City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and Council.

I'm going to introduce this topic tonight, then I'll turn it over to our consultant. Excuse me. So tonight you're going to hear about the results of a development fee study, including staff recommendations related to cost recovery. And before we get started, I wanted to kind of frame what we're going to be talking about tonight, what we're not going to be covering. So tonight we're going to talk about the fees that were studied related to the permit review functions provided by development services. These are primarily general fund revenues that the city collects for that work. What we will not be covering tonight, but you will see reference to it on several slides, is other development-related fees assessed related to parks, traffic, school, fire, impact fees, or utility SDC fees that are collected. As a reminder, those are restricted revenues for their associated impacts. Most of those fees were recently adjusted as part of the 2024 comprehensive plan update. or as part of your 2025 utility rate study. Before I get started, any questions about what we're gonna be discussing tonight? Perfect. I'll turn it over to Shivani. She's with FCS Group and she led the project study as well as we'll be going over the recommendations tonight.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Hi, Mayor. So my name is Shivani Lal. I'm the FCS Bowman Consultant Project Manager. It's been a pleasure working with Doug and staff and the executive leadership team here. We've had it for a project going for almost a year now. Give me one second. I'm trying to skip. Okay. Okay.

It's not you.

It's not me?

No, it is. Jeff's messing with you.

Okay.

I'm like, wait, I don't want to look at myself. You're on the right screen. I know. There you go. We're good?

Yeah.

OK, perfect. And then Evan Coughlin is my technical analyst, and he is joining us through Teams as well. So we'll get started. So a little overview here, like it was introduced. So this is a development services cost of fee study. The last study was done approximately 20 years ago or so. So since then, the area has grown. The cost of construction, cost of development has grown as well. For the development services team, City of Sumner has about 13 staff providing customer service to permit-related services, to the community of residential customers, commercial customers, and any customers coming into the city. The program currently is housed in general funds. Resources are collected through fee revenues, and any offsets are done through general fund resources to subsidize cost that's incurred by the development services. Current city's goal is to achieve full cost recovery, so at a rate where the entire cost that is covered by the, is regularly required and covered by the fees should be covered by the fees. And then the city is exploring enterprise funding by 2027. The FCS was engaged in 2025 to start researching the development services cost of fee study. So today's agenda, we'll kind of go over the project approach, guiding principles, project data that was reviewed, preliminary results in phase one, cost of service fee study, preliminary results of phase two. Phase two is really the fee setting part that we use the data from phase one to see what fees could be adjusted to meet the city's goals. And then proposed fee settings and policy discussion. So these are some of the key terms that we'll be using. So direct fee services, we're looking at fees that are directly tied to activities that's done to promote development services. So project related, customer service experience, permit applications, any in specific tied to a specific fee, such as environmental review. Indirect services, that's the other part of the component. These are service fees that are indirectly affecting a project, so these are front counter customer service and administrative duties. And from these components, we're doing cost of service, so calculation of the cost to provide the permit experience, including direct and indirect, and a portion of overhead expenses. So another word that you can be using is cost recovery, at what rate the cost is recovered through the permit revenues. And if their cost recovery is less than 100%, then general fund comes in and subsidizes the difference. So this was our project approach. It's two-part. Phase one is our technical analysis. Phase two is where we are right now, policy analysis. This process started about a year ago. We started with data collection. We looked at five years' worth of permit history. We looked at fees, non-fee services in step one, time estimates, how long does it take for an employee to process, how many staff touches the lifecycle of the permit, looking at non-labor cost, labor cost, and overhead cost. From there, we build our cost layers, direct services, indirect services, and overhead. So these are the three buckets. We can identify cost and see what cost can be recovered. And then we define the full cost of service. So we look at the entire division as a whole, and then we look at program areas, so building, land use, public works, and administration. So once we have that data that gives that information, from there we look at steps four and five, the cost recovery policies. What is the goal of the city? Where the city currently is? And what level increases? And how does that impact the fee revenues? And then any other goals that the city might have. So it's been a mindful approach. We've taken for the last three to four months navigating that space. We also compared what the Nearby jurisdictions, so survey jurisdictions are doing for their fee settings and where they are currently in relationship to the city. And from there, we have tail end of this presentation would be a staff recommendation. Looking at our statute for RCW, the Revised Coast of Washington, 80.02.20. So we have this. The city is within reason to set up a reasonable fee for the applicant to recover the cost that's to the city. One of the things we have to be mindful of, the cost has to be development services related. So activities pertaining to development services, plan review, preparing statements, And I'll go into the next slide to talk about what's not covered. So the guiding principle, we have full cost recovery, so the department can operate independently. We look at direct cost of permitting services, a reasonable portion of indirect or support cost, and a reasonable portion of overhead cost. What's not included in this study or cannot be recovered through fee revenue is comprehensive long-range planning, code enforcement that's not related to building, so general city code enforcement. So anything that's general government should not be used through this means and should be supported by general funds. So now we can look at our detail of our study analysis. So we did a full cost. We looked at staff information from 2024. Staff spent just a little over 9,800 hours on tasks to support the development services through construction permits, land use decisions, miscellaneous permits, public works permit. City can recover full cost in each categories. Of note, building valuation fees are not based on labor hours, so they're valuation based, so the adjustments are done slightly different. For this study, we're looking at some key assumptions, so the component of expense, revenue, and annual cost inflation. For this analysis, we looked at 2024 FTE salaries and benefit, the actual historical budget information, 2025 and 2026 proposed budget. The city had a self-reported distribution of labor hours, so this is where staff provided a comprehensive list of time spent supporting a certain permit type to adjudicate. And then we looked at permit history. So this is where we analyzed four years' worth of permit history from 2020 to 2024, things that are not included as it was shared earlier. We exclude impact fees, STCs, non-development service fees. And what we're left with is fees that generate 80% of our revenue, and these are usually 20% of the fees. So these are the fees that we should really focus on because having that adjusted will recover higher cost recovery rates. So that's the PREDO approach. Inflationally cost, annual inflation cost, general cost inflation is 3.5%. Labor and benefit cost inflation is around 4% to 5%. And construction cost inflation is about 4.5%. We'll delve into the cost of service. So why is this important? Why are development fees important and how does this impact the community? So these are the things that we want to have that as we navigate through the next few slides and its impact. So looking at our analysis based on our study, we looked at total annual cost, recoverable and non-recoverable, a little over $2.5 million. We had building about $1.4 million. Planning was a little over $400,000. And public works was a little over $500,000. So with each program area, then we were able to divvy out what's recoverable through fees and what's not recoverable through fees. the same methodology was applied to planning and public works. So overall, we could recover out of the $2.647 million, $1.545 million. So almost 58% could be recovered through fee revenues.

Just write it down, and we'll come back at the end for questions. Capture the slide, and that's what we'll do. Are you okay with that? Okay. Perfect. Thank you.

So once we have the cost, ultimately what it comes down to is the component of hourly rate. So once we have the recoverable cost for building, planning, public works, and the direct hours that the staff spent on it, it gives us an average hourly rate. So collectively, the city for the department, we have $157.38. But at the individual level, the building staff is about $172.23. Planning is about $178.28. And public works, about $123.21. So once we have this component, then every time that the number of hours spent on a fee, on a permit, you can multiply it to really get the cost of service. So looking at, and these are all FCS studies that we've done. Currently, City of Sumner is at $49.50 for its annual hourly rate. With our analysis, it's at $157.38. So that's the full cost. And as we project, this is a projection slide, so we looked at 2020 through 2024 as the actual, and we made an estimation growth of half a percent for what is anticipated for projection of 2025 and 2026. This is just a visual showing that trend that continues in the coming year. So now the big question comes in with the cost recovery. So what is the department's cost recovery rate? So we are currently at 75%. So out of the fee revenues that we can recover cost, the city is recovering at 75%. The goal is to get a full cost recovery. So the fee revenue was a little over $1.1 million with direct labor a little over $947,000, indirect of $228,000, non-labor of $134,000, and overhead of about $235,000. So there's that gap, the missing gap of 100% and 75%. That's the discussion. That's what we're trying to recover to move it to the 100% full-cost recovery.

Yes.

Mayor, I think this would be a good point to take a break. I know some questions are up there.

Okay. Absolutely. Wait, wait. Council Member Evers, go ahead. Sorry. That's okay.

So basically, we're charging about 75% of what we should. That's the bottom line, right? I don't like that word, bottom line, really. Okay, and then you were showing numbers up there, like 2.6 in the city, collected 1.4 or something. Was that a specific year or...?

Is that slide 14? Yeah.

I don't know.

Slide 12. So this is our collective. I believe it was 2024 we looked at. So this is the portion that could be recovered. So the 2.6 is recoverable and non-recoverable. They're parts of the services that cannot be recovered through fee revenues. The part that is recoverable is that 58%, the 1.45. Good? Good.

Thank you. Okay.

Councilman Kenna.

This might be more of a question for Jason and Doug, but can you speak to how this affects our city and our departments to only collect 75% and what kind of an impact that has on our general fund, our staff, and the resources that we devote to these activities?

Can I have you come back to that question because she's going to answer it in the next section. Okay.

Deputy Mayor Elpers.

You might say the same thing to me, but I just, the beginning, the first slide, I guess I'll ask my easy question first. So slide number 14, I believe, is the hourly rates comparison.

Yes.

Can you explain a little bit? So there's the blue color and then there's the gray color on each of the cities. So Sumner right now is $49.50 and it looks like the rate that you're talking about full recovery is $157. So what are the numbers relating to like CTAC, for example? What is that? They only have one number. What's the blue and the gray mean?

So thank you. Great question, Mayor, Deputy Mayor. So one looks like labor costs. The blue is the labor costs, the non-labor. So those are the costs associated for professional services, overhead, so all these other costs that's not salaries and benefit.

I got it. So the 157 is the total. The total, the grand total. And then gray is the non-labor.

Correct. So, for example, for CTEX non-labor is $48, and their labor is 115. When they're added up together, it's 157.38.

And that's what they currently charge.

That was the cost of service. I'm not sure what they're currently charging, but when we did the analysis, I believe they went to that full cost. I can verify that.

Okay, so there are other cities moving to full cost?

Correct. It is a general practice that the city, it's a leadership decision, executive leadership decision to have the enterprise entity self-sustain because that deviates the burden from general funds.

Okay, and I think that kind of backs into my other question. So at the very first slide you had on there, there was a couple of goals that I just wanted to clarify. I think they're pretty straightforward. But number one, there was the idea that the city had a goal of doing full cost recovery. And then considering the type of what's happening in this department, can you explain why does that goal make sense for this specific activity? Because obviously we don't do full cost recovery for parks. We don't do full cost recovery for streets and certain funds we just expect. But this one is, why is this one full cost recovery makes sense?

So this... I can answer? Okay, perfect. So with development services, the intent is the city is built out at a certain time, a certain period of time. There's only so much growth and development that would occur. So generally speaking, If it is not at full cost, general fund is subsidizing. So constituents are to some extent, the tax revenues or other revenues are offsetting the development cost that's needed for the city to self-sustain. So within the RCW, if you apply as a user fee methodology, then as a development department, you should self-sustain the amount that by statute, you could recover at full cost. We certainly want to recover at full cost, and anything overage would be self-sustained and potentially reserves or so forth, but not to offset other policy goals, such as building a park or transportation projects. So that's where that policy decision comes in. It becomes a city's structural choice. Okay.

So let me restate. So what I'm hearing, so then the second thing I, the second question there was about making an enterprise fund in 2027. And I think what I'm hearing you say, and I just want to repeat it to make sure I'm understanding, is that this type of service is, it's not, it's really specifically only for new development, and therefore it doesn't make sense for the community as a whole to bear the burden of the cost. Is that, and so that's why the enterprise fund makes sense, because it's more of a user type of fee?

It's all, including current communities. So let's say, and we'll go into future slides in the tail end. So if it's a single family making some upgrades, additions, and so forth, those falls in that development services. So they're going to be all encompassed.

Okay, so it's more, I feel like enterprise funds usually fit with user fees. How much water do you use, you pay that bill. And so that's why we do the enterprise model. And this one is, the reason it makes sense to move it to more of an enterprise model is because it's more, if you use it, you pay it.

Correct, and it's by SAO as well, with our state.

Thanks for clarifying that.

Yep. Council Member Malcolm.

Yeah, thank you. On slide number, a couple of questions. We'll start with 14. This might be a little hairier. We may have already addressed it a bit. But that number, that 1.54 number, where are we?

Wait, I'm further back.

Okay. One more.

One more.

No, that's not it. Slide 14. Is that it?

This is 14.

I might be looking at the wrong one. Bad number right there. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

So that annual cost recoverable costs, is that a fixed number each year? I mean, it'll be impacted by inflation and cost recovery, or not cost, but internal costs for us. And the type of funding that we get is gonna be fungible each year based on activity. So I'm anticipating that there will be years where we exceed this and years that we will need to backfill out of somewhere. What's the thoughts and strategy on how we would handle that? Especially if we move into the enterprise fund kind of model where we're a little bit more dependent on activity.

So, Council Member Malcolm, it's not exactly a straightforward question that you just asked, but I'll try to do my best to answer it. So when you create an enterprise account, if your revenues don't meet your expectations, and then you have all the expenditures side, you do have to subsidize that enterprise fund, and you do so with general fund revenue. We do this with our other enterprise funds today, whether it's the cemetery is a good example. We subsidize that annually with general fund revenue. The second thing, I think it really highlights the need that you have to continually look at these fees. We shouldn't go 20 years without looking at these. Because you're right, that 58% is going to change based on development activity. inflation, a whole bunch of things go into that. So I would recommend that if council adopts changes this year, that within the next five years, we're looking at this again, and it needs to be a continual look at it, just like we do with our utility rates. So you don't fall behind, or at least don't fall back behind as much as we're talking today.

And I think you're, I mean, you're leading into where I was trying to go with this is that this is, we're setting, you know, we've got a number that's in amber and To your point, we haven't looked at this for 20 years. It's going to change, and the activity is going to change. Are we future-proofing this so that we're capturing costs and capturing fees to ensure that we're not 20 years from now looking at a weird delta, that unintended consequence? So I'm just hoping that part of this is how do we think about this annually or at least biannually in our budget process? I had one other question, too. On 17 and 18, I was trying to understand the gap clarification. The funding increases we're talking about right now is to develop the gap between the 1.1 and the 1.5 anticipated. Is that what we're addressing with the fee increases? So just that $100,000 or $200,000 gap, and there's all we're talking about.

And just keep that in mind, this is a historic data, so it doesn't serve today's data. So this sort of gives us a guiding approach of what the future policy decisions should be. So this, we won't be able to recover that from the past. Right, right.

But we really are trying to target the sliver. We're currently hitting here. We'd like to hit here. So all conversations around increases are really addressing that gap in there is what we're looking at. Okay.

And then we also look at the 20% of the fees that generate 80% of the revenue. So there's that equity part of like which fees are more occurring and that should be the maybe increase, the higher increases. versus the fees that you only see once every five years or seven years.

I only have one last question. I promise I'll only have ten more later. Slide number eight, there's kind of language around reasonable fees, and I'm just curious what does reasonable mean in this sense? How do we frame that? Because I think that's going to be an ongoing question around You know, is 30% reasonable? Is 10% reasonable? Is 100% reasonable? I mean, what's reasonable really mean and how are we framing that?

So in our studies, I believe we took that overhead approach. It is based on, I mean, our statute is just reasonable. With overhead, one of the things we avoid and try to be conservative is not having the full overhead be covered through fees. So reasonable, like a 30% or 50%, and that's a dialogue that occurs within the study approach.

Okay. So it's, we're just going to leave it kind of loose and aim low.

Okay. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Alpers.

I had one question I wrote down and didn't ask, but it's kind of same lungs. I think one of the things I was curious about, because it sounds like it's a different methodology than we're doing now, and I just wanted to make sure that it's something that are you going to leave a product with staff for the next 10 years so we could go and plug in the numbers that are currently happening and we can update it ourselves, or do we have to have you back every couple years to do it? I love having you here. But it is expensive, that consultant. So I just- Absolutely. The idea of saying something that we can kind of plug and play going forward is really ideal. And so I'm just wondering if that's gonna be the case here.

So absolutely, great question. And that's one of the approach that I like to do for all our fee study site. I not only do cost of service, but I also do the indirect cost allocation plan and a couple others. This study delivers a comprehensive model. So staff will get a comprehensive model with all the worksheets, upkeeping it. If it is enterprise funds, every three to four years is where I would say have a consultant come in, do the cost analysis, make sure it's all captured. It's as automated as possible. It's a deliverable that's been shared with a report user guide and a model training. So we train the staff and share you how to navigate that tool.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks. One thing that was important for staff was to be able to go through each individual permit and do the tweaking if we needed to based on what was coming in, what wasn't coming in. Maybe we needed to focus a little differently. So it was important to us to be able to have connectivity to this program to be able to do that.

Okay.

Council Member Reinke.

Yeah, I was curious on the cost recovery. We're at 75% according to this graph. What is in line with the other like 10 cities on here? Are we in the ballpark with them or are they above us, below us?

There's some cities, one or two cities above. Majority of them are 30%, 40%. So Sumner in that situation is doing pretty well. So I think that's the leadership. That's having a lean ship, having a DS team that's been in season veterans. So as you see retirements and things occurring, that impacts them. A planner can approve a project or a permit within X amount of time, but a new planner may take longer time, so that's the cost. So it all impacts.

Thank you.

You're very welcome.

Council Member Wilsey.

Hi.

I'm just curious, does this naturally happen just because of the time distance between us evaluating these things? It just because of inflation, because of the changes to product and customers and all of that stuff, this naturally happens? It's not a us thing?

It's definitely not just a city of Sumner thing. One of the things is with development services, it's not regulated that you have to do these things. And if it's not monitored, then general fund just offsets that cost. As we're seeing regionally, nationally, there is burden placed on general funds. So if we can process that and self-assess fees that generate revenues, user fee methodology, then you can put your city in a better position for physical health.

Okay. Just the project we put in the closet and kind of pull it back out. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

City Administrator Wilson.

Thank you, Mayor. I just want to frame the Enterprise Fund discussion a little bit more. You know, we have a number of Enterprise Funds in the city, and one of the benefits of making development services an Enterprise Fund is transparency. So oftentimes we get asked, well, you know, this development went in. Did the city really, you know, get... enough fees to cover the expenses and it's not as transparent as it could be if it's an enterprise fund we can say okay we had this development come in these are the fees we had this is the general fund fees we had and they matched the staff time it works the other way as well though so when we have a large project say a multi-story building a large school where we need to bring in contract labor it allows us to clearly state, okay, we had this much general fund permit revenue come in for this project, and it helps offset the professional services that we bring in to help us meet our permit timelines or other experts that we need to bring in to review those multi-story buildings, et cetera. So it is much more transparent to you as policymakers, to our staff, and to our finance department.

Thank you.

Great. Should we move on? Okay.

Great discussion. Thank you. So looking at cost recovery and rate setting. Okay. Let's see. So this is the time. Pause for a question here. Processing this question. What steps can be explored for development services to recover its fee goals? We look at this was a collaborative approach. So we looked at three different tiers. Here we looked at our fee tool calculator and what does it look like. So currently the city is at 75%. Tier 1 is if we increased it to 80%. Tier 2 is 90%. And Tier 3 is the full cost recovery. And across the board, we're looking at 10% for Tier 1, 20% for Tier 2, and 30% for Tier 3. and gained in revenues about $350,000. So this is our staff recommendation for full cost recovery. Looking at some common fees and what its current impact where the current existing fee is so for building valuation That's 100 K to 500 K existing fees a little over 993 dollars With full cost you're gonna be at one thousand two hundred ninety one dollars and eighty eight cents right of way It's fifty dollars with full cost at sixty five dollars Conditional use permit is about eleven hundred dollars currently with full cost is fourteen thirty and These are the jurisdictions we surveyed and next few slides will kind of compare where the city falls in with its existing fee and with the full cost in relationship with its neighboring jurisdictions. So this is a component of comp plan. So city of Sumner currently is at $2,600 for this particular component. Within full cost, there's an addition of $780, bringing it to $3,380. And as you can see, we have Puyallup on the far left and then Edgewood in the far right. So it ranges anywhere from $1,100 to $8,715. Conditional use permit, city of Sumner was at $1,100, so by $330 increase would bring it to a full cost. The peer jurisdictions from Puyallup in a lower end with Edgewood in the higher end. And then another fee sample is the water meter permit. Currently the city's permit fee is $195 with full cost of $59 added to that. That brings it to $254. Again, it falls in the bottom tier overall. Puyallup's just below five is ahead and then Edgewood is on far This graph here shows us the light blue is where the current City of Sumner's building valuation is with a 30% increase. We're looking at a purple tier. It still falls in the middle to lower end in relationship to its peer jurisdictions. And then here we're looking at some of the fees in relationship to other city fees and its overall impact. For commercial portfolio, this is a new warehouse. We looked at a building permit fee, existing fee is $122,914 with a 30% increase, we'll bring it to $159,788. That's a little bit over $36,000 in additional revenue. Other development services is about $3,500 with 30% increase. It's about $4,592, so additional $1,054 revenues. And the other two categories, the parks, fire, traffic, SDCs, and MPAC fees, those are not part of this study. So overall, collectively, if the existing fee of a COMMERCIAL PORTFOLIO IS 255,363. WITH THE STAFF RECOMMENDATION, IT'S GOING TO BE INCREASED BY 37,928. SO THAT BRINGS THE PROPOSED FEE OF $293,291. The next is impact on single family residents. So a residential portfolio is a current package of existing fees between building permit, other development, SDCs, and impact fees is $46,097, with the suggested 30% increase on development services fee revenues. Overall, in the portfolio example, it's just a 9.1% increase. So from the existing fee of $46,097, the new fees will come to $50,278. So that's additional $4,181 in more revenue. Tenant improvement portfolio under the sample set we were looking at here. Total fee here for existing is $74,511 with a 30% increase to building permits and other development services. We're looking at overall 5.5% increase from $74,511 to $78,597. That's a little over $4,000 in new revenues. And then here we're looking at a residential remodel portfolio, so a new bathroom remodel. Residential customers coming in for that permit. Currently it's at $464.56. This is a remodel, so there is no SDCs or park impact fees. So overall it's a 30% increase. That fee will increase to $601.98 with a new revenue increase of $137.42. Then this right here is the additional dwelling unit or garage extension. As we're seeing in our region, this is something most of our homeowners are exploring. So we're looking at a full set of fees of $18,524. With 30% increase to building and development services fees, we're at 8.7%. The revised new fee would be $20,138 and increase by 16-14. Our next steps is setting up fee, policy discussion, and any other questions we might have. So I'll just pause here.

All right. Questions? Council Member Malcolm. I feel like I'm playing bingo up here. It went green, green, green, green. Thank you.

Just a quick question. I appreciate all the work, and I know this is just one giant Excel sheet of possibilities and plug-in stuff. I would like to ask the question, it seems like, don't take me wrong, I totally get our climate and what's going on and why we need to do these things, but We've been levying a lot of fees on our community a lot over the last year or so. It's the nature of inflation, rising costs, just the nature of these things. And it feels to me that coming in and just saying 30% flat across every type of permitting feels heavy-handed. I would almost rather see something that... you know, leaves it flat for our residents that say if they're wanting to put an ADU or do a bathroom remodel or do something here where we're not increasing fees there and looking more at our commercial, you know, people coming in to build apartment buildings or improving their warehouses space. And I don't know what the percentage of, you know, activity is, residential versus commercial, but if we went from a not include, you know, not increase anything on residential and we do a 32% increase on commercial, does that give us the balance we're looking at in a way that allows our residents to get a breather on fees and and we still get cost recovered you know from from folks that are possibly doing that especially when you show us the models of how much lower we are compared to our surrounding communities it seems like we have a lot of headroom there that we could lean a little bit heavier on on that end of the scale and a little bit less on the community and the residents here so i'm just throwing that out there has that been modeled have you thought about it is there a way to look at that model

So modeling-wise, we did have that option. So we have that fee tool calculated that allows that approaches on certain fees. So it becomes a leadership decision of what approach is needed in W-China.

This is a staff recommendation, and it's a recommendation only. So we wanted to bring forward what staff felt was a line in the sand to begin with and start with since we haven't done it for so long. So this is why we're in front of you to talk about this. So we just decided it was up to me on which level we wanted to go, and I said 100% just because I wanted to see what that impact was. So again, this is just a recommendation.

I mean, I like the 100%. It's just how we get to it, I guess, is what I'm asking the question. Are there other ways to get there?

I think the pitting of commercial against residential gets you kind of into an area that maybe you don't want to be in because you may satisfy one set of group, but you're not satisfying the other group. So this was a way to be clear across the board evenly was our thought.

I mean, I hear what you're saying. I'm not necessarily 100% there. That's okay.

We field the calls all the time of why are the costs the way they are, and if we were to field calls saying that how come the commercial gets more of these fees and the residential doesn't, and I'm a resident, or I'm not a resident, I'm a commercial business. So we're fielding those calls.

Okay.

Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Overson.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the conversation. I think one of the things I was considering is right now we've had a few small businesses. I think there's certain things that the city is really wanting to incentivize and we need in town. And some types of businesses are struggling. We've heard a lot from child care, for example, with the traffic impact fees that have affected them more than other types of industries. Their margins are lower. So I just was curious, is there... A lot of the times, I think what we've heard, and Jason, you can always put in, is we've heard, hey, we just kind of do it across the board, and then if we want to incentivize, we'd have some kind of a grant program to specifically support small business. I'm just trying to, I wanted just to kind of bring that out, the idea of, if we said, hey, we really want senior housing, we know that restaurants are having a tough time, and we know that child care, there's certain industries that we want to say, hey, we want to make sure that they're not burdened too much by this. Can we create an incentive? Maybe that's a separate program, not this study. but I just wanted to hear a little bit similar to Council Member Malcom's, just more thinking about it as an incentive, though. Is that an option, or how would that look? So there are

general fund grant incentive programs you could do. But once again, you're taking that limited general fund resource to pay for STC fees, for example, or other general fund development fees. So on one hand, you're saying, well, we're going to raise it, but we're not going to collect it. But we're going to then still put more general fund dollars in against it. It kind of works backwards against your long-term financial health and goals.

Yes, it works back. I agree with you. It works backward as far as if the goal is just to make money for the city, then I agree it works backwards. But if the goal is to support the areas that are weak, and then if the school district comes in who has plenty of money to do a big project, then I'm like, we wouldn't need to incentivize them. They're not going to run out of money. They'll have a, they have supportive, they have plenty of staff and time to do that. But if you have a person who has one or two employees and the fee of SDCs or the fee of this, you know, they just add up and all of a sudden they're like, I can't, I can't make it work. To me, that's a different, there's a certain type of, I think most of the businesses are under 10 employees. I think I'd say, I think the number I believe is over 70% of small businesses have less than 10 employees. And I think that those are the types of businesses that are really hard to run. They're easy to fail. and the ones that we really want to see succeed. And I don't think the permit fees are as high. I'm just curious. So what I'm hearing from you is that this is more of a discussion of a grant program and a general fund. So to me, it's more about what supports the community rather than, yeah, this is a revenue generator to kind of recover costs. And it doesn't sound like incentives fit into this as much, but that would be a separate discussion.

That would definitely be a separate discussion that we could have during the budget, building of the budget as we get later into this year. One thing I'd just like to remind council, when we talk about these fees and permit fees, once again, we are only talking about that smaller general fund number. And I appreciate, Councilmember Malcolm, what you're saying. It's like, well, can we shift the burdens? It's typically not the general fund fees, which are limiting development in our experience what we see what what kills a project is typically impact fees or sdcs and somebody not understanding how those are calculated not the general fund portion because when you look at these 30 across the board sounds like a lot but when you look at a single family residential thank you i'm just going to look at it here $137 for a bathroom remodel probably isn't going to tip the scales whether or not you do that. Can you put down single-family residential? We don't have very many single-family residential homes even built here on an average basis, but $4,000 is probably not going to tip it. What's going to tip it is your other impact fees. So just trying to frame that, that yes, 30% sounds like a lot, but we're talking 30% off of small numbers to begin with.

Are you good? Yeah. Council Member Kenna.

Thank you, guys. I might have missed it, and it's perfectly possible. Can you discuss more about the impact or just really focus on that? Because I know you said wait, table that for later. Can you hit on, you know, currently 75%. What impact does that have to, you know, our services and what we're providing and our funds?

So it's this table here that Shivani presented on. So it's $350,000 that we're not collecting, that we are subsidizing private developers that are coming in to do business in Sumner. Right. Which is a policy-level decision. That might be the right answer. But right now, that is how much the city could be recovering. And once again, when we're talking about general fund, which is the most, you know, limited resources for us, this is $350,000 that could go into other programming that is parks, police, streets, things of that nature.

Okay. Thank you, Jason. In terms of the examples that you provided of home bath remodels, single family home, those things, does that apply to the 80-20 principle of these are the most common types of things? They represent 80% of our permits and things that we're seeing on a daily basis?

Correct. Most of it. Single family, I think the water, maybe the bathroom remodel might not be the 80% of the, you know, fees. We just picked it so for the sample set. So you see the impact on a smaller fee.

Okay. So, but there's discussions we're having about the new warehouse and those are the most regular ones we see. Okay. Just to kind of bounce off of some of the other conversation, and I totally understand your perspective, Jason, or your kind of context about, you know, is somebody going to do their bath remodel for an extra couple hundred bucks or single family home for $4,000 or whatever that might be? To me, I see it, I guess, as I don't know if it's... In one way, it's discouraging or encouraging certain types of development. And those numbers, to your point, I don't think really do that. So then it just becomes kind of a policy discussion in terms of council. Do we want to lean more heavily on our commercial development and say, actually, you need to carry more of the burden, even if it's only a couple hundred bucks here or there from a residential permit? or do we want to make it simple, apply it across the board? So even though I don't think I'm coming at it from, you know, if somebody does a bathroom model, I'm saving them $130. Again, it's not a huge amount of money, but do we want to ask our commercial partners to bear more of that burden, even if it's just a little bit more? And I kind of fall more in, I really would like to hone that in that we're comfortable with as Deputy Mayor Elfers is talking about. I don't want that burden to be applied to childcare, for example. We've talked about that because we're all having that discussion here in the next few weeks. And so I don't want to apply it evenly across the board and then in a couple of years go, oh, we... We really didn't realize what we were doing there. So if we could maybe zoom in on some of these areas and really take a fine-tooth comb to it, I think that's where my mind is going. I don't know where the rest of council is, but I'd be more prone to be very careful about it and kind of lean more on the commercial side of development in terms of taking those fees on.

Just to make sure I understand where you're going with that, Council Member Kennan, you're concerned about these types of fees dissuading certain types of businesses like childcare facilities?

Oh, no, I mean, I think you could make that argument if the fees were exorbitant.

Sure.

Again, for some of the types of development you were talking about, it's not a high enough fee to probably do that. I just don't think, even if it's a couple hundred dollars for a childcare facility or for a bathroom remodel, I would rather apply that to commercial development rather than on our residents or on our businesses that we think we need here. Sure.

And the reason why I'm asking the clarifying question is because a childcare facility is a commercial development. Sure, yeah. So I don't know if it's legally permissible to, and this is something we'd have to do some research on, to say, well, this type of commercial development, we're not going to... raise permit fees on, but this time we are. That's why I'm asking the question.

And I would take staff's guidance on that, because I don't want, obviously, to get us in trouble. But if there are certain types of businesses, we're talking about child care, that we think we don't have enough of, we need to encourage it, we need to make it easier, On one hand, I wouldn't want to lessen the impact fees and then say, now you've got to pay more permit fees or whatever it might be, even if it's a drop in the bucket in comparison. But yeah, just if we can zoom in on those things and really be conscientious about that, that's where I would lean towards. If you're telling me legally we can't, then obviously I'll take that guidance.

I'm going to have Shivani speak to the question I asked her about legally couldn't even exceed 30% for a certain class or another. Oh, yeah.

So I think that's the other part, right? It's the art, and that's why we're here. It's a policy decision. So being mindful, looking at the customer classes. So within the statute, it's full cost, full cost for the division. You certainly can't have the developers pay more than their share to subsidize So that's the other part. That's the gray area. They could pay full cost, and if the other areas, such as the residential, if they're not paying full cost, then the city is not at full cost.

Okay. I thought Council Member Malcolm kind of asked that earlier, and it sounded like we could play with it a little bit. Was I mistaken on that?

Then you'll fall below the full cost. If you're playing with the gauge of the fee tool, it's less than full cost recovery.

Okay. So said in other ways, you can't subsidize... you know, single family residential with commercial. So you can't raise commercial 32% and keep residential at 25% because then one is subsidizing the other. But you could make commercial at 30% across the board and residential at 20 or 25%, right? To keep them lower or not raise them at all even. Okay.

Okay.

Correct. So I would like to offer something up, not that it's anything grandiose. But city staff has been very courteous to let me sit in on some meetings with developers that want to come in and do things. And I think it's a much broader perspective than what we're looking at. This, in the box, in and of itself, what's being presented is about recovering the cost. The city, for a number of years, has been leaving a lot of money on the table. And I'm just going to say, we've been picking up the slack as people that live here. I'm just going to say it that way. We've been paying that. When we talk about what we need to do for the people that live here, this is kind of a slippery slope because if we look at what this department does in a day, you would be shocked. So what I've been offering up, we sat in a meeting today with someone, and we're talking about efficiencies in their design and build process, right? so that they can come in and let's say somebody has a budget of X million dollars, they're coming in with a budget. These people are not coming in here with a never-ending checkbook. And we're really working hard for economic development. And so, again, I'm just going to say we have to be cognizant of that. So it's across the board we need to be looking at it. You know, it can't just be one or the other. But the fact remains that There are costs driven in this state today, and so somehow we have to carry that burden. Either way, we're paying for it. Somebody's going to pay for it. So we either charge accordingly and do something that we can and then work with these people coming in and saying, yeah, but here, we're going to talk to you about how you can minimize these other costs, kind of like consulting with them. Make sure you're being efficient when you design and build, and that can offset some of these rates that we need. It's actually working with someone right now because the staff here starts from day one, and I don't want to take us down that trail, but they start from day one working with people on what they need to do in terms of efficiency and their design and their build process. So I think it's just really important to think about it a little broader on what staff does when we talk about trying to recover the cost. So it's not just fees that are getting charged erroneously without some kind of meat behind them. So think of the service as well, right? So I just think we've left things on the table for a number of years.

Just one other thing to add. What the mayor is talking about is services that are not recoverable. We don't charge for those. Right. We just sit down with people that are interested in doing projects here in the city, and we help them find the best path forward that's going to make them get to be successful and get them to yes.

Council Member Kenna.

Sure, and this one, hopefully, is fairly easy. I'm just wanting to set the context a little bit more about development. For a long while, our region has been growing rapidly, and the state, with the rules and regulations coming out, are forcing us to develop and allow development. And I'm curious, it's hard to project, but if we know that we haven't done this for 20 years, I'm just going to assume we won't do it for 20 more years and act accordingly. I know we all say we want to do better, but let's just pretend that way. What's your kind of magic eight ball telling you in terms of development in the region and housing and commercial and what that looks like? And if it's going to slow, that gives me some information potentially to act on and say, okay, well, do I raise up rates now because it's going to slow anyway? Do I keep them low to encourage more development? I just need that context to help set the stage for me.

Absolutely. Great question. And I think that's the... that's the mindful approach, right? Like, how do you predict that? How do you do service and be stewards of this community and this line of business? My past experience been the local government and coming in at FCS, I looked at it full cost recovery. We discussed enterprise fund because that separates this department and weather storm during the downturn of the If it's enterprise fund and if it does recover more than because the permits were really adjudicated successfully in one year but it takes longer time to complete the entire life cycle of the permit, maybe you'll recover more. So you could set reserve funds aside so you can maintain your staff to weather that downturn of economy. So setting those physical policies, structural, making sure it functions well so when that downturn does come, you're sort of, you had guardrails. Right now, it's sitting in general fund. There is no guardrail. That's where it is. So it's baby steps towards the right direction. So looking and doing a cost of service fee study, it kind of sets the baseline. Where are we? What's the lay of the land? What's the overarching? So we're at 75, which is comparably well. I've had studies at 32%. And then it's a different commission discussion. What does that look like? How do you structure rates? And then from there, you move to that policy and what the near-term and long-term goals are. And I think City of Sumner's DS team is very diligent. They care about the community. The efficiencies are there. We were always thinking of saving the cost, but this is the cost of attracting and retaining staff and talent. So other cities are facing that staffs are moving. So that's the other part. So salaries and benefits are the bigger cost drivers. So it's a bigger complex And this is just a sliver of saying this is where it's at. Yes, it's $200 or $4,000, but the value that the customers, I mean, the associates provide to residents, it's the human touch.

Thank you.

Council Member Malcolm.

Yeah, it sounds like what you're describing a little bit is potentially like what... Deputy Mayor Elfers was talking about an annual slider bar that we look at and go, oh, we're ahead. Let's see. Let's pull it back. Oh, we're behind. Let's move it up. I mean, it feels like having that kind of built into the process would be worth doing. And I just wanted to also just clarify that I think my comments earlier are not about questioning the value of the team and the effort and everything going on. I totally get that. It's just a lot of stuff going on. I'm just looking at what are the creative ways we've thought about for funding the 100% Recovered And what I'm learning is that there are limitations that are outside my experience on what we can do and how we can do it. And I think what I'm hearing also from other members up here is that, okay, let's bring a values conversation into that and apply that and see if there's something else, you know, another way to think about it. Or maybe 100% isn't what the target really is when we include our values into it. Maybe 100% is. is for a segment of this is where we recover it, and then we subsidize other things that maybe fit into values or policy conversation. So I think there's some work there for us to kind of think about that and bring a point of view to that. But I just wanted to make sure no one thought I was questioning the effort or things going on. I've watched it. It is just, you know, it's... The man behind the curtain is an army behind the curtain.

You have to ask those questions and I think that's the important part and I think you guys are in this position because you value the community and care about the community. The other thing I wanted to point out is it took 20 years to get us here. You could elect a code or a notion or a policy to say we want to do a study of this caliber every three to five years or It's a decision that executive leadership can make. There's one city in Washington that's codified every three years. They're required by their municipal code to do a cost of service study.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor Alpers.

So I just want to make sure that you did clarify in the discussion you're looking for feedback. And we've asked a lot of questions, so hopefully that's helpful. But I did want to just say I do support the full cost recovery. I do support the enterprise fund. You know, if I was a business, I would say, gosh, if we get five-star reviews, let's do 100% cost recovery. If we start sliding to four-star reviews, I'd say let's get 90%. But I don't think that's really – I don't know how that's attainable. But I do feel like a lot of cities have reputations of one employee or two employees, and it's just like it's an inspector or somebody like that that just – causes a lot of grief. So I do, I'm a little reticent of that. You charge high fees, you'd want to provide services that satisfy customers. Permits are a little tricky. But anyway, so basically I think this enterprise model is a good model. I do Just for the council's sake, I do think that creating some kind of incentive to help specific struggling businesses or people that are in vulnerable positions I think is really valuable. I did look up online while we were talking, and I think it said 78% of businesses have less than 10 employees. And if you include people that don't have any employees, like just sole proprietors, it's like 96% of businesses have So I think that there's, to me, there's a story to be had about, like, hey, let's figure out how to help people that are struggling. Because I know that Washington's economy is not predicted to be super strong the next couple years. So, yeah, thank you for the discussion. That's kind of my position on it right now.

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Woolsey.

So just, again, chatting. Slide 25. Okay. So right now we're pretty much bottom of the barrel. We're not even really asking for our full value of what we are from those who are trying to, you know, grow. Um, and, and what you're proposing this 30% would basically bring us to kind of middle of the road. Um, okay. Um, the, I feel like in, in looking at the areas, um, one of the things that Sumner has is, uh, we have a value. We have a customer base that we're looking for. Um, and our value is, you know, developers want to come in here because we have really nice land. We have the ability to, we have the great staffing too. We have all of these things, these benefits. At middle of the road, we're still extremely valuable. Whereas at the bottom, we're undervaluing ourselves. So either we're being taken advantage of or we're putting that burden back on the citizens for that. Am I correct in that? Correct. Okay.

And this is a building valuation survey. So this is the actual table that looks at the cost, the value of construction. This was not part of the cost of service. So we just took a 30% above. So if there's a flexibility, this could be 35%. So that's the other option. You could bump that.

Well, I'm looking at, you know, like Edgewood is rock-starring it out on everything that they're putting out there. I mean, they know their worth, right? And they're putting it out there for that. So, you know, taking less than, you know, is putting a reflection of who, you know, we think we are when we could be asking for more because we have more value.

Absolutely.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Oh, sorry. Council Member Malcolm.

Just, I'm sorry, it just piqued my interest and I thought this was the right time. So when you look at Edgewood and Auburn, is this a profit center for them? Are they taking this one, you know, or is this cost recovered 100%? I mean, it just seems so much higher than what everybody else is doing. I'm just very curious.

So this is building valuation table. So this is the ICCA. It's not on the cost of service with the cost recovery rate. So this is a separate, but it's part of the development services. So traditionally speaking, the building valuation can subsidize. And the ICC table did not get updated since 1999. So cities are at its own liberty to revise their codes and update the table. And unfortunately, just like the cost of service study took 20 years, most of the cities, they just inflationary adjust. You're leaving money in the table.

Okay. Do you see anybody else? I don't see anybody else. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.

So Mayor, we do need some direction and I'm not exactly sure where council's sitting today, where they want to come back and talk about this. They're not either.

I mean, it's a lot.

One thought is we could send this back to the CD committee for additional review and consideration, or we can schedule it for another study session. But at some point, we need a direction so we can give you something to actually consider in front of you.

All right.

Council Member Evers. I'm with the Deputy Mayor. I'm fine. I think this sounds good. That's how I feel.

Okay. Wait, wait. We're playing bingo. Council Member Kenna.

Maybe we should all do a roll call here and chime in. I'm supportive of additional recovery. I just would like to really... Be careful about what areas that's in if we can. And so whether that goes back to the CD committee, I'm game for that or not. But I'm looking around. I know people, it sounds like there's generally an acceptance of needing to get more back while we can. value our general fund and our resources. But yeah, I just, I would like to see what we can do. And if there's a couple scenarios we can be presented with, like, hey, here's the 30, just the 30% across the board. Here's one where we can go up or down a couple different ways. That would really be beneficial to me to be able to look at it in that manner. Yeah.

Council Member Malcolm.

What he said. I mean, it's dead on. What I'm looking forward to is just some modeling comparisons.

All right. Council Member Hochstetter.

This has been a lot of information and absorbing it all. And I think I want to hear, Doug, if you could speak to maybe staff perspective on this. I'm sure you put a lot of thought and there was a lot of discussion on this 30%. I would love to hear you. We have so much trust in the staff. How did you get here? Why is this a recommendation?

Let me back up a little bit. When staff was given these worksheets to fill out for each individual permit, it wasn't taken lightly. And they took their time in knowing that I was going to be reviewing it. And eventually, we'd be reporting back to Jason on the results here of that. And collectively, they want to be made whole just because of the kind of workers there are. very much overachievers. They want to be successful. They want to, you know, be part of a collective team that is providing the level of service and getting paid for the level of services that they're giving. So they're on board at 100%. When that was presented to them, as far as the recommendation, they were all head nodding going, good, okay, this is exactly where we want to be. They feel at times that, you know, maybe some of the fees they're not pulling their weight because we're leaving money on the table. But quickly that subsides and they go back to work and get busy in doing what they do and let me worry about those things. So I would say collectively they're in favor of 100% recovery just because of the personalities that they are.

I'll just add, you know, when you come to development services to apply for a permit, you're buying a service from the city, right? You're buying the review of that service, of the permit, of the building plans, the land use decision. You're buying all that. And going back to what the mayor said earlier, the user should be paying for that. The community shouldn't be subsidizing that. It's a little different than a park, right? A park, everybody kind of pitches in. We build a park and everybody gets to enjoy it for free. this is a service I don't have to do to build or remodel my bathroom. I choose to live here. So I want to do that and I want to get a permit and do it right. But I'm buying that service from the city to make sure it's done right.

Thank you. Uh, and I, I know council member Hawkstetter, uh, you're on here, but that is exactly what I was trying to explain. I saw, uh, sat in a meeting today. It's with a developer that wants to come in and bring in a nice place here in town. And, um, So Doug, you know, talked this person through it and then said when you get, so he basically explained what the person needed to know. Now this is the person that's wanting to come in and do it, spent an hour. This is probably the fifth hour that he or someone in staff has spent with this individual to basically educate them. And some people could say, well, that's not our task. but it is because we understand our codes and we understand, you know, I'll just throw it out. If you have a square footage rate, that's 2,500. And let's say you want two stories. You don't have to put that $450,000 elevator in there. So these guys are kind of guiding people on how they can do the right thing. And it costs money. It's time. We're, we're paying for that time. I don't know how else to say it. And so, uh, With that, the offset is these developers, they aren't going to have the rework. They aren't going to have the extra expense in moving walls. They're not going to come in and be 10 hours into something and now have to move a sprinkler. So we're providing those services on a daily basis, all of us collectively. This staff provides a service. We've never charged for the service. Somehow we have to pay for this or general fund has to offset it. That's basically how it happens. So that's really what this is about in my mind. So thanks for clarifying that. Council Member Hochstetter.

Yeah, I think what I'm hearing the council speak, I think everyone is on board on the value that the staff brings, the 100%. What I'm hearing is representatives of the community here that live here that are kind of speaking up on the interests of the community on how does this burden fall and where. So I don't think there's anyone against getting to this 100%. And as I'm learning, Just like all the tax codes and all that. I mean, it's complicated. One thing, I mean, you move one thing, another thing shifts. And you don't get here and you don't get that. But I'm leaning towards more discussion on this. Not because I don't want... not because I think things need to drastically change, but this is a lot of information. And unless this is time sensitive, and I mean, we have a community development meeting in a week or two. I don't see any reason why more information and more discussion would be harmful. coming to something that all the council feels comfortable with. And I may be speaking for myself, but I don't know if everyone's ready to just jump on this immediately, as this was a lot of information to digest.

So we've waited 20 years. We can certainly wait some more to get information in front of you, and we're well prepared to do that.

Thanks, Doug. FROM A SCHEDULING STANDPOINT, CAN YOU REMIND ME WHO'S ON CD COMMITTEE? OKAY. SO MY RECOMMENDATION, UNLESS THE REST OF THE COUNCIL IS COMFORTABLE, IF THE CD COMMITTEE REVIEWS IT AND GIVES IT A DUE PASS TO THEN STICK THIS ON AN AGENDA RIGHT AWAY, WE PROBABLY NEED TO GO TO A STUDY SESSION. So we will schedule this for a study session. It'll be in July before we can get it back on an agenda.

Okay. We're good.

All right. Thank you very much, you guys. So now we'll move on to Item 2, AWC Conference Voting Delegates. Again, a call on City Administrator Jason Wilson.

Thank you, Mayor. Once a year, we get to talk about the AWC conference and the very exciting and important task of who is going to be the voting delegate. So at the annual conference, there is a business meeting by AWC. Primarily at that meeting, you get an update from AWC as well as vote in the members of the AWC board. Right now we have Deputy Mayor Elfers, Council Member Ranke, Deputy City Administrator Jeff Steffens, and Communications Director Carmen Palmer are all registered to attend the conference and business meeting. Additional council members may attend virtually if you so choose. Your council rules require that you discuss who is going to be a voting delegate, and it can be any elected or staff member. And then you need to vote at a regular council meeting, a majority vote of who those delegates will be. So the purpose of tonight's discussion and then the topic of the special council meeting, which will be held right after this, is who those voting delegates are going to be. So I will turn it over to you for discussion.

Well, I think that we could, you guys can talk about it or we can end this meeting and go right into our next meeting.

I do need you guys to talk about it and say who you want to be.

Oh, okay.

I can recommend if you would like, Mayor.

So, yes, why don't you recommend? That'd be great.

I would recommend that you choose Deputy Mayor Elfers, Council Member Reinke, and Deputy City Administrator Jeff Steffens to be your voting delegates, unless somebody up here would like to join virtually to vote.

Well, Deputy Mayor Elfers would like to say something.

There was some talk about... I think that I'm supportive of that option. I was there last year. I think Council Member Reinke was okay with that. We talked about it offline. If anybody has any other ideas, it's fine, but it's kind of a formality. And if we were arm wrestling and Councilmember Ranky beat me, I'd let him do it.

We didn't, though. There's a total of three, so you can both do it. And Mr. Steffens? And then it'd be Mr. Steffens. He wanted to carry the flag, I thought. He does. He does.

He's looking forward to that. Okay. Yeah, that works for me.

All right, do we need any more discussion?

No, as long as nobody wants to join virtually, that's the real question.

Okay. Are we good?

We're good. So you do need to adjourn this meeting.

All right, so I will adjourn. There's a special meeting immediately following the study session, so I'm going to adjourn at 7.12 p.m. And then Mr. Steffens needs just a minute to reset the report. Okay. Thank you. All right. I call the meeting of a special meeting of June 8th, 2026 to order at 7 13 PM. Will the clerk please call the roll? Thank you. Oh, we've got it set. Hang on. So I've got to somehow Let me see. Well, I turned them off. Sorry. Can you turn it on over there?

Here. I'm on. I'm here.

Are you on now? It's on now.

I'm here.

Thanks.

They got it.

Perfect.

Alphers. Here.

Alphers. Here. Hockstetter.

Here.

Kenna.

Here.

Malcolm.

Here.

Reinke.

Here.

With. We'll see. Here.

Thank you. So tonight we have special business and we're going to talk about the Association of Washington City's Conference Voting Delegates. Council Member Wilsey, would you like to make a motion?

Yes, I'd like to make, I move to designate Deputy Mayor Elfers, Council Member Reinke, and Deputy City Administrator Jeff Steffens as voting delegates to the June 23rd through the 26th Association of Washington City's Conference. Thank you. Can I get a second?

Second. Thank you. Council Member Evers gave us a second. So it has been moved and seconded to approve the designation of Deputy Mayor Elfers, Council Member Reinke, and Deputy City Administrator Jeff Steffens as voting delegates. So I now will call on City Administrator Jason Wilson.

Thank you, Mayor. As a reminder, the AWC conference is being held in Spokane, Washington at the end of June. The city is allowed to designate three people as voting delegates for the AWC general business meeting. At that meeting, you hear an update from AWC as well as elect a board of directors. at your study session earlier tonight, you all discussed this and chose those three that were nominated to be delegates. And per your rules, you do have to vote in a public meeting and those three need to receive a majority vote. So I'll turn it back to you.

Okay. Thank you. Do we have any comments from the public? All right. Anyone on zoom? Nope. Okay. Any comments from the council? I see none. Will the clerk please call the roll? Yes. Ranke?

Yes. Malcolm? Yes.

Kenna? Yes. Pockstetter? Yes. Evers? Yes. Alphars? Yes. Thank you. Pass 7-0. I don't know who I counted.

Perfect. Thank you. All right. With that being said, with no further business before the council, this special meeting is adjourned at 7.16 p.m. Thank you.

That's my kind of council meeting right there.