City Council - Regular Meeting

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Yes, I can.

Thank you. Yeah, we're ready. I have a little bit of technical difficulties, so I'm having to do it a little bit different tonight than normal. No, it's okay.

Okay. All right. All right. It is 6.01 on September 8th, 2026. And I now call to order the 2,190th regular meeting of the City of College Place City Council. Madam Clerk, will you please take roll call?

Yes. Council Member Green.

Present.

Council Member Cleveland.

Present.

Council Member Stuckline. Present. Council Member Lopez.

Present.

Council Member Evans. Present. Council Member Sherman. Present. Council Member Boyle. Present. And Mayor Hernandez. Present. And we have a quorum.

Excellent. Thank you. Will you all please join me in 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. All right. It's now time for public comment. Madam Clark, did anyone submit a written comment in advance or request to speak via telephone or virtually? I received no comments. All right. And there is no one in council chambers. So we're going to just move on to our consent agenda today, which consists of the agenda. For today, September 8th, 2026 city council minutes for August 25th, 2026 surplus of city vehicles and equipment banking authorization update resolution 26 dash 0, 1, 4, concurrence. with City of Walla Walla request to reclassify Myra Road and approve the consent agenda. Is there any item any member of the council would like removed from the consent agenda at this time? And if not, is there a motion?

Move to approve the consent agenda.

Council Member Green, is there a second? Council Member Lopez? All right. All in favor of approving The consent agenda, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Right, the ayes have it and the motion is passed. There's two proclamations for today's meeting under presentations. The first one is for Hispanic Heritage Month. Whereas each year, the United... Are you okay? The United States observes National Hispanic Heritage Month by celebrating the culture, heritage, and countless contributions of those whose ancestors were indigenous to North America, including Mexico, as well as those who came from Central America, South America, Spain, and the Caribbean. And whereas what began in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week under President Johnson was expanded by President Reagan in 1988 to cover a 30-day period starting September 15th and ending October 15th. And whereas the date September 15th is significant because it is the anniversary of the independence for the Latin American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Additionally, Mexico and Chile celebrate their independent days on September 16th and September 18th, respectively. And whereas the theme of this month encourages us all to connect with our Hispanic heritage and focus on themes of prosperity, power, and progress, recognizing the significant strides of Hispanics in the economic, political, and social growth of the U.S. And whereas we recognize and honor the many ways that Hispanics have enriched the fabric of our society, and we dedicate ourselves to address the lack of equal access to opportunity that they still may face. and whereas the Hispanic population of the United States is now 62.1 million consisting of 18 percent of the total population and in college place the Hispanic population now constitutes over 18 percent of our total population with the median age of 32 and now therefore Be it resolved, I, Norma L. Hernandez, Mayor of the City of College Place, Washington, do hereby proclaim September 15th to October 15th, 2026 as Hispanic Heritage Month. And I encourage all College Place residents to celebrate our unique and vibrant history and recommit ourselves to the shared future of a healthy, peaceful, safe, and sustainable communities for all. Dated this 8th day of September 2026. All right.

And next, Mary, could I just say, we recently discovered that the university, we've grown our Hispanic population from 8% eight years ago to I think it's closer to 27% right now. Oh, wow. So it's grown quite a bit. Excellent.

Yeah, that's great. That's excellent. Because, you know, the students contribute so much to our community. So that's wonderful to hear. All right. So appropriate. It's also Constitution Day proclamation. Whereas the Constitution of the United States of America is a testament to the resolve of the American people to maintain their rights, liberties and freedoms. And whereas President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared the National Observance of Constitution Week in 1956. And whereas Constitution Week provides the nation with an opportunity to read and reflect on this important document in America's history. And whereas the Daughters of the American Revolution, including the Columbia River chapter, have promoted and encouraged this week-long commemoration of the Constitution. And whereas September 17th, 2026 is celebrated as Constitution Day and marks the 239th anniversary of the completion and signing of the Constitution of the United States of America. Now, therefore, be it resolved by normality on this, Mayor of the City of College Place, College Place, Washington, to hereby proclaim September 17th, 2026 as College Place Constitution Day for the City of College Place and encourage all residents to reaffirm their commitments to the rights, liberties and freedoms secured by our Constitution, and to uphold these principles in their daily lives for the benefit of present and future generations. Dated this eighth day of September 2026. These are two important proclamations, you know, for our communities, for our countries. And I think it kind of, it's nice because it unites, it brings the unity of our country to the top, makes us reflect on that. All right. Thank you all for that. Next, we have administrative reports. There's two of them. First is a comprehensive update to the personnel manual to be finalized upon legal approval. Ms. Brooker.

Good evening everyone. Yes. So, since I took my position in late March, I have been working through the policy updates for the personnel and policy manual. A lot of the updates haven't been done since 2019 and there's been a lot of employment law changes since 2019. So the main. main bulk of those updates happened to be all the legal law for Washington state employment and pregnancy protection. And, um, and then there was just a lot of, um, updating for, um, uh, just the clarification for benefits. And mostly since we do have three CBAs, a lot of the employee policy doesn't, hold because the CBA takes effect first for those employees covered by the CBA. But we do have a good group of employees who are not covered under a collective bargaining agreement. So I've been working on this and it's currently with the risk pool under legal review. And I just kind of wanted to give you guys an update on everything that I've been working on. And I'll bring it again once it's been approved by legal to update and pass.

Any questions from council members?

No, thanks for all the hard work and thanks for this specific breakdown kind of indicating what exactly is being updated. That makes it a lot easier to digest and understand what went into it. So well done. Thank you.

Any other questions? I actually have a question.

I just before this meeting, I was in a community health advisory board meeting and we were talking about the wildfires again, air quality and things like that. And Commissioner Clayton mentioned how Washington state obviously has a law protecting employees during these types of conditions is do we have a policy that states how we will What procedures we will follow should there be, whether it be inclement weather or unsafe health situations in the environment?

I think at this time, it's just generally broad and referring to general L&I suggestions. That is definitely something that we could break down, be a little bit more of an undergoing just because we would have to look at each employee group and the ones that work outside versus the ones that are inside and what the recommendations are. But that's definitely something they can work on.

Well, can you do some research? Because she stated that Washington State requires that employers have

We have a plan that was put together by the safety committee a year or two ago, and we have been following it, but I believe it is still technically in draft form. Okay. I can share that with you.

Yeah, so then we need to get that finalized because she stated— walla walla she said has theirs done and approved to the counties did not and what that's why she brought it to the attention that the county did it was out of compliance on that um so i thought i'd ask okay no we can definitely make sure that gets out of draft form all right finalized thank you any other questions or comments nope all right thank you so much for that um next Ms. Holm will provide an overview of CivicSpot's agenda and meetings management, which is also known as AMM, its rollout.

Hi, everyone. So I have been working since April to transition us from board docs to a new agenda meetings management software. At some of the meetings previous to this, I have brought forth a little bit so you guys can see what it looks like. But we are getting close to stopping in board docs and only having our meetings and agenda and meetings management. And so the short name for it is AM, A-M-M. And this gives you, the PDF in the packet gives you an overview of the public portal. There is also a board portal. that you have to log into. And I have usernames and passwords. Well, you guys will have to set the passwords, but the usernames are all ready for you guys. So I just would ask you to reach out to me and we can work through getting you signed in for that. But this is... Basically, the backside, this is what it looks like. We have, so far, all of the meetings are loaded up till the end of the year. So staff members can go into the individual agendas and add items. There are events for a full year forward. And then what the public would see is this, what's on the screen right now. And you can choose an event category. So if you're looking for a specific council commission committee, you can choose a specific one if you want to filter down the agenda packet and minutes packet that will show for you that has been, that's historical, plus it will show you stuff in the future, but only what's in the future is just the event. The other thing is you can search content. If you want to look for April financials, you could type April financials in here and it will find it. It will find, let me put this in here, the meeting that it went to and Then you can click into the item very much like BoardDocs to find what you need. It has the attachments also. You can sort based on a specific date, if you would like to do, or a range of dates. We have it loaded from January 2020 forward. If you need to look at a meeting that far back, you would just click January 2020 or whatever it is you're searching for. It'll give it to you all the way back. But I'm gonna open one up for you. You'll notice on these, it has a video. That means that there is a, where we house all of our videos. It's in YouTube, so it's got a link to go to YouTube if you were to open it up. Meeting Media is where you can click to go to the video for the file that we had. There's the agenda packet and minutes for the meeting. This is all in the public portal and it has it for all of our advisory committee commissions and city council. As we start building in agenda and meetings management, it looks a little bit different. It has thumbnails. For instance, if you're looking at today's meeting in the agenda packet, You'll see thumbnails. They haven't been able to do the thumbnails for the historical meetings that we've had like they are when they're built in there. But if you want to skip to a certain section of the packet, you would just click that. That'll take you there. So this is the public portal. Anyone has access to it. It will be housed on our website very much. In fact, it will just be replaced right here where BoardDocs was. There's several other areas in the website that you can go to that will point you back to the board portal. Hopefully we'll get that cleaned up, but that is on my agenda once we transition over to Civic Plus fully and we're done with BoardDocs. The board portal is a little bit different. This requires a login. I have a separate sheet that I can send to you guys and it kind of just walks through it. This is what it looks like. I only have two meetings in here so far, but when you open up your meeting, you can look at only the agenda or you can look at the packet and you have an option to just view the file. and it shows you the whole packet or the whole agenda, or you can annotate the file. And this is You can use it however it works best for you. There is this little annotate right up here. If you're looking through your packet and you wanna say, oh, I have this, I wanna make sure and ask staff member about this. You can highlight, you can put arrows, you could put a box, you can strike through, and you can doodle if you wanna doodle. and change colors. And then you would just click save and it saves it in the cloud for you. And the only way that you can access this is you would have to use your username and your password to log in. So it saves it only for you.

But is it public record?

It is a public record, yes. Can we get styluses? That's going to make the doodling way better.

The fancy pens. You have a stylish ride on it. Okay, so watch your doodles. That's public record.

I think, so eventually...

I'm thinking we'll just load from here forward for the agendas in the board portal rather than populating it all the way back to 2020. Meetings to 2020 is in the public portal and then for the, yeah.

Yeah, don't go through that extra work.

Yeah.

Well, very nice.

Um, it's so far we've had staff using it, um, for two meetings so far and I've received really good feedback. Everybody likes it. Um, I work, I've been working with the city clerk from Kennewick and they've used it and they love it and she raves about it. So, I mean, I've had quite a bit of really, really good feedback for it. So hopefully you guys, um, like it also.

All right. Thank you. Any additional comments or questions?

Council Member Stecklein? Just one question. I like the public facing one. It's really pretty. I was just wondering if it is ADA accessible, like with screen readers, if you know, because sometimes when things are pretty or in boxes, like screen readers don't really read them. I was wondering if you knew that or?

I was wondering if you were going to ask this.

I believe. Yes.

We will have to be fully ADA compliant here soon. So that is on my list. Yes. I know that Civic Plus has a program called Doc Access and there's several of our partners in the community that are actually using this. It is an additional cost. So in order for the city to become ADA compliant, there is quite a few more things that we're going to have to be purchasing and like We're going to have to change the website and a couple other things, but yes, this will be. If it's not already, I think it actually might be. Okay.

Any others? I was just going to say thanks for your work on this. I know in addition to the cost savings, it looks really slick, a lot more intuitive, so I appreciate your work on it.

Thank you.

All right. Well, thank you for that. Well, I'm concerned here because we don't see a two-hour finance report for our last meeting with Brian. Something must have been missed over. All right. So we're going to be like, I can do it.

I think he timed his retirement specifically to avoid that. Good luck.

All right, so information reports. There's one information report in your packet to review. It's September city events information. So please make sure you look at that. It's the last month for our farmers market. So let's make sure to try to get out and support our vendors this last month.

Can I mention something? I've been double doing the work in parallel and it looks like I missed adding the informational report for city events information in the board docs one. It's in the Civic Plus, but it's not in the board docs. Okay, so do you want to send us that report? I would be more than happy to do that.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. Okay, everybody's like, I'm a...

pretend I saw it already? Because I've been clicking through Civic Plus. I'm like, well, I know it's there and I'd seen it. And so I went back and I was like, I can actually put it up on the screen if you want here.

It's just we had to cancel in Canto because of the rain. So we're looking at a different date to hold

all right well thank you sorry i'm just writing a note here um okay so we are now into the next session of executive session which we will we do have an executive session tonight so we're going to adjourn to executive session per rcw 42.30.110 parentheses one, close parentheses, parentheses H, close parentheses, to review the performance of a public employee, parentheses RCW, 42.30.110, parentheses one, close parentheses, parentheses G, close parentheses, close parentheses. We will return at 6.40 p.m. So we're going to give ourselves 15 minutes to have this discussion.

We should give ourselves 20.

Okay, 6.45, we'll return at 6.45. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. All right, it is 6.45 and I now call the regular meeting back to order. Let's see. No action was taken during the executive session, just for the record. We are now on to new and unfinished business. I have two things that I want to add first. First, I want to congratulate our HR, because she received a scholarship to training in Washington, D.C. So there's somebody doing over there.

You want to tell what the, what do you learn? It's through it's a public risk management training. So I'll be basically taking 100, 200 and 300 courses in a week to get certified for public sector risk management.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Thank you.

It is.

I look forward to it though.

Oh, Oh, Don, I forgot. We started six. Don's coming tonight.

The meeting was just about, it's just about over.

We just wanted to have a couple of minutes.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. It's okay. Have a seat. We'll, we'll call you up right in just a moment. And then second, we also want to celebrate the council member, Dana Evans. We seek her certificate of municipal leadership. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking that. I appreciate that. Robert, I was going to ask you, I've been getting some questions and then I've seen on social media some chatter regarding Sixth Avenue, still the construction work that's still going on. People are asking, does anybody know when it's going to be done or what's going on? Can we just get a brief update and then maybe also consider doing a public message letting people know what's going on on 6th Avenue and.

Yes, I don't have specifics. I wasn't prepared for this.

That's okay. No, that's fine.

To my knowledge. It is on track to be completed in. October to early November with the paving window. So that's, it's been a long project from the get go. Okay. That was meant to take. It was meant to take. Yes. Meant to take this long contractor is still moving along. And I have, I am of the impression from our team that they're on track to finish. Um, at least to get to the paving window and. There might be some punch list items that carry over, but that's pretty common. So, uh. I think come October we should see paving and road coming back together.

Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Um.

Can I just invite Don? I saw Don at the fair and he wanted to come and tell us some good news about the scenic bikeway that he's been working on. So, yeah. Don, step right up. I think you know the routine. You know where the button's at now. Do you see how I didn't pronounce your last name wrong? I just didn't even say it.

So, please state your name and your city of residence and then just share your update with us.

My name is Donald Geen. I live at 1124 West Pine Street in Walla Walla. I'm sorry for just barging in. The website's at seven.

Well done. Well done.

Right. I own the place. So I've talked to you guys before. Welcome. Hello. Step two for the scenic bikeway, there were nine routes that were chosen. Unfortunately, one dropped out due to the Palouse to Cascades trail entirety. They wanted the entire 200 and some odd miles. So that was dropped. One was dropped due to flood damage on the trail during the spring. And they wanted to go from 40 plus miles down to 15. And then one drop because the bikeway owners failed to acknowledge ownership. So there are six routes left out of 22. On August 6th, Guy Glazer with Visit Walla Walla gave the presentation. I was in the room because I wanted to. And on the 24th, the task force, which I sit on, met and we calibrated all the scores. So the Walla Walla Valley Sweet Onion Scenic Bikeway scored 46.2 out of 50. Olympic Discovery Scenic Bikeway scored 44.2. Tommy Thompson Trail and Anacortes score 43.3. Vancouver Historic North Bank Scenic Bikeway scored 39.3. Whidbey Island Scenic Bikeway, 38.8. And Snoqualmie Valley Trail, 37 points. And with that, the Washington State Parks Task Force decided that the top three were going to move on to step three. So... Walla Walla is officially moving on. We are going to get a scenic bikeway. What step three looks like is they're going to engage bikeway owners and relevant parties to draft official MOUs and partnership levels. I know before it was just signatures and do we really want this running through the cities and so this will be official. there'll be a washington state department of transportation review mostly for safety one of the routes that didn't make it they were already going through some uh ports and so they didn't want that department transportation already said let's move this over here so cyclists weren't dodging heavy equipment um the commission will will be requested action to designate after the wc Washington State Department transportation review and then implementation fabricate and install signs and then long term enjoyment. So I know guy sent an email. I don't know exactly. That's probably above my pay grade as a volunteer, to get official MOUs drafted and signed. I assume that they'll be brought to council and council will read them and decide if this is something that we should move forward with. So when that happens, I would like to be present and give my thoughts on everything. But I was here to share that we made it to step three. And so we are one of the three that will get a scenic bikeway as long as all the paperwork is signed.

Well, congratulations. Thank you for sharing that good news. This is exciting.

And I'll update the website when I, or check the website. It's a little bit better next time.

Yeah, that's all right. Thank you. We just recently changed our time. So it's not like a, didn't we? Yeah.

And you made it, you made it right. So thank you. Thank you. That's good way to end our, our meeting.

All right. Does anybody else, Councilmember Stecklein? Just one thing was the beautiful mural outside of Enable Arts is done and completed. So it is in English and Spanish, which is really cool too. So I invite people to go out. I posted it on my social media and I tagged Enable Arts and then they reshared it so we can get more visibility. Yeah.

Just a quick note that the flowers that are, so it's in commemorative of our sister city, right, relationship that we have. And so the flowers on the one side, on the English side, have our regional flowers to this area. And then on the right side, on the Spanish side, is flowers that are regional to Juncapeo, Mexico. So it brings the two different flowers or the communities into one mural. um and showing our relationship and both of our efforts of growing our communities so it was nice to have it done grant report was completed and uploaded um and um i think it's a nice addition to our city i was telling everybody that i think i could see where everybody's going to come take selfies at it so hashtag college city college place right all right any of anything else for good of the order all right Seeing none, do we have a motion to conclude? No, no one? So moved. All right, Councilmember Boyle, is there a second? Wait, yes, is there a second? Second, Evans. Thank you, Councilmember Evans. So if there's no objections, the meeting is concluded at 6.53 p.m. Thank you, everybody. Yes.