City Council - Regular Meeting

thank you very much for being here i'd like to call to order the uh lakewood city council study session of june 8th 2026 at 7 pm everybody is here tonight and uh the first item on the agenda is a pierce county unified regional approach the ura Dave Kuntz, To homelessness presentation and we are pleased to welcome pierce county council chair Jenny hitchin and policy analyst Mary connelly. Dave Kuntz, and Kevin move it more.

Okay, so while Mary is getting things situated, thank you all for having us. I'm Jannie Hitchen. Not only do I have the honor of representing Lakewood, I currently, as a... task that I assigned myself have been the de facto leader of the URA work that started two years ago. And Lakewood has been at the table the entire time. So thank you for Mike. Thank you for trusting. I think you've been there or sorry, Council Member Branstetter. It's been a long day. Council Member Lucero, we're in a formal meeting. And thank you for that work. Mary's really going to dig into the nuts and bolts. And if you have questions, please pause us as we go through. And then at the end of this, depending on how much time, we're happy to continue the conversation. But the goal of the Unified Regional Approach to Homelessness is that no matter where you live, in Pierce County, whether you're in a tiny town or you're in an urban center or you're somewhere in between, that there is a response to you entering the homeless system. And if you're entering the homeless system for the fifth time as in a cycle has continued to happen, or this is your first time, there should still be a response. And that we understand that people slip into homelessness for many different reasons. And so every part of our county does have people who enter homelessness. It looks very different depending on where you are. And so we need to have a response and it's going to look a little different, but still should have a response. So that really at the end of the day is what we are trying to accomplish together collaboratively. So I'm going to turn this over to Mary.

Thank you, Council. Oh, there we go. Okay. Thanks, Council Member Hitchen. So as Council Member Hitchen said, my name is Mary Connolly. I serve as staff to the Pierce County Council and have been working more specifically on this project lately. This presentation is going to start off with some data about homelessness in Pierce County to provide some background on the need for a unified regional approach. And I know that you all received an update in February about this work. So after starting off with some data, I'll give an update on the project and where it's at now and what governments interested in participating are being asked to do. As Councilmember Hitchen said, there are people at risk of homelessness or experiencing homelessness in all parts of the county, cities, towns, unincorporated areas, urban, rural areas. I'm sure you see that here in Lakewood with differences across your jurisdiction. And in 2025, Pierce County homeless response system served more than 8,700 people. as council member hitchin said homelessness has many different causes from job loss living on a fixed income to a mental health or substance abuse disorder rising rent foreclosure domestic violence young people aging out of foster care there's many reasons that somebody may end up without a home And homelessness affects all different kinds of people. As noted on a previous slide, in 2025, over 8,700 homeless individuals touched the Pierce County's homeless crisis response system. That included over 500 veterans, over 1,800 children under the age of 18, and over 900 people 60 years or older. So this is something that touches all kinds of people. And homelessness doesn't always look the same. The word homelessness might evoke an image of somebody who lives in a tent. I'm sure you see that around here in the city of Lakewood. And homelessness can also look like a family that's sleeping in their car, two families sharing a home because they can't afford their own separate homes, a young person who is couch surfing, and other situations where homelessness is less visible. When it comes to real stories and experiences, you all will be the experts in that, but I do have some data that can start to paint a picture of what homelessness looks like in Lakewood. In 2025, there were 460 homeless people served by Pierce County's Homeless Crisis Response System who reported they last slept in Lakewood. That number captures where people slept while they were homeless, but not where they lived before they were homeless. So before this meeting, I also looked up the major zip codes in Lakewood and found that in 2025, there were 428 people served by the homeless response system whose last permanent zip code wasn't Lakewood. So those numbers are actually kind of similar. During the 2024 to 2025 school year, there were 527 students enrolled in Clover Park School District who were supported by the McKinney-Vento program at any point during the year. McKinney Vento program supports students who lack a fixed regular and adequate nighttime residence. And so this number captures not only students who are homeless, but also students who might be doubled up living with another family because their family can't afford a home on their own. And so this number can help paint a picture of the number of children and also therefore families who are experiencing homelessness or housing instability. And then the final number is during an 18 month time span, 279 eligible households in the city of Lakewood applied for rental assistance through Pierce County's Eviction Prevention Program. Unfortunately, the program does not have sufficient funding to support all eligible applications that apply. to be eligible for the program among other requirements, an individual or family has to have an eviction notice or pay or vacate notice in hand. So that means at least that number of households were in that situation in Lakewood in that time span. Again, this is meant to paint a picture of homelessness and housing instability. There might be overlap in the numbers here, and I'm sure there are stories that aren't captured here. And so what happens when someone is homeless or at risk of homelessness in Pierce County? Pierce County has some programs that serve the whole county. For example, we have our Shelter Access Hub, which connects people to shelter 24-7. There's also, as I mentioned, the Eviction Prevention Program, which provides rental assistance and case management. And then there are also cities that are operating programs or otherwise supporting their residents in specific ways. So as you all know, here in Lakewood, you support local organizations like LASA with your human services grants. You also host Tacoma pro bono eviction prevention clinics. Some other examples from around the county, the city of Fife operates a shelter and jobs program, and the city of Gig Harbor has a staff member who's devoted to connecting residents to resources, and the city of Gig Harbor also recently opened a safe parking site in partnership with a church that has three spots for families experiencing homelessness. And even with all of these programs that exist now, there are some opportunities for improvement. For people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, accessing programs can feel confusing and the system can feel disconnected. There might be a different response in different jurisdictions or an inconsistent response. For organizations that support homeless people, inconsistent requirements across different funders means that they spend a lot of their time on compliance. And for local governments, there's only so many resources and so much capacity to support residents. So these are the issues that the unified regional approach is meant to address. So now I will talk a little bit about how we got here now that we have the background. And this will probably be familiar to you, so I won't spend too much time on it. But in 2022, Pierce County adopted a comprehensive plan to end homelessness. And the first goal in that plan was to create a unified homeless system. in april 2024 there was an inaugural meeting with 13 pierce county jurisdictions to talk about what it would look like to launch a unified regional approach or ura to homelessness in october of 2024 pierce county the pierce county council hired a third-party consultant called uncommon bridges to scope design and inclement excuse me implement a unified regional approach And over the last year, from March 25 to March 26, that consultant convened several groups to move this work forward. There was the elected leadership group, also known as the ELG, and Council Member Branstetter has been a member of that group. There are currently 11 jurisdictions represented on that group. There's also been involvement by government staff. Tiffany Spear from your staff has been involved in the staff planning group. And there's also been involvement by nonprofits and community members on task forces. At their meeting on March 20th, the elected leadership group, or ELG, reached consensus on a URA design. And at the start of April, the Pierce County Council staff took the lead on next steps to implement that design. So that's why we're here. And Chair Hitchen and I are on what we're calling the road show to talk to city councils about this project. You all are our third, but we have two more this week. So we'll be done with five by the end of this week. Yeah. And so now, as I mentioned, the elected leaders reached consensus on a design for the unified regional approach. So I'm now going to give a brief overview of that design. If you'd like to get more into the weeds, your packet includes a more detailed overview of this. So the vision of the URA is to substantially reduce homelessness so that it is rare, brief, and non-recurring. The mission is to empower Pierce County governments to choose locally responsive solutions to respond to and prevent homelessness while establishing a countywide framework that supports coordination and efficient use of shared resources. This mission is really supposed to anchor the vision in what the URA staff would be actually doing. And it really emphasizes that governments should retain the ability to decide what's best for their communities while also creating capacity for coordination and collaboration across governments in Pierce County. So what will the staff actually do? The URA will have some limited staffing to facilitate coordination, collaboration, and communication across governments, provide technical assistance in implementing locally tailored solutions, access additional resources and funding to serve Pierce County, and track and report on countywide data and outcomes. I'll give a few examples of what this might look like in Lakewood. So let's say that your government was interested in implementing something similar to the city of Gig Harbor and partnering with the church to open some safe parking sites. That's the kind of project that the URA would have staff to support you through the implementation of something like that. Or let's say you were wanting to better serve residents who live in the Lakewood and South Tacoma area and maybe you want to partner with Tacoma to pull some resources for that. The URA could support that. It could also support going to the state or the federal government to ask for funding for something like that. Or you can go really not really small, but smaller. So let's say your police department wants to collaborate with other police departments and talk about how to support people who are in crisis. Or your staff that administers human services grants maybe wants to work with staff from other governments that do that kind of thing, wants to collaborate on aligning timelines for funding release, et cetera. So that's the kind of thing that the URA would provide a forum for that kind of collaboration and coordination. Overall, URA staff would be available to provide technical expertise and also facilitate that coordination with other jurisdictions. As for governance structure and staffing of this effort, the design includes establishment via an interlocal agreement without the creation of a separate legal entity. Oh, never mind, sorry, I got a little lost. So without the creation of a separate legal entity, participation by governments in Pierce County will be voluntary. The URA would be governed by a board of elected officials representing participating governments. Pierce County would serve as the administering organization for the URA, and that includes as employer for staff. For the first one to three years, the annual budget is expected to be about $400,000 to $600,000, and that would primarily support employment of two to three staff. The URA budget would depend on the revenues from participating governments with those amounts based on the population of the jurisdiction. An estimated contribution for Lakewood for the first few years is about $27,000 to $45,000 a year, but that exact number is to be determined based on more interlocal agreement negotiations and also what jurisdictions join. You might also notice a lot of similarities with the South Sound Housing Affordability Partners or SHAPE, which is kind of a helpful touch point. So some of those similarities include there's a governing board of electeds, staff employed by Pierce County, a budget based on population size, and an overall goal of facilitating collaboration and providing technical expertise. So those are similarities. The biggest difference lies in that this is focused on aligning operations and services, whereas shape is focused on development and preservation. So the capital piece as opposed to services. And now I will talk about next steps. So now that there's a design for the URA, governments that are interested in participating are asked to adopt a resolution of intent that does these items. First, express their intent and commitment to work with other governments to launch a URA. Direct staff to develop an interlocal agreement. And then while an ILA is in development, commit to some first steps. The first is implementing three activities that I will describe more on the next slide. And the second is supporting establishment or expansion of at least one homeless intervention to address the needs in your community. This doesn't need to be something huge. It doesn't need to be something that even requires funding. It's just an additional step to meet needs in your community. And there's also opportunity with this to work with Pierce County Human Services to ensure that the services that the county funds are meeting the needs in your community. So that could also be an opportunity for that. A template for what this resolution looks like is in your packet. and the reason for this resolution is that the elg wants to see a variety of different governments pass this so that during ila negotiations there's a variety of sizes of jurisdictions at the table and often the staff need that go-ahead through something like a resolution to participate in that pierce county has adopted this resolution And there is one other city, the city of Fife, that is expecting to consider this in the next couple of weeks. I mentioned three coordinated activities. These are items that the ELG has identified as first steps that governments can do together to start practicing that working together and collaboration. So the first one is developing or updating data collection requirements for organizations that serve homeless people. When jurisdictions are using the same data system, there's more accurate data on the need, the gaps, what's working and what's not. For your city, this would require updating contract requirements to ensure that organizations funded by the City of Lakewood uses the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, to track participants and outcomes. We also understand that contracts can't be easily amended in the middle of a contract, and so We understand that and so would hope that staff could take some steps to prepare language for future contracts, but that's not something we would expect to occur day one. I also took a look at the shelters that you all fund through your human services grants, and those already use HMIS because they're county funded. Also wanted to mention the county provides training and licenses for organizations that use HMIS, so if you were to fund one in the future that's new to HMIS, the county has that technical assistance capacity to support that organization. The other items are developing or updating procedures to connect residents to resources, and that can include resources funded by the county already, like the Shelter Access Hub. And then finally developing or updating a policy to connect homeless people to resources during inclement weather events, as well as identifying locations that may serve as inclement weather. And the URA team, which is me, and as well as the Human Services Department, are available to support implementation of these activities. A couple other items before I wrap up. In your packet is a one-pager that summarizes the URA at a very high level and in plain language, I hope. So feel free to use that in communication if you'd like. We have a website, unifiedregionalapproach.com, that has upcoming meetings if you want to check that out. And then also just wanted to touch on, I know that in February there was a question asked about successful examples of this in other countries. elsewhere and I understand that there were some examples communicated to you all from around the country. I also just wanted to let you know I have been doing and intend to do some additional research on efforts that are comparable to the design that's proposed and especially examples from Washington State. For example, I've been in communication with staff at in Spokane and And so I'm happy to send information on that in the next couple of months if there's interest, or if there are other questions about other approaches that has not been answered, please ask them and I'll jot them down and get back to you. So with that, Council Member Hitchen and I are happy to answer questions.

Thank you very much. Council Member Hitchen, would you like to say a few words?

So as you can see, Mary really is just as amazing as she comes across on paper when she's explaining this. Elephant in the room, the King County regional model that has been in the newspapers recently and on the news, We aren't building that. I think anybody who was at that very first meeting, we were talking about it, and this was before it was in the newspaper, and said, we're building something for Pierce County. Pierce County is not King County. We're not just a little King County. We're Pierce County, and we want something that works for our needs and our jurisdictions and our residents. The concept of regionalism is part of it, but it's not everybody give your money into one pot dump and then someone else will decide where to spend. This is about coordinating, training, supporting, and communicating so that we are working smarter. and more efficiently with limited resources to help people with the best options to support them to end cycles or reduce harm. And so that at the end of the day, if we can do some of that early on and move towards quite a bit of it at the end, if jurisdictions pool together resources by choice because there's something they want to tackle, locally controlled is right there in the mission we want you to be able to figure out what supports lakewood residents that are experiencing homelessness and what is it that your team here and you as electeds think is the best investment but we want to support you on your journey and support you as you move through this with the large human services team we have at the county it's not just mary it's mary while we're trying to get this off the ground but we have a few staff, small number of staff to help support the coordination. And then we have the human services department behind that. So that really, at the end of the day, I just wanted to talk about the elephant in the room before we moved on to see if there's any questions.

Thank you, Chair Hitchen. So, and I just want to note that Council Member Branstad is on the board already and that Ms. Speer is also here if anybody else has any questions for her.

City Council Chambers, Thank you for that presentation it's really, really helpful it's nice to see this come to fruition after I know you've worked for for a long time on this, what do you, what do you see as a major differences between the King county model and the pierce county model is developed.

City Council Chambers, Do you want to take it. City Council Chambers, I letter.

I literally have a list like I knew that was going to be asked. So I'll go through this and then if I'm missing anything. Okay. So for one thing, this would not be a new legal entity. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority is set up as a separate legal entity. This would be housed under the county. And the administering organization, as I said, would be Pierce County, which means that its finances would be subject to Pierce County's financial controls. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority's interlocal agreement is between Seattle and King County. not the other cities in the county. Cities across Pierce County have been engaged in this process from the start. We've had 10 total jurisdictions participating in the elected leadership group since March of last year, now 11, and with the goal of having more than just Pierce County and Tacoma bought into this. The URA effort is also starting small with one to three staff. And at first, the budget would primarily pay for staff capacity and not for services. KCRHA is much bigger than that in terms of number of staff. And then finally, KCRHA's mission is focused on administering services. And the URA's mission is focused on supporting governments and facilitating coordination and communication. So that could look like administration of services if that's what the governments want, but it doesn't have to look like that. Did I miss anything? Okay.

So it sounds like a more decentralized kind of approach is what I'm hearing. Is there a minimum threshold of cities that need to participate in this to really make it work?

I don't think there's a minimum number, but we really aimed at having five at the table. So Pierce County, Tacoma, and then we wanted a couple different sizes. So a city like Lakewood potentially, and then a smaller jurisdiction because that really is going to have policymakers and communities at the table bringing their voice and their experience as we're developing the ILA. The services continue to happen, whether or not we have a URA, these services already happen. But so often as we're having these conversations, people are going, oh, I didn't know you could do that. And we're like, yeah, we have mobile treatment that can come to your community. We just need to know where, or, oh, there is a church in your community that does services. Do you need help with hygiene services? We have some nonprofits that do that work. We're happy to coordinate and schedule things out. And so that kind of, conversation where we're sharing information and resources happens when we all sit at a table together and so if it's just two so a lot of people thought just to call like the king county is king county in seattle that doesn't really work because that's not pierce county pierce county is really a mix of a variety of different sizes of communities with very different needs some separated by geography some separated by water um and we want to know how to support all of them

I really appreciate that because every jurisdiction can't provide every service. And so we can draw upon services available elsewhere. I mean, in a perfect world, we're not pulling people out of their community to go get help somewhere else. But there's also just a logistics and a financial piece to this. So you really feel like each jurisdiction can provide the service that really makes the most sense for that jurisdiction and their people?

So I think each jurisdiction can provide something and then know how to connect people with the services to whatever it is that they need at that time if we have it available. And we do not have enough shelter services for every person that is experiencing homelessness right now. But one of the most efficient things to help people with is if somebody is, I pick on Roy often, and Roy is listening, sorry, but I just pick on them often. If somebody enters homelessness in Roy, they don't have services. I wouldn't expect them to have even a tiny home village or a sanctioned encampment or even a shelter of some kind. But Tacoma does, Spanaway does, Parkland does. Can we move that person for... a couple of weeks to a month, maybe a little bit longer to get them stabilized while whatever it is that happened in Roy gets dealt with. And then maybe we get them back to Roy and we intentionally get them back to their community, connect them with their services so that if they have a church they belong to, if they have family that's there, maybe they had a job, but they lost it because of a medical reason. Maybe we can help them get back to that job once the dust has settled and they've healed. I don't know the situation, but I know that if we have a regional approach, we can be talking about how do we help people get stabilized and get back to their communities. Another example that we've talked about a couple times with smaller jurisdictions, and Lakewood's not small, but something that... communities might be willing to do is helping work with their school districts to figure out either safe parking or helping people who are fleeing domestic violence where you don't need it i need a house so if there's a house a non-profit's willing to open up a house for people that are fleeing domestic violence and they're fleeing domestic violence in lakewood maybe they don't want to stay in lakewood because they don't feel safe and so they want to go somewhere else and because i know that well I don't. Staff of URA would know that or the domestic violence providers would know that. They would know that Bonnie Lake also has a house. So we're going to send this person with their permission to Bonnie Lake to receive services, get to a point of stability, and then move them to whatever the next step is so they can feel safe when Lakewood suddenly, for whatever reasons, didn't feel safe. Again, that takes coordination and communication between providers and jurisdictions to say, yes, I want to be part of this situation in a way maybe they hadn't really thought about.

Yeah. And sorry, one more, if I may. Do you foresee there being any limitations on the kind of service a jurisdiction can offer? So, for example, a lot of the funding in this space is really more for low barrier stuff. If Lakewood, for example, wanted to do a high barrier family shelter, would it have the ability to do that?

i don't i think the only thing that comes into play is funding in general so it would be how do we get the funding for something that was like that yeah we have shelters that are like that where they're locally controlled and they kind of set the barriers um it just depends on what you're looking at so there's no prohibition from the county it's just a matter of that's a problem we together would have to solve Yeah, and I think it's one of the things that we make sure that it doesn't jeopardize. So if it was something that was being funded through the county, and we had rules that we weren't allowed to, and you wanted to use that funding, we would have to have that conversation. And then Lakewood would have to decide, we don't want to have that particular situation for our community. What else can you do? And maybe it's we're coming with, we're making sure that Service providers are coming to you at that site and that's how we partner with Lakewood because you wanted specific rules for your shelter. Again, there's things that are out of our control with some of those rules, but some of them are ours. Do you have anything to add to that?

Um, I was just going to add, um, I think as council member Hitchin said that funding can sometimes be a limitation, but there's also, um, like, it just depends on the funding source. And I'm thinking about like the city of five. I mentioned their jobs program. That is a high barrier program. Um, and it. works great for that population. And so there needs to be a lot of different kinds of interventions and not every funding source can support every intervention. But we need it all. Or yeah, go ahead.

Well, that makes perfect sense. I would just want to avoid the situation where there's a rule in our ILA that prevents Lakewood from providing the kind of service it would want to offer because of something at the county, not funding sources or a whole nother conversation. So that makes sense.

got it yes no that's not the intent thank you any other question any other questions council member laura sella thank you mayor bokeh uh thank you chair hitchin and miss connelly uh great presentation this is clearly something that's really important in lakewood uh as we've got a homeless population that that really needs assistance um i I appreciate the intent and getting folks sort of united around this approach as a larger entity for the county and I see how it can benefit areas that don't have the resources necessary to be successful. We're in relatively tight budget times. So we want to make sure every dollar is well spent. And I think we've done a pretty good job up till now supporting LAHSA, supporting the Tacoma Rescue Mission through the tiny house village. We've also had some things that may be considered missteps or things that may not have been managed great like Aspen Court and some frustrations around like the Marine Howard place here in town that I guess mostly houses folks that are picked up by wash dot and place they're not necessarily folks from liquid So my question is for $45,000 a year potentially. How can this be more effective for the residents of lakewood than us giving $45,000 to Lhasa or another group like that.

Okay, so really good question. And that we are often like, what do we get for it? Cause this is an investment and budgets are tight. I think one of the things that I am most excited about this potential funding source is that, or funding idea is that there are services that jurisdictions would benefit from. So I'm gonna use hygiene stations, right? You have areas in your community where people connect, where churches are providing a meal, where people get access to treatment or behavioral health services or families access services. And so Lhasa does that, they do hygiene, but they're one location. From my understanding, they're kind of bursting at the seams sometimes as far as access to services. So Other smaller communities also need that service. So if we coordinate and we have funding because we do have funding for things like this, where we put out a contract for hygiene services that are mobile, and then we set up because maybe you don't need it five days a week. But if I'm a nonprofit, I don't want to do it one day a week. That's a lot of work. I want to work five days a week. So the contract is bigger. So then I take my mobile hygiene unit and I go, OK, on Monday you're in Lakewood and Tuesday you're in Fife and on Wednesday and you're in Parkland and Thursday you're in Puyallup and Friday. And now I have a full time job under a contract that I've coordinated and I know where to send them because we talk often. through the URA work, and it is done in a way to serve the people of Lakewood in partnership. And so it allows us to take our grants and our dollars and make sure they are being invested in a way where they are actually showing up to support residents of Lakewood. The other one is street outreach, a really good example. When we have street outreach, We fund several different entities to do that work. It's kind of a hidden thing or people don't know how to access street outreach. I didn't even know how to access street outreach. I've been doing this for five years. And so coordinating that service so that we actually have a map of where they're going so that we don't have entire swaths of the county where no street outreach goes. and other parts of the county where there are three different entities are all going to the same spot because i'm duplicating services which is a waste of money so it's that type of coordination and thoughtful investment and communication that really helps by doing this unified response where we're talking to each other and we know where to send services and so that we're also not duplicating services So for Lakewood, it would allow you to invest more smartly when it comes to some of those small grants or larger grants that you do and allow us to amplify the work you're doing through some of these larger shared grants that we would do for the region. And I'm going to let Mary do a little bit more on that.

i'll just add i'm thinking about it more like literally in terms of dollars that the staff for the ura would um be able to support advocating for resources for the county and so hopefully that there's then more money coming in and also you're paying also for like staff capacity to support the URA, but also provide that technical expertise. And so you could also, in some ways, think about it as an investment in that staff capacity.

I'll let Mike go. Thank you, Mike.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And while I don't have Any questions or. I guess from the county, I will say that having been involved in this process since that very first meeting in the spring of 2024. And one of the things that came out at that meeting that continues to exist is that. Homelessness or the aspects of homelessness that are the priorities for each community in Pierce County are different. Some, like the city of Tacoma is looking at all different kinds of homelessness. Other smaller communities are particularly interested in certain of their subpopulations that they're that they have empathy for or that their community has empathy for being able to go and do that. It's similar to as we were going back and dealing with ARPA dollars, and we were particularly interested in focusing on the homelessness situation with veterans because of our proximity and the things to be able to go and do that. So the most important thing of this is that no one is being required to fund any programs of services that they don't feel are of benefit locally. But the reverse is also true. It provides a forum to where best practices in any community in the county have a way to be shared, made known, and to be considered, and if they are There is significant interest in them to seek some common funding for them that might be there to do that. I think it's and I would just urge that it is important for Lakewood to be a part of this process. And the reason goes beyond what's in it for Lakewood. It goes into what's in it for Pierce County. We're in kind of an unusual situation as the third largest entity by population in the county. And so the fact that we are involved in addressing an issue that I think many people in our community but around the county think is important but also think, what can I do? that we are able to do that. And we are a big enough entity that we have some very competent staff folks that can help a lot of the other jurisdictions around the county work through things, evaluate how they might participate with being able to go and do that. It's not. That's not dissimilar to a role that we play in shape of where there are things we could do. We're big enough to do some things by ourselves, but we are also... good enough neighbors that we have the ability to help help others if we if we get involved in a organized system of where that's that's possible that we can provide our input to do that so i think that it's important that we do that and i and i say we're the third largest city in doing it but that's my population we are not the third largest budget You know, there are other cities that have larger budgets than us because of how they are. We have always sought to be good neighbors and to address things to be able to help our neighbors to do that. And we have been competent enough both in our staff and on our council to be able to look at doing those things while we also have in our mind how do we particularly help folks. This is a problem that trying to help folks ourselves, we've had some failures. For instance, we sought to get a shelter established in Lakewood. And we put out an RFP with a million dollars to see would anybody in the homeless services world come and establish something here. And we got no takers. Got no takers. That led us down the path of supporting a more regional program, which is going to be the village for chronically homeless that's going to is moving forward, albeit it's moved forward in spurts because it's had to go through something, but it seems to be on track to be able to go and do that. And if you look at our involvement in the development of that project, even though it's a Pierce County project or is viewed at that, we had a role in changing the environmental piece over there where we said we'll put in a million dollars as long as it's not some environmental situations are addressed and as long as there is a particular focus on chronically homeless veterans to be able to go and do that and that has been a something that has gotten into the design and in in in the operation of it has gone through and that's an example of us coordinating regionally and of a role we can continue to take And I think we should be proud to tell our community that we're looking out for folks in Lakewood, but that we're looking out for our region as well. Thank you.

Yeah, sorry, just one more item. I'm on the continuum of care. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, is there any kind of coordination or facilitation you foresee with the COC?

So the URA design right now does not include designation of any formal advisory body, but does name a lot of different potential partners for collaboration, including the continuum of care. So I believe that there's more conversations to be had and work to be done to figure out how the COC and the URA would best be able to collaborate. Anything to add to that? Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

And thank you both for the presentation. Um, so I, there's some concern on duplicative efforts and making sure that, you know, what is, I guess, unique about this as opposed to some other things that are going on or efforts that are going on. Um, You know, if we sign up and start providing funding in a certain amount of time, What if we aren't seeing results that we necessarily wanted to see or what kind of metrics are going to be measured and how can we define success? And, you know, if we have been funding this thing for three, five years and it's like, I don't know if we're getting what we thought we would get out of it. Can we pull the can Lakewood pull the plug or is this what does that kind of look like?

So I've had the opportunity to sit on several ILA developments and this being one of them, that is always one of the things that gets baked into an ILA is how people exit and what that looks like. One of the things that, because we would have full-time employees attached to it, we would probably have a conversation about making sure that at least a year or a certain amount of time was provided so that we would have time to manage staff as the employer, just because as the employer, there's a certain duty to our staff. The other part is that we are in the midst of adopting a comprehensive plan to end homelessness update. And one of the things that we're really focusing on when we got it this year, the staff with human services, along with partnership with different stakeholder groups, including the COC, really looked at, we need to actually be collecting data, and then we need to actually look for specific number of improvements. So a really good example in the former document, the one that said create a unified regional approach, there's no numbers about like decrease the number of people entering homelessness by a certain percentage by this amount of time or increase the number of people who are accessing services in the first 48 hours and things like that. So we're actually creating within this newly adopted plan here's the baseline of where we are right now and here's where we want to go and so i think that plan because it's for the entire county would be a really good way to go and say okay you are a what's your part and which of these do you take ownership of and then how are you going to help move those towards that so we are adopt whether we're whether we have a URA or not we are really holding ourselves as the county to be more transparent around how funding is going out the door and who's being served and how are they being served and collecting that data and making it transparent and the URA would be one way to really help call us that make sure that it's not only happening with the resident like the residents in this geography are we actually seeing services county-wide absolutely

I'll just add that's a really good question and one that we've heard several times. And I think that either in ILA negotiations or a task of the first board will be to identify what are our performance measures. And maybe they're from the plan that Pierce County is adopting, but maybe they're different. But I think that there's definitely interest in

the the URA defining like for themselves what success means to them yeah I appreciate that because you know I'm having a little bit of a hard time kind of understanding how this does this fill specific like other gaps that loss and other other agencies aren't providing or is this You know, and the county and Lake, you know, Tacoma, like there's a lot of outreach and stuff that's already happening. Is this just another level of higher outreach? Because from what it sounded like is that this was more of like a facilitation role in doing lots of outreach and coordination. So there's a lot of that already going on. I just, you know, I'm

So I would say like LASA and other service providers are serving people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness. They are serving the people directly. This is more serving governments and facilitating collaboration amongst governments. So building that capacity for coordination collaboration.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Boki. So a comment and then a question at the end. So when this was last presented, was it February of this year or last year? This year. This year, yeah. I was pretty skeptical, right? I was concerned about... Whether the funding would just go to pay for a consultant and how that got back to serving the community. I'm not as skeptical now because these would be Pierce County employees right that are here to serve our community and and have the same sort of I don't know the heart that we would want to move forward on this. And as Councilmember Branstetter said about benefiting the county as a whole, even beyond Lakewood, my first thought is, well, we're here to serve the residents of Lakewood, but I also recognize that as we benefit the surrounding community, it helps us as well. And the analogy I like to use is like having a smoking section at a restaurant. While people may not be smoking at our table, we still benefit when people stop smoking elsewhere. So that kind of connects it for me. That's an interesting choice. The other not so kind one is like a peeing section in the pool, which also, yeah, won't go there. But my question is, so first, I am supportive of this at this point. I think I've been convinced and I'm not as skeptical as I was. But what I wanted to ask is what other municipalities have you got on board so far?

So formally, as in past the resolution, it's just Pierce County. So, but I will say that we have had continued constant, I'm gonna call it buy-in and participation from these 10 jurisdictions. They've shown up as we've gone through months and months and months of conversations. We expect the resolution to be before Fife City Council on two weeks from now. June 25th. June 23rd, we have other jurisdictions that are reaching out and asking us questions. So those jurisdictions that have not been at the table are asking questions about what you're doing. So we are actually expanding now that we've gotten to the point where like we have a thing and we have like a way to present it and we know what it's going to look like. Now will you talk to us? Because many of them were at that first meeting and then they just said, Yeah, well, we'll wait and see what you come up with, right? Well, now we have something. So we're being invited back. We've talked to Bonnie Lake and Sumner. I keep forgetting, but the roadshow has been very fast. So we will continue to reach out. But I will say that one of the things, so the county has passed it. We really are hoping to get to five so that I do have a variety of sizes of jurisdictions to have the legal side of the house have those conversations because the need of a medium-sized city like lakewood is very different than a fife or a gig harbor versus a tacoma right and so i need those voices to be there to make sure that we're not putting something in a contract that would be detrimental to your community. And so that's why this resolution to me was such a really good first step. In these ILA developments, you can spend an entire year just discussing arguing over what the definition of a specific word is and i'm like we have stuff to do. And we had a lot of energy so let's get this resolution passed in enough jurisdiction, so that staff and know they have permission to work with us on the legal side. And then our team at the county can be working with your jurisdiction on trying to do a couple of these things, some of which you're already doing so already doing.

Just a quick follow up. So Tacoma is the big fish, right? So what has been their response to this? And conceivably, the more groups you get on board, the more people want to get on board afterwards, right? You hit that tipping point. So what are your thoughts on that?

So Tacoma intentionally is pausing because they want smaller jurisdictions to get on board first, essentially, because they believed that if it was Tacoma and Pierce County, the two biggest players that jumped in first and started chatting and kind of coordinating things, it would actually be a disservice and our smaller jurisdictions would feel like, well, what's our role? So they've intentionally kind of said, we're going to let other jurisdictions go first. But they were scheduled to go to one of their committees at the end of this month. And they are, from everything that I've heard, ready to join on. But again, they're just very intentionally wanting to see what jurisdictions are interested and what concerns and questions they have so that it doesn't feel like the two big players are beating up on little cities and smaller cities and larger cities like Lakewood and

City Council Chambers, yep. City Council Chambers, Council member talbo and I would say. City Council Chambers, Probably going to wrap it up after that, because we're quickly hitting an hour and we have a committee that yes patiently waiting, so I want to be respectful of their time.

Thank you. I just wanted to ask and comment really that. So when I think of the different types of housing in Lakewood that supports homelessness and vulnerable, the unhoused from from further slipping into unhoused situations. I think of entities like Council Member Lauricella mentioned, the Mooring Housing Project, Howard Project, LAHSA, and also adult family homes, which are permanent supportive housing, but also attributed to, I think, the abundance of mental health facilities here in Lakewood, especially treatment and medical and such. It's kind of a rhetorical question, but that doesn't necessarily need an answer. But am I naive or is it fair to think that participation in the URA actually can help Lakewood have Stronger voice in advocating for more equitable distribution of mental health facilities of mental treatment facilities across the county so that the housing situation attributed with seeking with getting mental treatment and and health treatment. follows its follows that more equitably distributed across the county does that make sense.

So again, going back, it's local control. So Lakewood has or had maybe prior to becoming the city of Lakewood had different rules. And so there's a lot of those homes that were put in place and I'm going to call it grandfathered in. And that they're organized and licensed by the state of Washington. And I know that your city manager and I in multiple meetings have had conversations about who to talk to. I think one of the things is that supportive housing is one of the huge tools that we need. We know that there is a preponderance of those types of homes in cities. And so thinking about if this is something, is this a service that is happening in Lakewood for not in the control of this group, but it just happened, how do we support people that maybe get exited from those homes? How do we make sure that people are being supported and are there services that need to come in to help support people so they stay stably housed while things are going on? It's one of the many tools in the tool chest when we're trying to keep people stable and housed. And it's something we actually need in other jurisdictions. So you being there and able to talk about here's how they work, here's the type of home, is that a way to educate communities about being part of that tool chest? Again, something that maybe they haven't thought about. But now, if we have mobile treatment, is this something they could think about? And if they have zoning laws that say they can't do it, we could go in and work with them to really think about that.

Right. And that's kind of the point that I'm trying to drive at, is that... At least, at least the framework of a URA allows for that conversation to happen more prominently as opposed to Lakewood just being kind of out on our own on an island lobbying to the state every year or to whomever or to whomever. But under a regional framework, it seems that there is a more even playing field, like I said, just to have that discussion more prominently and educate the other cities about the importance of access to mental health and treatment. Thank you.

Dave Kuntz, Thank you, Council member table so we're going to wrap it up, thank you very much for being out here, thank you very much for the explanation, I appreciate all the. Dave Kuntz, The things that you kind of defining for me the difference between shape and what the ura is planning to do, which I think I now have my head, so I appreciate that and I look forward to. Dave Kuntz, The regional solutions and so.

Dave Kuntz, Like mckinney Vento.

Dave Kuntz, Like mckinney Vento which. folks can come from, once they're in the system, they can come from King County, right? I mean, if that's where they're, like you say, temporarily residing, but their home is still considered to have been here. And so... are they really getting the help that they need to really finally land? Because living in their cars is a real thing that happens to kids. So thank you very much. We look forward to continuing constructive conversations on this subject and appreciate it.

Thank you. And if there are additional questions, you all know how to get ahold of me, please feel free to either contact myself or as a council. If you wanted to put a list of questions, please send them our way, but happy to respond individually. If there's something specific to anyone here, thank you for all the time. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Dave Kuntz, So we broke the record, we have the new record now was 45 minutes Mary and now we're at an hour so see see see if some see if somebody else can beat that you said the other night, you were there 45 minutes and so now, so we hold the record, please. Dave Kuntz, Joint liquid promise advisory board meeting, please come on down. I'm going to ask everybody introduce themselves when they get the chance. Okay, we'll do our best. Could you introduce everybody or everybody have introduced themselves and then we'll get started. Do you have a presentation?

I have Talking Points by wonderful Sharon.

I have it beginning on page 41 of our packet.

All right, we can go ahead and start. All right. Good evening, Mayor Boki, Deputy Mayor Bell, and commissioners. Thank you for having us here. My name is Alice, and I lead the Center for Ethical Leadership, and I have the honor of chairing this. I'm on my second year chairing the Lakewood's Promise Advisory Board, and I've also been a resident here since February of 2020, and, of course, was hanging out at Lakewood before it became Lakewood in 1996. And so with me tonight, I'm super excited that our youth council liaisons are here. We have Natalie Lopez and then Amaryllis Flores Lopez with us. Huh? No. Flores Garcia. Oh, no. Why did I have Lopez? Oh, my gosh. I am so sorry. Garcia. And then we also have a CEO and Chancellor of Pierce College, Julie White, who is also on the board. And then we have our Director of Parks and Rec, Roxanne Miles, and then our amazing Shannon Bennett, who helps staff our board. And we're I'm definitely really sad that she's going to transition off, but super appreciate Shannon's leadership and doing all of this work. And so, again, thank you so much for inviting us to come and present. I know that we had put in a work plan. And then we really, you know, I saw Ellie in this room. I don't know if it was a council meeting or something. And I reached out to her and we kind of wanted to reground what Lakewood's Promise was an exception back in 1996. And so she was able to come and speak to us. and really re-energize and let the other board members know about what it did. And then we're like, yeah, you know, let's do this. And so we went and held an advance in May And really from that, we had some more conversations of how we can make this happen. And that's what we're going to go ahead and present a little bit on that. And so with that, we're presenting the amended 2026 work plan. And hopefully you can ask some questions and and have as a next step, adopt it later. And so. With that, the five promises are caring adults, safe places, a healthy start, marketable skills, and opportunities to help others. And what these five promises, what we have thought about with this is really looking at how we can align our monthly agendas to these five promises, focusing on each one of them and then what are the things that we can do to help move that along. And so with that, we have, we wanted to embed them into the structure and then kind of hold ourselves accountable. uh before these promises and sharing them out into the community and so we are really acting as a community convener and not really implementing another program really doing outreach ellie was sharing how we used to have pins and we had businesses and community organizations and stakeholders really buy into one of the promises or a couple of the promises and really creating that safer place, which our young people have said, hey, we want young places and and fun and fun, safe places that allow us to grow and develop. And so these are ways for us to to help you all make make that happen. And so in that we're really bringing that whole community together and creating that value of connecting the dots and seeing what are all of the services that we have here in Lakewood and really share and help be a part of that because we can never have too many people who are out there doing outreach and sharing you know, the plans that, you know, you all have created for us to create a healthy community. And so we definitely want to help strengthen the collaboration of our youth serving organizations so they can support our youth and then also elevating what our community partners are doing and especially the Clover Park School District and then also our our colleges that are here in Lakewood as well. and really do collaborative conversations and then really help with building those spaces and plans and partnerships to strengthen all of that so that we can move forward together. With that, we are also wanting to ensure that the meetings are clear and action-oriented. Back early in my career, we have this volunteer who is with Deloitte, and he always said, after your meetings, you need to have action steps. And so that's how we're going to kind of readjust our agendas to have that so that we can continue to move that work and hold ourselves accountable and make things and track our progress that we have. and then be able to come back to you and say, hey, look what we've done. And then, of course, when you're out in community, you'll also see, you know, the vibrancy of everything as well. And so the next thing that we have is really to prioritize our partner engagement and visibility. And so, you know, whatever it could look like, the idea before was the pins with the You know, the Red Wagon, it's a national thing, the Promise Alliance. And so whatever that is, the team and the Youth Council and your feedback will help with those things of what that could look like. And really, again, prioritize what our young people have said, that they wanted safe places and connections and connecting with the adults so that they could have summer jobs and grow and flourish. And so sites like the downtown park or the Colonial Plaza or even the different parks that are throughout our city and the schools being hubs so that young people are able to have those places to be and strengthen our community. And so in a closing note, you just really wanted to share that this amended work plan is more clear, has actionable steps and really realigns us to the purpose of of the advisory board. And so again, we wanna make it so that these five promises are visible throughout our whole community and really invite people to be engaged. And we know, and even law enforcement has always shown that when we have an engaged community, it's a lot safer and we're able to really thrive together in that way. And so with that, we want to ensure that we continue to update, you know, our youth program matrix that we have. And that's also in the booklet that in your booklet that you have and then and give feedback. make this even a tool for our families and partners so that they can also, you know, really engage in better ways. And looking ahead in the spring, really looking into having some sort of a campaign to do this and really get some excitement and momentum moving forward with this. And so, yeah, so we definitely want to make it so that it's not just our board or the folks who are close to us, but everybody who is in Lakewood and even folks who are around Lakewood, because who doesn't want to see the modeling that we have and other cities can implement that as well. And so I mentioned a little bit about, you know, hopefully approving our new amended 2026 work plan so we can continue that work and keep our conversations open so that we can update you on our progress. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Fong. I really do appreciate the inventory. I call it the inventory. You build it something else about all the different activities that go on. and whether we actually provide money or partner with this. So it's very informative for, for us here on the council that, uh, what we're involved in and what we're not involved in. So thank you very much. Are there any questions? Uh, council member Pearson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you guys for coming in and presenting. Um, one of the, one of the areas that I'm particularly interested in, um, is the, the promise for, um, effective education and part of that talks about career exploration and and i think that what's really a really important piece of that that we don't do i don't think particularly well or we need to do more of and when you look at the inventory as you said um you know the inventory of uh youth age 16 to 24 marketable skills mentorship opportunities to serve There's a lot of great things that are happening here, but there's also not a lot that's tied to job shadowing to let folks experience what types of different jobs are out there and be able to better inform and roadmap. their educational needs and to get them set up for, Hey, you know, I was able to job shadow this engineering job or whatever, and it looked boring and I'm not going to do that. I'm going to, you know, but I was able to, you know, have a job shadow with this marketing, you know, thing at Pierce County. And that looked like it was really entertaining and fun. And so I want to set up my education to set myself up for success in marketing or whatever it is. But I think that, and I spoke with Shannon about this, I'm going to try to get something set up for some of the youth council folks at least, but to do some job shadowing at Pierce County and experience, you know, what it's like to be a planner and a permit technician and, you know, someone at the front and an engineer and maybe someone who works in the building department and the fire district, you know. And so being able to understand really what the jobs are that are out there and and better set themselves up for okay i know what i kind of want to do now now i can partner with you know, these local colleges and high school programs to help set them up for success to do that. And so I think some emphasis on that, that's I think later in the third quarter or something is promised for, but I think that some discussions and something around that I think would be really helpful as far as roadmapping on how do we get people to be an engineer or be a city planner or be a city manager, right? You know, what does that look like? And what kind of classes do you have to take in high school to better set yourself, yourself up, you know, at, at junior college or, or community college or whatever they call it. But, um, You know, those types of things. Right. So rather than, OK, I'm done with high school now. And now what do I do? Well, I don't I haven't been able to job shadow as much. So I don't have a clear path and I don't have that road map clearly laid out. Right. So getting the road map and getting people to that quicker rather than now they graduated. Now they're in this. this fluff time where they're trying to figure things out. Right. And that's, that's where people face a lot of challenges. Right. So you're not a kid anymore. You know, you're a young adult and, and things are challenging at that, at that age. So.

yeah yeah that that's a really great point and i think that's the i mean that was what i was excited about coming onto this board you know several years ago um and it is creating it's for us adults to create the relationships with the businesses of here in the surrounding lakewood area and beyond um to do that to um to vet them so that we have relationships and know them and that it's safe for our young people to go and engage and and talk to folks And at our last meeting, it was really exciting because Amaryllis actually talked about, hey, you know, I want it for your project. You wanted to do something like that and create an infrastructure. So if you don't mind, would you like to share?

My name is Amaryllis Flores Garcia and I'm a student at Harrison Prep. I'm currently a junior. As part of our IB program, we have to do a project through community, creativity, activity, and service. With my focus or my future pathway going towards business, I chose this advisory board. through just like the community that we've had here I gained the idea and from learning about the promises of using my project and using that project time to creating a system like that and working with them last meeting I did bring up that I did want to set up like a job shadowing or something where kids could get like a summer internship or a summer job or something possibly even longer term And right now we're kind of in those beginning stages of setting things up and connecting with like the right people and hopes to set up that infrastructure so that that can be a possible pathway for people.

Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Councilmember Lorisella.

Thank you, Mayor Boeke, and thank you, Ms. Fong. It's great to hear what the folks are doing on the Lakewood's Promise Advisory Board. I appreciated your presentation where you talked about, or what was in our packet, talking about third spaces and a place for multicultural and multigenerational people to sort of interact, the afterschool and summer programs, partnering with the school district, and then working with our Parks and Rec Department to find places that we can have youth programs that are safe for people to get together. And I appreciate what Councilmember Pearson said about job shadowing opportunities. I had that written down as well. But I think we could even expand that to job fairs and opportunity for people to have sort of this collaboration space where they can learn what is out in the community and then maybe connect them for job shadowing pieces after that. As an advisory board, I think the structure is that you provide us with recommendations on ways that we can be most effective at helping folks in our community as it relates to each of those things. So I think under that sort of framework, the stuff that you presented, I think, is really good as part of the work plan. So let us know what we can do to help you and to help our community. And we'll go from there.

Yes, we're we're working together together on that for sure. And I think that the uniqueness of this advisory board is that we have the partnerships of the two colleges, Clover Park School District. We have somebody, Megan is, you know, at St. Clair. You know, I'm in the community and that really gives us a very robust lens. And then with all of you, you know, and our young people, you know really creating creating some infrastructure around job shadowing so that we have that i mean i remember doing that as as a kid a long time ago um and um and finding out you know what are those um uh removing those barriers um so that people can can um businesses can engage young people so We want to make sure that you come back after you are an adult and then also that you're you're taken care of.

Thank you.

Any other questions, council member?

Mayor, thank you. Thank you for being here. Appreciate the work that it's done and that, you know, for For many years, we've made efforts to do things that are for the benefit of young people. I think that your presentation today shows an intent to try to move on to a more comprehensive, coordinated plan rather than an opportunistic approach. as things just come up, we'll deal with them. But to get ahead of that, one thing that I guess that I will ask that you take a look at is that we have been focusing on providing the five promises for two decades. That I have difficulty looking within the five promises as to where we're providing for youth the resources where they have access to both peers and professional assistance in the areas of mental health and of doing that. I don't know which, I can't fit them into one of the promises. And so my thought is that maybe there's a sixth promise that needs to be formulated around that with some youth input in terms of doing that because we do hear from various youth at times and things over there. And it's... particularly we hear from young people that are concerned about their peers and how their peers need help in certain situations and how difficult it is, first of all, to even ask for help, and secondly, to then to actually get help once you get to that point. And I don't see that really framed in one of the current five promises, but I see it as something that, as a community, we need to be attentive to the reality of that need and how it actually affects some of our young people from being able to take advantage of the work we do towards the existing Five Promises. So if that could be something that maybe In 2027, you could take a look at and see if there is an actionable promise. No point in creating another promise if it isn't actionable to be able to deliver it. But the promises should be focused on needs. And that's one that I see where... not really getting to, particularly with a focus on young people.

Thank you, Councilmember Branstetter. Councilmember Talbot.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I'll just be brief and really just brief to accentuate the points that I've heard tonight from my council members, which I am very glad that that Council Member Pearson, you have brought up that observation about the importance of jobs, job job growth and job strengthening um but but also so the former the chair who of the youth council when she gave her um report after the youth summit i remember very clearly that she spoke about um the two so of all the stations at the youth summit The most popular and the most well-attended were the job-seeking and the job-hunting station and the station that had to do with stress and anxiety. And that, to me, I think, you know, we're coming to – we're all – roving around the same strings here and so thank you that we are not losing sight of that but I think all the more emphasis on whatever we can do to be supportive but also that City Council Chambers, We want to, we want to hear more it's good for us to hear more about you know in more specifics kind of what what the youth is facing and what the youth is experiencing in those areas that that allows us to be more supportive, thank you.

City Council Chambers, Thank you for pointing that out Council member and actually remembering what people said in previous meetings, but it's really important any other questions. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you very much to our youth council members for being actively involved in this, and your input's very important clearly on this subject. Just going through your work plan for the year, I think we'll all be interested in hearing about, we're always looking to program the Colonial Plaza. And because some events have gotten too big that we originally put there, we've had to move them to Fort Sillicum Park. So be interested to hear about safe spaces, Colonial Plaza opportunities. And I really do appreciate Council Member Branstetter's remarks around mental health. behavioral health and catching some of those things early. And there, there is funding available and council member Hitchens here. I mean, we, we do have the behavior, behavioral health and therapeutic courts tax, but there's a, but there's a process, right. And, and you have to work through that process and you kind of, you have to know what you're asking for and you, you probably need, but you know, we still have greater lakes health, the mental health here in, in the area. And I'm sure they would be interested in, talking to you about some programs or doing, I don't even know what it would look like. I'm already out of my depth. So I'll stop talking. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your work. I appreciate everybody on the committee and we look forward to seeing the results of your labors.

I think the team will be very excited to hear that there's funding available. So we will be back.

Apparently it's all true. Okay, thank you. if you put a good program together you always say you know people want people want to help when you've got a plan in mind and you've got people who are going to operate the program who know what they're doing yeah well there's no guarantees but we'll bring some it takes a year notes for you okay thank you thank you so much oh and yes and um and i believe um

Brianna or somebody will make sure that you can approve our work plan, so it'll be legit. Okay, thank you.

Sure they will. Thank you. So next up, and I'm looking for Ms. Speer. To the introduction of the 2026 locally initiated amendments to the City of Lakewood Shoreline Master Program, or SMP, Am I right, Ms. Speer, that there's, I think there's one amendment, or are we talking multiple amendments on that one amendment, or I'm just misreading things.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of council, Tiffany Speer. You are correct, there is a single amendment, and it is something that is near and dear to your hearts, I believe. First of all, just a quick comment about the packet. This is all beginning on page 14. of your packet and there is a lengthy attachment to that because per the state law process, we have to provide in the public record, both a clean and a draft version of our Shoreline Master Program with this amendment included. So there is only one change. the change is to redesignate one parcel 9132 edgewater park or edgewater drive excuse me to be changed from shoreline residential to urban park in order to allow its inclusion in the edgewater park expansion per the master plan uh the Process to date, we've had a public hearing that was held at the Planning Commission level, but it was the joint public hearing between the State Department of Ecology and the city. There is a particular process that's used for Shoreline Master Program updates, which is different from the normal legislative activity and process that the city uses. So you as a council body will be holding this session tonight and then taking action actually next Monday, excuse me, without holding your own public hearing. We did provide for you tonight in the packet all of the public comments that were received at that hearing as well as the city's responses to all of those comments. The only physical change to our master program document is the map. that shows all of the different designations around the areas of the city. There are multiple designations, I think six or seven, and so you would just see one simple change, which would be for, again, that one parcel at 9132 Edgewater Drive from Shoreline Residential to Urban Park. Everything else within the Shoreline Master Program would remain the same. The next time that there will be a full-blown review of the Shoreline Master Program will be in 2029, and that's per state law. So I'm happy to answer any questions for you.

Who would like to go first? Council Member Pearson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

I'm sorry.

Thank you, Mr. Spear. Quick question on, so how do street ends, those are technically right-of-way, how do those fit into this? Are they shoreline right-of-way or something different? Or if we're making them kind of like park spaces, do they have to change at all? Just a question.

It would potentially be the same process that we're doing right now for this parcel. If it is a shoreline parcel that is not designated a shoreline designation, not a zoning designation, because it's two different things. But if the shoreline designation would not allow the use that is being proposed for the street and pilot project or some future project, then that may need to be redesignated. But otherwise land use zoning and the allowed uses in the zone can be handled on an annual basis the shoreline master program can be done out of its five-year sequence like we're doing right now but at this point this is all just addressing specifically the edgewater park improvements okay thank you councilmember brandstetter looking at the the maps that are on

Dave Kuntz, Page 56 of our packet and it's the page that looks somewhat like this, then it's got the before and after map.

Yes.

And one thing that is of. Dave Kuntz, significance is that the. PB, John Gerstle PB, John Gerstle PB, Urban Park designation along this section of shoreline because I assume the park is narrow in it then includes portions PB, John Gerstle PB, Yes, some complete parcels and some Dave Kuntz, portions of parcels on the opposite side of edgewater drive that are essentially residential properties and that's that's that's what's exists now okay and it's it's it doesn't change in the proposed thing to do that. Dave Kuntz, Correct, but what is the. Dave Kuntz, What is the driver that. Dave Kuntz, pushes that designation currently to include. Those parcels are partial parcels on the opposite side of the street.

that was designated when the shoreline master program was adopted back in 2014 if not prior and uh what i would assume because i don't know for sure off the top of my head but if you were to look at the type of land that is on those parcels the intent is to protect the environmental conditions and designation or sorry the conditions and realities of those parcels even though they are across the street I would have to go back and do additional detail to provide you anything else besides that.

Okay. I guess that was when I was trying to envision why that might be, it looked like it was like a mathematical calculation of the buffer width. John Potter, And that because the park was so narrow the buffer from the shoreline actually extends up into those. John Potter, into those those parcels and that. Dave Kuntz, Because of the park, rather than those parcels getting a designation of. Dave Kuntz, shoreline resident residential they they ended up with an urban park with a separate with some slightly different rules about what people can do with their parcel to do that. Dave Kuntz, So, even though they're in within a shoreline buffer do they have my question really is, do they have to have. John Potter, An urban park designation or they could they be moved to their the residential environmental regulation and could have since we're dealing with this map. Could we do that with this change.

We could not do that with this change. It would need to go back through the process for a public hearing and have the environmental assessment done for each of these parcels. The one that you have in front of you has had an environmental impact assessment done. There's information that's been developed explaining why the change is appropriate. And so that's that similar time of process would need to be conducted for all of those parcels in addition to the one we're talking about right now.

Okay. Dave Kuntz, I guess, then, when I look at. Dave Kuntz, You know the. Dave Kuntz, The nine 132. Dave Kuntz, parcel that we're looking to add into this. Dave Kuntz, we're adding it into the park and so we're that we're changing the designation of that one parcel correct okay um. But upland of that parcel, there is some, there is some area that's retaining the residential designation. In other words, we didn't do the shoreline and then everything that was perpendicular to the shoreline going up to be able to go and do that. It looks like there's a, well, it looks like maybe that parcel is Dave Kuntz, it's kind of an odd country it's like parts of it edgewater drive and then parts of one of the parcels that's mostly. Dave Kuntz, Can you know you know urban park, but is a little bit gotta look at a corner of it that's got a residential designation in there we're not.

Dave Kuntz, I want to hang that up, I want to, I want to make clear we're only talking about the one parcel.

We're talking about the single parcel, and this is a process that's dictated through state law, so any other changes to this program, we would have to start a new process.

Okay. So I... Everything else...

I'm just saying it looks inconsistent. Okay. Rather than making all... Changing the one parcel is clear to be able to go into it. I had one other... question about doing this. In the comments from the public, there was a number of the projects that were concerned about the addition of impervious surface in this parcel based on what we plan to do on it. And there are some standards regarding impervious surface that are, I think they're in page.

What are the standards?

Essentially, there is a set of standards that talk about, Within 20 feet of the high water mark, you can't have more than 20% of the land be impervious. And then there's a greater percentage that goes before.

Director miles can answer the impervious service thing.

I don't think it I guess the question is you want to know is that what the question is you put in percentages fly to this parcel Or do they have or when we when we change? Are they parcel specific or are they?

They are using zoning designation.

Are we able to look at the whole? Area of the park if we make this change

Director Miles, do you wanna jump in on this? It looks like you do.

So the surfacing will be across the project. And so to the point, this really is just bringing one partial into that overall designation. There are existing conditions. that already exceed what our shoreline buffer will be. So a lot of the project, and the project is still under design. So, you know, we have met with ecology. It's still under design, and the design has to pick up at what the baseline is. There will be some incremental increase, but we're also doing a lot of restoration to counter. And so there will have to go through a variance process because it already starts over those thresholds. But it is looking across... the whole area that is looking to be improved, which now does include the additional partial if this designation goes through.

So if we do the parking and the boat ramp, because the boat ramp right now is, I think calling it a boat ramp is, you know, optimistic, but people use it. That all counts. So, but the whole park counts.

Correct.

Yeah. And there are those different variations for the first amount of buffer and the extended amount. But as I said, we're starting at a point that had the impervious surfacing. We're looking at some pervious surfacing for some variation, but also the largest part is adding stormwater treatment and doing shoreline restoration. And so there's some mitigating things that will go along with that. still having some level of impervious surfacing because the road itself, right, already exists in that area. So there is some offset that we're doing, but there's also other improvements that will go along with the variants that will come forward through our permitting process, but also we've been doing consults with ecology about what would be required.

Is there a difference between the impervious surfacing Limitations on shoreline residential and urban park.

Yes, it actually is less. So as an urban park, we have less in terms of allowances, but they actually are recognizing this and that some of the removal of impervious surface already happened when we acquired the parcel. And so there's a general benefit that we have already taken some efforts, right, to remove that surfacing and what we're putting back is less than what the allowances were on that parcel before.

Okay, thank you.

There's definitely math and calculations that will come back with you with the design.

Well, it looked to me that we may want to consider, upon approving this, of then looking at consolidating the existing park and this parcel into a single parcel so that we don't have to do bi-parcel calculations of that and some other things to do that that may make the percentages easier to comply with. to go on.

It will be the shoreline of the urban park that is being improved that is part of the overall calculations that go forward for the variance in the permit for the project, not a parcel by parcel element.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Any other comments? Council Member Pearson.

A quick comment on I think that Michael Leccese, Mr brands that are point is well taken as far as. Michael Leccese, It there probably should be some clearing up of the mapping because the intent of the urban park environment versus the shoreline residential environment is different and there's more allowances is. is what I understand in residential that you're providing for folks to do residential stuff. So I just wouldn't want the folks that are on those parcels that happen to be mapped in such a way that it's an urban park environment, that now they're more restricted to do stuff than they should be, I guess. So in future, I think that, you know, if we can clean that up, it probably would make some sense.

We can certainly go back and verify with GIS that the maps in your packet are correct, first of all. If there was an error there or not, we can share that with you. But otherwise, we can make those changes.

And I would say quite the opposite. I would make the entire city urban park. And then that way, we don't have to comply with the Growth Management Act anymore. So we just say, well, it's a park. So that's how I would do it.

Dave Kuntz, Mr mayor, we do that parcel by parcel, we can start with your parcel.

Dave Kuntz, Right, we just do one one mile radius of every park that we have and film yeah. Dave Kuntz, Do you think we could do that. Dave Kuntz, All right, any other questions from his sphere we've got this on the agenda next week.

Dave Kuntz, That that there's a mandatory. more comprehensive review due in 2029?

Correct. And so, yes, Mr. Mayor, this will be in front of you next week for action. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Speer. And the always fraught residential shoreline master program. Ms. Silva. And Mr. Remack has also graced us with his presence this evening. Ms. Silva, you're here to talk about the downtown transportation mitigation fees, TMF overview. And that begins, I believe, on page 231.

That is correct. And Mr. Remack is going to hover in the background. So signal to me if he says, don't say that, Angie, or something of that. So this is a follow-up requested briefing council asked as we were going through a major update to our engineering code as well as design standards. What the status of the downtown transportation mitigation fee, I'm gonna say TMF throughout this process or this presentation itself.

And that begins on page two.

The presentation itself starts on 237. 237. Thank you. So as we kind of move through this slide deck on page 238, what the Downtown TMF is, is really created under the State Environmental Policy Act or SEPA authority, which originated from the Downtown Plan Action EIS approved and implemented in 2018, 2019. This particular TMF only applies to downtown only and within that subarea plant boundary. No other traffic mitigation or impact fee applies elsewhere within the city itself. under that plan action eis one of the stipulations under that ordinance was that development contributes to its share of identified transportation impacts that was explicit in the plan action eis it was explicit through the plan action ordinance what that share would be and i'll go into that a little bit further on page 230 239 i believe the plan action eis intent overall it was to front load up front standards what are the clear environmental mitigation whether that was noise whether that was transportation but also storm water and critical areas protection In addition to that, it identified that mitigation directly tying to project impacts and assumed the maximum potential growth in the downtown area through 2035 specifically. So the maximum build-out from jobs, housing, and people within that boundary itself. and last but not least one of the pros or cons to having a plan action eis i've applied them to large geographies over 3 000 acres to small areas the bigger the area the harder it is to identify what those proportion of mitigation is but the intent of those EISs is really to streamline permit review. So you're front-loading all that environmental review so as a project comes in, it's just checking for consistency within those parameters. If you're within that parameter, no additional environmental review is necessary. If you're outside of that, you'll have to do traditional SEPA review that comes with a comment period as well as an appeal period. On the next slide, in comparison on 240, Between SEPA mitigation TMF or impact feed, there's a lot of cross pollination. It feels like it kind of does the same thing, but it kind of does it in different topic areas. So again, SEPA TMF project specifics identified in the EIS. There's specific agency rulemaking and RCW guidance that guides that authority, but also it's a case-by-case nexus. It has to be part of the mitigation projects in that EIS. Impact fees, you can have a little bit more flexibility. You can do system-wide growth funding. You could apply it to the entire city, or you can have different travel sheds with different fees associated within the city. So there's a lot of different ways to slice and dice that. And how you come up with that project list is through your 20-year capital facilities plan, often associated with your comprehensive plan, but there is environmental review associated with it. Really kind of that Growth Management Act connection. It has not only the ability to address capacity, but also system-wide improvements. Similar to a TMF, you still have to have that nexus. If I'm going to ask someone to pay a fee, what's that proportionality and what is that nexus to the fee I'm going to ask? And then on 241, oh, there we go. So part of that downtown TMF ordinance established, and also the planned action EIS, is established in 2018 dollars, close to $29 million of improvements on a specified list. That ordinance, that planned action ordinance identified what the proportionate share for private development, which was 50%, but assumed the remaining 50% would be publicly funded. That ordinance, in addition to our fee schedule, set what that TMF fee would be based on those 2018 dollars. Next slide please. So that ordinance, TMF policy was established circa 2019. 2019 to 2024 had a review of N24 as part of the larger periodic update to the comprehensive plan. Is it working? All those good questions with the council at that time. There were key policy updates as part of that adoption process. And some of those key policy updates formalized roles. Previous organization, the TMF, did not have someone specifically responsible for XYZ. We identified specific technical authorities, but who is responsible for doing what? Second major policy shift was previous policy. It didn't matter if I was going to operate a business across the street. It didn't matter how long that suite or building sat vacant. There was a credit whatever the use was. Part of the policy change is 12 months. Within 12 months, you get a credit of the previous trips. But after that, you're starting all fresh on new system impacts to the transportation network. That was a significant policy change. Another significant policy change was there was no directive in when we were supposed to collect payment or who was supposed to be responsible following up on that payment. And our former permit system was not structured to collect that payment at a particular component. That has subsequently changed from the policy change, but also a new permit system. We also previously, in a previous permit system, the TMF and SEPA were separate applications. So not only do I have to come in and get my land use permit, my site development permit, but also my building permits. I gotta get these two things if I was located in the downtown. We've integrated those into the overall process at land use or site development, depending on what that project scope was, to integrate not only the review of environmental impacts to the project scope specifically and the comment periods associated with that, but also made sure as those permits, whether it was land use entitlements or construction, we were tracking where that project was going through different analyses, through a traffic impact analysis or a traffic generation memo. and then last but not least providing clear rules and when we had to refund that money under impact fees you have to refund it it's statutorily in there and it's been defined by case law we identified when if we're not going to use it within a 10-year time frame that policy sets that rule

Next slide, please.

So this is just a crosswalk between those policies. We covered a couple of those already, but it's just a different visual outlook of what that is, but also in your memo packet as well. Next slide, please. So here comes the money. So based on that policy shift, what does that really mean? So between 2019 and 2024, we collected about a little over $164,000. Post policy shift in 2025, we've collected a little over $146,000. And I'm gonna separate collected versus assessed. We've collected $146,000 up until April of this year. But at that same time, we've also assessed, meaning we're pending building permit issuance to collect that money. And that's currently at a little over 227,000. So between 25 to April 2026, we've assessed or collected close to $374,000 by simply making some policy shifts in how we interpret and imply. So with that, that's my last slide. I'm open to a lot of questions. This is a heavy, heavy conversation.

City Council Chambers, Thank you very much civil, so the purpose of this was just information on how the how those changes we made back in 2425 have impacted the. City Council Chambers, That is correct, Sir Okay, thank you, Council member Pearson.

City Council Chambers, Thank you, Mr Mayor, and thank you for the presentation, this is, I think exactly what I was hoping to see when we were having these discussions, a few years ago about. And I don't even know, I'd like to get some more information on how exactly we were collecting fees in the past versus how we're doing it now. And it sounded like there was some fees escaping us somehow or something. So, um, but I, but I'm, I'm really excited for, for what we see here. And, and one of the big projects in our backyard, you know, the Alliance, um, A project like that if it's not within an area that's already gone through the is and all the stuff that it's gone through. would take far longer to do than they did here by essentially planning it, I think they had to do some variants or something but like. There was no big environmental element to it it's like yeah here come build this here and you're in the downtown and pay your fee, so I am we talked about it before i'm hopeful that that is a kind of a catalyst project. for others in the area. And yes very excited to see what we've been assessing and collecting thus far. So thank you.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Most of the 2019 to 2024 a lot of the assessments at that time fell into the rule of well it doesn't matter how long that building has been vacant. There is no new TMF fee. So you get this perpetuity of credit. And that was the biggest policy shift we made to start collecting more money than we've ever before.

Yeah, thank you. And I think that that also helps folks like a QFC or like some of these maybe blighted sites around the community that they're going to be losing out on their vested interest in their their traffic mitigation fees, and they could be fairly substantial. Now, do the fees go up, or are they set in stone back at 2019 levels? Or do they accrue, do they go up over time?

They are currently set by ordinance as well as our fee schedule. If this body would like to look at that, we would have to assess what does that mean for the plan action, the estimated total construction dollars, because again, that was 2018, $29 million. Sitting in 2026, costs have gone up significantly. based on those transportation projects. As you know, we're all going through the downtown transportation feasibility. We're gonna use those projects as a baseline, no action alternative, but at some point I'm gonna come to you and here's where the book ends on those. What else could we do down here? What does that mean? And what are those cost implications to those alternatives? So I will be coming back later this year to test some ideas with you all. One is the Green Street Loop. But what does that mean, but part of that is this here's the specific list here's the estimated planning level estimate not designer engineering at 30 or 60 or 90% design, this is the cost the ordinance outlines private development only place 50% the rest is on local taxpayers.

Yeah. And, and I, I think this is something that we probably ought to consider sooner rather than later, because I've gone through this in my day job of bees being stagnant for a period of time. And then when they're not stagnant anymore, people freak out because they ramp up like crazy. And so the longer you, you know, you wait on that, the worst the bandaid is when you rip it off. And so if we can, City Council Chambers and City Council Chambers reconciled things in a shorter term, I think that that would be better than waiting forever. And also, it doesn't do us any good when we're collecting fees at, you know, pennies on the dollar that is going to cost us, you know, a ton of money to do any of these projects. So anyway, there's multiple things to balance, but I think that I'd be interested in at least kind of hearing what that might look like.

um so i wanted to ask of the so on slide or page 244 the slide with the breakdown of the fees collected that the the 373 973 that is all impact fees right. And my question is, has there been anything collected, or I guess what is the amount to report as far as SEPA-specific mitigation, if any?

We don't have impact fees within the city, so the 373 is total collected and assessed between the policy change in 25 through April of 26.

So it's just getting counted as revenue?

Correct, with dedicated revenue to certain projects.

Okay, then it's more of a comment. In 2023, the state passed SB 5452. This authorized cities to use transportation impact fee revenue for bicycle and pedestrian facilities not located within the road right-of-way. So this was a way to get basically multi-use paths off street share or shared use path funded using impact fees is that something that we can look at in terms of coordinating with our parks element or even just as a way as a means to get non-motorized infrastructure funded and built

City Council Chambers, This body can direct the department, we can work with the city manager on assessing what impact fees are that Senate bill that you mentioned is specific to impact fees not seep a mitigation fee, so there is different swim lanes different statutory requirements to hit. City Council Chambers, If that is something of interest I will have to come back, this is going to cost us X amount of dollars to evaluate that proposal, but that is something we can work with you all, if that is an interest.

Councilmember Brandstetter.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, I would just want to voice support for Councilmember Pearson's urging that we move to adjust the baseline upon which fees are calculated to include maybe even including a an annual escalation based on things like we do for a number of other things. Because I think doing it sooner than later, we can avoid some of the push to get vested once people think we're starting to do about it. So if we could do that in an expedited way, we'll be better off in the long run. and do it in a way that it takes care of itself every year that we don't have to have a council action every year other than something in the fee schedule.

Council Member Lauricella.

Thank you, Mayor Boki. And thank you, Miss Silva for this. Have we gotten any pushback from businesses and developers as we've rolled this out to be conceivably a little more aggressive to, you know, set it to only that 12 month vacancy requirement or anything like that?

I think the feedback we hear at the front counter or during permit review is oftentimes more of the small business owners. I just leased a space. I'm taking over a business or I'm starting a new business. They don't necessarily forecast in their business plan the cost of permits or what it takes to do a change of use of a structure. I was a barber shop, but now I'm going to be a restaurant and I got to update the building requirements to meet that occupancy. And also, often at that time, the TMF fee is a shocker to, again, those small operations. We also don't assess a TMF fee for a single family residence, for example. It's very explicit on what we can and cannot do. You don't find a single family residence often in the downtown area. Big developers. If you look across just Pierce County or in the Puget Sound area, impact fees are a very common thing. And it's not just about transportation. It's about parks as well as schools. And there's other impact fees starting to float around for growth to pay for its proportionate share. I will be remiss. Over 25 years of my career, did I have ever heard anybody complain about paying impact fees? Yes, it is. Every single time I've heard from the development community, the business community, how that slows growth, how that increases the cost of housing, construction, etc., and that ripples down to the property owner, the taxpayer, and the ones that are providing that service are paying for that extra cost. In addition to that, when we do our fee review for permits, we always look across jurisdictions. Are we too hot, too cold, or just right when it comes to those permit fees? And we often add, we might be a little high on our conditional use permit, but then I tack on impact fees from other jurisdictions, and we are far below the average related to what it takes to build a single family residence, a 5,000 square foot commercial building, et cetera.

Great. And of the $375,000 or so in your total there, how much of that could be tied to the Alliance project in the town center?

Alliance was vested to the old policy in 2024, so zero. But the Barnes & Noble that moved got dinged. So it was the base of that policy and the parameters of it, the previous policy, excuse me.

So, but at least they don't have to pay a B and O tax at this point. Right. So, uh, I will also echo my support for council member Pearson's, uh, suggestion that this be updated, uh, on a regular basis or tied to a standard benchmark so that we don't necessarily have to revisit it every year, but it's at least connected and then we can address it if it gets out of line. So thank you.

Could I just one statement? So we're listening to it as we're thinking about it anyhow. Right now we're talking about SEPA TMF fees. This is a 50% match from the city for anything we do with these monies. Traffic impact fees, which other jurisdictions are playing, are not a match with the city and what we're looking at. So I know we've had conversation about it and we've had questions about what we can do with impact fees. I would say that for the council to look at it, there's question as to which is more beneficial to the city overall. Yes, we already have the EIS that we did and we know what the TMF is. But is it that we want to increase in what we're looking at and keep up with the TMF? Or is it that you're looking at the other alternatives that exist and how you can use that money and other money that can match what we have in the TMF? Because right now, we don't have another earnings revenue system to go ahead and earn match for the TMF. Even if we increase the TMF, we still have to match that to go ahead and spend that money down.

Council Member Taubo.

So thank you for pointing that out because that is that is a huge that that's a big point for me and Forgive me because I'm reminded that, you know, I think I'm so ingrained into the world of impact fees and the rest of the world that charges impact fees and that has been charging impact fees for so long that, Ms. Silva, when you said, we don't do impact fees, I, yes, I had to come back to... And so that's so so as a as. As a question, though that's that's a little bit my concern is that when we get out of the downtown. And there are the commercial areas that let's say, for example, an alliance project wants to come somewhere on South Tacoma way or Pacific highway or anywhere outside of downtown. what are they subject to in terms of impact fees, if at all, right? Because we don't have an impact fee policy. So if some 100 unit, 200 unit, 700 unit, whatever, or if it's not even residential, if it's a job project, if it's an employment project, that wants to bring parking for 300 vehicles, and that's trips added on. How do we assess the impact of that and collect for it in the current framework that we have?

There is no impact fee that would be collected. We would, under SEPA, assess the environmental impact. One is transportation. Is it reducing the level of service through their traffic impact analysis? Is there off-site improvements we need to take into consideration in most circumstances that the intersection or the roadway itself, other than frontage improvements, doesn't trigger any actual construction before they occupy whatever building that they're doing?

Yeah, thank you. And so I guess to that, that's why I think it is worth considering an impact fee ordinance or whatever, whatever the policy is. Because even though we plan for growth in the Regional Growth Center, and we have the planned action EIS that deals with the neat and tidy policy, the growth that we plan for still activities can happen outside of the downtown and it doesn't have to just be residential nonetheless those activities impose impacts and that we have no way to collect for it you know we're on the hook to pay for a signal at Avalon and and Gravely Lake because we couldn't get that out of the Alliance project and And those are the types of impacts that I fear that we will stymie ourselves with in the future if we don't get hip at some level to impact fees outside of downtown.

Councilman Branstadter.

Mr. Mayor, I appreciate the Dave Kuntz, Movement of the conversation over into the realm of of impact fees that's that's an old conversation that that we've had it's kind of tied to should the city have have been all taxes or not, and it has been the idea that, as a significantly built up city that. assessing impacts project by project and making assessments where they're warranted as opposed to just a standardized thing of charging everybody. It goes back to when the city first got over there and we had an impact thing and we said everybody has got to put a sidewalk in front of every new structure and we ended up with all the sidewalks to nowhere and we ended up doing all that. So I guess I want to make sure that we move Forward making the correct adjustments. To the mitigation fees for the downtown that are part of that sub area in an expeditious manager and manner, and that we don't. Complicate what should be a separate discussion is, is there a time of when we want to move to a. Dave Kuntz, To to a more impact fee dominated structure, as opposed to our SEPA dominated the assessment way far away. Dave Kuntz, Keep keep them separate.

Dave Kuntz, Even if you're going to look at them both yeah yeah and we need to stay on the topic at hand, I appreciate the discussion about overall.

council member thank you thank you so um in response to mr remax comments about the 50 and how much we're on the hook for i hear what you're saying with be careful what you wish for if you increase these then we're also on the on the hook for increased fees so um i would say that i would be cautious with my earlier comment then so um thank you

Dave Kuntz, Okay, thank thank you for your report i'm going to close it at that, because we need to get on to city manager comments, because we do have a possibly lengthy. Dave Kuntz, executive sessions so um. please look at items tentatively scheduled for the monday june fifteenth twenty twenty six regulators city council meeting and study session we will be looking at that uh... the s m p thing and then uh... i think we're waiting on i don't know that we're gonna have the baseball thing ready or not uh... and then and then review of resolution establish an encroachment evaluation process for lake turn so that should be interesting and review the okay so please take a look at that now i don't unless do you want to change to the agenda

Yes, I think we should add to the items for consideration next week a motion to amend the Lakewood Promise Advisory Board work plan, given that they've given us the draft of what they would like the 26 plan to be amended to. And that should be a simple motion for us to put together and deal with our consent agenda next week.

I don't know why that's not on here. Is it they planning not to be ready? Typically we would have it on in the next week.

Not necessarily. It was part of the joint meeting tonight on the agenda through there. So it's kind of one that emerged through the development of the actual agenda bill, not necessarily through the agenda development. So when it came on the agenda bill realized, okay, they're looking for a work plan adjustment. So yeah, we can add that to for next week, more than likely.

Can you have it ready for next week or no?

I would think we should be able to.

Because it was the way it was written. It wasn't written like a bill, right? It's, it's, it's. So I don't know how you would put that. I don't even know how you can put that together. We're going to try and put it on next week.

And if we can't, then it'll be on July 6th.

Okay. Thank you. Do your best. Because it's fresh in our minds. Okay, Mayor, City Manager Russell.

Yeah, a few items. First one, just looking for a little bit of consensus for the Association of Washington City's Conference and our three voting delegates. I would just start off by recommending the mayor, deputy mayor, and then add in someone else as the third. So I've just looked for either a nomination or a recommendation. That way we can get that information to the league in preparation.

Yeah, there's seven of us going or something. Are we selecting from those folks who are attending the conference or is that completely a separate thing?

I think we have six that are attending the conference and I'd recommend those that are attending.

Mr. Mayor, I would recommend Council Member Lauricella if he's attending as a... You're going to be there?

Okay. So it'll be me, Council Member Bell, Deputy Mayor Bell, and Council Member Lauricella.

Looks like we got consensus on that.

Unless there's an objection.

Okay, seeing none. Just a reminder, Farmer's Market tomorrow, along with Desserts on the Driveway in Telecom. Wednesday, Downtown Neighborhood Association. Thursday, Lake City Neighborhood Association. Moving into next week, start the Summer Concert Series on Tuesday, and then another Desserts on the Driveway for the Custer neighborhood. That's all I have, Your Honor.

Dave Kuntz, Thank you very much Council member comments again we've got some ask you to keep relatively short because we've got a pretty long. Dave Kuntz, executive session on hand so Council member Laura selling.

Thank you, Mayor Boki. I'll be brief. Last week, I had the opportunity to take a tour of some of our parks areas with the city manager and provide him with the perspective of a native Lakewoodian or Lakewoodite or whatever we call ourselves. But it was good to see some spaces and to show him some spaces that aren't normally on the well-traveled path. And I've got some recommendations that I'll bring forward when we have our parks legacy plan review. So that was really good. on the unified regional approach. I think I said plenty, but I'm excited to have that come back to us for a council vote on. Appreciate the work on Lakewood's Promise Group towards a safety net for Lakewood's youth. And I think an exposure to career opportunities and job shadowing would be great. It would have helped me figure it out a little faster when I was a kid in Lakewood. It took me a while to find my way. And I think job shadowing would have made it a little easier. So good stuff. I will plan to be at the farmer's market tomorrow and looking forward to seeing maybe some of you there. Thanks.

Council Member Pearson.

Thank you, Mr Mayor. I am going to try to get to the deserts in the driveway tomorrow and i'm hoping that someone else may be able to cover the downtown. neighborhood association on Wednesday if there's any ones planning on going. Sounds like a few folks will go there. Okay. I've got my end of the year baseball party for our little kids. So we had a wonderful season and enjoyed our fields down there at Fort Sillicum. That's it.

Council Member Talbot.

Actually, I was going to ask if anyone would be willing to swap Thursday. So if that's an option. But yeah, I would like to go to the downtown association. And that is my report. Nothing else. Thank you.

What's Thursday? Oh, okay. Council Member Branstadter.

I attended the SHAPE executive board meeting that was held in person in Sumner this time. They passed their resolution to send to all the member jurisdictions, including Lakewood, their budget for 2027 so that the number can be confirmed that we're okay with it and that it can be incorporated into our building, our budget for 2027. The changes there weren't significant. I appreciated the conversations that we've had over the past couple of weeks regarding the looking at the tip and the other things. But it strikes me as today as I was reading the public comments about the shoreline master plan changes and the comments that people made that somehow when we ask for comments, we need to do a better job of communicating what the document we're asking them to compliment is for, whether it is a time to compliment it on design or whether it's a time to compliment on doing all this. People seem to miss the point and they make a lot of comments that had to be, either should have been made earlier or have to be made in a different format or at a different time in the process. And we need to maybe be people misinterpret what we're really acting on.

Councilmember Lindholm.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Lots of good stuff going on right now. Looking forward to the farmer's market again tomorrow. If you haven't been, please, please go. It's an incredible event, as long as it's not raining. Shape, I attended virtually. Lots of good things happening there. Looking forward to the Lake City Neighborhood Association here this week. Are you going? I'll be going, yeah.

Okay, so you're going to cover for her.

Okay, great. Yeah, that's all I have for now. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Bell.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yes, great presentations and conversation tonight. I appreciate staff for presenting and really doing some great clarification on some things. Also for our county council member coming along with staff. And I feel like that really answers some solid questions that we've had about the URA and getting some clarification for us and also for our residents. So I think that that could be a very beneficial asset for Lakewood. And So tomorrow I am going to attempt possibly the Farmer's Market again. I went last week when it was sunny, so I'm a little afraid to go tomorrow. And I know I don't, no concert tomorrow, right? That starts on the week after. Or is it, does it start tomorrow? Oh, right. So I don't even know who's... Journey, a Journey tribute band, okay. See, I might need to be there. I know, don't stop believing. Exactly. So there's, between that, Desserts in the Driveway, we have two community meetings, I mean, partnership meetings with our downtown partnership and Telecom and just lots of good stuff going on this week. So I hope to see everybody out and about. Thank you, Mayor.

A clarification that concert series is on the 16th.

oh that is this yeah hopefully the journey tribute band will get good good weather I could just start I could just start making all sorts of jokes up all this anyway, I went to the pierce transcend meeting today and. got their financial report, it was decent for 2025. ridership was up the ridership is up really in the first quarter of. 2026 so. Let me explain the. The actual number of hours they're running the buses is now in 2025 was the same as it was pre-COVID in 2019. But the ridership was only about 84% of what it was in 2019. So they're still growing into that. And ridership looks good in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of last year. And we think it's because of gasoline prices. And then I have that neat jersey that I got as part of the board, but I didn't wear it, of course, tonight. So I got in the picture, but I had to stand back. Anyway.

and i didn't fall off any ladders last week so that's a start um yeah um when you you you mentioned at a previous meeting that they the collective letter to go to sound transit They didn't really want you to use space to talk about the 574. Correct. But did we then create a separate letter to do that? And is Pierce Transit supportive of our position of wanting to keep the 574 as it is, as a workforce transportation asset?

I have not brought it up at the meeting, which today would have been a good day to do it. I was told by one member who's on the Sound Transit Board that they convinced him that it was a good idea to stop in Federal Way. So I don't know how much support we do have, but I can start searching for that.

The 574 still exists. Oh, yeah. And then when the link is not running, they will have an alternative going through those early morning hours. They don't have that information out yet, but that was what was on the little notice of change. So the question that emerged related to that not being there is actually in their plans.

Yeah, well, I understand that that's their plan. I don't agree that that's good for the people that use it as workforce transportation of making it in two steps, having to make a link and having the link stop a quarter mile difference. from where the 574 now stops when you're working at the airport to be able to go and do that. And this seems like an issue that Maybe we should continue to be a squeaky wheel on before we get to the time in the fall or whenever they just say, okay, 30 days from now, we're changing it or two weeks from now, we're changing it. I think we need to keep that alive and get it looked at from a different lens other than the cost of fare and of being able to do that and wanting to force people to ride for a distance on the link to justify the money they're spending on it.

Right, yeah. I think that's a good point. Yeah, I'll yeah.

yeah.

I don't did we get any response from sound transit at all. Okay. Okay.

Okay, real quick. Thank you, everybody. Just a real quick go back. Previously, I'd brought up the topic of e-bike safety to this group. I learned today that Washington State's passed a law that goes into effect on Thursday that any e-bikes with a top speed of over 20 miles an hour, which is a lot of them, are now going to be classified as motorcycles and people will need a license and a motorcycle endorsement to use them. I am...

Well, yeah, no, I, I'm telling you, I ride my bike now. And even in Fort Silicon Park, I mean, it is, it can be, people go very fast on trails and stuff.

Yeah.

So I didn't know that. That's, yeah. Yeah. And around, in and around the park, especially.

And yeah.

So, I'd like to announce the City Council will recess into executive session for approximately 20 minutes. That optimistic? Pursuant to RCW 42301101I. to discuss with legal counsel representing the agency litigation or potential litigation to which the agency, the governing body, or a member acting in an official capacity is or is likely to become a party when public knowledge regarding the discussion is to result in an adverse legal and financial consequence to the agency. City Council is not expected to take action following the executive session other than to adjourn the meeting. So I'm calling the time here. It's basically 9.32, so we'll start 9.55. We'll be back at 9.55. Thank you.

We are adjourned.