trucks. And so we're getting that word out. But the farmers market is going to be up top starting on Saturday, September 5th. So that's my report. Now we are on to update for Emergency Procurement, Performing Arts and Events Center, HVAC Repairs, Jason Gerwin, our Parks Director.

Good evening, Mayor Ferrell, Council President Honda, and City Council Members. For the City's purchasing and contract manual under emergency purchases, emergency purchases have to be approved by the Mayor, Finance Director, and then reported to City Council at the next City Council meeting, which is why I'm here tonight. And so the last week of July at the PAC, we had two faults on ACCU. ACCU is an air-cooled condensing unit, part of the HVAC system, and we found two errors. One has kind of been an ongoing issue, and that has to do with the failed compressors. We've replaced, this will be the fourth failed compressor in the unit, and then we had a new one which was a low-oil fault. So going through and trying to find the best courses of action, you know, we kind of reviewed the reports and the data they pulled from the machine. They tried to inspect and trace the lines, finding out where the problem was, had to replace an oil separator. Screens may have been, we don't really know the reason. We're guessing screens were clogged and replaced the failed compressor and boards. we also had the manufacturer and the manufacturer startup company to come out and do a restart on this unit because uh... in my mind we should not have had to replace four compressors in this time frame uh... and so what it's really coming down to so here's pictures of the boards replaced uh kind of the oil separating unit metering out a picture of the location of where the the boards go we've got some compressors here some eev valves and so really what we believe is going on is the eev valves are malfunctioning and so what they do is they allow the refrigerant to return to the compressor And so the compressor is designed to compress the refrigerant gas into a gas, not a liquid, and then likely it didn't compress all the way. And so liquid refrigerant gets into the compressor and then follows the compressors. So as we were going through it and talking with Mac Miller, I said, well, how many EEV valves are there on the unit? Because we've had several of these fail before, which has been the cause of the compressor failures. And we have 27 EEV valves attached to this unit. And so our original not to exceed price was $50,000. We are going to authorize another $20,000 to try to eliminate another EEV valve failure, which is causing the compressors to go down. And so it's a little added expense now that will hopefully save us money and replacing compressors in the future. and having the manufacturer, along with Mac Miller, make these repairs, we're feeling pretty confident that we're not gonna have to replace a compressor anytime soon. With that, I'd be happy to entertain any questions.

All right, councilor, any questions? All right, thank you very much, Jason.

Thank you.

Okay, now we are on to council committee and regional committee reports. Councilor Walsh, land use and transportation.

Well, I was out of town for our last meeting, and I asked Council Member Hamilton to chair it. I don't know. Do you have any comments on the last meeting, Alyssa?

Yeah, so our next meeting is September 14th.

I can say that.

Probably the two items that we discussed that are relevant for this meeting is the first reading of the rough grading code. That's going to improve our permitting process. And first reading for the sign code amendments was quite the hearty discussion. Other than that, that's the end of my report.

All right. And that ends my report as well.

Very good. Thank you. Council Member Sessoms, Parks, Recreation, Human Services, and Public Safety.

Thank you, Mayor. The committee met last on July 14th. All members were in attendance, one virtually and one in person. Our next meeting will be Tuesday, September 8th, 5 p.m. All are welcome. Thank you.

All right, thank you. All right, Council Member Kuchmaier, Finance, Economic Development, and Regional Affairs.

Thank you, Mayor. Most of the items on the consent agenda today are what we approved at our last FedEx meeting. I have asked that we include a report from Economic Development on a monthly basis or quarterly basis, whatever would be appropriate, because it's Finance, Economic Development, Regional Affairs, and so bringing back in that Economic Development report portion of that committee I think would be really valuable at this time for all of our council to be involved in that. And then our next meeting will be September 22nd, five o'clock in Council Chambers. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Council Member Sefa Dawson for Lodging Tax Advisory Committee and Regional Committees.

Thank you, Mayor. We have a new person being appointed tonight to join the LTAC Committee. And that then makes our committee full. And this committee is a little bit different. For those of you who don't know, we have to have equal number of taxpayer or revenue generating and then same number of tax receivers or what is it called? Yeah. And so if there's one missing, then we have to make sure that is fulfilled before we can make any decisions because we have to have that equal balance. So now we have the balance. And our next meeting is going to be this Thursday at 2 o'clock. Regularly we meet on Tuesdays, but this one is a special meeting. It's going to be in person at the Marriott. And one of the highlights of our meeting is going to be a strategic budget discussion that we're going to have. And then for regional, there's no PIC meeting this month. And then, yeah, any other meetings that we have, I can report at the next one.

All right. Well, great. Thank you very much. All right. Now, time for the Council President Report.

Thank you. So AWC has some interesting stuff coming up. On August 17, they will have an online webinar on the 2027 legislative agenda. And they would like council members to attend and hear about the potential recommendations that AWC has for their legislative agenda. You do have to register online. And then on September 16th, they have another online class on parks and arts, and it sounds really interesting. It's on how you can create a thriving arts and cultural scene in welcoming parks in public spaces. Washington State Arts Commission will be participating in that. The senior commission had their meeting last week. And they have a luncheon tomorrow at the community center. This luncheon is sponsored by Steel Lake Presbyterian Church. It's from 11 to 1. And Jerry Vaughan will be talking about his trip to Africa. And that is free for those who want to attend. Council will be holding a Council with Coffee on September 19th. It will be at the Farmer's Market. And if you went to Kicking It, you saw the The temporary little buildings that have a beautiful mural painted on them. And there are some stores inside those buildings. And we will be holding the Coffee with Council inside that space. So in case it rains, we're covered. But we'll have coffee and treats. And that will be from 10 to 12. So that's Saturday, September 19. And we hope to see you all there. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Okay, and now it's time for the most important part of the meeting, our public comment period. You've got three minutes. Once it says green, yellow means you've got 30 seconds, red means please stop. Please let us know what town you live in. We don't need to know the address. Many of you put that information on here. And then everybody knows the rules in regard to decorum. Okay, with that, we've got JP Cameron.

Hello, everybody. JP, also known as John Cameron. I live here in Federal Way. And I'm here to talk about the city's contract with the flock camera, flock safety systems. Before I start, I just wanted to make it clear I don't suspect the city doing anything nefarious. I have all the trust in our police department. I don't. suggest that they're doing anything nefarious either. My real problem is with our contract with Flock Safety Systems. So I have pulled the contract and about 300 documents from between the city and Flock. And I wanted to bring forward a couple of things that I don't necessarily find very comforting in our contract with Flock. A couple of things is, I guess where I should start is that FLOC has perpetual rights on all data that comes in from those cameras. And the city of Federal Way has zero control over the perpetual data rights for that. We can't stop them. We don't know what they have. We don't know what they take. We don't know what they do with it. And we can't control that at all. Anybody in the world with access to flock data can search our cameras and flock will not tell us about it. So somebody in Munich, Germany, somebody in Moscow, Russia, somebody in Delhi, India can look up an anonymized license plate out of the city of Federal Way and they can identify who it is, where they're going, where they've been seen before and search it thousands of times if they'd like to. And FLOC says they anonymize the data, but looking through their contract and their privacy policies, the only anonymization FLOC safety does is remove the person's name from the data itself if the city provided it. The license plate, all bumper stickers, everything else remains the same. And I can find out who's on a license plate just by going to bumper.com and putting in the license plate and state. I can see who owns the car. So anybody can really do that. It's more of a marketing term when they say anonymize than it is an actual anonymization of anything. When I looked at the success rates for flock safety, I looked at a couple peer-reviewed events, one by the Los Angeles Police Department Inspector General who found that 32.3% of all flock camera images were false positive rates on stolen or otherwise nefarious vehicles. Roseville, California did the same thing and found 71% of all photos provided by flock were false or led to improper information. Um, there is, there are five pending cases, constitutional lawsuits against this and more continuing several cities in Washington and dozens, if not 20 plus around the country are currently canceling and stopping their flock contracts. Uh, I think it just opens the city to litigation and I don't know that we need all flock to have everything that we have here in the city. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Uh, Jeffrey 10 creedy.

Good evening, Mayor, Council President, Councils, good to see you all. So my public comment, oh, Jeff Tancredi from Federal Way, almost 30 years. My public comment comes from, the reference comes from Brandy Cruz's July 21st podcast regarding school choice funds. 29 state governors have opted in to President Trump's school choice program, which provides millions of dollars in scholarships to families. As of today, many state governors, Democrat governors, unfortunately, have not opted in and are, quote, dragging their feet. This is an opportunity for parents to improve their child's educational outcome. This money can be used for private tutoring, private school, tuition, and other educational support. If Governor Bob Ferguson doesn't opt into this program by the end of this year, millions of dollars won't come into this state for families to access. This money is for low to middle income families. This is not for privileged children who come from wealth. This money is for low to middle income families, which would benefit the students right here in Federal Way Public Schools who would not have access to these funds. Why doesn't Governor Ferguson opt in to the school choice program? These funds were approved in the Working Families Tax Cut, otherwise known as the One Big Beautiful Bill in 2025. According to Brandi Kruse in her podcast, Governor Ferguson and the Democrat Party are beholden to the teachers unions. The governor receives donations from the teachers unions, according to Brandi Kruse. According to Brandi Kruse, the Washington Education Association, the teachers unions, runs Washington State, not Governor Ferguson. He sends his kids to private schools, but won't allow you to send your kids to private schools unless you pony up thousands upon thousands of dollars out of your own pocket. Other governors like Gavin Newsom and Westmore of Maryland, same thing. They send their kids to private schools, but you can't. So, Governor Ferguson, respectfully, if you or your staff is listening, Please, release those funds so that families here in Washington State, specifically in Federal Way, can have access to this money. We know who's struggling the most in our public schools. If you break it down by race, I don't have to tell you. I've talked about this for five years. Many African Americans are trapped in failing government schools. It's disgusting.

All right, Bob Derrigan.

Federal Way, a place where good things happen every, every month. And I'm proud to remind you that we're having our 21st scholarship car show at the Commons on the 22nd of this month. Great planning gone into it. and a good way for us to involve our public. There'll be a record-breaking 58 award categories. We'll ask the public to vote on the veteran's choice, the lady's choice, teenager's choice. You name it, we have some kind of a choice. We even have a mayor's choice. But one of my exciting things I want to tell you about, is I acquired some rare paintings. And we're going to be allowing people to bid for these paintings. Together, they're worth over $1,000. And so we'll have other items there that you can take part and raffle. And of course, all the money that all the net proceeds go to scholarships and to date, We have awarded over $184,000 in scholarships in the years we've been doing that, these young people from our high schools. We're really proud of that and have a lot of people within the community, people in the council, that will be part of this. Our chief of police will be there with the top, he'll be judging the top cop award. Of course we know he's the top cop. Anyway, wanted to let you know about it and hopefully you can come and have a good time. We'll have some goodies in the morning and Yeah, we'll be giving away free popcorn. How do you like that? Anyone going to turn away from free popcorn? All right. Thank you for your time.

Thanks, Bob. And thanks for the exhibition of art there. See you at the car show. Okay, next we've got Elna, L.A.? Okay, great. And then the next comment is by Jan Barber, so we'll have both up at the same time.

Three minutes each. I was just going to tell her she's starting. Well, many of you know the situation that we're trying to address, that on March 27th, the county, King County, yanked the only freestanding sharps disposal container in our city and in Auburn the results we we as Lions are very interested in the environment and also helping people with diabetes both of these fit into our situation with the sharps well sure

I think primarily we wanted to update you. We were here on May the 15th and we just wanted to do a little summary of the progress or the things that have happened since May 15th. We did some research with the state so that we could better understand what legislation was in place and what improvements, if any, might be necessary in the future. And Christine Reeves, you may remember, was here at that time, and we were able to meet with her close to that date, plus after the fact. And she agreed that maybe legislation is definitely the long-term solution for this problem. We think we can do some things short-term, though, and we, since Auburn and Federal Way are both involved, we wrote to the mayor in Auburn just in describing the problem as we see it and our efforts and inviting any suggestions and information about that issue in Auburn. We're also going to speak to the Lions Club in Auburn on their first meeting in September. We will be speaking to Rotary on the 27th of this month. So we're trying to get some community groups together so that more people can know about the issue. And we're going to develop a little trifold so that we can advertise more effectively to health facilities, to veterinarians, to pharmacists in particular so what we do is appreciate the the support that we've gotten from Susan Honda and from the mayor and I they know they're pursuing efforts in this city too so with that thank you thank you and Jen did you have any would you like to speak some more on this issue yeah okay I would was that last week how much was that

Okay, please.

Thank you. We appreciate this. Um, last week I spoke to the Olympia host, uh, lions club, which is large and influential. Um, one of the people who was a part of that and says he wants an article is the editor for the journal of Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater. They call it jolt. The, the president of the club said there needs to be a regional solution. Um, and when I was at the rotary, uh, first responders, um, presentation, I also introduced myself to the Everett. I think he was, he was the head of police and he asked me if I could speak in zoom, um, within lions. I'm going to be speaking to with others, going to be speaking to the past district governors. The office of insurance commissioner has indicated that the law needs to change. And as they understand it, right now the mail-back system that I've been demonstrating is only for sharps that have medicine in them, which is their reading of the law. This is not going to be a fast solution, but it does need to be statewide. And we're going to continue as Lions to reach out And we're working on a trifold brochure. That takes time. Thank you for the additional time.

Thank you, Elna. Thank you, Jan. Actually, before the meeting, Before the meeting tonight, actually, I had a conversation with our parks director who also handles facilities, and we're working on a short-term solution, but knowing that this is a legislative issue as well, we could possibly add this to the legislative agenda. It'll certainly be on the agenda to discuss, and then we'll be working to find a good place for that. Okay, thank you. Okay, and now we've got Mr. Sean Damon Hagler.

Good evening, City Council. Good evening, fellow citizens of Federal Way. It is with rather a grieving heart I find myself having to come before our city council at this time to, in all honesty and transparency, discuss an issue that I believe we have, law enforcement accountability. Having currently been a resident of Federal Way now for eight years, having been a resident in the past, I WAS A TAD BIT UPSET WHEN MY WIFE TOLD ME WE WERE BUYING OUR HOME IN FEDERAL WAY BECAUSE OF MY PAST NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES WITH THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY HERE AT FEDERAL WAY THAT IS TO SERVE AND PROTECT US. IN THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS, I'VE HAD MULTIPLE INCIDENCES WHERE UTILIZING MY PHONE TO CALL 911 No law enforcement came to serve nor protect.

And I have the receipts.

Even as recently as this past Friday, calling a law enforcement agent of our Federal Way Police Department to come and assist me while multiple times within minutes being threatened and accosted while trying to exit my vehicle to on the third time because there were two incidences prior where they did not show up in the last six months to have an officer tell me multiple times, I needed to calm down. And I am sure he was recording because he said he was, me to tell him, no, sir, the problem is you're not listening. You're not doing your job. When I call you as a citizen of this city, community activists, if you will, some of you on this very council, you know me. And you know I stand on principle and integrity. You see me in the community active. If it's happening to me, I fear it's happening to others. And I would appreciate one, several, multiple of you contacting me so we can devise some measures to prevent it from happening more in the future. Thank you for my three minutes. I hope to hear from one, if not all, of you soon. Have a wonderful evening, one and all.

Thank you, Mr. Hagler. And before you leave, we've got a Commander Buchanan.

I don't have time. Also, as you know, I'm a small business owner and a husband with a sick wife. I have to get home.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Have them contact me, though.

We've got your phone or an email. We'll be in touch. Okay. Commander, I'll let you and I discuss, and maybe even the Chief, too. We'll talk after the meeting, and we'll make sure we follow up with Mr. Hagler. In fact, I'll set this aside. Thank you. Okay. Vitaly Pikotin.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm here on behalf of Ukrainian community to express gratitude and to share the story of 18 kids who arrived from sister city of . It's a city of Rivne in Ukraine, my hometown. We organizers of this trip, of the group of kids, they are special kids, orphans who lost their fathers because they were killed either in actions or considering missing until now. And we are really grateful for all residents of our city because for almost a month they've been dwelling here, visiting coffee shops, And one of the trips we had, it was a special trip, visiting our city hall, visiting police station, visiting court, and especially thank you for mayor, for Bill Odino, thank you for Pam, for organizing a community center for those kids. They had lots and lots of fun. So I am receiving lots of comments from their moms from Ukraine. They're texting me, calling, and they have so many great memories visiting the best country in the world, the United States of America, and meeting our great people, our neighbors who treated them very well. So I'm here just to say thank you. And even in Bible, God, he positioned himself a father of orphans. And this is the pure religion to taking care of the fatherless and the voiceless. So I'm here just to say thank you. It was a really important work done by the U4U Kids organization, by local First Ukrainian Baptist Church, and every institution that we visited, all restaurants, coffee shop, and Amish market, they treated us with their dinners and lunches. So I just want to say thank you on behalf of Ukrainian community.

All right, thank you. And thank you for the work you do in the Ukrainian community. And we had a great time with the kids. And thanks to Pam and Bill who helped make that happen as well. Okay, Paul McDaniel. Now, Paul, I've got you down here for three minutes and for five. Do you have five that are here present?

No, I'm sure we're spending a little amount. But if not, I'll just do three. Paul McDaniel, resident since the 1990s. Good evening. I want to start by thanking the Diversity Commission and the Parks for putting on a pretty good community festival. I had a good time, beautiful day, a lot of people. So I'm looking forward to next year on that one, pretty much. I'd also like to give the council an update on the William J. Woods Veteran House, ran by the MSC. The problematic manager has been removed, finally. after months of battling back and forth, but there's still a lack of services being offered in that location. Yesterday I was advised of a situation where a vet was brought into the location with no furnishings whatsoever. He ended up sleeping on the floor for two days before another veteran bought him a blow-up bed. The website states that they're supposed to be fully furnished in that place, but they're not. So we do have some issues there and it sounds like credibility work still needs to be done. Due to time restraints, I'll hold off on the dismal state of the city's finances until next time and move on to my main topic. Earlier this year, I talked about optics when it came to voting for a council president. Today, I'd like to talk about optics and accountability when it comes to city management. The city council has no say, really, in city employment. So the majority of my corrections are mainly focused for the mayor and the staff. Jessica Neal Holson, in 2025, she was hired as the human resource director. To the best of my knowledge, she was able to negotiate a contract that had, I believe, a $50,000 or $75,000 package. It is the only employer that I know of who was able to negotiate something like that. Very interesting. Also, to the best of my knowledge, she is no longer with us. So my question is, did she have a contract with a severance package? And if she's no longer with us, did we pay that out? If so, what was the amount? The second one is a little bit of a disgust to me. Louis Cardonza, a federal police officer. Officer Cardonza was allowed to resign after it was found that he had sex with a domestic violence victim while still in uniform hours after responding to a call for help. It wasn't until the next day he went back that she finally said no and came in and reported him to an officer. My first question is to counsel. I brought this up a few meetings ago. I want to know if anybody actually looked into it and found out if that was legit or not. I ended up doing my own research and talked to officers I know and found out it was legit. It makes me disgusted. My second question is, why wasn't he fired? Why wasn't he made an example of? Why didn't the city show the residents that we do not tolerate this type of behavior? Instead, it looks like we swooped it on the rug. It doesn't look good. I want stuff like that taken care of, and I want you guys to publicly do it. It needs to be made an example next time. I feel this is a missed opportunity, and I hope you guys have a good night.

Thank you, Paul. With regard to those follow-ups, Brian, let's talk about how best to approach those personnel matters with regard to what public records are available. We'll treat this as a public records request. Mr. McDaniel, Paul, we'll treat this as a public records request, and then we'll be in contact about that, okay? All right, thank you. All right, Kevin Morris via Zoom. Kevin, can you hear us? Kevin, can you hear me?

How about that? Can you hear me now?

We can, yes.

Okay, good. Just very briefly, council, and with all due respect, mayor and council members, this is a little off the subject of what's been going on tonight, but I did some research again today trying to find out if, in fact, if the city council is still operating as a nonpartisan board. And if they are operating as a nonpartisan council, rather, not board, but council, Why is there still a council member that is the chair of the 30th District Democrats? That's all I have to say. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Morris. All right. And this is a nonpartisan body. Okay. Mary Menard via Zoom. Hi, Mary. Can you hear us?

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes. The floor is yours.

Thank you. I'm Mary Menard. I'm a homeowner of a home in Federal Way. And I would like to thank our first commenter, John, although I don't know him before tonight, for doing the deep dive and getting the facts on the automated license place readers and flock, et cetera. Part of my comment was that I searched the city's website and I found no easy access to the city's relationship with flock automated license place reading or any of that. And so part of my comment was to request that that be put in an accessible place on the website or be made as a council report, just a brief report very soon. I came to ask you, Mayor and Council Members, do not let Federal Way become a surveillance state. Stop feeding dollars to flock safety. Use any funds that you can redirect to improving our police force in other ways or mitigating the situations that exacerbate crime. The residents and the visitors to Federal Way have Fourth Amendment privacy rights, due process protections, and equal protection guarantees. Individual rights are not subject to popular vote, nor to your wielding of the power that flows from the popular vote. Tracking a vehicle as it moves through Federal Way can reveal deeply personal and private information about the persons occupying it. I want you to hear me clearly, regardless of how many additional crimes you solve or how much quicker you solve them. I do not cede my rights of privacy, due process, and equal protection for you to record my vehicle as it lawfully moves through Federal Way. You have no probable cause that I've committed any crime, nor that my vehicle has been associated with any crime. The track record of flock safety has earned the distrust of Americans. I don't believe the collected data are safe from breach, especially from skilled and well-funded intelligence agencies or government agencies. And I have no faith whatsoever that FLOC is absolutely deleting all traces and copies of collected data after 30 days. The best way to ensure data doesn't get breached is to avoid creating it. Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Mary. Anna Patrick.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So in July of 2017, four young men went missing in Newtown, Pennsylvania. One of them was our nephew. He was murdered in cold blood on his property. He was buried on his property. And they were missing, they didn't show up to work, and the FBI got involved. And a license plate reader camera helped them locate the bodies on the property of Cosmo DiNardo. You can look it up. There's record of this all over the news. And you can see that this is one of those situations, one of those examples where having a license plate reader solved a crime. And had they not solved that crime, there probably would have been additional crimes. And this was four men who were unfortunate and murdered on this property and buried. And they were tortured beforehand. So thankfully, they were able to track two of the cars to a gas station somewhere nearby where they found the diabetic medication in the car. And they were trying to desperately find the victims and ultimately located them in that property. So I think when we start to talk about getting rid of cameras, getting rid of evidence, getting rid of leads to solving crimes, which is what these are, we start to help the criminals to commit more crimes. And we can address the issues that we have without completely doing away with something that is a tool that is essential in the current modern day that we live in. This is a tool for more sophisticated criminals that cross state lines. And thankfully, I've listened in to scanners and heard the conversation about how these license plates are used. It's just a piece of the puzzle. and you can listen in and hear yourself and see how it's used. Yes, I suppose there could be people that are in out there maliciously using these and we should maybe address that and I think our lawmakers have and our city's already talked about it numerous times. So you could probably look back at those previous meetings and hear those meetings and where it's being discussed. Just wanted to bring that up that there's another side to this. There's victims who are experiencing crime that are needing these crimes to be solved. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Okay, that concludes public comment. Thank you very much for all those who participated, and we very much appreciate your input and your passion for our community. Okay, now we're on to the consent agenda. These items have gone through committee, can be passed all at once, or after I read each one of them, I'll ask the, after I read all of them, I'll ask the council whether they would want an item pulled for separate consideration. all right so item five is consent agenda item a approve the minutes for the july 21 2026 city council special and regular meetings b approve the ap and payroll vouchers june 1 through 30th 2026 c approve the monthly financial report june of 2026 d approve the purchase skid mounted vector excavator from swim surface water management swm E, approve the award and funding allocation Dumas Bay Center Heron and Osprey Room HVAC upgrades. F, approve the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network, PCERN, rebroadcast agreement. G, approve project acceptance fiber optic loop 317th to 272nd. H, approve to advertise State Route 99 at South 373rd Street roundabout and access management. And I authorize additional contract authority 2024 ADA retrofits. ADA meaning Americans with Disability Act retrofits. All right. Council, would you want any item pulled for separate consideration? All right. Council President Arndt.

I move approval of the consent agenda items A through I.

Second. Second. It's been a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? All right, matters pass unanimously. Item six, we've got the public hearing. Item A, public hearing, proposed residential parking code amendment for the city center core and city center frame zones. I will now open the public hearing at 7.58 p.m. I'll have Senior Planner Evan Lewis, who will provide the presentation for this item.

All right, good evening, Mayor Farrell, Council President Honda, all council members and members of the public, Evan Lewis, Senior Planner, and this is a hearing, a public hearing on our residential parking code amendments for the city center core and city center frame zones. So we recently briefed the LUTC on two washington state senate bills which require us to significantly reduce the amount of parking that we require for most of our land uses and that also limit our some of our regulations that we have in place on structured parking and other forms of enclosed parking So we're gonna bring you that full citywide ordinance, all 600 pages of it later this fall. Tonight's ordinance is much smaller and more contained. It's just focused on residential uses in those two zones, city center core and city center frame, specifically where our structured parking requirements are now inconsistent with state law because of those recent state mandates. And by adopting this ordinance, we can preserve the city's ability to continue to retain our structured parking requirements to the extent that state law allows us. So the policy question is, should city council amend our residential parking requirements for the city center core and city center frame zones? Just for some brief background context, I know those who are at LUTC have heard this before, but it's important context to this ordinance. So in 2025, last year, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 5184, the Parking Reform and Modernization Act, which limits the minimum amount of parking that cities can require. And our compliance deadline is January of next year. The intent, the stated intent of that legislation was to reduce development costs, encourage walking and multimodal transportation, discourage excessive reliance on automobiles, and to let the market determine the appropriate amount of parking. So that was the stated intent in that bill. And the PRMA puts limits on the amount of parking that we can require. So I'm just highlighting the land use here that is relevant to tonight's ordinance. And cities cannot require more parking than one half of a parking space per multifamily dwelling unit. And so that's that's the one that is relevant to tonight's ordinance. cities cannot require parking so we cannot require any parking for residences under 1200 square feet affordable housing senior housing and i'm just going to stop there because those are the three that are relevant to tonight's ordinance but there's several other situations going into commercial land uses that where we also cannot require parking and we'll unpack all of that in much greater detail with the full the full city-wide ordinance this fall So the land uses relevant to tonight's ordinance are those under 1,200 square feet affordable housing and senior housing. What it does not do, it does not limit the amount of parking that can be provided. So there's no maximum amount of parking that that legislation sets. It does not limit requirements for temporary or carpool parking or parking for religious organizations. And it does not apply to parking required from the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA. So this is just highlighting those land uses that are relevant to tonight's ordinance. So let me go back a slide. So multifamily, right now our code requires anywhere from one to two multifamily parking spaces per multifamily dwelling units. That will decrease to one half space per multifamily dwelling unit. Senior housing right now our code requires one per senior housing unit that will decrease to zero and right now We already do not require parking for affordable housing and that will not change with this although as I've mentioned at committee this we have to follow the state's definition, which is Provides for more more types of housing that fall under the the definition of affordable housing under this legislation Just slightly more Also, the note at the bottom, cities cannot require parking for residents as under 1,200 square feet. So if you have a multifamily complex and all the units are under 1,200 square feet, we cannot require parking for that. And then there is Senate Bill 6015 passed in 2024. that states, garages may not be required as a way to meet minimum parking requirements for residential development, and parking spaces that count toward meeting the minimum parking requirements may be enclosed or unenclosed. So in short, the parking requirements that we had and still have in place as written in our code where it says you have to provide this percent of your required parking in a garage or in a parking structure underground in the footprint of a building, et cetera. Those are essentially invalid under state law the way they're currently written. However, Senate Bill 6015 does not say anything about our ability to require structured parking for parking provided in excess of required parking. So to take a more extreme example for those land uses, like senior housing, where the parking requirement drops to zero, any parking provided, we still have the ability to require structured parking for any parking that's still provided. And the market will still provide some parking for Most projects most likely just based on cities And studies around cities that have already kind of pulled off the band-aid and removed all of their all of their required parking So for that parking that exceeds the the parking minimums we can still require Structured parking so that gets us to tonight's code amendment so Again, it applies just to residential uses in the city center core and city center frame zone where structured parking is connected to our required parking. And the uses that affects is multifamily, emergency housing and shelter, senior and special needs housing, and permanent supportive housing in city center core and city center frame zone. And this is primarily impactful in the city center core zone because that's where most of our structured parking requirements are found. Now the reason we're at a public hearing tonight as opposed to just taking this straight to first read at the last meeting is because staff has now recommended post LUTC and post taking this to a planning commission hearing a couple months ago that we remove the community business zone from the ordinance that had already gone to committee. There were a couple ASPECTS OF THE COMMUNITY BUSINESS ZONE OR THE BC ZONE WHERE WE DISCOVERED THERE WOULD BE SOME POTENTIAL UNATTENDED CONSEQUENCES TO ADDRESSING BC NOW. WE NEEDED TO WORKSHOP AND DO MORE RESEARCH AROUND BC BECAUSE OF THE WAY THAT STRUCTURED PARKING REQUIREMENTS WERE WRITTEN IN OUR CODE ALREADY. I'm happy to unpack that more, but essentially it wasn't fully cooked and we needed to do more research on the BC zone. So we'll include BC uses, all BC uses in the full citywide parking reform ordinance that we bring to you in just a few months. So tonight's ordinance, it then brings applicable uses, those that I listed there, into compliance with required parking ratios of Senate Bill 5184 and the structure parking requirements of Senate Bill 6015. And for the city center core zone, it requires structured parking for all permanent parking that exceeds minimum parking requirements. Right now in city center core, 95% of required parking has to be structured. We can't associate structured parking with required parking, but what we've done in this ordinance is it now says all parking that exceeds minimum required parking, all parking, has to be structured in the city center core zone. The adoption process, SEPA was issued in May. This went to a public hearing at the Planning Commission in July. then went to LUTC. Because of that change that was made after it had already gone to both the hearing and LUTC, we're here at a public hearing to also have first read tonight with the modified ordinance, and then hopefully it's on track for adoption in September. And then the note here is that we'll bring you the full citywide parking reform ordinance Right now, it's on track to go to a public hearing in September. So if that's the case, it may come to LUTC in September and then come to the full council in October. But there's a little buffer room built in if we're not on that timeline. So the staff report outlines how it meets all of the code amendment criteria and policy options are listed here to adopt or to not adopt and provide direction to staff. And the mayor's recommendation is option one, approve the proposed ordinance. Are there any questions?

All right. Thanks, Evan. Council, any questions? Council Member Hamilton?

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for your work on this, and I understand that we have to. adopt these policies to match you know what state law has said and so and I understand that we're working right now on the residential uses but I will again once again and you've heard me say this before as we were working through this and getting caught up with what the bill says we need to do just to keep in mind the second part of that and how it's gonna gonna match up with the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act at the federal level. And I just wanna make sure that as a city, we're not placing a heavier burden on religious institutions. Just because the bill says that we can doesn't mean that we should. And so those are my comments and thank you for your presentation.

And I'll note, you may be happy to hear that we, although the state's not mandating that we include religious land uses, staff has been heavily focused on that particular land use, both in terms of ensuring that we're associating parking equally, in a way that's equal across all religions, and also we do expect to bring you an ordinance that would reduce the amount of parking for religious land uses, just like we're reducing it for all land uses.

Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you. Do we have any public comment? Okay. All right, thank you, Evan. Councillor Walsh.

I move to close the public hearing.

Second.

It's been a motion and a second to close the public hearing. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. Unanimously at 8.09 p.m. Okay, number seven, council business. Item A, appoint senior advisory commission position. Council President Honda.

Thank you. So today at 4.30, the council met and we interviewed, we had 12, I think 12 or 13 people that we interviewed for different commissions. And we interviewed two people for the senior advisory commission. So I would move to appoint Larry Bell. Muniz to position five for a term to begin immediately and expire August 31st, 2027. And Ian Anderson to position number seven for a term to begin September 1, 2026 and expire August 31st, 2029.

Second.

All right.

Been a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right. The appointments are unanimous. Thank you. Item B, appoint the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee position. Council Member Asafa-Dawson.

Thank you, Mayor. I move to appoint Harrington-Griffin to position number five for a term to begin immediately and expire October 31, 2027. Second.

I'm going to motion a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The matter passes unanimously, or the appointment passes unanimously. Okay, Item C, appoint Planning Commission positions. Council Member Walsh.

I move to appoint the following. Anna Patrick to position number two for a term to begin October 1, 2026 and expire September 30, 2030. Vicky Chenoweth to position six for a term to begin October 1, 2026 and expire September 30, 2030. Is there a second?

Second. Second. Is there a motion to second? Is there any discussion?

Point of information.

Yes, Councilmember.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. We're going to do this as one vote, I would imagine, so we need to mention alternates in here.

Yeah, he was just getting to that.

Oh, it didn't. It sounded like we were moving to a vote. Okay. We were.

Yeah, there's still more to the motion.

Oh, okay. Sorry about that. Thank you.

Or we can do it as two motions because this first part will be.

No, go ahead.

Do it all as one.

Sorry.

All right. And furthermore, I move to appoint Gurmanjit Bassey to alternate position number two for a term to begin immediately and expire September 30, 2030, and Vitaly Pikhotin to alternate position number three for a term to begin immediately and expire September 30, 2028. All right.

Now is there a motion with respect to all of those?

Yes, that is all moved.

Okay, that's the motion. And then is there a second? Second. It's been a motion and a second. Council President?

Oh, second.

All right. So there's been a motion and a second for...

uh the um the commissioners and the uh alternates um all those in favor i'm sorry i'm sorry council thank you do you have any discussion yes yeah uh mayor i'll be voting no on this because um we have a lot of extraordinary people that have applied that have uh experience that we could be using on this commission and as i indicated earlier that um you know we we need some new uh individuals serving as commission to offer new perspectives and outside-the-box thinking. And I know that we had a parent that applied to this commission, and it's too bad that he's not being considered. We had someone from the great city. Well, I shouldn't say great because we are the great city. But we've had a lot of people that just have a wealth of experience that I think should be considered at the very least for the alternate positions. So I'll be voting no on this. Thank you.

any further discussion all right yeah I have a question yes so I thought we were going to discuss the other two positions position alternate position two and three when we last when we left earlier that's what we had said so did those two get more the most votes is that what happened or During the special meeting we had a discussion a motion needed to be made so that we could continue on the discussion so if you'd like to discuss you're certainly welcome to My question is I thought we were gonna discuss this further and then we didn't mention position 7 at all so we're waiting I think we should say something or not because position seven was not even brought up.

Do we need to say something about position seven?

No. I mean, there's a motion pending and a discussion about what the motion is is appropriate, but anything else would be out of order.

Okay. All right. So, Council Member Savadas.

No, I, yeah, I'm asking because I know we all voted differently and I really didn't know where it went, so I thought that we were going to have that discussion here to either vote or... determine who the other two are because I did not know so my question again is did these two names get more votes is that what happened it's a question I'm asking for clarification

Did we have staff present for this? There's been no vote on this. So there was a discussion. There was not a consensus reached at the previous meeting on what would happen. So there's now a motion pending. And if you want to make a motion to amend the pending motion, that's in order. But this is the structure that we use to do these sorts of things.

OK. All right. So does this relate primarily to the alternates?

Yeah, I was just asking a question. I know we were going to discuss it here, and I'm still asking for clarity, for clarification. Okay, good. Did those two people that you just mentioned get more votes?

There's been no vote.

There's got to be. In the previous discussion in our special meeting, was discussed but there was no actual voting there that was just we were trying to arrive at a consensus and so and we didn't arrive at a consensus then and so now is the time to discuss it if we're going to discuss it okay councilmember moore

So I think what Councilmember Safedat is saying is that some of us were under the belief or assumption that we would come here talking about the alternate positions, plain and simple. But Chair, you mentioned those two names. So I think Councilmember Safedat is saying, how did you come up with those two names when we were expecting to come to this meeting to openly talk about it?

He's made the motion to nominate them, and then it'll be up to this body, and it's subject to amendment and subject to change. So those two names have been put forward, and then in this parliamentary process, we can explore the will of the majority. Council Member Sessoms?

Yeah, this whole process is very confusing to me. I'm not sure what happened yesterday.

in the vote tallying but um i'd like clarity so could i make something very clear there's been no votes so there was a discussion at the previous meeting oftentimes for these types of things a consensus is reached sort of sort of informally and everyone kind of knows how the vote will go at this meeting that did not happen at the last meeting so now we've had a motion Mr. Walsh has picked two alternatives that he thinks is appropriate, that he has made a motion to appoint. There's been a second, and now there's a discussion. If you disagree with that, you may make a motion to amend the motion to change those names. That is the process that we use. But there's been no vote. I just need to reiterate that because it implies that there was some sort of backroom tallying that happened, and that did not occur. Just to be clear.

Right. There's been a motion. And, Council President?

So during the earlier discussion when we were trying to come to a consensus, there was not a consensus on the alternate positions. And this is the point of which a motion needed to be made. There needed to be a second for the discussion to occur, just like with any motion.

OK.

So definitely, this is your opportunity.

One second. Heather, can you please state the names of the two proposed, the two named alternates that have been named in the motion?

Yes, it is Gurmanjit Basi to alternate position number two, and Vitaly Pikutin to alternate position number three.

Okay. Council Member Moore?

Yeah, so I move to amend the motion to appoint for position number three alternate Mike Bollock Ziegler and for alternate number two Joseph thank you thank you madam president Joseph Santana thank you okay there's been a motion is there a second on that motion second

Council Member Sefardowsky has seconded it. The motion made by Council Member Moore is to replace the two previous named individuals with Joseph Santana for position number two and Mr. Ziegler for position number three. There's been a motion and a second. Is there any discussion on that amendment? Council President?

We asked during the meeting of the attorney if we could add more alternates. Did we decide if we could do that or not?

Yes, the code explains that there's a fixed number of votes and, sorry, there's three alternates available and we already have one appointed.

Okay.

So there's only two spots available.

Thank you. Okay, is there any further discussion?

Yeah. Council Member Moore? Thank you, Mayor. You know, the reason why I make this, and this is, You know, this is a difficult choice because there is a lot of good people in here. But for me, the reason why I'm making this amendment to this motion is we're bringing two perspectives that I think are critical to this commission. Joseph brings a public health perspective and a lot of experience when it comes to working with groups, communicating with groups, communicating with community. And I think that is a much needed aspect to this commission. We've all heard that communication is a thing. And I think he can really play a critical role in that. And I think, you know, the reason why I amended the motion to include Mike Ziegler is his approach and his level of research, the ability to connect, the ability to dive deep into critical information I think really lends itself to this commission and especially the fact that he has young, young kids. And I think that's a valuable thing. I mean, obviously on the commission we all come from different backgrounds and that's a beautiful thing, but I'd like to see a parent of young kids on this commission because this commission is really about building the future of our community. And so that's why I made the amendment, and I wanted to speak to that. Thank you, Mayor.

All right. Thank you. Councillor Cushma, your light is on. Did you want to speak? Okay. Councillor Walsh. Yeah.

I would just like to comment that I want to commend all of those who applied for the position. We had some very frequently with commission appointments. We're appointing whoever applies. And right now, we have a good problem to have. We've had more applicants than what we've had positions. And that's a good problem to have. And there's a number of those applicants that I think would do very, very well. And so I would like to emphasize that those who we are not appointing, To stay involved, apply in the future for other commissions, and stay involved with the city because that is good. Okay.

All right. I don't hearing, not seeing any other lights on. That concludes discussion on the issue. There's been a motion to amend the main motion to replace the two previous name alternates to on position number two, Joseph Santana, position number three, Mr. Ziegler. All right. All those in favor of the amendment, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Nay.

Heather? Council Member Asafa-Dawson?

Aye.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Hamilton? Nay. Council Member Walsh?

Nay.

Council Member Sessoms?

Aye.

Council Member Coachmore? Nay. And Council President Honda? Nay. The amendment fails. Okay.

Now for the main, going back to the original motion, all those in favor of those previously stated?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Nay.

Nay. Nay.

Heather? Council Member Suffer-Dawson?

Nay.

Council Member Moore? Nay. Council Member Hamilton? Aye. Council Member Walsh?

Aye.

Council Member Sessoms?

Nay.

Council Member Coachmore? Aye. And Council President Honda? Aye. The motion passes 4-3. All right.

Thank you, everybody. Item 8, Ordinances. First reading, Council Bill 943, Ordinance, Residential Parking Code Amendment, for the city center core and city center frame zones. Our senior planner, Evan Lewis, presented previously during the public hearing, and then there were no public comments at that time. Would the city clerk please read the ordinance title?

Council Bill 943 ordinance residential parking code amendment for city center core and city center frame zones. An ordinance of the city of Federal Way Washington relating to residential parking requirements in the city center core and city center frame zones amending Federal Way revised code as detailed in the written title.

All right. Council Member Walsh.

I move to forward the proposed ordinance to the September 1, 2026 council meeting for a second reading and enactment.

Second. It's been a motion. Second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? The matter passes unanimously. All right. On to item B, first reading, Council Bill 933, Ordinance Condemnation for Pacific Highway Non-Motorized Corridor, 16th Avenue South, South 308th Street to South 288th Street Project. We'll have Civil Engineer John Cole represent this item.

Thank you, Mayor, members of the committee, Council President. I'm here to present ordinance for a condemnation of Pack Highway non-motorized corridor phase two project. A policy question I have for you today is should the City Council enact an ordinance authorizing property acquisition through condemnation for the Pack Highway non-motorized corridor phase two project? The background information on this is the ordinance describes the property required for this project and I have here a visual of the parcel that is of interest. Action's taken, certified red mail has been sent, and legal notices have been published. Next step is a second reading and enactment is scheduled to occur at the next council meeting, and we will communicate with the property owner to an attempt to reach a negotiated settlement. And as always, I'm available for any questions.

Okay. Is this for a particular project?

Uh, yes. The pack highway phase two non motorized trail project.

Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Have we received any public comment and no one here said, uh, indicated a desire. Okay. Oh, council president.

Where does the trail begin and where will it end with this is all settled.

Well, currently we're just finishing up phase one. Phase one takes it from the high school north to Dash Point and Redondo by the school, the park there. Phase two will take it, there's a small segment that'll extend it past the high school, almost widening the sidewalk in front of the high school on Pack Highway. The other portion of that phase two takes it from Dash and Redondo all the way up to 272nd. And then we just recently hired a consultant to design phase three, which will take it from there to northern city limits.

Are both those phases, are all the phases funded?

Funded? E.J., I'll step in on that.

Phase three anticipates a grant that we haven't applied for yet, but the design for phase three is funded, yes. So assuming it works successfully with a grant, the answer would be yes to your question.

And would you anticipate that it will be completed?

The entire trail?

Right.

I think it's, there's a phase four and then Des Moines has a section to construct as well. So I think it's projected for like 2035, 2037, something like that for the full construction of everything.

Phase one, two, and three. When will that be?

That is 2029 or 2030. Yeah, approximately 2030. Off the top of my head. Phase two will start construction next year.

Thank you.

All right, thank you. Good question. All right, would the city clerk, anyone else? Okay. Would the City Clerk please read the ordinance title?

Council Bill 933, Ordinance Condemnation for Pacific Highway Non-Motorized Corridor, 16th Avenue South, South 308th Street to South 288th Street Project, an ordinance of the City of Federal Way Washington providing for the acquisition of certain property for the purpose of constructing right-of-way improvements in the vicinity of SR 99 at 16th Avenue South from South 308th Street to South 288th Street known as the Pacific Highway non-motorized corridor 16th Avenue South, South 308th Street to South 288th Street project, describing the public use and necessity of such property, directing staff to exhaust reasonable negotiation efforts to purchase such property, providing for the condemnation of the property, and directing the city attorney to initiate all necessary actions and proceedings in the manner provided by law for said condemnation if attempts to purchase are not successful.

All right. Council Member Walsh, do you have a motion?

I move to forward the proposed ordinance to the September 1, 2026 Council meeting for second reading and enactment.

Second. It's been a motion. A second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Better pass unanimously. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, John. All right. Item C, first reading, Council Bill 944, Ordinance Rough Grading Code. Our Community Development Director, Keith Niven, will present this item.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Council President Honda, and Council Members. Keith Niven, Community Development Director. So the policy question in front of the City Council is, should the City Council approve the proposed ordinance relating to allowing for rough grading? So this is a new code provision for us. We discussed this with the Master Builders Association as well as certain builders that were building within Federal Way when we asked to remove the city oversight of forest practices permits. And one of the things that the builders brought up was that they would be greatly advantaged if they could get out there and start grading sooner than what we currently allowed under the existing code. And they gave us examples from other cities that allowed for early grading. And so it seemed like a reasonable quid pro quo for us to put that into code and in exchange kind of release our oversight of forest practices. One of the biggest things to be concerned about as a city by letting a builder get out onto the site early is that they go ahead and they clear the vegetation and they do some grading and then for whatever reason, whether it's their funding disappears or other things happen, they stop work and the site sits there disturbed and unworked for a long period of time. And so one of the things to put into the code is also a requirement for restoration if the project were to stall. So the proposed revisions, 1925.050, adding a subsection to addressing the restoration requirements, which I just referenced. 19.120.080 is actually creating a rough or early grading permit 19, 120, 110, basically editing the requirements of what's to be included in a grading permit to remove some of the more detailed things which could be held off until final grading permits were issued. The decision criteria in the City Code, there are three of them for amending Title 19. We believe that all of them are met. the recommendation public comment there was a letter from the master builders on the 31st of July supporting the proposed code amendments the Planning Commission recommended approval the mayor also recommends option one which is to approve the proposed ordinance and I'm here for any questions all right council any questions of Keith Keith thank you thank you did we receive any public comment okay and no one here has expressed a desire to speak

All right. Would the city clerk please read the ordinance title?

Council Bill Ordinance 945, sign code ordinance. Sorry. Council Bill 944, Ordinance Rough Grading Code, an ordinance of the City of Federal Way of Washington relating to providing for a rough grading permit amending Federal Way Revised Code 1925050, 1912080, and 19120110. All right. Council Member Walsh.

I move to forward the proposed ordinance to the September 1, 2026 council meeting for second reading and enactment. Second.

It's been a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Matter passed unanimously. I heard you. Thank you. Okay, item D, first reading, council bill 945, ordinance, sign code amendment. Keith Niven, our community development director, will again present this item.

Good evening again, Keith Niven, community development director. The policy question in front of the city council is should the city council approve the proposed ordinance relating to amending the city sign code? Now, we did a massive update of the sign code six months ago. I would love to say we got it perfect. But after using it for six months, my planners identified a few things that didn't quite get fixed quite right, so.

Best graphic I've ever seen, the city presentation.

Very clever. So here we are tonight. You know, the good news is, one, I don't have a big ego, so that's good news. But the second thing is, we really, there's only five amendments that we're talking about tonight. And I highlighted number three. Number three is the only one of substance. And what it looks like in the code, and I hope you can read this, is under the maximum height for a monument or pedestal sign, it provides for the height to be in relation to the size of the building. Unfortunately, what got dropped off through one of the revisions is a maximum. And on all of our other tables, there's a maximum of 12 feet. This one could be gigantic. So one of my planners caught this. We're here to primarily add this and then to do some other non-substantive edits tonight. Again, we think it meets the three code-required provisions for criteria of approval. There's been no public comment up to this point. Planning Commission recommended approval of the ordinance, and the mayor also recommends approval of the ordinance. Again, I'm here for questions. Okay.

Council President, do you have a question?

I have just a thank you. Thank you for you or whoever went out and took pictures of the signs that I asked for more information on. Of course. It helped me understand more and know where we sit as a city, so thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Yep. Great. Thank you. Council Member Sessoms?

Yeah. So are inflatables on top of buildings considered?

You cannot put a sign of any kind above the roof line. That's not allowed by code at all. So if you see any around town, feel free to let me know. We'll send code compliance out there to have a conversation with the business. They need to stay below the roof line.

I think what he may be referring to is, you want to say what it is?

Yeah, Chick-fil-A is a.

The cow.

Inflatable cow on top of Chick-fil-A.

We'll go take a look at that. I don't get, I get stuck, I'm like shackled to my desk. I don't get out to see what's out in the community. So we'll look at that and see if it actually is a sign. And if it is, we'll need to talk to the business about its presence.

Council President.

What's the definition of a sign?

So sign, it's defined in code. I don't have that in my head.

It's just a chicken.

If all it is is a big chicken.

It's a cow.

It's a cow. If it's a big cow, if it has words on it that says eat more chicken, that's in their marketing. So that's in their TV ads. I think that starts to get to be a sign would be my guess. That's what? It would probably be a sign. So we'll... we'll we'll talk about that as staff good thing is planners have a staff meeting tomorrow at uh 10 o'clock we'll have that conversation okay um councilmember seven austin did you have yeah so that's the email we got that's what i was gonna ask okay so anytime well you can't should they have had a permit for that To put an inflatable on the roof, I think there should be a permit for that because it needs to, it's tie downs need to be, to meet certain wind load requirements so that the cow doesn't go flying off and hit some other property or business or the street. So technically it's a structure and it's by definition of city code and it should have been permitted.

It could walk over to Paris again. Because you usually see those, the ones that kind of wave around.

So the wavy ones, so the sign code update that you guys did last year, we put a provision in for the wavy type signs because they technically weren't allowed in our old code, but yet you saw them all over the city. And we weren't really getting any complaints from the community about those. They're called feather signs. And so we put a provision in the updated code for the feather signs.

Well, the feather signs are like the sort of boat. What I think she's talking to is the ones that inflate. that kind of come up those are not feather it's like there's a like a deal it's like a person yeah and then they yeah like a gorilla or something like that no that's if it moves in the wind it's technically a feather sign even though no there's a there's a wind blower it's like a like a vertical tube that the air comes out of it and it falls down it's got little arms and then the air comes in and it stands up. It goes up and up and up and down. Yes. You know what I'm talking about?

I do know what you're talking about.

And it's still cold.

Exactly.

Can you show us again?

Exactly. But it's not like a feather. So if it's advertising the business, it's technically a sign and is not allowed.

Yeah. Okay. Councilmember Moore.

Mayor and Keith, you're not allowed to retire. Exactly. And the record, hopefully Heather captures that. But appreciate the work that you do and the way you go about it and all that you do. I do hope, I mean... I do want to be business-friendly, obviously, and obviously it's been mentioned tonight about the Chick-fil-A's cow. I consider that to be art. But I hope there's a way that we can kind of, the mayor's office, you guys can kind of work together to make it a win-win situation on that. Because it is great marketing, absolutely. You know, my...

My practice on this is to let the professionals always make the determination. I almost never get involved in an interpretation.

I'm just hoping that because I'm hoping there's a way to work with them. That's all I'm trying to say.

We will absolutely try to work with the business unless they're absolutely in violation of the sign code and then there may not be a lot of latitude. But we will definitely try and work with the business on something that might have been put out there without a permit which might have needed a permit.

Oh, I was just going to joke. You can have the cow go over to visit the bear on the way to Paris.

Right. Exactly. That's right. What she said. What's that? Oh, Melissa. Yes.

Thank you, Mayor.

Oh, you're welcome. Oh, let me talk again.

Well, thank you, Keith, for all the work that you did, especially going around taking pictures. I don't know who did that, but that was great. And my big concern, as you remember, was the hospital signage. I wanted to make sure that if they were ever to have to replace that signage, that it fit within our sign code. because I knew of an issue in another city where that was the case and all of a sudden they were like oh we can't replace the sign because you know the new sign wouldn't work but I'm so thank you for that and I look forward to figuring out what your interpretation is of the cow or whatever it is if it's a sign art marketing I don't know but one thing for sure is Chick-fil-a has everyone talking about their business so I guess it worked whatever it is

Give me a couple days and I'll let the council know how that pans out.

Okay.

Yep. Good.

Kent had a big gorilla for a long time. Yeah, they did. Yeah. Really tall. All right. That's all I'm going to say about that. All right. Let's see here. Any other comments for Keith? All right. Did we receive any public comment? Okay. No public comment. Would the city clerk please read the ordinance title?

Council Bill 945, Ordinance, Sign Code Amendments, an ordinance of the City of Federal Way, Washington, relating to updates to the sign code, amending Federal Way revised code as detailed in the written title.

All right. Council Member Walsh. Before making the motion, I'll just say that if you're concerned if it wasn't secured right, the cow might jump over the moon.

Ba-dum-bum.

All right. Wow. And with that said, I move to forward the proposed ordinance to the September 1, 2026 council meeting for second reading and enactment.

Second. It's been a motion. A second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? All right. Matter passed unanimously. All right. Thank you, Keith. Item E, second reading and enactment, Council Bill 942, Ordinance, Solid Waste and Recycling Amendment. Would the city clerk please read the ordinance title?

Council Bill 942, Ordinance, Solid Waste and Recycling Amendment, an ordinance of the City of Federal Way, Washington, relating to solid waste and recycling, amending Federal Way Revised Code 19-125-150. All right.

And Council Member Walsh? I move approval of the proposed ordinance.

Second. It's been a motion to second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous. All right. So now we're on to council reports. It's the one and only meeting of the month. Councilmember Sefid-Awson.

that into you okay I'll go thank you mayor I don't have much to report on I did attend I did I attended the Federal Way pride national night out and community festival the Federal Way pride and community festival there were great events and But I wish they were not so close together because we need community events like that and bringing our communities together. So I think when we plan this in the future, it would be great if they were spread out a little bit. I think that would bring us together at a different time. And I know we didn't plan it, of course, and maybe having that conversation with them would be great. But otherwise, they were great events. And the Seattle Builders Council reception I attended maybe a week and a half or so ago, and they gave us a tool on housing, solutions, I believe. And I did email it to Amy to share with the rest of the council. So hopefully you get to see it. But the problem then with the solution is around housing and building housing. So hopefully you could all get to look at it. And I think with that, I'll end my report. And I will drive by Chick-fil-A, because I haven't seen it yet.

Awesome. Thank you.

Drive by tonight.

Exactly. Goodness sake. Wow. I just can't miss it. It's great art. I just wanted to take the time to say thank you to, oh, I just forgot their names. Janice? No, Janet. Thank you. Thank you. Jan Barber and her friend. I forgot her friend's name. And her friend, who is a lioness, that came and spoke about the Sharps. I'm pleased to hear that, Mayor, you're working on something and that, Council President, you've been in communication with both of them. I have talked to Jan as well. and i think many people use sharps for different different reasons myself being one of them and so i think this is a really important thing that we have a place where we could safely dispose of them i think that's really really important for public health reasons and i'm puzzled as to why the county decided to do what they did i'm not sure why so i want to see greater understanding on that so i'm really glad to hear that something is going to be taking place so um You know, as much as I'm looking forward to my PSL pumpkin spice lattes, Mr. Mayor, they'll be coming out August the 25th. But as much as I'm looking forward to the holidays, summer is fun. Because there are a lot of exciting events and just as we've heard throughout the this meeting You know, it feels good to be in federal way when all these are happening. It feels good to be in community It feels good to bring people together and whatnot And so I've had the privilege to attend a lot of different community events that the mayor has indicated and also wanted to say thank you to the scouts that were over at the Masonic Temple for hosting. It was a lot of excitement over there, by the way. And I think what I appreciate about that is it's a space that's being utilized. And I think that's really, really important versus not being utilized. And we had two of our officers show up. I think the mayor was going to go in there with a dunk tank. No, I'm sorry. He didn't do that. But I know he was busy running around everywhere else as he shared earlier. But that was just fun to be there and just to connect with some of the folks there. So it was great. And my son loved the activities that were had over there. So also I wanted to I think one of the best things about being an elected official is being able to listen to people and bring ideas. And I wanted to do a shout out to Lacey and Katie for being really bold with one simple idea, which is to create a fence around some of the parks. And I just wanted to give them a shout out to say thank you for seeing a problem and trying to be solution oriented. And I know that many of my colleagues have received emails and correspondences from with our mayor's office to the parks director. And I hope there's room for something for a middle ground. uh because as a parent to a two-year-old and a five-year-old i do think safety matters and having a fence where you can relax and let your child be a kid i think is a great thing without you having to worry about it i know that we often have to go to a different city to enjoy that and i'd like to be able to stay here We have a lot of great parks, 30-plus parks, great amenities on all of them, but the greatest thing is that people have ideas, and when they're constructive and positive related, I think there should be some room to play around and get some work done to empower them and hear them and see what we can do. Also, I... I wanted to kind of comment on this, and that's the LPRs and flaw cameras. I greatly appreciate all the comments that have come through. I know that we took action earlier this year on this, and I think what I want to kind of speak to is that And I appreciate what Ms. Patrick said, which is safety should be a paramount duty. Safety is absolutely important. And, you know, we've known people to say this is felony way. In order to change that, we've got to provide our officers with the tools necessary to keep our community safe. And so there has to be a balance on that. And my personal take is that I want to do everything I can to give our officers the tools that they need to keep our community safe, give them the tools to find possessions of stolen vehicles and reunite that vehicle with the individuals where that vehicle was stolen. But I think that's really, really important, or it provides closure to families. and what i want to make sure is that the federal government and ice does not have access to our information and that's i want to make sure that that line is distinctly clear and that we continue to focus on that and and i'm confident that our law enforcement office or department uh has assured us that no information is being shared. I know that Council Member Sessoms and I get an update that nothing's been shared, but I hope that is the case, and I'm confident that's the case. So I just wanted to put that out there that there's value to LPRs, and I think it's really, really important, but I want to assure that You know, the federal government doesn't have access to our cameras here. And I should say ICE. So with that, I will hand it back to you, Mayor. Thank you. All right. Thank you.

Mayor, can I add one thing? Yeah. When we were talking about sharps, I have a young lady living with me who's diabetic. So I took her sharps. I couldn't take it anywhere here in Federal Way, so I went to Angle Lake. Angle Lake? Bow Lake. Bow Lake, okay, that one. And I paid $42 to dispose of the needles that I had with me. They didn't even weigh anything. They just said $42 for one trip. So I just wanted to add that to the conversation when you're proposing whatever, you know.

All right, thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, Council Member Hamilton.

Thank you, Mayor. And I have a few things to report on. And thank you for everyone who brought public comment. And I just want to touch real quick on the flock cameras as well. Obviously, I've stated my support for them in the past. But there is some talk around the nation even and about the constitutionality issues. And I imagine at some point, the courts are going to rule on that I think maybe they're waiting for a case with legal standing I'm not sure but but I imagine it will work itself out in the courts so I look forward to hearing more about that in the future a couple of events that I attended is the salmon bake over 900 plus meals so I would say that was a huge success and being part of the Kiwanis Club is is really just it's very fulfilling and and I'm glad that we have them in the neighborhood here in Federal Way also the Federal Way Pride event attended that now we had it on our calendar to be there at noon and it was probably the worst time because it was downpouring and It was windy, and I didn't get to stay for very long. And so maybe next year it will be better. I hear what you're saying about the two events being so close together. And actually, I've heard from people in the community even, why is it on August 1? with Pride Month being in June so you know maybe there's some conversation there I think I heard that it was because they wanted not to be so close to the other Pride events but you know maybe that could be reconsidered because you know I think I think you bring up a good point there also attended the community festival that was an amazing festival as well brought the community together the fusion gala was wonderful as well and a lot of us attended that and they raised a lot of money for homelessness and then also I attended an FBI human trafficking awareness event on the 30th and that was a really interesting event it was being hosted by the AME church in Renton and it was really just a small group of us there was like six of us and then two FBI agents were there and we talked about human trafficking and we went through a real case went through the whole case and how they built the case the evidence that they had and it was wild I mean just really just wild what this case all entailed, but learned a lot about human trafficking, brought back some resources that maybe we can use. And perhaps I will share that with our police department. It was like two pages of resources on human trafficking. So that was a great event to attend and then lastly as many of you know I sit on the AWC public safety caucus and a couple of items that we discussed and in that caucus basically we just discuss upcoming legislation and issues that are gonna affect public safety and we just share kind of what we're thinking and then I believe the caucus will come up with a position on legislation and go from there but two of the issues that were brought up was basically what's amounting to bail reform and they're they're doing it through a court role and What it's going to do is or what's being proposed is to cap misdemeanor gross misdemeanor bail at $200. So you only have to put up 10%. So it'd be $20. So that was discussed. And then also court unification was discussed. So those are two legislative items that are being discussed in that caucus. And I just wanted to report on that. And the mayor sits in that caucus as well. So that's my report.

Great. Thank you very much. Okay, Council Member Walsh.

Yeah, I was actually out of town for nine days and missed a lot of the great events. The fusion gala is one of my favorites. I'm a big fan. proponent of fusion. I think it's one of the very best non-profits in the area. I also miss the community festival and other events. I was there for the salmon bake. I think that the salmon bake is one of the great events in Federal Way that truly brings people together from all political persuasions, from everything, and it's a great gathering place and one of the great events that creates community here in Federal Way. And I want to hats off to the Qantas for providing that. And then, of course, the proceeds go through for the great things as well. With me being out of town, I want to thank Melissa for chairing the LUTC meeting last week. We got back Sunday night, and... I'm glad that it was Sunday night not Monday night that we got back because on Monday evening I went got in the car to go to an event and our cul-de-sac was completely blocked off and the one of the fiber optic installation companies had hit a Puget Sound energy gas main and we I pulled out of the driveway. I was wondering why at 6 o'clock all of these fiber optic workers were still sitting around in the cul-de-sac. Normally, they've gone home by then, but they were just sitting around the cul-de-sac, not working, just sitting. And when I pulled out of the driveway and started to drive down the cul-de-sac, I realized that, hey, there was a big PSE truck with a big tank on the back of it. There was the South King Fire there, and one of the firemen was there holding off the traffic. I got out of the car to see what was going on, and the smell of gas was very Very apparent. I mean, it was obvious why they didn't want us driving through there. And so our cul-de-sac was actually blocked off somewhere between two and four hours. I'm not sure just how long, but I'm glad that I wasn't coming back 24 hours later and get back to my house and not even be able to get to it after a 13-hour drive. But anyway, so there are some challenges with the fiber optic installers. But anyway. Um, but, uh, but, but, but being gone, I did see my, my six non, uh, non Washington grandchildren. And so that was, that was a wonderful, had a, had a great time, uh, more work than I'd, uh, was involved with work more than what I'd anticipated. But anyway, but anyway, it's great to be back in federal way again. That is my report.

Very good. Thank you. Council member Sessoms.

Right So shout out to the Kiwanis Club my colleagues here for being Kiwanis members My wife and I enjoyed The salmon bake, it had been many years since we had been to Steel Lake. It was our first time at the salmon bake. We really, really enjoyed it. I got to get that name of the seasoning from you. We walked up and paid for two tickets and really enjoyed the event. On the 25th of July, went to the Honoring Our First Responders event and met some really, really nice people. For those of you who don't know, it was sponsored by the Federal Way Rotary Club. I would encourage you all to take a look at their programming. They do work all around the world, just like the Kiwanis Club. So I am thinking about joining that group. August 1st, I attended the Pride Fest at Town Square Park. Had a lot of fun just seeing people being themselves and families from all walks of life. It was great. By the time I got there, the weather had cleared up, so it's a little windy, but the sun was out. August 5th and 6th, I'm not sure what was happening here, but I was in Leavenworth. I was there for a day and a half budget, municipal budgeting workshop. learned a lot and I'm looking forward to meeting with, uh, the directors, uh, to learn what their needs are as we go into the budget here. And, uh, so I'm excited about that. And I'm, uh, I've got a list of things I'd like to share out to the council and I'll make sure to get that to you all. Um, let's see. August 8th, I had a great time at the community festival. Again, got there a little late, but boy, it was fun. Walked up on stage just in the nick of time. Thank you, Mayor. And yeah, so earlier, Mr. Hagler, I think he was one of the public commenters, He shared some concerns. They sounded very personal. I would like to work with the chief and the mayor to understand what those concerns are. I could just tell by his voice and his testimony, he was really, really concerned. I have interactions with the police. at least three times a week. As I get off the train, there's always a Federal Way police car right there in front, very prominent. I make it a point to go up and interact with them, chop it up, just to get to know them. And over the course of the past six months, or eight months since I've been on the council, I've gotten to know them by first name. I could say my interactions are positive. So what I heard tonight, very, very different. So that's why I'm interested, and hopefully we can get some resolutions in place, whatever his concerns are. But with that, my report is concluded.

Well, thank you. It's immediately following the meeting. I'll talk to the deputy chief, uh, acting chief Sumter. And I've, I've pulled out the, uh, uh, the comment sheet for that. We'll follow up with him. Thank you, Mary. All right. Thank you. What's that? Yes. Um, that's remember coach Mark.

Well, I'm going to say thank you first. And then I'm going to tell a quick little story. I know you like stories. So I want to say thank you to one of the ladies in our audience, Dara Mandeville, who, when Walmart fell through for Night Out, National Night Out, that she had the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts come to Masonic Lodge, where her husband is a member, and then put on the event that Council Member Moore attended. And I was there as well. And it was a very good event. And so thank you, Dara, for that. rescuing them at the last minute. So of all of the events we're talking about, they're wonderful. But what I'm really looking forward to, and I'm going to tell you a little story, is having finance economic development coming to give us reports. I really want to work on that. Thank you, Tonya. You can see her perking up there. 1990, I was on the community council. I wasn't on the city council. It was later. when they determine they meaning the powers that be and i think that you know we talk about different partisan groups we're nonpartisan but any partisan groups should get together on this whole issue in our city and the issue is this in 1990 the Legislature passed the Growth Management Act. Well, isn't that just peachy keen? Because we weren't a city yet. And they had powerful people in other cities, Redmond, Bellevue, Seattle, who decided that they were going to be the job centers. And they were going to send the people way out to figure a way where they were going to live and take light rail to work in the hotels, in their hotels. and that we were going to be the place where people would live and go elsewhere to work. Well, isn't that just peachy keen? So here we are. What is this? How many years later, 40 years later? We need living wage jobs in our own city. And that's why I got so upset over the Red Lion and what extended stay, which is now the Booker House. Those are wonderful ideas. And I certainly agree that we should always welcome anybody who's homeless. But we put money into these. buildings that we're not receiving for our citizens. It doesn't matter. I don't know who lives there, who doesn't live here. We have families living in the woods. We have people in the woods who are freeze to death. We needed a place for them. Right now, they're welcomed by fusion, but we needed a place for them to go. I was looking forward to the Red Lion being a place where we could have our own shelter. which now, again, county, state, Seattle, they're making decisions for us, as well as the state legislature. Well, by the way, the state legislature, and I think I can say this quite, heartily, which is I'd like to know where the money goes that's supposed to come to our city. For example, the 373rd roundabout in front of Gethsemane Cemetery. We're trying to figure out how to come up with the money for the state road in order to prevent the accidents that are occurring there. And so what is going on here? And so I would invite both parties, Republican and Democrat, our citizens to stand up for us. We're not just 100,000. We're probably 125,000 if you include the area east of the freeway. And I would like to really work for the next year or so on getting living wage jobs here so our citizens have a place where they can find a job that makes it more than just 18 or 28 dollars an hour with full benefits over 30 you have to have 50 an hour just to live these days and it should be in our own city we shouldn't have to leave our city to go elsewhere we our chamber our chamber lunches we have nobody showing up where are our businesses and so thank you mayor i know that we've sorry i'm sorry about my voice tonight We've cleaned up our city. We have wonderful events. We have neighborhood events. We have people coming together. We're working together beautifully. Where are our people with the ability to provide living wage jobs? That's what I want to concentrate on. So that's why I'm talking about economic development. Thank you, Mayor.

Very good. Thank you very much. All right, Council President Honda.

Thank you. So I want to start with some thank yous. I'd like to thank the people who organized the Pride event and the community festival. Those were great events. I too was there at the Pride event at noon, in the rain and the wind, and it was very cold and windy. So I didn't stay very long. But I would like to thank the people who organized those events. I'd like to thank the people who applied for our commissions tonight. It's good to have, well, this would sound odd, but we usually don't have enough people to fill commissions. So having more people than we had spots for can be a good thing, but if you're not chosen, then that's not a good thing. So I want those people to know that they did a really great job. All the interviews were awesome, and everyone was certainly qualified to be on the commission. We just didn't have space for everybody. And I hope that they continue to be involved and apply for other commissions as space comes up. I would like to thank the neighborhoods that welcomed me and my husband to National Night Out. And once again, I would like to say that I would like to see a citywide National Night Out event, not every neighborhood. has an event, and a lot of cities around us and around the country have a citywide event. We did, I think in 2017, Betty Taylor and I planned a citywide event. We had over 300 people at Town Square Park, which we were not expecting that many people, so I know that there is If there was a central location, we have beautiful parks, we could pick a park, have a National Night Out event for those communities whose neighborhood is not holding an event, because we have a lot of neighborhoods in the city that do not hold National Night Out events. So I'd like to plug that. So those are my thank yous. I'm very excited to talk about Desna Cup. Desna Cup is coming back again this weekend. It's at Sahali Middle School. And this is the 17th annual Desna Cup. And they started in 1999. And I remember I was very involved in the PTA and the schools in 1999. And the founders of Desna Cup came to meet with me because they wanted to know how they could get the schools involved. And I've been involved with Desna Cup ever since. It is at Sahali Park this weekend. They have volleyball, soccer. They'll have vendors there. They have a really great kids' playground that they set up with inflatables and a lot of really great food and desserts. And this is the people that started this are immigrants from Russia. And the reason that they started Desna Cup was they wanted an event that brought people together. And they know that people play soccer throughout the world. And so they started with this soccer tournament. And it was small at first. And this has grown to be a huge event. So if you can, come up to Soholly and watch some great soccer. And now they've added volleyball. So they have teams from up and down the West Coast. And sometimes they have teams from Canada coming. It's a really great event, and there is awesome, awesome food there. I'm looking forward to the Lions Club Car Show. That's always a great event, and I get to judge cars, and I don't know what I'm looking for, except I like red cars, and I like cars that are nice and cute. So that's what I look for. I also would like to talk about the sharps issue. I've been working with Jan since she brought this up months ago and have realized that this is not just a local issue, it's a national issue. I have talked with two organizations that are trying to have a solution throughout the country because sharps that are thrown out, or they're thrown into the toilet, or they're thrown into sinks. I mean, people are just being very creative on how they're getting rid of their sharps. If they have medication in them, it's not considered a sharp. It's considered a medication. And it has to be disposed of differently. I've learned a lot over the last few months. And I don't believe it's a local issue. I believe it's a national issue. I have talked with our state legislators and our state insurance commissioner. I would like to see, long term, I would like to see if a medication is prescribed to a patient that is injectable. I would like to see that patient provided a personal sharp container that they can return to the pharmacy and the pharmacy can then take care of disposing of it. The insurance commissioner was interested in that but doesn't know if that will work. It will take legislation. But for now, we can work on something here in Federal Way. And that's what we're doing. I would also like to say I was at the First Avenue Library yesterday, and they have replaced the sharps containers in the bathrooms. They're really tiny, but they are there. They're in the bathrooms. So it is not just a local issue. I think it will take state legislation. We can start in Washington and then go national and solve the problem. Because it is a big problem. It's a public safety problem. It's a public health problem. And it needs a solution. So I'd like to thank Jan for finding this. And she's working really hard on this. Let's see, do I have anything else? We are, this is our last meeting of the month, but that doesn't mean you can't contact us. We're still available by phone, email, text, whatever. And so we will see you again in September. So thank you for being here.

All right. Thank you, everybody, for being here. Thank you for the public comment. Thank you to the staff. Thank you to my colleagues. Great meeting. We are adjourned.