City Council - Regular Meeting

is now six o'clock and i will call the meeting to order uh clerk please do the roll call mayor frederick here just doing the audio levels okay deputy mayor winkler here

Councilmember Elliott, Councilmember Walton, Councilmember Gassick, Councilmember Wargo, Councilmember Burrow, and Councilmember Thakur. We have a quorum.

Thank you. Please stand 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 indivisible with liberty and justice for all now is the time for public comments uh clerk anyone call in or email some comments no we have no written comments and no one's online okay and i see no one in the audience so um we'll move on to the uh approval of the agenda Do we have a motion for that? Council Member Barrow?

I make a motion to approve the agenda.

Council Member Thakur?

Second.

Do we have any further discussion? Okay, I'll call for the vote then. All those in favor say aye. Oppose? The agenda is approved. So first on our agenda tonight is item 6.1, which is our 2025 budget overview and 2026 midway budget. And Tara Dunford is here tonight to help us with that along with Keith. So go ahead, the floor is yours.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor and Council. I'm just going to go ahead and turn it over to Tara and let her lead the show.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Tara Dunford, Finance Consultant. I know this is a lot of information to disseminate and it probably looks a little bit different than you've seen it in the past, but my goal is twofold. One, I need to get familiar with the city's finances so that I can effectively assist the city through the 2027 budget process. And then two, I wanted to understand and make sure that council understands historically where the city has been in the last few years, especially in the general fund. um so tonight i'll focus mostly on the general fund hitting a couple talking points in other funds um there's a lot of information in here i've included data for every single fund that the city has again the general fund is the most important being the primary operating fund of the city basically capturing everything that's not required or elected to be accounted for elsewhere it tends to be the fund with the most restriction and and constraint financially whereas your utility funds for example you can raise rates if you need to you don't necessarily have that luxury with the general fund so i really want to focus focus on that. Just a few general notes regarding our accounting basis. So the city is on the cash basis of accounting. This means that when revenue comes physically into the city, it gets recorded as revenue. There are no accruals. There's no matching of revenues and expenses across periods. So there can be some variations there. The biggest one is with grant revenues. Typically, you'll have the expenses coming in first and getting reimbursed later. That can cross years and cause a little bit of variation. The expenditure side works pretty much the same way as the revenue being in that the expense is going to get booked when a check is cut to an employee or a vendor. There is an exception to that. It's prescribed by the state auditor's office and that is the 20-day open period rule which says that the city must leave its books open for the first 20 days of January. Any invoices that come in in those first 20 days that are related to the prior year have to get coded back to the prior year. um the same works for payroll so your first payroll in january always has to get coded back to december so why this matters and why we care about it when we're looking at budget numbers and we're looking at six months of data we might expect that we should be at 50 of expenses But really, we're only reflecting five and a half months of payroll and really approximately five and a half months of accounts payable. And we need to remember when we get to December, our expenses are going to be higher because of that open period and essentially getting three payrolls posted to December. So I formatted the reports to say that there's a target percent of 46% for expenses. That's five and a half months. Take the targets worth a grain of salt. That's not saying we have to be there. There could be valid reasons for being higher or lower. Again, we're the cash basis of accounting, so there's no accruals or attempting to match things to the correct period. It really is When the check is cut or the cash comes through the door, then it gets booked. It's nice because it's simple and it's easy to understand, but it can cause a little bit of variation period to period, either month to month or year to year. And then I'm not sure how fund balance or cash investments have been described to council in the past. They are one and the same. So if I talk about fund balance or cash and investments, they are the same thing. Again, since you're on the cash basis of accounting, this is a real known number. It's actual cash in the bank. Well, the very last slide in the presentation or the page in the presentation will show that breakdown. I just want to make sure we're on the same page related to that. And then lastly, I think councils received presentations in the past where fund balance has been kind of included or rolled up with revenues. So we've had beginning fund balance and revenues coming in equal to expenses going out and ending fund balance maybe not broken down in the most clear way that is an allowable way to do things and it shows a legally balanced budget but it's not truly presenting to you whether you have a structurally balanced budget so The reason for this formatting change is I want Council to see very clearly is fund balance going up or down every year? Are our resources higher or lower than our actual expenses? To me, that's the most critical piece of information that Council needs to be aware of during the budget process. so as i go through this please weigh me down interrupt me stop me it's very informal um i'll just hit some key talking points so if we could go to page four um it's page four in the packet i wrote packet numbers down uh carrie so that page yes yes thank you doesn't have a question

Council member Walton.

Um, I'm just curious, um, are we not going to talk about pages two and three? Cause I had a questions about them and they go and they do pertain to the general fund.

So I thought, so the pages that I noted down are the packet number pages. So we are actually starting on page two of the financial report, which is page four, I believe of your packet.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. I'm just going on the number down here. Perfect. So yes, you're starting on page two. Okay. Thank you.

I'm sorry if I derailed that.

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was trying to be helpful by doing packet pages and obviously I confused things.

You were so thorough. I didn't recognize it. Thank you.

Yep. Good. So yes, we are on page two. And I'm actually going to pull up my version so that I'm looking at the right page numbers here. okay um so this one is showing 2021 to 2025 actuals for the general fund i wouldn't necessarily suggest that we always present this much data to you but there was concern when i started what happened with the city why did the city get an s p downgrade um what's going on with the fund balance etc so i wanted to be sure that i really understood these pieces um again the format to start with we're always going to show beginning fund balance separately from revenues because we want to understand that that that's not ongoing that is really our savings our reserve balance and we want to see if that's going up or down um the revenues are broken down by category i've tried to consolidate it into meaningful categories we have the underlying data available for any of these so if council prefers more or less information here it's very easy to present it differently or provide additional information for any of the larger categories. The expenses are then broken down by department, the way that the departments have been set up in the financial system. At the bottom of the page, if we scroll down a little bit, Carrie, we have what I consider the most important line. So this is revenues over or under expenditures. This means are we going up or down every year? And then at the end, we have ending fund balance or our ending cash and investments that we have in the fund. So what's happened in the general fund? In 2021 and 2022, the city received just over $1.3 million per year from the federal government of ARPA funds. This was one time money. It was very confusing when cities got the money. There were a lot of rules and you could use it for this, but not that. And in the end, it came to be that anything less than $10 million could just go into the general fund and be used for any governmental purpose. So there really, in the end, were no strings attached to this money. Since the city is cash basis, the money was correctly reported as revenue in 21 and 22 when it was received. And you'll note that the fund balance did go up both years. So, if you look at the city's finances, just at their face without digging deeper, you'd think things are fine. If I look at a general fund budget, I like to see that that's. That makes me happy because it's pretty much operating expenses in the general fund. Yeah, you might have. a capital repair or something here and there but typically it's operating expenses that are going to track year to year the deeper story is you only had a balanced budget in those years because of the arpa money if you hadn't received the arpa money you would have had a substantial decrease in in fund balance both years and we really see that come to light in 2023 where expenses keep tracking along increasing as we would expect you don't have the arpa revenue and there was no other revenue to replace it so the city had a huge decrease in fund balance and then ending fund balance dropped to 5% of expenditures at the end of 2023. That would have been enough on its own for an S&P downgrade for sure. Regardless of what your fund balance policy is, 5% is alarmingly low no matter what, whether you have a policy or not. Fortunately, 2024 came along and the city had two big revenue sources that helped stabilize this. So the school of red light cameras came on, generated Significant revenue, and then there was a tax increase that happened in 2024 fully implemented in 2025. So those 2 revenue sources really stabilized. The general fund, and we end up at. End of 2025, we had a surplus both in 24 and 25 again at its face. You think this is really good, but. The police union contract expired at the end of 24. So the 2025 actuals reflect 2024 pay rates. What the impact of that's going to be, we don't know. It could be substantial. We'll look at some hypotheticals later on. So it's good. It's moving in the right direction, but we don't really know where we're headed at this point. There's a few variables. Yes, I'll pause for questions here.

Councillor Walden.

Yeah, and I can't thank you enough for how detailed this is and the specificity, each page being at this part, it's really great work. Really, it's exquisite. Thank you for that. I can only imagine how much time that took you. So I wanted to talk two things. When you look up at fines and penalties, was it like 1,056,000? And then you go down to court costs, 250. Is that 250 in court costs, the cost it takes to go when we have a, someone's appealing their camera ticket or something like that. How do those two go together? So we're bringing in this much, but we're losing that much for an overall maybe 700 grand in the positive. Is that correct with that?

Yes, what's happening is your court costs are increasing because we are using the courts more for the camera system.

Got it.

Okay.

And then one last question. When you talk about the percents underneath, that 5% is absolutely frightening. Thank you, Mike and Beth, for being such good diggers a few years ago on that. What is recommended to have in terms of that ending fund balance? Is it like 22%? Did I get that right? I was kind of crazy Googling.

Yeah, 22% is a great number. I typically think it depends on the city. If you're a struggling city, if I come back, if I worked for you in 2023, I'd say let's get to 15%. Let's make that a goal to get there as quickly as possible. 25% is great. And I would say that's a pretty good best practice. Your policy is actually a total of 30% with your three combined funds. I don't have any problem with that. I mean, I wouldn't go a whole lot higher than that because then you run into this argument of are we hoarding money? Are citizens receiving the benefit for the services they're paying for? So there is some risk. Very few cities actually have that problem of having a too much fund balance. I wouldn't worry about that. But I think if you're in the 20 to 30% range, you're in the right range.

And one last quick one. What is other non-departmental? Because it's almost $200,000. What would that be that we're paying for non-departmental?

Yeah, that's a bunch of random things.

Hang on. Just a couple. I didn't have to have a list itemized, but... I can tell you those.

A lot of money. I know. It looks like AWC dues, pollution control assessment, animal control...

um are some of the highlights okay okay thank you that's good just give me some idea that's perfect deputy mayor workler uh thanks mr mayor and my thanks too for the detailed report my preference is stays detailed i really like the numbers i really appreciate it so i i'm The format worked well for me, and if it works well, I like to see it continued in that detail. But I assure you all my questions will get fewer. And I also want to thank you for answering the questions I sent in advance. That's greatly appreciated. I'm going to make an observation after having reviewed my questions and your answers that I just think the rest of the council members should be aware of that when we get in the budget process, we think about it. Between 2024 and 2025, while it appears sales tax is up, when I dug into the report, it appears to be area of construction. So that is something I think when we get into the budget process, we know that construction is inconsistent. Right now we have some construction going. In the past we haven't. Next year we may not. The following year we might. So as we go into the budget process, I just want to remind everyone that that's my observation and they're a bit unpredictable and it's easy as we've done in the past to overestimate that, which has created some budget challenges. The only other, you know, I'm glad to see the ending fund balance is up, but I do see that it might be heavily based upon construction. The other sales tax areas, from what I could tell, seem to be going down. That's just my observations. And my last question on it, warehouses as of right now, although we're on 2025, are they all filled? And I think you had in one of the questions, one is not paid, and we won't mention any names.

I, Keith can speak to whether they're filled. The one is paid up. They just paid about two weeks late, so it didn't hit the June report.

Okay. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Again, thanks for the detail.

Okay we can move on to the next page in the packet. So now we're going to get into 2026 budget versus actual. Two purposes for this slide. One I want to show budget compliance. So as a reminder the budget's legally adopted at the fund level for total expenditures. so i know in the past the city has done more frequent budget amendments my recommendation generally is if you don't need one don't do one um so i'm really when i'm analyzing this looking to see if we're on track to go over at the fund level in total and that and that's why it's important to watch where we are in terms of projected and year-to-date actual versus budget The other purpose for this is I want to show with these projections, where are we heading? Where is our starting point potentially for 2027? Now a note about the projections, they are very rough estimates at this point. There's not line by line analysis in them yet that will happen later in the budget process. So next month when I come back and we talk about revenue projections, I'll have gone line by line for every revenue source in the general fund and captured all of the variations that come from maybe one B&O tax customer paying late skews the numbers. That will be captured later as we move through the budget process. These are really, really rough estimates, just kind of grain of salt information at this point. Based on current year-to-date activity, I have adjusted for the bigger one-time items like insurance, liability insurance that's paid in January and then and the ER&R contributions, asset replacement contributions that have been booked in full. So if we look at budget versus actual for revenue in total, we're at 51%, really right where we should be. There are some variations, but it's looking pretty good. Expenditures are at 48% of budget to actual. We set our targets 46%, factoring in the five and a half months. A lot of that is due to the insurance, again, insurance and ER and R contributions being booked at 100%. Projecting out where I think we could be, again, keeping in mind these are very, very rough estimates. It's looking like we are on track to have revenues coming in a little bit higher than budget and expenditures a little bit lower. That's good. We like to see that. However, again, police contracts, the actuals that are reflected in 2026 are based on 2024 pay rates. The fire contract expired at the end of 25. So we have the same issue for fire occurring in 2026 that we have for police in 25.

We got a question. Deputy Mayor Winkler.

More of a statement again. Thanks. I really like the detail in the fact that you answered my questions. I just want to share that. I agree with the rest of my console. My peers up here that when we get in that budget process, although it shows a nice jump between the 2 after reviewing all this and your answers to the questions. Yes, contract settlements is going to greatly affect that. We have some vacancies that are going to affect that if they were filled. I think the admin had make some tough deals and they're doing that to make sure everything stays in balance. But we need to be aware of that. So that number is not as large as it is. And right now we're fortunate to have like affinity going on. We got some sales tax coming in from construction. What next year is going to look like in that category could be different. And that's where our sales tax growth is. So just be when you look at that real high beginning or projected end compared to what we actually ended. It's going to be tough. You know, it's tight. OK, thank you, though.

That is absolutely a correct statement. I believe 2027 will be a tough budget year. And that's a great segue if we can go to the next page and look at sales. Oh, sorry.

We have another one here, Council Member Walton.

I'm sorry I have so many questions, but I just, this is the way my brain works, and I have highlights and questions over. So if I'm looking again at page three, am I reading this correctly, where we have police, I'm just giving an estimate, like 4.3 million, and the current last column is 3.7 million. So that went down. Is that correct how I'm reading that? Or, okay, is that the projected? And then it looks like the police went down. up a little bit, is that correct? From 3.5 to 3.7, is that correct?

Yeah. Or the fire.

Yeah, fire. How do you, how is it that we have a group and the payout for salary is going down in a time where I know we're doing six bargaining units in Puyallup and I guarantee you no one's going down.

This is, I love these questions. This is a great question. Fire overtime is very, very high currently.

What did you say?

Fire over time is very, very high. It's already on track to be $200,000 over what was in the budget. And I can't speak to how accurate the budgeting was for 2026, whether it was a budget accuracy issue or something happening operationally. But that's the big factor with fire versus police not having that same issue.

Okay, and kind of echoing what Mike was saying. So we're into two years without a police contract and 2025, the end of 2025 was fire. So we're about half a year with that. and i know from bargaining and education things it's retroactive so when we do get that contract we go back and make those adjustments i'm just curious i think i think it's gonna be crushing i'm sorry but i just a two-year contract two years back is i don't even it makes me nervous makes my palms sweat um because all of this is other people's money it's our taxpayer money so with that can't we possibly get some estimate of that i mean uh based on a package of a two percent increase a three percent increase you know we have to do that bargaining the admin and teachers if we give four it's this much if we get five it's that much can we get something like that as a council so if we settle the contract next month what could it possibly be in terms it's not pie in the sky there's got to be some algorithm to kind of get a ballpark we have possible it's actually in the slide and we're going to get there it's in the packet yes we'll get there momentarily i just didn't see different like levels of it i guess so okay it wasn't maybe very well labeled as what it was but yes we'll cover that in a moment fabulous thank you we have uh council member barrel

Hi, I just have a couple of questions. Probably Keith can answer these. On the greenways, we actually had budgeted $100,000, but it looks like we're at the end of the year only going to be spending $25,000. Where are we saving that? And there must be something in there.

We actually are not saving that. That's a great question. And I said the projections are very rough estimates. I didn't go line by lines. What's not captured in there is summer watering. I just took what's happened year to date and said it's going to continue without getting more sophisticated in every line item. So I do expect those projections to change and come back up in line with budget as we keep updating them.

And then lastly, facilities. We're like at 77%. What did we do this first half of the year?

Yeah, the big thing that we weren't anticipating was there was an HVAC system over in the public safety building that required significant work and repair. So that was one that had had a question. So I went and asked facilities. So that was the unanticipated expense that raised that. Great, thanks.

We have Council Member Thakur with a question.

Yeah, I had a few questions and comments, but I thought I will save it for the last and I will. But just to expand something on what just Susan said about police and fire contracts, and we have a two years in, but also we have to remember that this is an ongoing process. I don't know if say they agree for two years or three years, then we are already over with that bargaining and we have to restart. So this is like an ongoing process for us and we need it to be more better doing budgeting and our physical responsibilities and all the physical management. And I think that is only my comment is that, yes, we have a problem right now, but this is an ongoing issue we have to deal with and i wouldn't call it as an issue or problem it is just the ongoing what we have to work with that's the only thing i wanted to say thank you uh okay so we'll move on to page four which is the sales tax summary

I've included sales tax data for 2024 through the first six months of 2026. The first section of the screen that we're looking at here is showing sales tax by category for year-to-date 2024, a full year of 2024, and a full year for 2025. As we noted a moment ago, 0% growth without construction. from 24 to 25 so obviously we need to be tracking that and not counting on sales tax to be going up um as you have me here in front of you more frequently you'll realize i tend to budget very very conservatively on revenues i do not like to be budgeting high or projecting any increases my typical standard for sales tax would be to look at what our actual is in 2026 taking out one-time construction and properly budget that same amount for 2027 with no increase i just never want to be counting on that to come in higher especially when we're seeing trends like we did from 2024 to 2025. um i believe the construction number that's shown in 24 and 25 is probably a pretty good baseline so 230,024 and 238,025 um it's consistent and it's a good uh percentage at 18 and 19 percent of total sales tax it's not indicating that it's uh that we're overly reliant on that or that it's uh there's any spikes in there if we go down to the second half of the page the second graphic This is January through June 25 to versus 26 and we'll see a totally different picture. If we look at construction, we notice that the 1st, half of 25 less than 100,000 that jives with my baseline of saying, I think just over 200,000 is probably our right number. But our actual in the 1st, 6 months of 2026 is over 250,000. So, we need to be aware of that and say, that's a spike. That's not something we can count on. That's the 55 and older community that's going in. That's entirely related to that 1 contractor paying for that as a reminder here. We're always 2 months behind and data. So the numbers that the city, the dollars of the city receives in June are for sales tax. It's actually collected in April. Collected in April by the business, remitted to the state in May, remitted to the city in June. So, 2 months behind, we could see a little bit more revenue coming in related to that project, but it should be pretty much wrapped up at this point. And I expect construction numbers to go down. Not seeing any new vendors or any new projects coming on board when we look at the underlying data. So. If we look at sales tax and see, wow, we have a 27% increase year over year, that's great. It's a one-time increase. It's not something we can count on. Our real increase looks to be closer to 4%, which is nice to see a 4% year over year in 25 when we saw zero 24 to 25. So it indicates there's a small amount of growth happening there. At least it's a trend in the right direction, even if it's not anything too substantial.

Deputy Mayor Winkler.

I hope you don't mind the interruptions. Again, thanks. I really like the detail. This is actually my last question on my list, but it's more a statement that I'm going to ask the council members to also look at. I just want to bring something to Council Member Elliott, and I think she'll agree with me, and I have been concerned about. For a couple of years is the downward trend in our sales tax after you take it out. And if you look at accommodation, the food services sales tax and you look at a wholesale trade sales tax, both of those years, they went down. Not only did it go down in 2021. the year before, 24 to 25 June, but 25 June to 26 June. So that has been on a downward trend that I think we need to be aware of when we're doing budgeting. And just as important, if not more important, I think we should be aware of and maybe a little concerned about the health of our businesses out there, that they're impacted and that when they bring concerns up, It's documented in the fact that if we're bringing in less sales tax, that means they're selling less, which means it's tough. I just wanted to bring that up for those involved in the business side. Thanks.

Yeah, that's a great point. And to that point, I have all the detail for all the taxpayers behind this. And one thing that I always look for is, is there an obvious explanation? Did a business close or come on with both accommodation and food services and the wholesale trade? it's not any one business it doesn't look like any of your bigger businesses left it's just and it wasn't anybody any one business going down substantially it was kind of across the board like your bigger food service establishments all reporting slightly very slightly lower sales tax revenue which is just an interesting trend like you say to be aware of but it's not appearing to be uh business specific from what i can see so far council member elliott

What I find interesting about that is our tourism dollars, I mean, our expenditures in tourism went way up, and yet our accommodations and food services are going down. So does anybody know why? And I guess, what was, why did tourism go up? What have we done differently?

I don't know the answer to tourism right off the top of my head.

The tourism was that grant, the LTAC grant.

The LTAC, oh. Yeah. It was the LTAC grant for the study that we did.

We have another question here, but one of the thoughts I had on that was that we had some golf tournaments and things going on, but council member Gassick.

We've got questions that aren't getting answered. So my question is where are your department heads? Why aren't they at this meeting?

I didn't know they needed to be at the meeting.

Well, we're going over the budget. So it's a pretty important meeting. I would think that they should be present to answer questions that we might have about line items.

Noted.

Let's go to page 10. Well, we don't have to skip. I don't mean to skip over anything. If we want to go through departmental budgets, we absolutely can. This is just in a little bit more detail than the summarized data that was on the prior page. But yes, let's start. We can look at page five. It's the first one. so here i've broken down every department so these totals both the budget totals and the year-to-date totals will match the prior page the general fund summary and then i've just broken down the departments into more detail so salaries benefits supplies services and then the equipment replacement contributions um to see where we are uh here today one more thing here uh council member walton

Yeah, and maybe it's on another one. I tried looking at the broad picture, the 10,000-foot view, the 100,000. But I had just a question when we talk about mayor, council, executive, legal, fire, police, engineering, et cetera. the next two pages. What exactly are services? Because some of them are as high as $176,000. Some are 101. I think one was, oh, this one in fire is 339. The one for police is 924. They're pretty substantial amounts. I did add them up and get a grand total. And again, not an itemized list, but that's a lot of money for something called services. And so I'm just curious what that could look like.

Yes, that's a great question. The categories that I use here are what's prescribed by the state auditor's office for accounting. So they do lump everything into services. It's going to look different in every department. Insurance is the biggest ticket item typically that you'll see. That's why that services line is going to be high relative to budget versus actual because we pay the bill in January and insurance per bars is included in the services line. I can give you a little bit of other just some other things for police and fire here really quickly.

But you're saying insurance would be the biggest chunk for all of the different departments, irregardless of what they do.

I should say it should be the biggest reason for variation in the budget to actual because we've paid the full bill in January. So for other departments, looking at fire, I'm going to see if I can see some of the bigger line items here. Fire is like 339.

I think that's the biggest...

They just services line item.

Yeah. And what police was 924. So I'm thinking, you know, if it's insurance, that's a big discrepancy of like $600,000. But are there? Can there be a discrepancy based on number of people or, um, or job?

So any professional services would go in that category. Anything that you contract out for South Sound 911 is one that Keith just brought up that would go into the services line item. Yeah, so that's gonna be the big one for police fire. Nothing's jumping out at me as anything big right off the bat. We can certainly provide a breakdown of the details for you, though. I have all the data here. I'm just going through it and not nothing's jumping out too quickly at me. So what the totals are, but we can provide line item details for all of these things.

That would be great. And last question on page five, what are central services? Everything else was pretty self explanatory, accounting, legal, etc. What are central services? What would that entail?

IT is included in central services, I believe.

Let me check.

HR is actually in the executive budget.

Okay. I didn't know that. Thank you. So IT is kind of central services.

So central services is the bulk of it. Yeah.

Thank you. Appreciate that.

So on these departmental budgets, we are looking pretty good. Again, the big variation that we're seeing is the fire over time. That's the number that's jumping out at me as tracking a little bit over. As far as whether that's going to require a budget amendment or not, we just need to track and see if the union contracts settle before the end of the year. We'll definitely need to come back with a budget amendment because those are gonna be substantial numbers. If not, we may have savings in other areas that will cover that and as long as we're fine in total, we wouldn't need to come back and amend the budget. Are there any questions on any other individual departments or are we okay with moving on to discussion of the reserve balances? So, reserve fund balances are on page 8. For this purpose, I've combined your three funds. So the general fund, the revenue stabilization fund, and the contingency fund. Revenue stabilization and contingency are separate funds that have been established by council, but they're not legally restricted externally. So council can move money back and forth with these funds, relabel them, et cetera. So I'm really focused on the 30%. target in total um if one fund is low it can the general fund could transfer money to bring that fund up to its own target or vice versa so we have the general fund target at 15 revenue stabilization at 10 and contingency reserve with a five percent target adding up to the 30 percent um Our 2025 actual known number ended 2025 with 23%. So target was 30%, ended at 23. The variance is just over $950,000. So that's a substantial shortfall versus your own policy. So the city's own policy says we should be at 30%. City was only at 23%. Whether that's bad, good or bad for the city's fiscal health, to me, you're still at least in the right range of 20 to 30%. So I'm not overly alarmed looking at this. However, slightly more alarmed when we think about the police and fire contracts. So again, not to hammer on that point, but it is the biggest thing that's impacting the city financially and the biggest threat, if you will, to the general fund stability right now. um 2026 projected now the projections are based on if things continue along as they have with no union contract settled this year the city could potentially get to 29 by the end of this year that's great but really not because once we have to take that hit and pay the retro pay that's a direct impact to this balance that's where it comes from is fund balance um there is no other source for that so to be clear these numbers will go down substantially when that settles um if we go to the next page i want to show you some hypotheticals for the union contracts so question first from uh council member elliott sorry and it's related to those contracts but so if we just if if these contracts or if the police contract settles like in november

so then does that chunk of money come out of the general fund then okay and then we could we could if we needed to we could transfer money from the other two funds to make the other one whole okay thank you yes correct um so on page nine is

a summary here and I want to be very clear about this this is hypothetical informational what could cost of living increases cost the city this is not intended to say council should bargain towards these numbers or this is what you can afford or this is what terra thinks it's purely informational just so you can have a rough idea of what the cost would be at different levels um also important to note this includes salaries and salary related benefits so benefits that are based on salaries are your drs contributions and deferred comp contributions those are a percentage of salaries so those have been factored into these estimates what's not factored in is if there's other asks that are not cost of living adjustment related for example if Police and fire currently get time and a half for overtime on holidays and now they want double time on holidays. That's not factored in here and that's not a real example. Just giving you an example of things not included in this. So other asks. Not included, rough estimates based on 2026 actuals. But yes, if we jump to the worst case kind of scenario that's presented here, if a 10% cost of living adjustment was awarded for police and fire, the annual cost is over $500,000 a year. That's for one year.

So if we talk about... Councillor Wolton has a question.

Oh, no. Go ahead. Go ahead and finish, Tara. And then I do. Thank you, Ron.

If we have, so $500,000. For one year. For one year.

So it's already two years behind. Correct. So the cost. So a million.

Well, no. For police, we have to look at it separately for police and fire. So notice police is just over, say, $225,000. To make the math easy, you'd owe $250,000. It would be the cost for two years just for police. And then the fire, you'd owe one year, which is $275,000. So $775 total would be the cost for catching up police and fire at 10%.

And Tara, what number from page eight would that come out of? I'm sorry, I was trying to circle and now I don't know what I circled. From page eight, like let's say 700,000.

It doesn't matter. It would really just come from the total. So the total of 3.6 million, 3,617,561. So it would come directly from there. That would drop the balance back down to about 23% again to take that hit.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Council Member Barrow.

Yeah, I just wanted those numbers. Do they include overtime in this? Because I didn't know if that was included.

Yes, they do. They include an estimate based on current overtime use. any other general fund questions or comments what i've heard for follow-up is the line item detail for services and police and fire is a follow-up item to provide okay um

Oh, yeah, I just wanted to comment. I think this is one of the best presentations we've had. So it does provide all the detail. I mean, I think more detail is always good, in my opinion. But I just I thank you. I think this is just this is what we've needed. So thank you.

Thank you. And I'm sorry, I don't have all the answers yet. I'm barely new to the city's budget. I'm trying to get there when I have them all. Happy to answer budget questions all day, every day.

Okay, so I have one question about which has not been asked so far, which is about the interest revenue. So if you can go back to that page, wherever it shows in the general funds, and it shows that we have received only 29% of the interest. Why is so?

I'm sorry, that's page three, Carrie. um i suspect the interest revenue budget may have been a little bit high um in 2026 um I can see how if you're just trending along, one might make that mistake. So I don't want to cast zones. Interest has been historically high in the local government investment pool. Again, when I come to you, I'm going to say, I think we should budget it at 2% right now. It just dropped below four in the last couple of months, but that's not a revenue source we can count on. And we should be budgeting that very conservatively and having it be an extra thing coming in, not being in this picture of having it low at this point in the year. We really want to see the picture looking opposite, again, my opinion and my preference for estimated revenues.

My question, again, I don't think I got that, or maybe I didn't understand your answer very well. But so we are having only 29% received means that are we still getting more interest revenue?

Yeah. So we are getting more interest revenue. It's coming in. It's just that the budgeted number I think was too high. So we budgeted 143,000. That may have been a little bit overzealous looking at where the actuals are. why so is it not a fixed uh we have a cd somewhere which gives us the interest the cities in the local government investment pool um is the investment vehicle which i think is great for cities it's a hundred percent liquid it's very competitive our rates have been above four percent How the revenue budget for interest was developed in 2026, I can't speak to. I didn't do it. I would typically myself estimate very low for revenue. Even if I know that the pool's paying still 3.7% as of last month, I wouldn't budget that for 2027. I still expect interest rates to go down even if we we don't want to build in reliance on interest revenue into the budget because the city's so limited as to what it can invest in. It's pretty much the pool or something very similar and a more realistic rates over time would be in the one to two, maybe 3% range if you're aggressive with your budgeting. So I just think the budget number was a little high for that line item is my best explanation. Okay, thank you.

One other thing, Councilmember Thakur, is we didn't used to get as much interest, but since Keith has been here, we started using the sweep accounts to get maximum interest off all of our funds that aren't being spent.

We'll go over a slide at the very end that shows the breakdown of cash versus investments, and the city is doing a good job of investing as much as possible. It's just we can't control rates.

Yeah.

Council Member Walton.

Thank you, Jewel, because I went back to that one too. I know there are positions that we are going to need to fill in city's role, city government. Have those estimated salaries been put into this when a finance director, whatever it is, are they reflected in the budget as well? Because that will also be more money going out. Does that make sense?

They're reflected in the 2026 budget numbers. So the budgeted 2026 expenditures, the projections are based on what's happened year to date. So it's going to factor in like you did have a finance director for most of that time, but not all of it. And there are other vacancy savings that are in here. when we build the 2027 budget again this is a my preference thing there's always uh ways to do it but my preference is to budget at 100 for salaries of benefit so every authorized position needs to have 100 of the dollars budgeted um if we get in a situation where the budget's not balanced and we can't get it balanced there you could consider do you want to budget for some attrition do you want to say For example, the police department can never be fully staffed. They can never maintain fully staffing. So maybe we budget their salaries at 90% and hope they have a vacancy. That's not a best practice to me. I don't like that. I don't want to use that as a starting point. The 2026 budget looks mostly complete for salaries and benefits but not perfect um the variances there could be some hires that would impact it correct yes okay fair enough thank you

Okay. Council Member Wargo.

Just a quick question. We were talking about the 10% worst case on the police and fire, 775. How is it distributed? Is it going to be a lump sum that happens when it happens, or is it going to be amortized? How does that work when that takes effect?

I should clarify that the 10% isn't worst case, it's worst case on my slide. So just to say that it would be since the city's cash basis, it would hit as soon as that union contract settles, the city has a very short window of time to pay the retro pay and it would hit the general fund budget right then. There's no going back years or paying it over time, if you will.

Councilmember Gessig.

When is the next meeting for contract negotiations with fire?

I don't know off the top of my head where the next one for fire is. I know we're working with our labor attorney right now to get one scheduled.

Okay. I asked that about a week ago and I haven't gotten an answer. I'm very disappointed with how this is affecting the budget. I don't even know where to start. I appreciate the detail in the budget. So thank you for the work that you put into it. But I'm not liking the message at all.

Any other general fund comments before we hit a few other topics? Street fund, I think we'll be on, let's try page 12. 12, thank you. I wasn't going to go through every fund, but I'm happy to if council would like to. I just thought it might be overkill. So the street fund revenues and expenses are both low when we look at budget versus actual, this is due to capital grant projects that haven't happened yet. So the capital outlay expenses are low. Um, Expenses in total are low and then intergovernmental revenues are low, we have to spend the money first in order to get the grant money coming in so that's just a variation on that one and minor thing on the drug enforcement fund page 18. This fund doesn't currently have any expenditure budget in it, but does have some allowable expenditures use of drug seizure funds in the police department. So we'll need to include that in a budget amendment. That's the only thing so far I'm seeing where I can say we absolutely need a budget amendment and it is only $10,000. But just administratively, we have to have Council provide authority to spend that money so that the fund has expenditure authority in total. Yes.

Council member Walton.

um we're skipping ahead on this the page 13 street depreciation um 43 824 actual through june 26 is is that what we have left to work on our streets Because in 21, I mean, I know variations depending on when projects start and end and all of that, but $43,000, where are we on the whole street improvements too? Because I know that's a big thing as well. How does that factor in? That's

a very odd fund to me. In my opinion, you shouldn't even have that fund. So it got fund balance from somewhere. If we look back to the 2021 actual, it had over $350,000 in it and the city's just been drawing it down. It has had no contribution since then other than interest revenue coming in. The transfers out that you're seeing are transfers to the street fund for projects. But yes, the funds going to be depleted very soon at this rate. My recommendation would be. Close it out. It's unusual to have this separate fund. Streets have different funding sources that would go into fund 101 typically. So grant revenue, transfers from the general fund, it's always subsidized, transportation benefit funds, possibly use of real estate excise tax funds for street projects. So there are other sources and then this pot is pretty much gone with no new revenue coming in.

okay thank you for that just trying to council member so it's a good question from uh council member walton and a good answer from you and uh explanation but the depreciation word itself is not should be the bringing the revenue in my opinion and having that as a uh you know one of the fund doesn't make sense totally

It doesn't make sense at all.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense. And that was my one of the comment I put it on to say, I don't know why we have no revenue and depreciation and still it's on as a budget item. Yeah.

It's a very strange one. There's always a balance for me when I start working with a new city of saying, how much do we clean up all at once? And it's kind of picking and choosing things. Any fund that starts with a one, your 100 level funds, is typically an optional fund. So the exception is the street fund. So fund 101, you need to have a street fund. It needs to be separate from the general fund. It tracks the motor vehicle fuel tax and then any other street related expenses these other 100 level funds that you have are optional they could roll into the general fund um it's not bad to have them you don't have to have them so when are we thinking of closing this fund and how are we going to close and where do we transfer it's a very small amount 40 000 is not a big amount and It would appropriately just go to the street fund to fund 101. That's where the money has been going every year. It's just been budgeted these transfers out into the street fund. I would recommend that we either include it in a budget amendment in 2026 to zero out the balance and move it all to street fund or include it in the 2027 budget of transferring the remaining balance into the street fund. Either way will accomplish closing it out.

So I think we can look forward from the city staff recommendation on how to move this and get it out of our way. Yes. Okay, thank you.

Yes, it will have to happen via budget ordinance, either budget amendment ordinance or budget ordinance. One of the two would be the method to make it happen.

Thank you.

Let's skip ahead to fund 301 because this fund actually has some good news in it. So fund 301 is a fund that's required to be kept separate. This tracks the real estate excise tax dollars for the city. So real estate excise tax is the first quarter and second quarter percent on sale of real estate. The city has a substantial amount accrued in this fund, which is great to see. And the other positive here is that if you look at the year-to-date actual revenue, it's already higher in June than the last several years have been in total. So again, this is a very variable revenue source, not something we want to count on, not something we want to budget aggressively, but just nice to see it going in there. It is a source that can only be used for capital projects. So we're not relying on this revenue for operations. It is capital related. It's normal to see the balance in this fund growing for several years and then you spend it on a big project. Um, or various big projects. So, as of the end of June, there's just under 3.4Million dollars in there. Um, this is certainly something the city should look at in the 2027 budget process. Are there. Big capital improvements you have that you could use some of this money for, um, it has to be things that are in the comp plan and comply with requirements. So there are. some strings attached to it and legal restrictions attached to it. But the balance is very nice in that fund.

And that has a question.

Oh, yes. The transfer out that $500,000, where did that go out of that fund for this first half of the year?

Hang on. That went to a capital project. I think I can tell you in a moment. Oh, actually, I'm sorry, that went out to the debt service fund. So that is being part of the outstanding debt. And I honestly don't know what bond you have outstanding that's in the 200 level bond fund, you know, the building city hall project.

Okay.

yeah so it's the debt service and that is an allowable use of real estate excise tax uh so 500 000 of the 750 was budgeted to go to debt service and the remaining 250 is a transfer out to streets for street projects thank you

Council member at the court.

So I think this transfer in and transfer out also always all the pages has it. And I had a question and I'm like, I think it would be nice to have a line item underneath just to show. So we don't wonder that where the half million went to or where does the half million is coming from? Also, there are transfer ins and I'm like, where does the half million is coming from? So even if it's going from one fund to another fund, And if it is just spells out underneath that, hey, this went from specific fund to a general fund, that will be very, very helpful. So we don't, we avoid a lot of questions.

That's great feedback and very easy to put into future reports. Thank you. We could go into the next page to the Water Fund. The biggest thing that jumps out as looking odd here is the miscellaneous revenue is extremely high relative to budget. This is the PFAS settlement money that's coming in. It's also resulting in a very high fund balance in the water utility. It will be expected that this fund balance starts drawing down pretty quickly as that money is spent. So it's kind of the opposite of a grant scenario where you spend the money first and then get the reimbursement later. In this case, the money is coming in first and then the related expense is going to happen at a later date. On the expense side, the water funds looking good in total budget versus actual. And the fund balance looks very healthy. I always caveat this in utility funds. The fund balance looks very good, but I don't know what I don't know. So I don't know what your capital needs are. I don't know how substantial those needs are and where fund balance relates to that. Operationally, it appears you have a very good fund balance and you're operating.

in the positive overall in the in the water utility fund and tara our public public works people and our city engineer uh in previous meetings have uh informed the council about coming projects and you know like our hoffman hill reservoir and other things that are going on so some of that money will in fact be drawn down perfect

let's jump to the last page and then if there's any questions on pages that i skipped we can certainly jump back to them um this is a cash and investment summary as of june 30th so it breaks down the cash and investment balance by fund as of june 30th these numbers will tie back to the individual fund pages where we have ending fund balance as of june 30th The bottom part where we're showing the distribution of cash versus investments is to show council how the city is doing in terms of investing. So I look at this and I think this is great. Most of the $19 million that you have is in the local government investment pool as of June 30th. That's great. That indicates that the city is transferring money, keeping as much in there as possible to maximize your interest. rate of return. It is normal that you should have some balance in cash. I usually recommend for a city of this size keep at least half a month's worth of expenses and payroll in the bank so you're not having to transfer money every single day or every week or reliant on limited staff to do it. But your distribution looks very good to me. So I'd say kudos to the finance department for maintaining this and doing a good job with it. um this part we can control the rate of return in the local pool we cannot control unfortunately um like i said rates are currently right about around 3.7 percent uh that is the last page in the report i'm happy to jump back and also if there's questions that i wasn't able to answer that i didn't already note down please let me know and i can follow up with more detail tomorrow um on any of them council member walton Hello.

Yes, if we could go back to the page 22 stormwater utility, just correct me, is that also money that we can use for sidewalks? Did we talk about that? Is that also a fund we can draw from for the sidewalk improvements?

If it's keeping the storm drains clean, it's a gray area, more of a public work question.

Well, they're not here, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah.

That's also going to be a subject matter for the next council meeting too. We're going to talk about that.

Okay. And I, I do want to echo, um, Shauna statement. I think moving forward, we do budgets. It would be nice to have, um, the heads of those departments just so that question for instance, could be answered today and not two weeks later. So if we could kind of note that moving forward, I think it just would like expedite things for all of us. So, okay. So that is something that, that we will talk to at the next council meeting to put on the agenda. Correct.

There's this, we're planning to have a discussion on sidewalks at the next council meeting, I guess. Right.

And it'll involve this fund possibly being used for that. well this fund and maybe other funds we have a number i just want to be really specific because my question is can we use stormwater utility fund for sidewalks and you said oh you know a little gray area got to be careful so i just want that question to be posed and answered at the next council meeting so i'm not pushing it again for another two weeks so thanks council member at the court

So I guess I'm going to say my few words. First of all, I have to say a huge thank you to our staff for the report format and the presentation. As you might remember, asking twice during the last meetings, I made the comments that because of my personal business experience and accounting methods and using the softwares, These reports are really the best reports we can read out of. And we do not want to see the reports which is presented in the Excel spreadsheet, which can be very well manipulated at any stage by anyone. So I'm very happy to see that. Also, second thing I wanted to point out, that last week I attended the Association of Washington City's Budget and Physical Management Workshop in the Leavenworth. So, and this was the second one, as me and Deputy Mayor Winkler also attended the four-day training at AWC in Spokane. During that time, we end up meeting with the many city accounting software providers, and they did say that this kind of software reports are available. You just need to ask for it. And when I was talking to you about the line items, so all the specific to the project funding, all the different categorized. So I think this is a great work by the staff and you and presenting to the city. So kudos to them and thank you again to the entire city staff. This one of the, I think everybody asked the question and everybody has already said all these things, but I do want it to echo what all the other council members said that this is a very good balance. Our budget is at this point, other than few challenges, which is on our way. and which we are very well aware of the police and the fire and we don't know what it will turn out but i think this is an ongoing challenge and how do we solve this i think we need to work on it as a council for the future reference also not just this time and one of the things I do want to say that when I was in learning as a new council member at these conferences and I met dozens of mayors, council members, city administrators, city finance directors and city clerks, I had a very good discussion about the best practices and two came to my attention at the most. First one as a best practice is if we want to consider it, our council can form a new financial oversight committee, which is made up of the three current council members. They will be presented with the budget and the current year till date expenditures in detail. So when entire council gets the reports, they know that is well looked into by our three CMs. Basically, this oversight committee having it it benefits to the mayor city staff city administrator and all the Council members that's my one suggestion and the second suggestion is. I would love to see a snapshot of opening balance and ending balance every time with the bank statements. So many times we know that, okay, these are how much money we have in the account. but we would like to verify that and if we have a oversight committee and if they verify we don't need to do that but many times reports can be anything so and also as we know that many times in the irs rules also opening balance and ending balances has to be matched by the cpas with the bank statements so if as a council member also if we get a total bank balance showing snapshot so we know that those 17 millions is in the funds sitting in the bank at this place i think that's those are my two suggestions thank you any other any other questions for tara

Okay, well, I want to thank you so much. I know Tara that you and Keith and did a tremendous amount of work on this. This is the best budget report I've ever seen. So I really appreciate your work on this and we'll look forward to more such reports and as we're going to be developing our next budget over the fall months. So this will give us good information as we move forward and develop that budget. So again, thank you very much. We'll move on to the next item, which is 6.2, which is the item we discussed briefly in individual meetings about data centers. So Keith, you got a few comments on that, I believe.

Yeah, I just wanted to read some key points as we're getting prepared to do this. So there are both national and statewide concerns from local governments regarding the proliferation of data centers and their potential impacts, such as the use of significant water supplies for cooling equipment, that are required for data centers, the creation of emissions of using fossil fuels, potential for significant amount of noise and heat that can negatively impact the health and wellbeing of surrounding neighborhoods and communities. The city's comp plan has a goal to implement regulations that reduce environmental health hazards and ensure access to clean water and air for all residents. However, our development regulations do not currently have regulations specifically governing data centers to address mitigate potential negative impacts. RCW 35A.63.220 and RCW 36.70A.390 authorize the City Council to adopt a moratorium for a period of up to six months without notice in a public hearing provided the City holds a public hearing within 60 days after the adoption of the ordinance and we establish a work plan to conduct related studies to support the review and potential revisions of existing development regulations to ensure the impacts of data centers are mitigated and implementation of vision goals and policies within the adopted comprehensive plan. The ordinance will adopt a six-month moratorium on the sitting creation or expansion of any data centers, meaning we do not have to accept, process, or approve any land use or building permit applications related to data centers as they are defined by the ordinance. The moratorium will automatically expire at the conclusion of the six month period unless it is extended as provided by the RCW or unless it is terminated sooner by the city council. For example, if they adopt specific regulations before the conclusion of the six month period. Our current plan is to advertise and conduct a public hearing on the ordinance at the September 8th council meeting and include the ability for the council to adopt the ordinance at that evening. So we just wanted to share the information of what we were doing and the regulations regarding and just make sure the council is aware and try to answer any questions you may have tonight as we're moving forward with this moratorium. With that, Mr. Mayor, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Questions for Keith on the data centers. Council Member Elliott.

Yeah, I have a question but a comment. And I thank you because I've talked to several citizens who have brought this up and it's a big interest to everybody. So I'm glad we're moving forward on this. So thank you.

Yeah. Any other questions for Keith on that? Okay. Well, I wanted to make clear also that we don't have any current applications for data centers or any such thing going on. This is just kind of a get ahead of the curve type of thing and give us six months to kind of study the situation and figure out the best path forward in the event that we do get some applications in that regard. At this time, we have approval of the consent agenda items. There's one item on there. I would like to delete the former on the council meeting minutes for the last council meeting, July 28th. We inadvertently had the former city attorney's name on there, and I would like to delete that. So if we have a motion, it would be with that change.

Councilmember Wargo and move to approve the consent agenda items for 11 August 2026 as amended Councilmember at the core second.

Okay any further discussion? Seeing none I'll call for the vote all those in favor say aye opposed Okay, the consent agenda has been approved.

I

We'll move on to the mayor's comments. The only comments I have is that I would like everybody to pay attention to all the different activities we have coming up in August and in September. There's a lot of different things. So for the public and the council members and everyone, keep an eye out for all the different activities. things like facebook or bits and bytes that tell you all the different things that are happening so with that i don't have anything else do we have council comments okay council member barrow

Yes, I just want to talk about what happened over the weekend. Last Saturday we had Museum Day and it was Dino Day. And thank goodness we had lots of volunteers because we had over 212 people sign in. And I know there was at least another 20 to 30 people that bypassed signing the book. So it was quite the event. Everyone had a really good time. And I just want to thank all the volunteers. And I'm glad everyone had fun.

Council Member Walton?

Yes, and I don't know if this is a question answered within this, and if I step out of bounds, someone please tell me, but I think it goes without saying that we're all concerned about the status of our negotiations with fire and police, particularly from a financial standpoint and all the other pieces that come with that. I believe some of us had requested that we meet and I don't know, do you call it executive session for those kinds of situations? Not to talk about contracts, that's not our role, but we do as council approve contracts. And this is getting, in my personal opinion, we're in a crisis. I've never, and I've been in education for 39 years, had a contract go two years. It's starting to become expensive no matter what, if that continues. And with that track record, I'm concerned about FIRE as well. I'm concerned about how we retain really good people because I know when you fail bonds and levies and you don't, do contracts well i know in my profession teachers and principals leave i don't want that here for a lot of reasons safety being number one um so i'd like to request is it two council members i think that need to ask for a particular meeting to occur and it should occur because i know some of us and that person can speak for themselves have asked for that and it's not today and I'm not guaranteed that it's gonna be the next time we meet and that's very concerning to me. I think some time issues are out there and I just want to be thinking about where our city's gonna be, worst case scenario, because that's what we're really kind of paid to do. We have to think in worst case. and be prepared we can't think on you know and cross our fingers so i'm super disappointed that wasn't taking place today whether an attorney is available or not um but what guarantee can i have that i know two of us i've requested that to happen and i i don't feel that i'm getting a date secured if that could be addressed i would appreciate it thank you councilmember elliott

Well, just kudos again to the dyno days. I thought I broke my bike by there and it was packed. So good job museum folks. Good job, Carol. And the second thing is last night I attended the planning commission meeting. Just I happened to click on the calendar and I saw that they were doing comp plan stuff. And so there's a lot more work that's going to be coming through the planning commission on doing revisions to our comp plan. And with a new law that the legislature passed right after we completed our comp plan. And kudos to Lisa Parks, who's our consultant doing planning. She did a really good job of handling questions that came through and steering people in the right direction. But we're going to be seeing more from planning on our comp plan. So that's it.

Council Member Gessick.

Thank you. I'm the second person that requested to have the meeting regarding contract negotiations being past the expiration date. And there's no date on the books for the next discussion, at least with fire, as far as I know. And I think that you've got an issue because you have 12 firefighters. Eight of them have applied to work elsewhere because West Pierce is hiring for about 40 positions and those offers will be extended to them September 14th. So we have the potential of having four firefighters left by the end of the year. What do you think is going to happen when you have four firefighters left? Do you think they're going to want to stay here? when it's just them. It's like these contract negotiations are affecting the morale of these departments. And it might not be my job, I'm not in HR, but we oversee the budget and we legislate for the citizens and we're here for the taxpayers. And I don't think that this is being handled properly. And I have great concerns with how long this is taking and the status of these departments that are, you know, having so many issues with contract negotiations, I really want it to be addressed. And I'm, I'm very concerned. And I think the citizens should be concerned as well, because this is a service level that is not going to be met if we lose eight firefighters. And I'm just not seeing any worry or concern from anybody else about it. I seem to be me and Susan seem to be the only ones that are really concerned that we could lose eight firefighters. I mean, You know, we asked for a meeting today because they're sending the offer letters out on September 14th. That's like a month away. And you offered September 1st. That's too late.

Council Member Thakur.

Okay, so... As you know that we have a some of the sidewalks in the streets and has some kind of a war going on at some point in the city and I think I have a one just a suggestion that if it's possible as you know I travel a lot and some of the states. And some cities put the sign on the street saying that your tax dollar at work. And it also says where the money came from. Sometimes it says, hey, it came from a state grant or the federal grant and what's happening. Or sometimes even people, I have seen signs which actually says that how much money is going to be spent for the improvement of that project. Road, so it's pretty it just makes things clear in the citizens mind one What is happening and who is paying for and how much is it expense? So like a one big green sign if whenever we have a major project going on in the city And if we can put it in it might be it might be a thousand dollar expense But I think it's worth of calming down everyone's question and concerns that's my one thing and i didn't plan to say this but i think after the susans and saunas comment i think we all are concerned i am particularly concerned but i'm concerned through the budget process and questioning the budget and how we're going to pay and the long-term you know situations so anything and everything we can do for our city and citizens we are up for it and i think everybody would agree to that any other council comments

okay city administrator yeah a couple things mr mayor um first you know i want to thank tara and her work i think it speaks for itself but i also want to recognize kelly atkinson and kathy trotter for a lot of their help and work on all this as well so i just want to recognize everything that they've done for for the presentation that you had tonight Since we last met, we had a canoe journey, so I wanted to acknowledge some people that were really instrumental in planning and preparation. Day of literally was all people on deck and everyone was wonderful, but I want to recognize these people. Amy Walker, first and foremost, attended every meeting with me and was part of the entire planning process and her department, Emma, as well. In terms of planning as well, I want to recognize the PD, Chief Moore, Deputy Chief Lopez, Sergeant Bernate, Sergeant Sabo, and Diana, who all participated in helping in the planning and organization. From the Fire Department, Chief Gilley and Fire Marshal Turner. From the Public Works, Larry Clark attending, but I also want to recognize the Public Works people who were instrumental in helping get preparations for the day of. Jason Scott, Luis, Sam, Nathan, Iana, Jacob, Andre, Justin, Steven, Jacob, Dylan, and Jesse, all of them helped with trail preparation and other things. Mayor, I wanna just recognize your support and guidance through all of this. Council, I think it's important to recognize that when the tribe came to me and said, hey, we would like to come to you for canoe journey, on your council goals, you said partnerships with neighboring agencies. And so it immediately, had me say, okay, let's sit down and figure out what we can do. And of course, from there, your support as well was really instrumental. But that's where those council goals let us know that when we were presented with something that we can move forward with doing it, knowing that we feel like there would be support. And of course there was. So just wanted to recognize all those people in a day of everybody from the city was terrific. So with that, Mr. Mayor, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Council Member Ithacore.

Yeah, I guess budget concerns and questions just carried us away. But I do want to say a huge thank you to city staff. I mean, that was no means it was a small event and making that happen with a few handful of you managing thousands of people in our town, almost half of the size of our town was not easy. So thank you so much. And I was part of the event and I really enjoyed every moment of it. It got a little hot on that day and a little dusty too, but I, you know, and also a huge thank you to Nesqually tribe. They did this to in our town and you guys work very hard in the long term for a long time planning it and implementing it. So kudos to the city staff. Thank you so much.

Thank you. One more thing I do want to mention. We did reach out to the Nisqually tribe. Chairman Choke passed away last week. And so we sent regards to the tribe for their loss and just want them to know that we're thinking of them during this difficult time. So with that.

Any other questions for Keith?