City Council - Regular Meeting

It's 7 p.m. on Monday, August 17th, and I call this regular city council meeting to order. Councilmember McNally-Martinez, will you lead us in the flag salute, please?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

All right. All councillors here with exception of Council Member Ternes. She's asked to be excused. Could I get a motion to excuse her? Yes, Council Member Poer.

Moved to excuse Council Member Ternes' absence.

It's been moved and seconded. All in favour? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. All right, next item on the agenda is citizen participation. And we have two people who have signed up today. And I can't read your handwriting. I'm sorry, it looks like your last name is Johns. Oh, Susan Johnson, oh my gosh.

It depends on which personality comes out.

Okay, well, I've never seen this one before.

I write left-handed. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. Susan Johnson Milton. It was a treat to see all the youth in the parade this year. It felt like just a small town, and we're surrounded by this mass of growth. Isn't that the truth? I mean, it really felt it this weekend. The Parks Board pickleball scramble was loads of fun for us and the people involved. Teenagers and adults played. The winners were given medals, gold, silver, and bronze. We ended around 2.30 p.m., cleaned up, and took the equipment down to the city tent in the lower field. I was a little bit mystified that the city booth abutted the right side of the stage when you face it from the tent where people sit, with that speaker reverberating as hard and loud as it did. I loved the music. I even danced, and I think they got photos of me, unfortunately. Don't tell my husband. But however, conversation was impossible at the city tent. Staff needed to wear earplugs for the auditory protection from the sound of the stage. And I mean, they were right at the stage. who worked with the city on our growth management plan was there also with their information. Our planning staff had very important information to share with the citizens and glean comments on their opinions, especially in ray to the proposed tree canopy ordinance. My opinion is the city booth should not be hidden. It should be close to the entrance of any event. Two tents were at the entranceway along Oak Street in the lower part. At the time I was there, I did not see anybody present. This is sad because it diminished the role of the city and its info that it wants to have to interact with our citizens and to answer any questions, especially rate planning and our zones with framework being there. Another thing I heard is, and my comment is this, the lack of golf courts, which we have had in the past, citizens so enjoy the interaction riding with the volunteers and talking about Milton days and past years and meeting new people. That climb up to the street parking up at the school or higher up Oak is very hard on some people. And I'm not talking about me. And who on some people who are not considered eligible for ADA. In the past, there were four to five carts that were always busy. In fact, even the ones that were used by the mayor and one other staff person would be called into need to move people up and down. And it was a constant fury up and down Oak Way. And maybe around lunchtime it settled down. I want to thank you Council Members Hall, Cedar, Roberts, and Martinez for being in the parade and meeting her constituents at Milton Days. To the Events Committee, you should be proud of their first Milton days and take kindly suggestions for the future. You know, I'm from the South, and one of her sayings is, it's not necessary to throw out the dishwater. It's or required to start anew without considering the past successes. The old provides a map to build on as time and needs change, but the old doesn't need to be cast aside entirely, thank you. It was a very good weekend for many, many people, and I'm glad it was successful.

Thank you. Just to let you know, I did play chauffeur for most of the day, so I did shuttle a lot of people back and forth. OK, the second person that's on our sign-up sheet is John, and I'm sorry I can't read your last name. Could you please let us? I'm sorry?

Tedrick. Tedrick. T-E-D-R-I-C-K. Tedrick. Thank you. Tedrick. I moved here about 18 years ago and built a rundown home off of Taylor Street. And I love the little small town that it has been. And it's a great place to live. And I wouldn't live anywhere else. And so the reason I'm here is in opposition of the 2801 Redwood Street You guys are wanting to rezone that property. And so my opinion is that we need more small homes for people to live in the city of Milton. not apartments. I know we have apartments right here at the end of Taylor Street, and that was a great piece of property to build it, and it looks like a very nice 15, 18 units that they're building. My worry is that Taylor's a small street. You got a lot of speeders. You got a lot of this. You got a lot of that. You already have the Ukrainian school that's going to go in there. That's going to be a jungle full of people when that opens up, and I don't... have anything against the owners that own that property, because when you sell to make it a different zoning, you're gonna make more money, I understand that. I don't have anything against that, but I think that place would serve better to put 16 to 24 houses in there that the houses need to be in the city of Milton, small houses that people can afford if you can afford a house at all anymore. And there's lots of nice little houses that were built right across the street where that fence is. And I think they should do a small impact statement on that. They don't have to do, they could do a partial impact statement to see if zoning that would put in there. them zoning that 4.04 acres and putting a store in there. I just can't see that happening. At the very least, I could see maybe some condos or something like that. I don't necessarily have any grudge against that, but I think family homes are well needed in this place. And that would be a good place where you could put either 10 to 12 bigger homes, or you could put 16 to 24 smaller size mid homes. And my opinion is that we need smaller houses for people to move in the city of Milton, not a bunch of complexes that they already have. They already have a busy complex right next door. And if they were to build a condo system or apartment system, it would be, I think, in my opinion, just too close to each other, too many people coming in and out of there. My opinion is to stay with the single-family homes. All right, that's all I got to say. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tedrick.

All right, those were the only two people that signed up on our list. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to address the Council this evening? Yes, please come forward.

Jacqueline Whalen, Milton, Washington. I wanted to thank the folks who did the work for the event over the weekend. It was lovely to see so many people engaging with one another without a phone right there in their face. It was sweet. I do have another comment, and I wish to direct it to Public Works, but the administration as well. We have an electric department. We've got really smart people with electricity. This city really needs, really needs an electric system that allows amplifiers at the stage, but when it hits a certain level of sound, the electricity cuts off. when you can be in your house over 700 feet away from the event and be able to sing along, that's very loud, very unnecessary. And I really wish we would take the issue of noise pollution much more seriously. So that's the request on that. We've got the department, we need to do it. There was a lot of concerns about the stage going in. Last year there wasn't the noise problem. This year there really was. Secondly, regarding microphones, I really hope that the administration and staff can do something more so that we can have a recording system and broadcasting system that doesn't seem to have so many opportunities for things to fail. Last meeting, portions of citizen comment were not recorded. planning commission meeting, sadly. It's not the first time, the recording didn't happen. I am 1,000% confident that the person operating the system is doing the best they can. I assume the problem is with the system. So I ask the administration, please, can we get our tech people to take a look at this and help people who are doing so many different things at the front desk there, help them to be more successful by having a broadcast system that really MAKES IT CLEAR WHETHER MICROPHONES ARE OPERATING, WHETHER THINGS ARE BEING RECORDED. THAT WOULD BE A REAL PLUS BECAUSE I KNOW STAFF IS REALLY TRYING TO DO THEIR BEST WITH WHAT THEY'VE GOT AND I DO HOPE COUNCIL WILL SUPPORT MAKING THINGS BETTER. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. ANYONE ELSE WISH TO ADDRESS THE COUNCIL THIS EVENING? All right, seeing none, we will move on to additions and deletions. Are there any requested additions or deletions from the Agenda this evening? All right, seeing none, we will move on to the Consent Agenda. May I get a motion to approve the Consent Agenda? Councilmember Ceder.

Move to approve the Consent Agenda as presented.

It's been moved by Council Member Cedar and seconded by Council Member Poore to approve the consent agenda. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Motion passes unanimously.

All right, moving on to presentations. The first presentation we have this evening is from Judge Allen. Welcome.

See how this works.

I am Sandy Allen. There's a lot of new council members that I don't think I've met, and I appreciate you having me here. I'm the judge. I've been the Milton judge for 20 years, and this is Ellen Atteberry, and she is the Milton and Puyallup Court Administrator. So I'm here to talk to you today about the Milton Drug Court. We received funding from the Administrative Office of the Courts for their fiscal year, which is July of 2026 through June of 2027. So we've received funding from them, and I want to talk to you. Oops.

A little bit too far.

Okay, I want to talk to you about how we got here. Back in 2021, our Washington State Supreme Court found our drug laws unconstitutional. And then for about a period of two years, Washington State didn't have any drug laws at all. When the legislature reenacted the drug laws on July 1st of 2023, they made the drug offenses, the majority of them misdemeanors, instead of felonies. So what used to be in superior court is now in the district and municipal court, courts of limited jurisdiction. So the maximum penalty is 180 days and a $1,000 fine. You lose your right to possess firearms if you're convicted. And over the last three years, since the new laws have been in place, we have had over 240 drug charges filed in the city of Milton. And the majority of those, Tipper was involved. So he's an active part of the Milton Police Department. So... Can I do this again? Third time's the charm of not pushing too much. So we found the need to start a drug court. I went to the administrative office. The courts provided the statistics for Milton and our efforts to do kind of a modified drug court without any funding. So we had previously done a resource court every one time a month where we'd bring in peer support navigators and people from treatment agencies to come in and try to work with defendants to get them evaluated and get the defendants the help that they needed. It wasn't sufficient. So then we tried to bring in treatment evaluators every court hearing to try to work with defendants to get them evaluated and again found that the number of cases were just overwhelming. So we went to the state and asked them to support Milton for a drug court. We need to recognize that there is a problem with addiction that needs to be solved and no matter what the punishment we do unless we treat the underlying problem, we're not going to get them out of the system. So the drug court model invokes judicial oversight on an actually more regular basis than a normal court appearance along with intensive treatment and then support through our court, case coordinator and peer navigators to help work them through the system to hopefully get them back to being productive citizens and not continuing to reoffend. We are planning on having our drug court the first and third Tuesdays of every month. We're adding additional court day on a Thursday one time a month to make up for the time that we're going to be needing to have the drug court up and operational. So we received $204,000 from administrative offices. The court says pass through funding to operate the court. Most of the funding is through personnel costs. We also received a significant amount for recovery support, and that is helping with housing, food assistance, hygiene products, bus passes, the things that people need that are addicted to drugs to get them to the resources where they can get help. We also received almost $15,000 in treatment resources. That's to pay for the drug evaluations, pay for treatment that might not be covered by insurance, to do the drug testing that we need to do regularly within the drug court, pay for toxicology screening, and those types of items. And feel free to jump in if you guys have any questions. The biggest category is personnel costs. My salary, the prosecutors, the public defenders, there's additional costs that the city of Puyallup will incur by Milton taking on this task of doing a drug court. But probably the biggest expenses and the biggest needs are the case coordinator case manager, which is going to be a half-time contract position. And the case manager works with the drug court participants, coordinates their treatments, helps them with outside resources and coordinating all of that, and also collects data and reports, all of the data to the administrative office of the court so they can track everything that we are doing in the drug court. And then the other position that we can contract and hire that we have funding for is a peer specialist. And what a peer specialist is is a recovering addict that has been trained by DSHS to work with people that are going through the drug court process and be their advocate and support them in their treatment and their struggles reach out with the group and the court team to be their advocate and support them. So what we need from council and mayor is for you to accept the pass-through funding from the contract with AOC that has been executed. We need to create the necessary funding buckets so we can properly track the funds that are coming in and out. We need to work with the city of Puyallup to amend the contract with the city of Puyallup to add the drug court in. And we also need to approve my amended contract that allows for the additional funds for operating the drug court and approve the amendments to the contracts for the public defenders and the prosecutors. So there's a lot of work to be done and a lot of things that I need help with from the city and over there to get this to move forward. So I'm happy to answer any questions. And I've got Alan here as backup if you guys have questions that I don't have answers to.

Yes, Council Member Seder.

Thanks for being here, Judge. For the AOC funding, is there any time that they placed on that? By which I mean, you know, if we approve pass-through funding this year and kind of have our contract amended so that it's reflecting that when we renew it every year, could AOC pull back the funding and thereby create a situation where we're funding the drug court directly?

The funding for this year is guaranteed. Yeah, so and each year they do a renewal and they've simplified the renewal process. I know that all of the courts that were prior, that had been funded prior got funded again for this year. And we would know if our funding was going to be terminated. But I would expect from past years that they're supportive of it. Do you want?

So every year they look to continue to support the courts that are already live and going. So if the funding, if the state continues to get the funding for therapeutic courts, then Milton will continue to receive that funding. The contracts that are being submitted with the amendments have to do with it being sunsetted if for some reason Milton did not receive the funding. But the intent and the idea behind it is to continue to support more and more courts to have a successful therapeutic court model because as a state, they notice that it is an epidemic that needs to be treated. So while there is a potential, it's less likely. I can tell you for Puyallup, I think this is our... fourth year of having money supported for therapeutic court. And so their push is to get more people live. So one of their main things is to get Milton going successful for their Milton drug court program.

Yeah, that's great. Thank you for that. And I'll just, I don't have any more questions, but I just want to say I also understand that AOC has that goal of implementing, and I think this is a very important funding priority statewide. Even if it was Milton funding, I would suggest we do it, because in my experience, which is limited, but Drug Court has been very successful. I did that when I was in law school. I helped with that, and that was 16, 17 years ago. And it was successful then. It's only proved more successful. I'm aware of various studies on the issue. It's very good. So I really appreciate you doing this and getting it working for Milton because those 240 cases, those aren't other people. Those are Milton residents and we should be helping them. So thank you for bringing this forward.

Thank you. Yes, Council Member Mounts.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

I just wondered if you would speak a little bit to the budget allocation. It looks like there's almost 26,000 going to housing, food, bus passes, and hygiene, evaluations, treatment, and testing, which just looking at the goals of the program, I would think that the bulk of the funding would go toward those things, but it's 26,000 out of 204,000. So if you could just speak to that a little bit. Is that enough money for those services?

A lot of the budget money that we use is to supplement what the participants will have. A lot of them, we help them get their identification We help them get medical insurance. And so it gets them the evaluations that might not be covered by insurance, but the majority of the services that they will get will be covered by their medical insurance for the alcohol and drug treatment. And so this is used to supplement that.

So this is like the state medical. Insurance, I'm assuming that a lot of the participants aren't working and getting insurance coverage from their employers, right?

So I will tell you that a lot of this budget is based, modeled off of Puyallup's as well. Again, we've been successfully doing Puyallup for a handful of years now, and then we had a grant when we launched in Puyallup. What we're finding is the majority of folks, once they get support with the insurance, that we don't end up covering it under our funding because they are eligible for the state's insurance to get the evaluations and treatments. So far, we have yet to have to stand in to do that piece. The additional pieces that we have to do is more of the support function. That is getting them to treatment facilities, getting them to court. That's where the bus passes come in. Doing the random UAs to help keep them accountable. Doing other sorts of classes for them. So it's more of the other support work. where you see the cost in there. So the bulk of all these programs is always personnel because it takes close management of this money and to make sure that participants are held accountable and can be successful through this program. And so hence, that's why the majority is through that personnel. And yes, while it might seem low, we just do our best to be good stewards of the public funds. And we try to just, you know, utilize the funds available to support the participants. And so that money will probably grow, because more people will start to, you know, we start funneling more people through this program. Ideally, we will be able to help more folks, so.

Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you.

Yes, Council Member Hall.

So how do you rate how the system's going? Say you come back in a year, what kind of statistics can you, are you going to show us what we've done?

Administrative Office of the Courts requires us to keep statistics. So we will keep track of the number of people that entered, the number of people that entered into treatment, the number of people that re-offended or commit new offenses, a number of people that dropped out of treatment. Those are all statistics, and the number of people that graduated, hopefully a lot. Those are the statistics that we will track, that we're required to track with the administrative office of the courts. Is there other things that we... So we were mandated when we're using those funds to keep track and so we will be able to come back and present that data to you also to hopefully show our successes. Yeah, I look forward to that.

Any additional questions, comments? Yes, Chief.

First of all, let me say that I support drug courts, I think they're a great thing, and I want to thank Judge Allen and Ellen for doing this work and going to AOC and soliciting and making us eligible for this program. And then one of the things that I want to talk about, because I also have helped start a drug court in my previous jurisdiction where I was the elected sheriff, and... One of the things that we look at, of course, is the, if you wanna see how healthy your population is, go and look at your jails and try to figure out why incarceration and recidivism is occurring. And one of the things is, there's some facts out there, and this is estimates, that six out of 10 people are dealing with some kind of substance abuse issue, and 41% of those people will have a coexisting condition, meaning mental health and substance abuse. And one of the things is this program focuses on treatment rather than incarceration, because I can tell you that incarceration is one of the most expensive ways to deal with individuals that are struggling in society for a variety of reasons, whether it's substance abuse, mental health, socioeconomic, or just plain old deviant behavior and lack of accountability. And so my experience with the drug courts has been very positive. I can tell you that, again, estimation that you look at the recidivism for drug court is 11% to 46% versus 34 to 79% when you look at people that are not getting any kind of treatment. Our jail population just here at the misdemeanor level is about a quarter of a million and we'll probably maybe hit 250,000 because we're having a lot more people that are in need and we have not had the tools to be able to focus on providing resources to these individuals that are suffering with mental illness and substance abuse. And the coexisting condition, meaning what it means is that either maybe they were mentally ill and they started doing drugs to deal with their mental illness or maybe they started doing drugs and it was voluntary, but then it moved into the realm of creating a permit mental illness. And so by having drug court, we can identify these individuals that are good candidates that we can provide some rehabilitation services and focus on treatment rather than incarceration. And then if you were to take the numbers and you were to loosely subtract the 46% recidivism rate from the 79% recidivism rate, at the both highest levels of recidivism between the two. In our current budget, that's potentially about $70,000 that we would save on rather than incarceration and providing treatment, and hopefully reduce these individuals from being habitual offenders. So I just wanted to remark that I'm a big proponent. I've seen it work, it's been very successful. And I'm very proud to be a part of a city that is considering this and I'm very, proud to be a partner with the courts and with the judge to be able to hopefully facilitate this program. So it makes sense and my recommendation to council is that you should support this.

Thank you, Chief. Anyone else? Judge Allen, thank you very much for coming this evening. Thank you, I appreciate it. And staff will be working with you, I'm sure, going forward.

Okay. on the next steps? The next steps, yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I appreciate it.

We've got the paperwork. We're preparing it and bringing it forward to council as an agenda item. And we'll let you guys know when that happens if you decide you want to be here for that.

Just a quick question. Who should be the contact person? No. She's planning. Everybody's pointing fingers. To work with the city of Puyallup on amending the contract. I don't know who would be the contractor. key person that would get with them? Is it our city attorney? Are they?

That's usually the mayor, city attorney, and myself that we go over, review the contract. But Michelle is on the finance end of it, so.

Right. So, okay, well, we'll talk off record about next steps of who's going to be working with Puyallup and getting that done. All right. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Thank you very much. All right, the next item on our agenda is another presentation on the State of the Pierce County Library. I'm sorry, I don't have any names, so if you could please introduce yourselves.

Happy to do so. Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. My name is Gretchen Casarotti. I'm the Executive Director of Pierce County Libraries. And with me this evening is Chad Harper, who's the Library Operations Supervisor at our Milton Edgewood branch. And Steve, our Regional Services Manager, is helping to pass out copies of the presentation, which I understand you all have print copies of this evening. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time on the agenda this evening. It's with great pleasure that we get to come out into the various incorporated cities that are annexed into the Pierce County Library System. And just share a little bit about what's happening in the library. I started in this role in 2022 and have had the chance to work across Pierce County, the 2,000 square miles from the mountain to the sound of our service area. If you're not familiar, Pierce County Library System is a junior taxing district. Similar to the way school districts are structured, we have a governing body, a board of five trustees, and we serve the annexed cities within and the unincorporated areas of Pierce County, not Puyallup and not Tacoma. but the other cities within. So pleased to be able to come out and share what's happening, meet the elected representatives, and answer questions that anyone might have about the happenings in the Pierce County Libraries. Go ahead, next slide. So when it comes to finances, we've been working hard in recent years to ensure that the library's increasing our transparency around the taxpayer funds that fund the organization. We are about 97, 98% funded completely by property taxes. By state law, there are very few revenue opportunities for library districts in the way that municipalities enjoy. Okay, you do have copies. And so we are very heavily reliant on that. And as you are all aware with the 1% property tax cap in the state of Washington, our revenues are limited while expenses continue to grow. And similar to your drug court, the majority of our costs go to personnel. About 66% of our annual budget each year is to the people who make the magic happen. We would otherwise just have buildings with books around the Pierce County. And we all know that you can have access to things, but then when you have meaning, context, and support is where people really have more value to what the library can bring to a community. We also have invested in more transparency around the platform, so not just coming out to share with our representatives in the county, but we have launched using ClearGov. And so now anyone can view the library's funding in the budget brief documents that are available on the website, and also through the SAO for the state of Washington has a financial intelligence tool. So you can also see where the money went. and really excited to continue to move in that direction. Currently, we're at 33 cents per 1,000 of CEST value, and since I've been here, that number hasn't changed. We've been really working to control expenses in the ever-increasing environment and knowing that we have no new revenue to accommodate that. So we've currently held at 33 cents for the recent few years. Let's see. Next slide, please. The small bit that is self-generated, we're really grateful to have such great supporters in formal structures. So we have a Pierce County Library Foundation, and every October we do a fundraiser, which is actually fun. It is a trivia bee. where we all get together and you get to nerd out for a good cause. Our foundation provides the support for book giveaways to children in the summer, as well as a variety of other supports at the local level in the individual branches, as well as for the system. And then we also have Friends of the Library groups. And Chad will tell you a little bit about ways that community members can get involved in our local branch here with the Friends group.

Hello. We have a really amazing, very active Friends of the Library organization that we share with the Fife branch. We're the Fife, Milton, Edgewood Friends of the Library. We do, periodically, we have a book sale. People from the community come in and donate books that people can come into the branch and it's a little bit on the honor system. We have a little box for people to put in cash or a QR code if they want a Venmo the Friends of the Library to buy used books. And then we, the librarians, pull the money together and work with our volunteers with the Friends of the Library to support various programs. People, if we want to have a speaker or a presenter come into one of our programs, and if they have a speaking fee of some kind, we are able to pay them from the Friends of the Library funds. Sure. Just a little bit more about the Milton Edgewood branch. We were built in 2011. I think we're one of the newer branches in the system. Last year, we had a little bit more than 60,000 people come through our doors and check out almost 83,000 books and materials. It's books, music CDs, physical audio books, DVDs, as well as magazines as well. We have 11,677 cardholders, and last year we had 48 classes and events, and almost 500 people in our community attended those events as well.

And excited to see the system growing that number overall. So many libraries in America in the post-pandemic environment are still working to return to pre-COVID use. And in the time that I've been here, we've worked really hard with the new strategic plan in particular to build an internal system around programs. A lot of folks will come to library programs even if they don't have a library card. You might have a grandparent who's helping to watch the kids on the weekend come to a story time. or a senior that lives at a facility and they bring a group in for a program. And so we look at a variety of metrics and programs is an incredible strategy for people to come and discover new things at the library and connect with their community. So we are going to be very excited to come back next year and let you know that those numbers are increasing in 26. And as a system, that new strategic plan was a refresh with our mission, vision and values. The Board of Trustees approved that in 2025 and we're continuing to work forward and implement that in our operations and annual plans. I want to especially call out the organizational value of transformative hospitality and just Council Member Cedar, what I was hearing from you, for example, is we really want everyone who walks through our door, no matter where they come to from where they're at in their life, to feel welcome, to feel valued. to have a really personalized experience where the staff are really meeting that person's needs. And that looks different for everybody. Every person who walks in the door has got a whole life outside of this one interaction. And so we're really leaning into that as an organizational value and how we want that to inform the services that the staff deliver every day. Next slide those major goals include strategic partnerships, which is another reason why we're here really looking to break down siloed walls and silos. across the county where you know we're also working with peer navigators in some of our library branches and, in fact, looking to be bringing in social work and to our practices and. partnering with law enforcement across the county. And so we really wanna be purposeful and intentional in the way that we approach our partnerships from everything from nonprofits to local governments, as well as looking at important things to people across the county around environmental goals, practical financial goals, to make sure that our library operations are gonna be able to be sustained into the future. So that's just a snapshot of our new strategic goal areas. And Couple of things coming up we want to tell you about and we'll get out of your hair.

We try to have our librarians work really hard to Try to have programs that meet all age groups and all interests. We have an adult Medicare awareness class that is coming up. I would expect that to be very, very popular. A few weeks ago, we had a sort of an intro to estate planning. We had an outside group come in and we were able to provide the space for that. By the time the library branch opened, we had a line that snaked kind of around the shopping mall where we are located. I think we had 50 people waiting to come in, and then about another 20 came in shortly after the program started. So I would expect this to attract a similar number of people. We do have a very active and robust book club that meets once a month, and I don't remember what... This month's book club book is, I should have looked that up before I came here. Personal librarian.

Thank you, yeah. Thank you.

That was entirely unplanned, I promise. Yeah. We have a couple STEAM programs, one geared for younger kids or kids of all ages, for a kids discovery lab program on Wednesday the 26th, and then one that's geared towards the teens in your life. It's called a fantasy job board. And then we have weekly story times every Monday from 10.30 to 11.15, story time for babies. Come in with your little ones and hear a really fun story. And then we also have a Master Gardeners program for teens as well that's focused on sustainability. Go close. Oh, sure. I'm going to share an impact story that I thought of on the way here because it happened just this past Saturday, and I think it's kind of cool. We had on Friday, we had someone come in who I'd never seen in the library before. They came in with a very very haphazardly collected group of papers in a torn envelope and said, someone dropped these outside of the library. And I have no idea whose they are, but they seem important because they have things like birth certificates and a driver's license and other things in it. And so thanked them for that. And then another staff member and I went through it to see if we recognized a name. Fortunately, because we didn't recognize the name, when we found the driver's license in the pile, we recognized the photo of the patron and I said I know who this person is because he comes in almost every single evening and so the next evening Saturday evening before I had left he was in sitting at one of the tables in the branch just like he always is and I went over to him and I said did you happen to lose something very important outside the library and he says well what do you mean and I said well someone came in and said they had found this sitting, laying on the sidewalk from outside the branch. And he says, I'm not sure. And I said, well, let me go show it to you. So I brought it out of our safe and I said, does this look familiar? And he said, oh my God, this is filled with super important documents that I needed to send down to California to get my passport, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, we were able to reunite him with driver's license, bank cards, a lot of cheques to be deposited, his birth certificate, and a lot of very important applications. And so, I like to think, yes, we're building with books and DVDs, but at the end of the day, I always think libraries are there to help people first and foremost. And so, that was one of my more favourite stories. Turn it in.

Thank you all so much. We'd be happy to stand for any questions that you all might have. Appreciate your time.

Yes, Council Member Roberts. Thank you, Mayor. I just had a question about the fantasy job board. What is that? It shows a team steam program. I'm just curious what that is.

I'm honestly not too sure. Okay.

I know that the teen programs do a lot with envisioning futures and youth development. So while I don't know the details of this particular program, similar to like a fantasy football league, they do a lot of really active programming with youth that make them like, I don't know, what's the term, gamify? And so like our youth volunteer programs are also looking at what are you good at and what do you want to do with your life? So my assumption is that it's in that vein of making it fun to envision a future.

Do you know the age range? I mean, it says teens, so I'm assuming 13 on. I'm just curious for my own personal son. They get him off the screen.

Because it's a STEAM activity and it's a fantasy job board, I'm going to make an educated guess pulling from my school librarian days and say maybe it's an activity where kids in STEAM science technology are coming up with ideas for jobs. fantasy science-y jobs that might exist in the future that they might want to invent or apply for someday?

I don't know.

Sure, why not?

But generally, teen programs are, yeah, 13 to 18. And no one gets carded for that, so if they're like 12 and a half, they're probably going to be fine. Parents get to choose, or 19.

All right, thank you.

Any additional questions or comments? Thank you very much for coming this evening. Thank you so much.

Have a great evening.

Thank you.

All right, the next item on our agenda this evening is a public hearing for the Comp Plan Amendment and Zoning Map. It's on page 15 of your packet, and Planning Manager Stallnecker will be presenting this item.

Thank you. This was introduced at the last meeting. This is for the public hearing portion that is required. There will be, it is on the agenda if there's any discussion. It won't be on for adoption until the first meeting on October. Just a quick recap. So the comprehensive plan, this is a joint hearing because there's a comprehensive plan future land use map change and the corresponding zoning. They are tied together so the comments can be received together. There's two parts to the comp plan. The first is the map proposal and it is tied to the private request for 2801 Redwood Street to change from urban residential multifamily to uptown mixed use on both the future land use map and the zoning map. Just a refresher, it's currently zoned for multifamily, which is apartments, but it's more at the density of 12, where If it goes to the mixed use, it would be more of a density. It could go up to potentially 30. It also would have the potential of commercial uses if the applicant, if the current applicant is looking at housing, but by changing it, it would change. It would give those options at some point. Just a quick point out for the council. Their application forms is on page 73 and 74, where they basically, they're kind of making their argument, the idea that it does allow for a variety of housing. There is a charge in the state as well as the comprehensive plan to make sure that we have a mixed variety of both types of housing and pricing range of housing. The majority of our city is single family homes. There's also some parts that are intended to be the more mixed use. the more apartments a little bit higher density. And so they have kind of worked through their, how they feel like they meet the criteria for that. The second kind of half of the comprehensive plan amendments is the six-year capital improvement plans. I did go through and we should have as of last time, It sort of should have the most current numbers. I was thinking there was a question related to that. I was thinking Dustin will be back by today, but Dustin is not back till Wednesday. So if there is any specific questions about the capital improvement plan, we can get those answered before October. So there is that. So at that point I will stop and we're able to open up the public hearing. And then, like I said, after the public hearing, the first agenda item is discussion. If the council has anything they wish to discuss or ask questions on.

Okay, it is 7.51 p.m. and I open the public hearing. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this item? Yes, please come forward. Please give your name and city for the record.

Good evening, my name's Taylor Wyman. I am real estate advisor for Roy Skinner and his family. and here on behalf on the land use comp plan change. So any of you guys are familiar with what we've requested. Obviously the Skinner family's owned this property for since 1986. And I know I've been in real estate for a little over 10 years now and I'll see housing development can always be a little contentious kind of depending on where it is. New development, not everybody loves, So I understand Ted's position. Obviously if you have lived somewhere for a while, own a single family home, maybe you don't want new development next door. I think obviously looking at this from kind of the city's perspective and the comp plan, reviewing that, you know, over the next 20 years looking forward, I don't see the city's determined that this area along Meridian Avenue is designed to be the mixed use center of the city. You want the retail, you want it to be walkable, you want apartments, you want people to have a place to live, go out to eat, entertainment of that sort. If you're looking at the map, you can see down, if you look down 28th Avenue all the way down to Taylor Street, it's a pretty straight line. This property in question, if that line continued, would go right through it. But obviously with the map zoning and how you design it, you're not going to have two zones for one parcel. So it went around it. If it had gone through or if it was multiple parcels, you probably would have maybe two-thirds of that parcel would be the uptown mixed-use zoning versus the urban residential. And obviously one of the main concerns would be impact to neighbouring properties. I'll see to the east you have uptown mixed use, to the south it's uptown mixed use, to the north you have both uptown mixed use and then one kind of similar older single family home that's URM. And then you have the dock at Surprise Lake, which is obviously a large 330 unit apartment complex to the west. You kind of, you know, it's designed, you have a huge apartment complex. I think it would make sense to increase the density from right now it's 36. You go to 90 units. I'll say that brings in, you know, more homes, more families, more people that are going down Meridian corridor, spending money, going out to eat, kind of improving that. And I'll say it's one of, one of the few developable, developable parcels along that corridor. That's not already retail or, some buildings already on it. Thank you. So I appreciate. Thank you very much. Yeah. Have I answered any questions? I don't know if I can do that.

Not in a public hearing.

Okay. All right. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Anyone else wish to testify in the hearing? Yes. Please come forward. State your name and city for the record, please.

Jacqueline Whalen, Milton, Washington, speaking as an individual citizen and just request a discussion from staff on a question that I didn't really hear answered, which was really clarifying the distinction between someone putting in an application versus a zoning designation. What is the guarantee that the application is what actually will take place? And if staff could please comment on could a zoning change be done with conditions and just like a master plan kind of thing. So those were questions that citizens were asking me and I just wanted to pass them along. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else like to testify this evening? Seeing none, I close the public hearing at 7.55. All right, moving on to our regular agenda. The first item on our regular agenda is on page 47 of your packet. It's the Comp Plan Amendment Ordinance 2146-26. Again, I- Planning managers, start over.

Yeah, so like I said, both A and B are on here if there's any further questions or discussions. This is legislative, so it means that it is the Planning Commission makes a recommendation, Council gets to make the final decision. There is some recommended criteria to kind of look at, but in general, the The plan is the council's discretion. So you get to make that decision on if you feel like this fits within the overall comprehensive plan and then follow up. And to the one question that I said, I kind of addressed the first comment that was earlier tonight, just the idea that it is zoned right now for apartments, it would be a higher density apartments. under what they're proposing. I will clarify that again, there is no, you can't link it to that per se. If you make the Comprehensive Plan Amendment change and you make the zoning change, it does allow whatever is in that use table under that zone. So you can't condition it or anything. So, There is that. At that point, I will see if there's just any other further questions for me or discussion amongst the council. Like I said, it's not on for action. It'll come back in October for that. It's still under state review.

Yes, Council Member McNally-Martinez.

I just have a quick question. Do you know why that property wasn't zoned that way originally, being that it's right on the edge? Is there a formula that's used?

No. So that kind of line right down there, some of this was actually light industrial. And so the feeling was that didn't make sense to light industrial on the corner. This was already multifamily, so we just left it as multifamily. We just left that one. That wasn't one we were looking at changing, but we did change all of this away from light industrial. Again, did not make sense to match what was above, which was sort of gonna be that mixed use.

There was no specific reason.

There was no specific, it's just that's what it was, and there was no, you know, what we were looking at, you know, there was definitely some areas that just didn't, that felt like needed to be changed, but some areas, if there wasn't a clear reason to, we didn't.

Any additional questions? Yes, Council Member Mounts.

Thank you, and thank you for the really helpful chart on page 79. My understanding, and I think you just told me this, told us this, is it could be used for multi-family dwelling units, child care centers, religious institutions, adult family homes, restaurants, mercantile, personal professional services, and offices, those types of things. Would that, of course, logically require new roads to go in, coming out on Taylor probably, so there'd be an exit onto Meridian and an exit onto Taylor. Probably really premature for these kinds of questions, but I drove over there today and I took a look at that area. Yeah, so whatever...

At this point, what you would be doing is simply saying, could those uses change? And yes, when we go to our use table, right now it's under URM, which for the most part is primarily just residential uses. It'll be moved to UMX, which is both residential and there are some commercial, quite a few commercials because it is mixed use. Anything that they would still have to go through the full land use application process. So depending on what it is, most likely whatever they do, it's gonna be a major site plan. So application's gonna come in, it will be reviewed by, and they will be required to have a traffic impact study They will be required to show us all of where they're gonna put roads, how they can deal with storm, how they can deal with parking, all of that. It gets reviewed by our engineers. Notices go out 500 feet to all the property owners. If there's enough interest, we would hold a neighborhood meeting. That's sort of an option depending on how many people are interested in that, if they want more information. And then, like I said, everything goes through the planning department, the community development department, but we're looking for fire to say, yes, this looks good. The engineers to say, yes, this looks good. Our traffic engineers saying, yes, this looks good. Utilities. And then And usually what they get is an approved site plan if it meets all the criteria and it may have some conditions. And then they go through civil, which is the fine tune actual approving of exactly where those lines are gonna go and then building construction. So.

So thank you for that. And if I can piggyback on that, given what Council Member Cedar said last week, We're looking to strike a balance between affordable housing and urban development and commercial and canopy preservation. There's a lot of trees on that lot. It looks like that whole corner is wetlands. How would you, how would we or how would I strike that balance because that's a large parcel given that the Skinner zone, those three parcels together, and if it's zoned for future development, we're losing a big chunk of residential potentially. I mean, if we approve the zoning change, there's nothing to stop them from doing more commercial than there is residential, right? So, yeah, so...

The, just to kind of, again, until things are approved and final, there's always things. But the current proposals, this property right here is currently under contract with, it is commercial and it's under contract with a commercial business. And at that point, I think that's going through. So what this current proposal is tied to would be this lot and this lot, and this one is already, uptown mixed use. So yes, the current plan would be, the current proposal is that it would be multifamily at a higher density than you can do under multifamily. But yes, once it's changed, if that deal fell through, somebody else could potentially look at it for something else.

Thank you.

Council Member Cedar. Thanks.

So I think that the tool, well, as I stated last week, or whenever we talked about this, I'm opposed to this. I think the tool to guarantee that this is used for residences is called a development contract under RCW 36.70 , sequentially after that. That would guarantee that any rezone is under a contract that goes with the property and can't be used for commercial uses. But even if we were to do that and guarantee that this is used for high density residential in this area into the future, it still doesn't solve the problems that come with a rezone. And those problems, we just heard some from Council Member Mounts, but the other people around there, the setback gets reduced to virtually nothing. The building height increases exponentially. The trees are going to be gone. I mean, it's so counter to what we are trying to do And I don't see any compelling reason to do it. I appreciate Mr. Skinner having a representative here, and I appreciate that he bought those three lots at, I'm sure, quite a deal back in the 80s, and that they're worth a lot right now. But that's not what our zoning code is meant to do. And as soon as we rezone, we lose control, even if we try to put some attachment to the property. And frankly, even with the best intentions right now, 15, 20, 25 years, if that turns in, it becomes more profitable to make that a self-storage unit, then that's what it'll be. And I think that we have a duty, because I've never talked to a constituent who says they want more high density on the corridor, Meridian Corridor. That's what Edgewood has done, and I've heard nothing in the time I've been on council, but we don't want that. We want gentle density if we have to have it. And increasing the density there is not gentle density. So I'm adamantly opposed to this. I've not heard any compelling reason to support it. Thanks.

Any additional questions or discussion? All right, so this is going to be going to the Planning Commission?

No, it'll come back to the Council in October. for action, which could, again, Council has the authority to approve, approve with changes or amendments or deny.

Okay, will there be any more public hearings?

There's not public hearings. The city, I mean, Council usually does take comment on an action item. And it is legislative, so it's, like if it goes through a hearing examiner, it's quasi-judicial, you have to be very careful careful how you do things, because it's sort of like a judge. With legislation, you are allowed to talk to constituents, even talk to the applicant, as long as you're not during a quorum or something. So, it does have a little bit more flexibility. But yeah, it'll come back to Council. And like I said, we always usually take comment before action. So, if there's... Mayor Paterson All right.

Thank you. So, we will move on to regular Agenda Item B, the Zoning Map Ordinance. on page 77, and this is a discussion item.

Is there anything additional, or was it covered under Conference Plan? We're all good.

Are we good? Okay. Then let's move on to item C, which is an action item on page 85, Budget Amendment Ordinance, and Finance Director Robach will be presenting this item for us.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. The proposed ordinance provides adjustments to the 2026 budget as adopted by City Council in December of 2025. This is the second ordinance amending the 2026 budget and reflects changes that have occurred since adoption of the original budget. These adjustments are detailed in the accompanying exhibits A and B. Exhibit A is a modification to the wage scale for one position title only. If approved, this amendment would change the position title of planning manager to community development director. This new title better aligns with the position's current duties and responsibilities, and more information regarding this position is included in the next agenda item, 8D. This ordinance was presented at the study session on August 10th for first reading. And I'd be happy to answer any questions once a motion is made.

All right, would somebody like to make a motion? Yes, Council Member Roberts. Thank you, Mayor.

Move to adopt the Ordinance 2144-26, amending the 2026 budget as detailed in Exhibits A and B.

Second.

I'll give it to Councilmember Hall. Is that right? Okay. Councilmember Roberts, would you like to speak to your motion?

I would not, thank you. Okay.

Councilmember Hall, would you like to speak to your second?

I appreciate this coming to Council. We're always looking to keep up with what our workers are doing and the jobs they're doing and make sure that they align with what the city needs. for a number of years, and she is a hard worker and deserves.

All right.

Any additional discussion? Councillor Cedar.

Thanks. I noticed that we dropped the economic portion of that. What was the decision for that?

There actually wasn't a decision, the information that was provided to me when I created the budget amendment had the economic development in there and I was later corrected that, or that information was later corrected and so we, it was a correction and not a conscious decision.

Understood, thank you. I think it's a good title, I think it matches what Planning Manager Stalnaker and hopefully Director Stalnaker does, works very hard for the community. I have a question about, on page 93, which is regarding Fund 503, Information Technology Fund. I notice here, it may be, I don't know where this originated, the adjust budget for new website hosting and AI agent services, $44,000. Can you tell me about that line item?

Possibly the mayor can help me a little bit with this as well. We're transitioning to a new website host, and this is kind of the front end for setting up that new website host. So our old website hosting costs will go away and these will replace it. It's just that there's a bit of a crossover period in 2026 where we'll, where we have both the implementation of the new system and paying the remainder of the old system. I don't know if there's anything else.

Yeah, there's been a lot of complaints about our website and about how hard it is to find things, and so we have looked out to other cities and what other vendors are out there, and we have found one. It's about, what was it we just paid? It's about $28,000, I believe, that is an upfront fee in order to pay for them to design and implement. And it should take between six and eight months. So it's a one-time charge to implement. to essentially rebuild our website. And part of that website is going to have an AI agent that will crawl the site. And you'll be able to ask English prompts. And it will be able to go through all of the ordinances and everything that's available on the website and give an English answer to the query. So if somebody says, do I need a do I need a permit to build a fence? It will not just give you a link to that area of the code, it will actually tell you what you need to do in the process, you would need to do in order to do that. And it will also take away, well, it should, I'm hoping that it will take away the need for people to call into the city and use staff time, to be able to walk people through this. Because again, the biggest complaint that I have heard from people is that they can't find anything on our website. And so they're calling in and asking staff to tell them what to click on in order to get what they're looking for. So I'm just trying to make the website much more user friendly and ultimately free up some staff time.

Okay, so this wasn't something that was budgeted for in our original budget, correct?

That's correct, yes, yeah.

So obviously it's below our threshold for approval, but it's a, right?

Yes, because it's two pieces. There's the website hosting piece and then the AI agent piece, and so each of those... Those are distinct individual pieces and contracts or invoices that were under the separate council approval level of 40,000.

I'll just note that I found that line and I went back and reviewed to try to figure out where that came from. I was a little troubled that it wasn't actually briefed in here because 44,000, it's not nothing. That's a big budget adjustment. Just moving forward, I would appreciate having that right up front. It felt a little hidden here since it doesn't appear in the ordinance that we're passing and it doesn't appear in the previous ordinances for the budget. Thank you.

Thank you. Sure. Noted. It's not going to be that much in this budget year. The other half is going to be in next year. We probably didn't really even need to make it this big. We weren't sure at the time until we got the contract and found out that they were paying for it in thirds.

Yeah, sorry, and I would note, I think it's a good, I mean, modernizing our website's a good idea. Hopefully it'll get like a little clippy.

Let's hope not. All right, any further discussion? Okay, it's been moved by Council Member Roberts and seconded by Council Member Hall to adopt ordinance. Oh, I'm sorry, this is an action item. Is there anyone from the audience that would like to comment to Council before this is voted on? All right, again, it's been moved by Council Member Roberts and seconded by Council Member Hall to adopt ordinance 2144-26, amending the 2026 budget as detailed in Exhibits A and B. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. OK, moving on to item D, title change to the Community Development Director on page 95 of your packet. This is an action item. And it looks like I am presenting this item. Tonight, I am asking for your confirmation of Anjali Stalnaker as the City of Milton's Community Development Director. Anjali has served as our planning manager for the past five years, and I'm requesting that we make this title change to formally recognize the level of responsibility she has been carrying and the leadership she has demonstrated. This is not simply a change in title. This is a recognition of the expertise, experience, and leadership Anjali has brought to the city of Milton and the expanded role she will continue to provide within our organization. Anjali brings a strong educational and professional background to this position. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Geography and Regional Planning with a minor in Political Science. She is also currently pursuing a master's degree in management and leadership through Western Governors University. Anjali recently graduated from the Northwest Women's Leadership Academy, a leadership development program associated with the city and county management association. This leadership training has further strengthened her ability to work collaboratively, manage complex issues, communicate effectively, and provide strong leadership in municipal environments. Most importantly, Anjali brings more than 20 years of professional experience in urban and city planning, long-range planning, and environmental design. Her experience gives her a broad understanding of how planning decisions affect not only the individual projects but also the long-term growth, development, infrastructure, and quality of life of the entire community. Her expertise includes comprehensive planning, land use issues, development regulations, long range planning, environmental considerations, and the many competing interests that come with a responsible community development. These are areas that require both technical knowledge and the ability to work effectively with residents, property owners, developers, elected officials, and other agencies. The community development director position is an important leadership role within our organization. This position is responsible for overseeing the city's planning and community development functions, supporting responsible growth and development, working with residents and businesses, coordinating development activities, and helping ensure the city's planning and development processes are conducted professionally, efficiently, and in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. It is my honour this evening to request the affirmation of Council to support my decision to appoint Anjali Stallnecker as Community Development Director and approve the corresponding title change. During her five years as Milton Planning Manager, Manager Stallnecker has demonstrated professionalism, knowledge, and dedication to our community. She has developed a strong understanding of Milton's unique planning needs our community priorities and the challenges associated with managing growth while maintaining the character and quality of life that our residents value. She has also demonstrated the ability to take complex planning and development issues and work through them in a thoughtful and professional manner. Her experience allows her to look beyond the individual application or project and consider the broader impact on the community and the city's long-term goals. Her contributions have not gone on notice. In 2024, Anjali was recognized as the City of Milton's Employee of the Year. I believe that recognition speaks to the level of commitment, professionalism, and service she has consistently demonstrated to our organization and our community. In making this recommendation, I want to share that I have spoken with members of our senior leadership team, as well as members of our community. There is a high level of confidence in Anjali's ability, professionalism, and judgment. I believe it is important to formally recognize the leadership role she has already been providing and give her the appropriate title and authority to continue that work. On a professional level, I have had the opportunity to work with Anjali and observe her professionalism, dedication, and commitment to the city of Milton. I have seen firsthand her willingness to take on challenges, work collaboratively with others, and help move important projects forward. I also believe that Anjali's extensive planning background provides the city with an important level of institutional knowledge. As Milton continues to experience development and faces increasingly complex planning and community development issues, having a leader with her depth of experience is a significant asset to our organization. I believe this title change appropriately reflects the ability, the level of responsibility Anjali has been taking on and provides the city with a strong and experienced leader for our community development functions. As Mayor, I am very pleased to have Anjali Stalnaker as a permanent member of my leadership team. I believe the City of Milton will benefit greatly from her experience, technical expertise, leadership abilities, professionalism, and continued commitment to our community. Therefore, Council, I respectfully request your affirmation and approval of my appointment of Anjali Stalnaker as Community Development Director for the City of Milton. Yes, Councilmember Hall.

Moved to approve the confirmation of Anjali Stallnecker to the position of Community Development Director. Second.

It's been moved by Councillor Holland, seconded by Councillor Poore. Councillor Holland, would you like to speak to your motion?

Again, Anjali is available. I mean, she has, I've seen her work on Sundays. I've seen her work Saturdays. I've seen her work all this weekend for melted days. talking to people, her dedication to the citizens and the city is above reproach.

Thank you. Councillor Rapport, would you like to speak to your second?

Thank you, Mayor. That's twice you had to beat me to the punch there. Mayor, thank you for presenting that honored words and everything that you shared on how hard she works and serves the community, all the hats she has to wear, and thank you for awesome endorsement. Hard to follow that. I personally can attest that Anjali has been wonderful to work with. You know, the biggest thing I've worked with her on is the tree ordnance, and she's been very kind, patient, been able to kind of compartmentalize a lot of the different questions and also help me with different areas. And especially being a new Councilmember, I feel that your presentations have been really wonderful in general across the board. And just really appreciate how kind you are and how hard it is to wear so many different hats. And you probably do the work of several positions. And so, I appreciate that you took the time to honour so much of what she does. Thank you. And thank you for your service. Councillor Neill.

Any additional discussion?

I just want to acknowledge with gratitude putting the job description in writing so that it becomes part of the record. And it's a very complex job description for sure.

Council Member Roberts. Thank you, Mayor. Just on a personal note, thank you for all you do. Thank you for meeting with me on Friday when the city's closed. I really appreciate all you've done, again, to reiterate the sentiment of John, Council Member Poore, being a new council member. I mean, you're a plethora of knowledge. So using all your information, all your knowledge, all your extensive education, et cetera, has been extremely helpful. So thank you for that. Any additional discussion?

Seeing none, it's been moved by Councilmember Hall and seconded by Councilmember Poore to approve the confirmation of Anjali Stalnaker to the position of Community Development Director. All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed? Any opposed? Motion passes. And I forgot to ask if the audience wanted to say anything. All right. Moving on to Item E, the Salary Commission Ordinance on page 103. It's an action item and Finance Director Roebuck will be presenting this item.

Thank you again, Mayor and Council. Compensation for city council members has been fixed at $400 per month since at least 2002. Since this amount has been unchanged for over 20 years, staff is proposing the establishment of a salary commission to review the compensation of elected officials. This ordinance was presented at the study session on August 10th for first reading. Some minor language changes were made and a requirement that salary commission member members be residents of the city was added based on discussion at this meeting. The primary language changes were changing wages and benefits to just compensation. I think those were the only text changes other than adding the requirement, the residency requirement. I'd be happy to take any additional questions once a motion is made.

Would anyone like to make a motion? Yes, Council Member Seder.

Move to adopt Ordinance 2145-26, establishing a salary commission.

Second.

Council Member Seder, would you like to speak to your motion?

Rather than ask leading questions, I'm just going to say the things that I think are important, which is that The council's pay, nobody here is doing it for the pay. And this is the alternative to council setting its own pay in the future. So this is an independent commission that the citizens can then have a referendum on if they see fit. I think this is a good thing for moving forward to hopefully increase council participation, more citizens willing to join without viewing it as a strain on time and actually being fairly compensated for the work that goes into this. So yeah, happy to see this.

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

Yeah, so I just reiterate the same sentiments as Councilmember Cedar. It's been a long time since anybody in Council's gotten a change. But again, we're all doing this, you know, because we'd love to help out the community, et cetera. So this does allow the opportunity to potentially have any kind of increase or decrease for that matter. So yeah, it's due. So thank you.

Any additional discussion? Councilmember Hall.

I agree we all deserve it. We work hard. I feel like this was premature. I really think it should have happened after budget or at least we knew what the budget is for next year because this will not come back to Council. This will be enacted, correct? And that gives me pause because our first job is really the budget. And we have no way of knowing what the costs could be. But again, you can't do it without it because you can't do the budget. So it makes me nervous we could cause farther deficit to the budget.

Finance Director Robich, I believe that if anything were to happen, it would happen prior to the budget being enacted, correct?

Yeah, well, the budget, I'm not sure how quickly the, I've never been involved with the Salary Commission before, I'm not sure how quickly people could be appointed and a decision could be made. The budget is due to be adopted said to be adopted either at the first or the second meeting. It's usually at the first meeting in December. Sometimes it has been the second meeting. So if all of that could happen before that, I could incorporate it into the 2027 budget for approval.

I believe I saw it's 60 days.

Ms. Once appointed, yes.

Ms. Once appointed, 60 days.

Ms. With the option to extend that with Council approval. Ms. Oh, we could extend it?

Okay, all righty, thank you.

Any additional discussion? This is an action item. Would anyone from the audience like to speak on this issue before the Council votes? Yes, please come forward.

Okay, I have some comments on it. So I dislike the timing of it. I'm not against salary commissions. I looked into it when we're going through the salary thing back in 2020. What concerns me is because there is no guardrails on this, the state doesn't limit, like it does with Pierce County or with counties, the increase. Since it's been so long, if Council would be willing to, at this point, do something, at least you know within your budget what you're willing to do. and then next time appoint a salary commission just to bump it up somewhat to me that seems more reasonable and The other concern I had is with the ordinance under duties and process item C the Salary increase shall be effective on the next payday for city employees once it's confirmed shouldn't it acknowledge the referendum process meaning you have to wait the 30 days and and then it would be on the next day. Because I don't know, can you claw back if the referendum happens? I wasn't sure. Because this ordinance doesn't mention the referendum process at all. So thank you.

Yes. Please come forward.

Susan Johnson did. I said ditto.

That's not my last name.

Ditto. I agree. I don't think this is the time. I understand that we are under in the city for our council many, many years. And I'm not opposed to a raise. I'm opposed right now because we do not know what the economy is going to be. We don't know what grants are going to come in. I think because there's so much uncertainty in our economic condition in the United States right now, this isn't the time. Wait till 2023. If you're doing a three-year budget proposal concept or a two-year, we don't have enough data right now with what's going to happen economically in two years. So I agree that maybe if you all want to give yourself a little something, but we've got more increasing in this coming budget than income and different things happening. It looks like the cost to drug that the drug courts, we're going to get money, but there's still going to be cost associated with everything. This is not the time we're getting taxed for the people are, we have to do the public safety tax. And I think the regular citizen understands you've given your time and your effort. And believe me, I've done a lot of years in this city since I moved here in 2009. And I remember being on council at 400. And I said, gee, with the hours I put in, that comes down to a cent a minute because I'm committed to the city. So don't get me wrong. I understand. But I think The common person says, I'm not getting anything right now either. It's just hard right now economically for so many people. So I'm asking to say, yes, I agree. I think we should have had one before, and it didn't happen. I'm saying, go ahead and do one, but put it for a year. Again, the referendum's very important to note and documentation. So I'm just asking you to delay it. Let's see what 27 is like and try to set it for 2028. I think it's really important because I think we're gonna be really hit, and that's just my bias, more with costs, taxes, and economic stress. Thank you.

Yes, anyone else? Yes, please come forward.

Jacqueline Whalen, Milton, Washington. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. I'll do the word text issue on page 106 of 114. I'm curious to know what an official is. Does that mean someone from the Civil Service Commission can't be on the salary commission? Just a question. There's nothing in there that talks about grounds for removal from the commission. Some cities do list that. duties and process, paragraph A. There should be some better wording in there. It's missing, well, I'll just go to the sentence. The salary commission shall convene and determine the compensation paid to the mayor and city council within 60 days of confirmation by the city council. It just, there needs some extra words like, the city council, their confirmation for the, I can put it in there later, it's equivalent to what is in C, where it talks about a date within the timeframe of when the commission was confirmed by city council. So sorry about my muddied comment there. But see, these two paragraphs don't jive. If you're saying that the review and determination time has to happen in 60 days, And C says, within the 60 days, the determination has to be turned in. You still have a whole legal process. You still have the referendum process. There's no real due date. I've seen some cities that talk in terms of the commission shall meet at such and such a month. They shall meet on certain days. Their work shall be due by such and such a date. That gives time for legal. that gives time for a referendum process, because a referendum, as I understand it, is limited to certain elections. So there's just a lot of, I know this is based on another city's code, but there's just a lot of open space in there for me. The premise that more money's gonna make more candidates, I don't know, where's the proof? How much money is that gonna take? The people who are going to be on the salary commission, where do they get their education? I mean, is it just look around? There is no competition here. You can't say, well, I'm going to go be the mayor in such and such a city. You are mayor where you reside. So competition isn't a factor if that's a thinking of here's why we should be doing more. Who's the staff liaison? There's been no real presentation of how this thing is to work, given the fact that we've never done it before. It'd be kind of nice to know what we're getting into. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional public comment before the vote? All right, seeing none. It's been moved by Councilmember Cedar and seconded by Councilmember Roberts to adopt Ordinance 2145-26, Establishing a Salary Commission. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Nay.

Okay. It's passed, what do we have? 521.

All right.

The next item on the agenda is Item 8F, On page 109 of your packet, the Police Vehicle Surplus Resolution 26-2006. And Chief Hernandez will be presenting this item for us.

Good evening, Council and guests. Tonight, bringing before you a recommended action to approve Resolution 26-2006, declaring obsolete police equipment to be surplus and authorized and disposed Many years ago, we went through an amortization process, and you agreed as a legislative body that it made more sense when a car's value depreciates to the point that the repairs are more than the value of the vehicle, that we go ahead and surplus those vehicles. And this vehicle has reached that service life. It's 12 years old. It has 83,000 miles on it. And so tonight what I'm asking is the authorization to go ahead and dispose of this vehicle.

All right, I'd entertain a motion at this time. Council Member Seder.

I move to approve resolution 26-2006 declaring obsolete police equipment to be surplus and authorizing the disposal of same. Councilmember Cedar, would you like to speak to your motion? No, always appreciate you bringing this forward and our robust discussions about the fleet. Thanks, Chief.

Councilmember Miles, would you like to speak to your second?

Thank you for keeping track.

Any additional discussion? Councilmember Hall?

Chief, that is one of the best cars to drive. Because when you sit in it, you go down into it, you feel like you're in a cage, and it is very comfortable. Yes, they do get squeaky and wonky, and steering is hard to drive, but it was a good car.

It'll be available for sale. I said it'll be available for sale if we vote for it. Okay, Council Member Roberts.

When?

What we usually do is we invite at least five people or five companies, we put out an advertisement to place a bid and so then whoever the highest bidder is is the one who gets the bid.

Yeah, anyone out there interested, feel free to contact the city. Any additional discussion? This is an action item. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak on this issue? Seeing none, it's been moved by Councilmember Cedar and seconded by Councilmember Mounts to approve Resolution 26-2006, declaring obsolete police equipment to be surplus and authorizing the disposal of same. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right. Moving to council reports. Council Member Roberts.

Thanks, Mayor.

I'd just like to thank the Events Committee for a great showing of Milton Days. I'd like to thank Kylie personally for all that she's done for that. She worked a lot with the vendors, and I appreciate all the work because, I mean, we had great food, great vendors, et cetera. So we put on a good show. And I've been living in Milton for 12 years and this is the first time I've had the opportunity to actually attend Milton Day. So it was a good time. So yeah, thank you to everybody that was part of the Milton Days. Council Member Miles.

Ditto, can I do that? Ditto. It was very interesting to go to Milton Days and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the bouncy houses and the kids, they all had a good time. I agree with some of the earlier comments, public comments that were made for points of refinement and just nice to see the community come together.

Thank you.

Middle Davis was great. Thanks so much for everyone putting it together, being there. It's just great to see the community come together. A lot of great comments.

Council Member Poore? Nothing. All right. Council Member Hall?

I'd like to thank the city for a national night out. Police Department, Great job. Bouncy house. The toucher truck. That is probably the most kids I've ever seen at any event for City of Melton. Events was fun. Yes, there is some room for refinement. I think we probably need to go through jobs for who's responsible for what. So the volunteers understand that the city employees are the ones they go to.

Council Member McNally-Martinez.

I just want to ditto on the Milton Days. I was very impressed with the vendors and the volunteers. I work for a city that has a lot of paid staff that does a lot of the jobs that I saw volunteers doing 100% by themselves. And I appreciate that and thank you for doing that for our community.

All right, moving on to Director Reports. I was gonna say Planning Manager Stalnaker, but I'm sorry, what is your new title? Director. Director, I'll just call you Director Stalnaker.

A couple things real quick. Following up for Milton Days, since Dustin's not here, I will do a shout out to the crew who was there early, was there late, They set up, they tore down, they were there throughout the day picking up garbage and doing stuff. They were really helpful, and they, and that's sort of a, I mean, we need people to do it, but we sort of start with who wants to do it, and I appreciate all of them that were there. Yeah, there was some... some adjustment at the last minute that kind of got us tucked in the corner between the fish and the stage. And it was fine. I mean, it was loud. And it was, you know, we probably didn't reach as many people as we would have liked. We did get to talk to a lot of people in line for the fish. So that was good. A lot of kids came over. Framework was there kicking off the climate information. And so we got, surprise, surprise, the number one thing people definitely always care about is sidewalks and bike connections, and then obviously trees and safe parks and all of that. So we'll kind of process some of that. And we'll be looking at some, an outreach, We're working on a committee that will sort of cover a lot of the different, you know, getting the Puyallup Tribe involved, different agencies involved, different residents involved to help guide some of that work. So that's all coming. We just, switching to Planning Commission, we just heard today that it's not on YouTube. It is a new person that's running it. She's pretty sure it recorded her fears. She didn't click the thing that launched it onto YouTube. So we have an email out to our tech people. They will look. Sometimes it defaults and saves it on the computer, and she don't hit the right button to make sure it gets posted. So fingers crossed we have the recording and that we can post it later. And her and I will go through it again and make sure we're hitting all of those boxes. So I apologize for that. And then we are another thing with Planning Commission. I will be gone the week of September 8th for a conference, and that's when the next regularly scheduled Planning Commission is. So the Planning Commission is basically moving that to August 26th. So a week from Wednesday, we will do that meeting. We'll sort of take place of the September meeting. We are talking We are reviewing some, kind of the next proposal for trees that the city council sent back to them, as well as looking at some updates to definitions and table of uses and stuff. So that'll all be coming back in September. So I think that's it. And then thank you for all the nice words.

Thank you. Finance Director Robich.

No comment.

Chief Hernandez.

I just want to reiterate National Night Out was great and really want to thank Jessica and Nils for all the hard work that they did. And it's the biggest turnout that I've seen in 12 years that I've been here. So we'll continue with that tradition every year and make it bigger. And it was nice to meet and greet with the community. Milton Days was great and want to thank all the volunteer staff and all the help that they provided, the events committee, and a special shout out to Jessica and Nils and Tim for their tireless effort on the staff end of coordinating and working with the events committee to get this all pulled together. And we have a tentative agreement with the guild where we're waiting their vote. And so I'll be bringing the hopefully a completed and ratified agreement back for council's consideration. And we're quite pleased with the bargaining and how fast it was able to happen. And if you say something, if you see something, Say something. And together, we're stronger.

Thank you, Chief.

I notice that we do have one of the members of our Events Committee here. And if you'd indulge me, I'd like to give her a hand for for putting together a great Milton Days, and six of the seven members were brand new, and so they, I'm impressed. Thank you so very much. I was a chauffeur for most of the day for Milton Days. I was taking vendors back and forth. to parking in the morning and also in the afternoon. And the comments that I got in the afternoon were that the repeat vendors were saying that it was the best Milton Days that they had experienced so far, and that they were looking forward to next year. And so, Yeah, the events committee and the city staff that supported them did a wonderful job. And thank you so very much. And thank you to the community for making it such a success. With that, is there anything else for this evening? Okay. Seeing that all agenda items have been concluded, I adjourn this meeting at 8.15.