City Council - Regular Meeting

The administration from not funding some states based on how they voted or whatnot. And then they also created other types of criteria that were not left up to the Secretary of Transportation to administer, but instead were done in statute with that grant program itself. As a result, you actually have statutory definitions for kind of how much comes to Washington State and what types of influence we can have over getting those programs itself. And also, as you can imagine, because Senator Murray is the author of the federal grant program, she pays very close attention to the projects that come through. And as the ranking member or the chair of the Appropriations Committee, kind of has a lot of sway over how that happens. It's a long way of saying it's really, really helpful to socialize our intentions with the delegation and get really active political support for them as we are considering whether it's a 27 or a 28 grant application. It makes a big difference in this one.

Councilmember Pearson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So as we consider expanding the Green Street Loop and tying it all the way out towards I-5, I think that when you look at a construction grant application, that would come in and really revitalize a major corridor, the major corridor into the town center that has many areas that are deficient. We had an ADA and pedestrian kind of accessibility study done and like three quarters or more of the driveways are non-compliant and the ped buttons are not compliant and the ramps. And I mean, it's just like, this is littered along the entire stretch there. So that's one element. you know, tons of pedestrian and kind of expanding the Green Street loop and the beautification into the downtown. I think that that would be a much bigger sell and a much bigger sales point than simply the Green Street loop that's, you know, kind of half green already and it's mostly focused in just the downtown, the town center and a couple other streets. So I think that, you know, if we can really set this thing up and get to the bigger project. I feel like the bigger project would actually be a better sell than the smaller project, maybe.

One other point following on yours, sir, is the build program itself uses a really unique... set of criteria for deciding which projects to invest in. And one of those is economic development, which is not something you see in highway grants or, you know, different types of things. So that the fact that you're also trying to target economic development along that corridor, too, and like redo business access and like I know in the Green Loop project, that was a big component of that was like, how do you create a sense of downtown, a sense of space? Those will be key elements in your build grant application eventually. And those will be scored very, very competitively.

That, okay. That, that's, that's really reassuring. And, and, and that's, that was exactly those points was like, okay, we have the downtown and the green street loop, which is great for people that are in the downtown. How do you get them to the downtown? Right. And how do you keep them there and make it this welcoming, you know, natural flow into the downtown. And so that's where some of that came from. So I, that's, that's, I feel like that'll be good for us. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. I noticed there's, I pulled up the grant page on the Department of Transportation and there was one in Boise in 2025. Project will construct ADA-compliant sidewalks, curb ramps, crossings, pavement rehab, bicycle facilities, stormwater management improvements. And this is approximately along five miles in Boise. And it's a $23 million project and they got 18.4 million. So that's a nice, and that's a huge project, right? I mean, so, I mean, we're on the right, playing in the right sandbox, I think.

And I'm sorry, but I need to keep talking about the build grant program a little bit more if you'll indulge me.

Okay.

One thing is that prior to 2021, no city under 100,000 in Washington state had ever won a build grant. Because one of the metrics they used was how many people will you benefit from this project? So smaller and medium-sized cities just couldn't compete on a turnstiles metric. In 21, and the city of Lakewood has been one of a lead number of cities lobbying for a medium-sized city set-aside for years. So in 21 was our big success story where we made sure that in 21 that half of all grant awards in the BUILD program had to go to communities under 200,000 in population size. It's the first time we put any type of population metric in this at all. So since 2021 in the state of Washington, Shorelines won a BUILD grant, Bothell, Linwood, and seven other medium sized cities. But those are construction grants all in that kind of 18 to $23 million range. And Shoreline and Linwood and Bothell look a lot like Lakewood in terms of kind of what problems they're trying to solve, how they're trying to deal with housing and economic development and moving people from a mobility standpoint through their communities. So we have a precedent here. We're not it this doesn't feel like shooting at targets that don't you know that are hard to hit this this does feel like the right program for us at this time great any other comments okay carry on great uh well i need my glasses for the next one i'm still looking for the on the pages here although oh yeah there are a lot of different grants So bullet point number three is essentially just making sure that we are staying connected to the programs that the cities built a policy track record on. But these aren't ones that I can tell you are necessarily at high risk right now or there's a big national strategy to invest in them at this point. But these are things that we want to make sure that we are maintaining communication with our delegation about. If these percolate or pop in any way, we want to make sure that we are fighting for home funding and CDBG funding. And certainly as the quality bypass project, you know, continues to take shape and comes out of the planning stages, we want to make sure there's a liquid voice in that story at the federal level. So three is kind of a catch all for those. If there are policy areas that we have missed, This is also, I'm definitely looking for council and mayor input on this one.

Council Member Branstetter.

I'm not familiar with what the FEMA pre-disaster mitigation grant program is and how that relates to us.

Yeah. It's a ubiquitous term for a lot of programs that fall under that umbrella. It's everything from culvert funding, believe it or not, because it's a flood mitigation strategy, to some of the grant programs that exist. Basically, the nickel version is there was a whole series of discretionary grant programs set up in the last infrastructure bill that passed in 21. A lot of it falls under this umbrella. So it's how do you do building earthquake prevention? How do you do prevention, earthquake mitigation, stabilization efforts? There's a lot of grant money out there that's distributed through this path that cities have access to. So the reason it's a bullet point on here is that we've lobbied for it in the past, and we don't want to see those funds diminish, and we don't want to see those grant programs go away. It's not that the city has active grants in those spaces right now, but we want to make sure that we're paying attention to them.

Well, I guess the other four items on the list. Three of them are ones that the city has an active interest in. And then the Squally River Bridge Project is something that we are part of a regional coalition that is very active to it. So including on this list an umbrella of a whole lot of other things over there, I'd i guess i'd rather leave that to the people that specifically want to deal with specific those other grants to be able to go and do that rather than making it one of our priorities i think the other four are a priority for us because we we use them or we help create and want to use one and and we definitely want to see the squally river bridge project happen. So I guess that I would, my thought, Mr. Mayor, is I would take that one in the middle out. There's probably plenty of advocates for it around the nation, but until we have a greater likelihood on the timing of the next earthquake or the volcanic eruption, I'm not all that concerned with it.

You know what? I would agree with that actually, but looking at the rest of the members, what do you think?

I agree.

I think that there's, we've got four things on there that we're actively involved in and we actively use, or we want to help with the Nisqually Bridge. And the other three are things that we are, two of them we get money from. So yeah, let's just drop the FEMA one. Bless everybody here from FEMA. Okay. Easy. Keep on going.

Great. Number four. So we've been communicating with the city, and this is a broader policy issue, but the administration has been, there were rules that were published from OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, that would essentially move the decision-making for grant awards from the agency staff level to political appointees. And it's a way for this administration to make sure that states that they have a better relationship with get a larger percentage of the federal investments that are made. It's also a way to administratively try to enforce the actions that this administration is trying to do through executive orders. And that is the DEI language, that is the trans healthcare issues, the gender affirming care, abortion restrictions, things like that. Trying to do a lot of social policy through grant administration. Right now, those rules were published. They were sued by a collection of states. There's an injunction right now that has delayed the implementation of that rule. And the most recent Senate appropriate or the most recent appropriations bill that's a continuing resolution has delayed the implementation of that rule till December 13th to collect more public comment. This rule, if enacted, no matter where you are in the politics of any of the individual executive orders, would would disadvantage Washington state because we have state laws that are in direct conflict with these executive orders, which would make us unable to access some of this federal money. We think it's a terrible idea. A lot of states think it's a terrible idea, and it's unlikely that it will go forward. But I think it needs to be pretty high on our agenda because the risk of not being able to access federal dollars, this would mean that your potential build grant would be subject to a political appointee saying, is Lakewood in line with kind of our other broad policy goals? And that is not a place for an infrastructure grant. That's the bigger picture behind number four there.

And while I agree with that, maybe I have some concern with how it's phrased. In other words, why not just say that we're opposed to this specific rule as opposed to characterizing it as with political appointees and things like that i mean i mean that's really what we wanted we don't want the rule implemented

I would ask that you take a broader definition. And the reason is that we're not just fighting this on the OMB rule. So even getting a grants.gov number right now, the administration is trying to make cities compliant with executive orders just to be able to process your financial transactions on a grant. And then they're looking at different, I mean, they're looking at a variety of strategies to implement executive orders through contracting provisions. So even though the OMB rule is kind of the the entree that's in front of us right now, there's a lot of different ways that they're approaching this issue.

Okay. Well, obviously you live and work in that environment. It just seems odd to me for us to say that we don't think that the Secretary of Transportation should have anything to do with something that goes on in his department. I would like him to delegate those things and be able to go and do that. But I'm not necessarily saying that if there is something that he is engaged in that has to do with it or any of the secretaries or undersecretaries who have responsibilities to say that their subordinates aren't subject to their It seems odd to me. Being opposed to a specific rule or set of rules, I would rather just describe them differently than being we'd rather have non-political appointees make decisions than political appointees. I don't know. I would describe it Less adversarially.

Anyone else? I mean, I generally agree with Mr. Branstetter's comments about describing it less adversarially and really being more pointed on the rule itself rather than the other elements of it.

Okay. I guess I respectfully disagree because I find it a bit over nitpicky that we're not going to change the language of the federal rule, but I think that it matters the way it is presented because what we are not wanting to do is be affected by overreach inappropriately by anyone in any appointment. And we are, we should look to the agency professional staff that are the subject matter experts in their roles. So to me, it's fine as it is.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I agree with Council Member Thabo on this. I think the intent behind this, as I understand it, is in general, your agency staff doesn't change with the political seasons as often as Your appointed people are. And I think if you target a specific rule, they'll just make a new rule and come out of a different way versus looking at intent and trying to stay more aligned with something stable as opposed to things that could shift with the winds of politics.

I can add a little bit more context, which might be helpful, which is that this policy can be reworded. I think we can do that to meet, we can work on the wording on this to make it more palatable to counsel. At the same time, I do want you to know that like, Association of Washington Cities, National League of Cities, they are the lead kind of entities with every other public association group fighting this type of effort. Why it's important for Lakewood to stand up on this one, though, is because Patty Murray will be the one determining what happens with this through the appropriations process. And she is actively looking for cities to stand up and work with her on this and partner with her on this. So it's one of those things where we have other people standing in front of us on this one. National League of Cities is going to carry the legal fight on this one. We don't have to do that. But we are being asked to take a policy role to partner with our delegation to fight these efforts. That's kind of the nuance behind this. I'm happy to reword this. I'm not wedded to the specific intent on this one. And if we want to do that in a softer way, I'm happy to do that.

I guess I would. far be it for me to compliment the state of washington but i like how they do it because they score it right we we do these grant requests they score it and then the legislature just they fund it or they don't or they fund it more whatever the case may be so they're still in control um So I don't know that I like any of how, because it just seems like a black, I mean, you do your best to tell us what's going on, but it just seems like it's this, we have an administrator comes in and says, okay, now we're going to add all these things. But administrations have always somehow been able to play with it. I mean, my father, God rest his soul, believed to the marrow of his bone that Dan Evans support for Nelson Rockefeller in 1968 for the Republican nomination for president doomed the Boeing company and led to its decline. Now, we could talk about airline orders in the late 1960s and various things like that, but he Absolutely believe that. And knowing the next administration, I believe it too. I mean, I believe it to some extent, like, oh, they're never going to get. So I think every administration kind of plays, they just, they just took it to this extreme, which doesn't, you know, it's just, that's the president's personality. So I would, I would wordsmith that a little bit and, and I, but I completely understand You know, we're in a situation where we got to look like we're playing ball here while at the same time we're asking for money. And, and so we are playing ball. We would like a more of a neutral process that bases everything on the merits of the, of the projects rather than outside. Does that sound better?

Yeah.

Does that tell you? In other words, I don't want to have to sit there and try to explain what's our policy on immigration at the Lakewood City Council because we have no policy on immigration at the Lakewood City Council. Our state has already stated what we can do. So I don't want to have to talk about funding the Green Street loop and have to discuss abortion and immigration with you. I just, I don't, it just doesn't seem.

Let me take a swing at rewording this, Mayor, and I'll swing it back to council.

Okay, great, thank you.

Yeah, I think I understand where everybody's at.

Can we coalesce around that, I think? Okay, thank you.

Well, that's a good segue into number five, because now we're going to have the same conversation. Same church, different pew, right? There has been an attempt, particularly in 2026, to encumber federal grant funding with other types of contractual requirements that the administration wants grant recipients to enter into. All of that is currently encumbered right now in the courts, including King County versus Turner, which is the big one out here in the state of Washington. So this is all kind of subject to what happens over the next couple of years in the courts. But the reality is that cities are being asked in order to take federal funding, you are going to have to enter into a grant agreement that is currently under judicial review. And that grant agreement is similar to the conversation we just had. It is going to require that the city not have any DEI policies in place within its organization and other things that actually fly in conflict with state law. So there are things that some states have that require you to do things that, again, would prevent you from contracting with the federal government. So right now, that's all in advance a little bit. We're kind of waiting to see how things shake out. I don't think we're going to get to a resolution in this in 27. I don't think the courts are going to move that fast on this one. So the question really is for number five, how do we as a policy statement, kind of similar to the conversation we just had, how are we able to access federal funding without onerous, non-relevant grant requirements that are connected to that project? And maybe this is worded slightly... Maybe I should have worded the one previously more like this one, because I think this one might be closer to where the conversation is. But I'll take feedback and questions.

Council Member Branstad.

I generally do like the way this one is worded and understandable. In your comments just now, you added the onerous Irrelevant, which I think is the point. And the mayor's point too is we want applications to be graded on the merits of what they're trying to accomplish, not other things. And so to do that. My question about this is, is this supposed to be two sentences? Without owner restrictions and task policy goals benefiting the city of Lakewood. I mean, is there a sense saying we support tax policy goals benefiting the city of Lakewood? The and is kind of.

Are we going to have an Oxford comma conversation here? Okay. Because I will die on this hill. I mean, I will take a council action to make me not die on this hill, but otherwise I'm going to word it awkwardly. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

I'll fix it.

I am with Vampire Weekend.

We've always supported less restrictions on things we've asked. I mean, I don't know. Is that I mean, I'm just kind of stating the obvious. The less restrictions we have on any grants received, the better.

Well, I think, yeah. Let me also take a swing at wording this one more consistent with the policy goals that we had in the previous one, and we'll run them back by council and through city, if that works for you, Doug. Great.

And we're great with the set-asides on number six, I would tell you. I don't think, does anybody have any comments on number six, the set-asides? We've been in support of that for years.

We are making the slowest progress on this. We do make progress all the time, but it's just the progress falls short of a win, so it doesn't quite feel as good as it should. But even this year, the transportation bill passed the House. I don't know if you guys know this. And your member of Congress, Marilyn Strickland, was the one who had drafted the amendments to create additional medium-sized city set-asides on some of the grant programs. We didn't prevail, but we are securing support. We're securing bipartisan support. And again, in the next, if control of Congress switches, we will have both the chair of the House Transportation Committee and the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee from the Washington State Congressional Delegation, both of whom support this policy goal.

Can you define what a small city is and what a medium city is?

That is subject to negotiation, Mayor. The city's stated position in the past has been we want a band set aside for cities between 10 and 75,000. But frankly, we're happy with We're happy under 100. We're pretty happy with the current build grant language of half of all awards under 200. I mean, the point is to get a set-aside and to get that immersed in statute so that we have access to these funds. And then future lobbying can be to tweak kind of where those bands appropriately lie. But right now, we don't have access to a medium set. We don't have access to a set-aside at all. So getting one in there almost at any number is the first goal.

So we're in the same... bowed as new york city exactly you're competing with detroit for most of these okay yeah all right yes we are fans of the smaller medium city set aside and your delegation is behind you on this one on a bipartisan basis and bicameral basis yeah because that would if you got it to half under two hundred thousand that's there's only a few cities then that would be above that right only three in the state of washington only three in the state of washington yeah All right, delegation meetings. So we had, I must say, I speak for the deputy mayor on this. I felt very productive meetings back there. I mean, these things, and there's just a lot going on, you know, that doesn't have to do with the business of Congress, I guess. And, and We realize that and we really do appreciate the efforts that you took to make sure that our visit was productive. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you for saying that. I think things are changing. You know, Congress didn't meet a lot this year, so it was hard to get in. And then also, you know, I mean, COVID really did change the way that we communicate with our delegation. They are out here more than they used to be. I think it used to be much more of a DC focused entity. And yet I still think that this is, this is kind of table stakes for doing it right. You know, table stakes is making sure you have those relationships in place that you take the investment to, to engage in those and to initiate them, not only out here in the district, but in DC as well. And that doesn't mean you have to hit those marks every single time and every single calendar year. But I do also feel like that's just the best practice for how to do these things well. And I think the city has done it extraordinarily well for a long time.

So can we think ahead a little bit here? I really do think the House will switch. I'm beginning to think the Senate may switch. So the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader both come from New York, I guess, if Schumer can hang on. How does that change things in your mind?

We're being recorded for the public right now, right? Yes. I would say I would rather have the chair of the Appropriations Committee than the Speaker of the House.

Okay. Yeah, that position is like, yeah, it's a tough spot if you don't have a big majority, right? Okay, great.

I mean, I'd rather have both. Don't get me wrong.

No, but that helps. That helps, I think. So in your mind, when, I mean, maybe we should have, but everyone's here tonight. When do you think we should time our next visit?

Yeah, it makes... It is an impossible question to answer for you tonight. I can answer historically, but then there's just some things we don't know, which would influence my answer to that question. Historically, the best time to go is right around between the end of February and the midpoint of April. And that's when Congress is really setting its agenda for the year. You can get into the early stage of that. If we have funding requests, that's when they tend to get heard and considered. That's really the strategic time to go. But this year, you know, we don't know what's going to happen in the election. We don't know if there's going to be a leadership change. We don't know where committee assignments are going to go, like how quickly we don't know if they're going to get a budget done this year, if they're going to kick the can into next year. Like a lot of those things, I'd like to see where those start slotting in because our asks next year are going to be determined by this agenda. And the transportation bill will be a big part of that. So I want to make sure that we are back there on the early stages of a new leadership on that committee building the transportation bill. When that happens as of this moment, I can't tell you that.

So let me go back on what we said here today. And one of the things is our support for the bridge at five. And we do that mainly because we know there's factors, but it's south of us, right? So if a flood knocked it out, we're impacted. JBLM is impacted. But I think our main reason is that we want to be supportive of the Nisqually tribe. It's incredibly important to them, not just for flood reasons, but for salmon restoration and that kind of thing. And so we've been very supportive. but I'm trying to understand how that's going to start to look. Is this going to be, I keep thinking it'll be mainly a state thing, but have they even begun to study it? And this is, I guess, a segue into bringing Shelly up here. Have they even started studying it? Because I remember, I think we were still doing things online when they first brought it up in a joint meeting we had with them. And I remember asking them, well, what does this look like? I mean, is it just a two bridges that are longer than the ones they have now so that it'll last another 70 years or something and handle floods. I mean, they said Billy Frank wanted something like the Lionsgate Bridge that would go over the whole thing, but they were already talking at $27 billion. I just don't think that's realistic. But they didn't know, and they said, well, we need a study to find out. So we're at the study stage, but we're supportive from the standpoint it's important to the Nisqually. In my mind, that's the most important thing.

I would say it's my understanding they are at the study stage. It's my understanding that it's a WSDOT-led priority. It's my understanding that the state will be the lead entity. But to make this happen and to secure the amount of federal funding that will be necessary to pull this off over whatever time horizon we're talking about... There has to be an activated, coordinated local coalition. And to the degree that we can mitigate concerns locally and not publicly, to the degree that we can be on the same page, you know, in terms of what our voice is in support of this project and give the state what they need in order to go compete for federal funds. um divisions locally create fractures in the ability for funds to come to the project so being an active participant being being an eager participant in that process i think is is in the city's interest

So I'm going to ask the members, is there anything that's not on here that we should maybe begin to consider? Council Member Lauricella.

Well, thank you, Mr. Mayor. One thing I don't see on here and I'm not sure where we're at is the North Clear Zone and additional funding for that that we've talked about. Is that something that should be part of this?

My opinion is no. I mean, I think we've, we've spent a lot of time on the North clear zone for, and a lot of effort. I, I think I would rather, I mean, this is me again, if ever, I mean, there might, there's probably differences of opinion here. We've spent a lot, a lot of time and effort on the North clear zone. And I've been hearing about it now for 20 plus years. And I think we've given the Air Force ample time and I think we do. I think it's in the best interest of the city of Lakewood to talk about things like the RAISE grants and various things like that.

That's me. I don't disagree with you. I just wanted to make sure that we were clear because it had been a priority before. And I agree. If they're not going to show up and provide the funding that's needed to clear out that space, then why should we be the ones to put that forward for them?

say the city manager and I had, I think, a productive conversation that covered a number of areas with Colonel Hankey. And he asked about like, hey, what's this road that goes right through our clearing? It's like, what the hell is it? And we're like, We have no idea. It's probably a Pierce County thing that somebody cut a deal with somebody over beers or something in the 1950s. Who knows? And now we've made improvements to it. But I think we had a good discussion surrounding it, like if there was a national security issue or we'd certainly have discussions about if they were like, I mean, we can't close it forever because a lot of people go on the road, but that we're, we would be flexible in a national security or emergency situation and that kind of thing. I thought we had as good a discussion as we could have in that, but he's with the army. Remember? So, I mean, he's in charge of the whole place now. So, but that's where we left it. Okay. I mean, I would, do you want to add anything, Doug?

Yeah, I think as it, you know, you look at two different things. One, you know, do we take advantage of opportunities that we have in North Carolina? And I would say, yeah, we still probably would as we're partners with our base and partners on the base versus the federal agenda where we spend significant amount of time and effort trying to push forward things that I think has been iterated here that, you know, where the results been on that. It's been challenging in some of those areas. So I think we stay in that framework of being partners with our military on base, both on the Air Force and Army side. And if we have opportunities, we still have other sources of funds that we can go for, but to make it a focal point on the federal agenda may be worthwhile to not have that as a preeminent component.

I think at the end of the day, The issues that the United States military would have with this area is traffic and the cost of housing. That that's really, those are the things. They find it increasingly difficult. They've got people going to Lacey now, which brings us back to the bridge discussion. So they've got more and more people having to go to about as far as they're, I think there's requirements. They can't be too far out. They have to be within a certain distance drive of the base right mike and so those are the issues that really seem to surround it that like cost of housing is miserably high and and the traffic is bad so you know when they try to get to the port of tacoma it takes them umpteen hours um there's issues surrounding those kind of things there's also some environmental issues i think that come up once in a while and that the city to the north of us isn't as supportive as we are in that regard. So it seems in my mind, that's kind of where this thing has gone. And if the money comes up for the clear zone, I mean, there's still efforts to buy stuff and we tore down that building finally. And so if they ask, we've actually, Tactical Taylor, I think is now torn down, I hope. And after all these years, the contract's out, so.

Anyway, and I had just had one more item and it's probably not for this agenda, but a ways further out in the future as we start to This addresses the H barn as a community place, but we will start to look at another multi generational community and event center and potentially wanting to partner with or even the folks on JBLM or other community partners to get us their federal support would help with that too. But that's probably a 2028 and beyond. Great.

It would be nice if we could clear the decks with these other things like the Green Street Loop and the raise grant and Bridgeport, because we are trying to, you know, we do have general agreement as to something here in the downtown core. and we expect it'll be very expensive.

We should never brainstorm in a public session, but why don't I take a note here to follow up with staff, Michael and Doug on this one. This might be, there might be some planning money that we could go get to look, to explore some of these questions and see what it might look like without competing against other things on the agenda.

So, and yeah, We should, because there are a number of facets to it. I mean, council member Laura Sella touched on that, but there's, you know, we don't have a good place for a heating and cooling center, various things like that. We talked about a nice kitchen that could feed people. And so now we get into the FEMA side. So, but don't, don't add us back to FEMA. Don't add FEMA back, but we'll add it back when we need to. Any other questions for Mr. Johnson?

A closing comment, which is just, Thank you. The city of Lakewood, I think, has had just an unbelievable run at the federal level. I think your delegation is lockstep with you on your policies. But more than that, you're trusted. And not every entity that walks into an office is trusted. So when you tell them you need something, you basically have earned the right to kind of not be questioned about the community need for that project. And you've delivered on the projects that you have asked for money to support. That goes a long way. And it's, believe it or not, not true of every other kind of municipality that goes back and asks for funding. So thank you also to the staff kind of that administer these programs that help prioritize them for your attention. And thanks to the council for leading on these. It's really a privilege to work with you.

Thank you, Jake. We appreciate your time. We appreciate you coming here tonight.

All right. All yours, Shel.

Ms. Helder. Shelly Helder Gordon Thomas Honeywell governmental affairs to review the state legislative agenda, I believe that starts on page 15 of your packet. And we see right here right right off the BAT. We don't want negativity, budget realities, I think is your way of putting it. And we're just not gonna, we're just gonna think positive that things are gonna be great, great. Floor is yours.

Thank you. Thank you for giving me some time this evening to meet with you all and help the city prepare for the 2027 legislative session. I do have a slide deck. I think Brianna, are you able to pull up the slides? If not, they may be in your packet and I'll just speak to them. I'll get going.

So 23, great.

Okay, there are several topics I wanna cover this evening. I'm gonna start first by looking backwards and just discussing some successes that the city has had historically to give a reminder of what we've done as well as examples of successful projects. and then we'll look forward what we expect from the 2027 session we'll talk about some best practices and guidelines when developing a legislative agenda and then we'll review the city's draft legislative agenda and wrap up to talk talking about next steps So the slide outlines several of the city's successes over the last three biennia. And I'm not going to talk about each one of them, but I want to just pull out some of the observations that I have. The first is that the city's capital budget requests have ranged between $200,000 to $500,000. We've been really consistent in getting an award. nearly every year that we ask for that. So I think that that's worth noting. We've also been successful in continuing to secure funding through the state operating budget for the community partnership program at Western State Hospital. And just last biennium in 2025, we got a bump to the funding for that program, an inflationary increase. And then there are successes that are not listed here, and those, I would say, are more policy areas where we incorporated an amendment into a bill that would have otherwise been more difficult for the city to implement, or we were successful in joining the coalition and defeating legislation that would have been counter to some of the city's priorities. So there have been good successes, and I think it's important to reflect on that as we then start to look forward. So the 2027 session will be a long session, 105 consecutive days. This is the session where the legislature adopts new budgets, so the operating budget, transportation budget, capital budget. And the budget years are the last three years have been challenging because the legislature is having to Adopt budgets in an environment where their costs are rising faster than their revenues. And an environment that local government is familiar with, but is relatively new to the state. I feel pretty confident in saying that Democrats are still going to hold majorities in both chambers in the 2027 session. Because of simply from retirements and legislators choosing to run from other offices, we will have a minimum of a dozen new faces in Olympia. I expect there may be some more than that. Since it is the first year of the two-year cycle, there will be new committee assignments. And with new committee assignments comes potentially new committee chairs, potentially new ranking members, So the committee work will look different in a new biennium. And then each caucus will select their caucus leadership and the majority caucuses will choose the leadership for each chamber. And all of that plays a role in the process and how the legislature identifies what priorities it wants to advance. We already know that I mentioned the 2027 session is going to be a challenging budget year. But I do want to note that the budget that is the most constrained is the operating budget. That's the budget that pays for state operations, one of the primary costs being the education system. The transportation budget is also constrained because its primary revenue source is gas tax, and gas tax continues to decline as vehicles become more fuel efficient. However, the capital budget is funded primarily through state bonds, and so that is a consistent source of funding, and I'll get to that more in a moment. We're starting to hear rumblings about a jobs package, which usually what that means is a compilation of pieces of legislation intended to achieve a certain outcome, in this case, jobs. I imagine it's going to be investments in infrastructure, apprenticeship programs, regulatory reform, kind of a holistic package that probably won't cost any money because they don't have any money. And then which ties into the affordability theme, which the last the last two legislative sessions, affordability, it's like bingo. Like if you put it on your bingo card, you're definitely gonna get it. It comes up in nearly every conversation. And I expect that will continue to be a lens through which the legislature uses to determine which policies to advance. so with that context about what what we do know obviously there's a lot unknown but um some that we do know will happen in 2027. i want to just review some i would call them best practices i just wanted to ask before you get on into too much specifics yeah um you mentioned it in terms of the capital budget the transfer temptation budget

Okay. They're not exactly the same thing, but they are the same thing. When we went to the AWC annual conference, there is a session there and they called it a listening session with legislators about needing more transportation money and of trying to find out whether there was a preference for a road users tax or another way to tax people based on how much they drive being able to go and do that. Okay, so even though that's the least the budget at least under the least stress, I guess, of what I understand, that there just seems to be a, you know, it's kind of like the millionaire's tax is aimed at people, and this is one that's named at people who have electric cars, okay, to be able to go and do that. Is that really something that is getting talked about or just by a few folks in the transportation world?

Great question. I would say the transportation budget writers are leading the conversation about sustainable alternative revenue for the state's transportation budget. Gas tax has historically been kind of the bread and butter of how the transportation budget is funded. And with gas consumption continuing to decline, gas tax revenues continue to decline. And it's not just because of electric vehicles, though that is a big contributor. The state did, and still does, they charge a pretty hefty fee for registration of electric vehicles to compensate for the fact that they're not paying into the gas tax. But it's that every car on the road that's been made within the last decade is more fuel efficient than the cars before. And so as the fleet is becoming newer, it's also becoming more fuel efficient. So there are conversations about alternative transportation revenue. The two concepts that I've heard discussed most Our road usage charge or RUC, which is what you described, that would be based on the miles that you drive. Alternative, it would be a highway user fee or a HUFF. really creative acronyms. And that would be a flat charge, but it would be a tiered rate based on the fuel efficiency of your vehicle, based on the manufacturer's designation. So if you drive a vehicle that gets 20 miles per gallon, you would have a flat fee. If you drive a car that gets 40 miles per gallon, your fee would be higher because you are paying less in gas tax. Those are the two concepts I've heard discussed so far.

I didn't see it in any of the documents that you had here, but I think that with either one of those, that right now, fuel tax, gas tax is a state shared revenue that some of it comes to the city. Whereas none of the proposals that anybody talked about including that in the road users tax or the things over there and whichever one they choose or there was even talk about maybe we'll choose both and give people an option of which one they want. But to make sure that whatever option like that happens includes some way that that revenue gets shared with cities.

Yep. Yep. I'm making a note because I think it's an excellent point. Okay. So some of the best practices when you are adopting a legislative agenda, the first is to keep it focused, which is to choose three to four top priorities. These are issues that are directly impacting Lakewood and issues that are likely not going to advance unless the city takes a leadership role. um the way the city has structured your legislative documents is you have your legislative agenda which has your top three to four priorities and then you have your policy manual and that outlines any number of other issues that the city has a position on but maybe are not the highest priority issues and the policy manual ends up being a resource for staff and for myself to be able to engage in the fast-paced legislative process in um in a timely fashion without having to come before council and and ask do you support this bill or do you not um and so that's that's the function of the policy manual The legislative cycle is a two-year cycle. And so for that reason, we encourage cities to adopt a two-year legislative agenda. So as you're thinking about what the city should prioritize in 2027, think about it, OK, what also do we want to see achieved in 2028 as well? And these are things that Lakewood has done for years. It's just a reminder of why we do what we do. Because the capital budget is the budget that is the most stable, I strongly encourage the city to identify a capital budget request as one of your top priorities. That is the budget that makes investments into local community projects. So that's where we're gonna see potential return on investment. And Lakewood is fortunate to be in two legislative districts. And so that gives you the opportunity, if it makes sense, to make two capital budget requests. In two districts, you won't compete against yourself. So there's opportunity that other jurisdictions may not have who are only in one district. on because both the operating budget and the transportation budget are limited in their resources. I don't advise advancing requests within those budgets. But there are some caveats to that recommendation that I will get to once we review your draft agenda. Um, and then it's really important that a city's legislative agenda be focused on city centric issues. Um, your voice can be amplified most when you're speaking to issues that you work on. It's not to say that the city of Lakewood doesn't have positions on education funding or healthcare, but those don't make sense to be your top priority items that you're advancing in Olympia. Um, and then I, I did not include it on the slide, but I think it's worth noting that it's most successful when legislative priorities have the full support of council and the community. Um, it's difficult to be successful in Olympia if we're coming down there with controversial or, um, issues that have created division within the community. So with that overview, I'll move into describing the draft legislative agenda that you have in your packet. And I'll talk about each one, and you guys are welcome to ask questions, or we can move on and talk about them all at the end, whatever you prefer. So the first potential priority is ongoing funding, and specifically $640,000 for the community partnership program at Western State. And just a minute ago, I said I don't advise making operating budget requests. The exception to that recommendation is for ongoing funding for programs that have historically been included. The city has received this funding every biennium since 2007, and we have not yet been successful at getting this in statute. And so for the funding to be guaranteed again, the legislature has to include it in the operating budget.

So I got to speak. Thank you very much for writing the remarks. Unsuccessful in moving them and the mayor of Medical Lake did a nice job too. Is that something we're gonna take a run at to try to make it permanently or is it just too much effort

so it's a good question and it's it's a little bit of a i think worthy discussion for the council um the the what's changed since last session is the house appropriations chair is now retired and so there will be a new chair of the house appropriations committee that is where the bill has died every time we've run it in the past Just because there's a new chair does not guarantee that the new chair will give the bill a hearing. But perhaps it's worth trying again, I do think within the current budget climate, it makes it even harder to put programs in statute because budget writers are not going to want to obligate themselves to something beyond what they already have as obligations.

I see the benefits of getting into statute. I'm also concerned that we're frozen in the statute without some kind of CPIs, cost escalator. My feeling is, well, you know, you've thrown a curveball now that you said that the appropriations chair, the one who held it up all the time or stopped it. is going to be gone but but when it didn't happen last session i just thought well maybe this is something we should just drop for a little while that's my personal feeling it just seems like a lot of work to try to try to get into statute a lot of effort burning political capital to try to get something that i don't know that we're gonna and for the reasons that you now just stated that despite maybe having a chair that's a little more open to it it's still going to be hard for them to do to say here you automatically get money these guys automatically get money unless we can come up with some kind of I mean what do you think my feeling is to just drop it for now

Well, yeah, that's helpful to hear. I'd be curious what others think. I'll just add that the way the bill is drafted is it does not include a specific dollar amount. So we don't get locked in at a certain level. It essentially puts the program in statute and obligates DSHS within their maintenance budget to fund the program. But the level would be determined between the city and DSHS depending on need.

What do you think, Mike?

Mr. Mayor, I think that this is not a two-year cycle that we should make that effort. I think the best time to renew that effort will be once the new hospital is built and the Western State campus has changed remarkably, hopefully, because then we'll also have more data and more parameters about what what's going on and be able to go and do that while we continue to just on a yearly basis go with an annual appropriation for the community partnership program and then look for the major change like putting something in statute when the new forensic hospital is there and once it's a forensic hospital i don't i don't know what

Does Walla Walla have to, Walla Walla County investigate crimes within the prison? I mean, it's essentially, it's a hospital, but it's essentially going to be a prison. I mean, these are people there because they've committed crimes. When this thing's all said and done, it's people who have committed crimes pre-trial, granted. So I guess the discussion we really need to have is, is it our responsibility to police it? because i i yeah i i i would argue we don't have that responsibility any longer and and perhaps that's a reason to not want it in statute yeah so i think we should just pass on it because we've got other we're going to talk about some other things tonight i think that are going to use up plenty of political capital so thanks

So then the next potential priority would be a capital budget request in the 28th Legislative District. I listed on the agenda two topics that I've heard about in the past, the H Barn at Fort Silicon Park and waterfront access at Camp Murray. But I imagine there are other items that you all may want to elevate. I think the... The, I guess, guidelines that I would set are the average award for a capital appropriation within this category is $800,000. Lakewood has historically received below that because we've come in every year. The projects that receive the higher level, they tend to have off years or off biennia where they don't get an award. So it's a little bit of a pros and cons. Do you want the predictability of having of coming and asking for an award and getting one every year? Or is there a big project that has a big funding gap and you need that help in that particular that particular biennium? The other thing that I'll mention I guess I would say to not focus so much on the dollar amount that's needed and more focus on what is the story behind the project? What is the community need, the community benefit? Where are the other funding sources coming from? That makes for a much better capital budget request than starting with the dollar.

Okay, so we've talked about the HBARN a lot. Just last night. Camp Murray waterfront access. I love that as an idea. But I don't think that we went this year and even asked. We didn't even go through the whatever water access RCO process to even ask for money for that. So, you know, we didn't until we do that. Then like we did with Edgewater Park where we kind of did both.

Yep.

And it's not our problem. Well, yeah, but we're going to pay for the improvements though, right? So until we go to the RCO, I think if I was a legislator, I'd be like, well, how close are you if you haven't even asked for RCO money or whatever or access money or anything? Yeah. I mean, what do you think? I agree with that. We didn't do that, did we? Okay. Did we make any RCO requests this year? Okay.

I do think in years past, we've been successful with local community project grants. Those are like essentially earmarks from the state for projects that already have RCO grants. So to your point, yes, that is a very helpful first step.

Michael?

I think we're very early in the Camp Murray Waterfront Access project and even the visioning that I don't know what sort of an agenda it is, but it isn't to ask for money. It's asked for permission to spend money, to be able to be, you know, ideally we'd like to just annex that piece of land into the city. That would then allow us to have control over that, to be going and do that. But there's a combination about who really can approve that. It's like when we go back to the six years it took to get ownership of Fort Steilacoom Park before they found somebody who was willing to do that. And we ended up with a proviso in the budget. to be able to go and do that. So it's more a question of what kind of ownership use relationship do we want to work towards on that piece of property? In other words, while we would be sensitive to the security needs of Camp Murray, it's not inside their fence, but it's in the footprint on a map that belongs to DNR. And DNR has been transferring properties to local governments to build houses and do other things. And this is as good of, while this isn't for housing, it's for an equally needed Dave Kuntz, purpose, so if there was a way in the agenda, where we could ask to move forward getting that land, at least, at least, at least to us, if not. out wide granted to us and we could tell the legislature and then you would end if you annexed it to us and gave it to us, you'd save money because you wouldn't be spending $20 a year you're spending to maintain it. But that's really the issue with that. That's an important project, but finding the way forward is not for us to sit down and have groups with the community about what could we do with it. It's getting control of the land in a way that we can actually do anything.

Council Member Lindholm.

As I think about the 29th, I don't like the idea of just manufacturing a project that we can ask for. We have yet to complete or even begin or really even contemplate seriously phase three at Wards Lake. That's something that I think about is could we potentially scope something that could be completed in the near term? Maybe that's not feasible. I also think about Springbrook. So I just open up to council. What do we think about those two places as a place that we can focus some effort and potentially some money asking?

Dave Kuntz, yeah the 29th and thank you for providing the map so we're racing ahead here.

Karen Hollweg, yeah now they're there for reference.

Dave Kuntz, But I do, I do want to go back to a couple of policy items. Dave Kuntz, So take a look at page 33 everybody the 28th and 29th dividing line. Dave Kuntz, And if you've got any ideas about what we could ask for in the 29th or for a capital request or do we just pass on it, I don't know.

Well, if I may, let's ask the question about potential more work at Ward's Lake.

Yeah, I don't know. Got to hear from somebody.

Is that a realistic thing that we can contemplate in the shorter term? Because it has to be deliverable in 2029. Is that correct?

Generally, if you're going to make a capital budget request, you want to be able to demonstrate that you can deliver the project within the biennium, though there is an additional two years that the money is available.

So phase three talks about expanding our path access and these types of things, maintenance, these types of things. These are things that we could do for an affordable amount in a shorter period of time. Sorry, I keep eyeing you over there. Yeah.

So this is the first time this council has talked about it. So it's not been a priority. So if council wants to make it a priority, we will shift. our resources to working on that project. I can't give you, exactly, I can't give you a question as to what it would take without fully investigating what that would look like.

I don't know about a phase three, so thank you for bringing that up. I mean, if we got money for the 29th ask, I don't know what to tell you guys. What do you think? Council Member Tubble's laughing at us.

laughing at your facial expression. I guess, you know... Just touching back on Camp Murray for a sec. I mean, we haven't received a recent update on Edgewater Park, and we did receive state money for that park. It's not under construction. I think we're due for some sort of project update. I think it would be awkward to continue to ask for more lake access or other capital, you know, to continue to ask for more lake access on Katmari without demonstrating that we are a reliable partner in delivering Edgewater Park, for which we accepted, for which we asked and we accepted state money for. So I wanted to say that, but over to Council Lindholm's comment, I would be supportive of that because it's been my thought for a while now that we haven't put the investment into the LD 29 section of Lakewood, but really the east part of Lakewood along South Tacoma Way and that strip for some time. We've concentrated our economic development efforts on downtown and downtown and downtown and we We have not had, I think, we have not allowed ourselves to think a little bigger as far as citywide economic development and what can be accomplished in other parts of the city that complement downtown. And so, I guess, so that means that we just, we don't have... it appears at least that we don't have capital needs but we do and we did do recently some repaving but I don't want to necessarily fall off the radar of LD 29 because I don't find that I think we need to stay continue I think we need to continue to stay engaged with them and and also ensure that they are engaged with us because I just don't find that level of engagement from them and I know it's like a such a small part of their district but I would like to see some more mutual acknowledgement, and I i think but i think though that we kind of need some updates on edgewater park first and i think we need to discuss our draft legacy plan as well to get a picture of what we as a city are trying to prioritize in that capital array and our legacy plan and then where phase three of wards park fits into that but

I would agree with that. I think we need to get back to you on the 29th ask. Because I didn't know there was a phase three Wards Lake. Maybe I'm the only one here. Suddenly I'm beginning to wonder. Because I might have fallen asleep or something.

I don't know.

I don't think that.

But anyway, go ahead. thank you mr mayor i also was not fully aware of a phase three for wards lake but that's that's on me for not reading the plan and i will definitely look at it to see what's there because i do think the northeast section of our city does need more attention uh and this is a good way to do that i just don't know that we're necessarily ready for that now because we haven't gone through that wish we could just bank that goodwill for when we are ready to try and get more funding for it. But our international district and Wards Lake, the area around Pierce Transit, there's certainly opportunities all in that section of the city where we could build more infrastructure and promote business and really Make it feel like even more of the city of Lakewood, as opposed to being out on the periphery. I will note that Springbrook is not part of the 29th.

It looks like the 29th delegation really helped us in Springbrook. Councilmember Lindholm and then I'll go to Pearson.

Yeah, just very quickly, this could be as simple, because anytime we talk about something we haven't talked about before, it can feel like, gosh, we're entering a whole new planning phase, and that can feel scary. This could be as simple as we're going to spend $500,000, $700,000, $800,000 to expand trail access into Wards Lake, according to the Wards Lake, the Phase 3 plan. It could be that simple. So I don't know that we're necessarily talking about less time. I don't always want to speak for our staff, of course, but it doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think to not lose sight of the, you know, the opportunity that we have for two separate funding asks, you know, one in the 28th and one in the 29th, it would be helpful, I think, when we are talking about, you know, our plans on what we're doing to make sure that we have focus on the two different areas where we have two opportunities for funding i think that it would be because we do get focused on our downtown sub area the transportation district you know these these different areas that are not not in the 20 you know so i think that if we can always keep an eye on at least a few a handful of projects to be aware of that we can kind of keep pushing all the time that we do have a list and we do have an ask or or something i think that'd be helpful to almost break them out as to like here's our legislative agenda for this district here's our legislative agenda for this district and that way we never lose sight of oh here's our top five well all five of them are not in this district right so it might be helpful

You know, I think that in the realm of consistency, we have actually every year asked for something in each district. We haven't always asked for something that's with a big cost. You know, I think that last year, with the thing we were trying to ask for them to fund a second sign for the city over there on the intersection of 96th and South Tacoma Way. We never really got Senator Conway to see that one. In the past, the 29th has been really supportive of a number of things that have happened. When I first came on the council, this building was in the 29th district. It's the growth in population in Parkland and Spanaway that has caused those lines to to shift over to what they are now and actually took Springbrook out of the 29th district of where they did a good deal of funding to help us with things in that part. But now, but that, you know, Ward's Lake Park is a place that we have a plan for. It has a number of plans that can be implemented, elements that can be implemented incrementally. And I think that we should analyze that and see which one of those would really make sense to try to move forward in the next biennium. And to do that. So we don't have to think big, but we have to think consistency of constant improvement of the 29th district area of Lakewood. And that's the story and message that we sell to. And there's going to be at least one or if not two or even three

three new that delegation is kind of odd exactly of how you're going to work it's pretty sure it'll be democratic but it's unsure exactly who um it'll be so we'll come up with something for you on wordslake and an ask how about the 28th district the 28th personally i think we just have the barn is the only one that's right um the the other thing isn't or what we're talking about at Camp Murray. And I'm with Council Member Talibot. I'm increasingly concerned about Edgewater Park. We brought in millions of dollars, and we're not hearing much. And so I don't know if we need some help, outside help, to help us get this thing moving. But it's getting, I mean, I don't know. We haven't heard anything. And we have millions and millions towards that. And I don't know what to tell you as we go into the legislative session if we're going to need extra time or not.

Mr. Mayor, I guess that I would say I would not. I would hope that we're sort of at the end of having to go and make repeated asks around the H1. I think the 28th district ask we need to be thinking back to our discussion with Mr. Johnson is that. Dave Kuntz, We need to ask for some money to do some planning around bridgeport way, because when we get around to wanting to a year from now be asking for some. Dave Kuntz, Federal build grant, we have to build upon what we're doing with the green street new federal money, but we also have to start spending some time doing some planning about bridgeport from. 108th Street to that over there. And it's not the same thing as Bridgeport Way multimodal improvements. I think we're moving away from that into trying to develop a corridor focus of the development on Bridgeport Way. And so asking for some money on the 29th or from the 28th, rather, from the 28th, to do some of that planning, I think would be a legitimate ask if we can make the amount palpable.

What is a good pot to ask for that from? Is it transportation dollars, or is it... Well, I guess I'm... Or is it...

Yeah, you said it's not multimodal. It's not multimodal.

It's a... I guess I would ask Councilmember Pearson to better describe it, but it's more comprehensive. It's a combination of aesthetics to build that corridor so that it's more robust for economic development, but that it is... And, you know, you've got a lot of ways as a gateway into the city to be able to go and do that.

So, yeah, it's really the Pearson Parkway. So we really need to, we don't know, right? So we do have to plan, but right now we are not ready for January to explain why. So I'll let. I don't know that this is ripe yet, but right.

But well, based on what's been described so far, it would be the transportation budget.

But there are I mean, what There are regional mobility grants under WSDOT that do fund planning studies, and that would actually probably be better. It would be better to go for those planning study grants first and then come with a capital ask for planning because I think, because my view of state money is that they want to use that, they want to see that money get spent on the construction.

yes they want they want it to be able to be towards a benefit to the public as soon as possible so planning is not as how do we get one of those planning things that she's talking about the the grant we want one of them planning The grant program that was referenced, it's through WSDOT. It's funded through the state transportation budget. But it's, I say it's simple, it's as simple as the city applying for the grant program.

So we're back to the barn, which is the only thing really that's right. Council member Laura.

So thank you, Mr. Mayor. When I think of the 20th district, I think about our city goals and priorities that we put out there. One of the big things is parks and lakes access. I think one of the things that's restricting us from rolling out a bunch of street and improvements is finances. maybe that would be a good opportunity for us to ask for additional support from the state to access state-owned lakes for the people of the state of Washington that come to Lakewood to access those. What do you think?

I'll leave that for the group. We only have one in the queue right now. We've got plenty of others that we can work on. We just need to choose what the next one is. Then we have time to do that. They're all in the 28th. What do folks think about that?

I mean, if the question is, do we want money to develop our street ends? Yes. Is that what we're asking?

There's also sources like we use for edgewater though right water access monies that we didn't ask for this time around. So we could queue that up, but it would be two years out again. So, but we can queue up another one and because they're a half.

What are they, what does it cost us to build the one I was initially funded or requested 400 K and I think we're up to a million and we haven't broken ground yet. So, okay. Yeah.

But when we Back when we were planning a number of years ago, the idea was to sequentially keep do one, then do another one, then do another one, not wait years in between them. And so it's, you know, we're at West like of where The contract to do it is out for bids. So whether the next one is the lake end of Lake Louise, whether it's the Lake City Boulevard, whether it's on American Lake, whether it's another one on Lake Steilacoom, you know, it's a question. And those projects that Louise learned have like a three-year life cycle because you've got to,

identify it you've got to then you've got to design it then you've got to convince the public it's a good idea and then they can do it yeah so we would between now and the legislative session have to identify so we've got two i mean at least two homework assignments We're assuming that we've got enough money for the barn or actually there is enough money for the barn if if but I think that partners for parks is applying for a grant with Department of Commerce. I don't know what their chances are. We just discussed that last night so You know,

Well, it doesn't have to be decided tonight. The intent is to start the conversation and for you all to hear from one another. But I think it's a good beginning to the discussion. And we can chase down some of these ideas and see what comes of it. So we talked about the capital budget. The transportation budget I mentioned is also constrained. And so I don't think there is a lot of opportunity there. But I do think that it makes sense to have, if there is a project that is important to the city, that we know what that is. Because as Council Member Branstetter brought up, there are conversations about alternative revenue sources. And while I... They're designed, they're intended to be a backfill of the declining gas tax. There is a potential that there will be revenue in the future that budget writers may choose to program out for projects. So I don't expect there to be funding for projects in this upcoming biennium, at least not projects that are new, that haven't been in the queue for a while. But there may be a way to get in the queue for future projects down the road. So it's more like we start planting the seed now for potential project award in the future. So I want to to put that out there as an option. We haven't had on the city's legislative agenda a transportation request in several years, and that's partly because a really big request was the I-5 corridor, and that work has now been underway and is almost completed. Previously, you spoke about the I-5 Nisqually Delta. I'll just add a little bit more update that I recently learned. WSDOT is working towards completing the NEPA review and it's supposed to be completed this fall. and my understanding is that that will allow them to then identify what the preferred alternative is for the bridge design whether it's the 6 000 foot span or the 12 000 foot span and that will give us a better ballpark of how many billions the bridge will cost um the wash dot is the lead agency for the project and they're saying that the need in this upcoming biennium to keep the project moving forward is 37 million um that's a large chunk of change and it is a massive it is a massive project with a lot of regional support and statewide benefit so um i guess i'll i'll leave it there for for your discussion

That sounds good. I mean, we're supportive of the project. But I mean, yeah. That sounds like it's making its way through. So that's positive and we don't have to get too involved, I don't think. Council Member Talbot.

ask a question about where does the Washington high speed rail project stand in the priority of the transportation budget I know I think it was last session or it could have been before there was like 50 million dedicated to the planning phase of that project but that project is so far off yeah to say the least so I Where is the impetus, if at all, coming from the push for that project coming from at this point?

That's a good question. I don't know if there's like a particular stakeholder or entity that is pushing for it. I think the high speed rail in general is something that a lot of the budget riders that transportation budget riders are really intrigued in or intrigued about and want want to see it happen in Washington um so it's not to say that there aren't stakeholders pushing for it I'm not I'm just not aware of who they are and I know the budget writers are are very interested yeah okay thank you and I don't want to deter or

Too much. I only asked, though, because if if there's any way that we can at least accentuate the exclamation mark in our in our support for the Nisqually project that we support it with with You know that that it that it is a critical need that it is a critical piece of infrastructure, and you know we we want to we are highly supportive of critical infrastructure that as opposed to brand new. and that we shouldn't be in competition so much. I mean, critical infrastructure should be funded first, especially that that is, you know, serving critical defense, et cetera, et cetera. So I guess I'm just trying to say I don't want to lose out to those that are highly advocative of less critical infrastructure.

yeah yeah i maybe i just want to clarify there is no money allocated to the project in the upcoming biennium and the need is 37 million so it is a very heavy lift yeah i think maybe the example of the california high speed rail project should give everybody pause as to

how to go about major projects like that. And that's, I'm being really nice. I mean, it might be one of the single, it apparently is just a jobs program, right? Just for people to work out in the ag areas and to make money in construction. That's all it seems like, that nobody believes it's ever gonna be a decent rail system. So they're really gonna have to go to work on it. And everybody likes, yeah, everybody likes trades. Okay, so we're kind of, so what else you got for us?

The last, I would say, bucket for consideration of a potential priority would be a policy priority. And I listed two. You don't have to have any, but the two that I mentioned are, or that I included on the draft agenda. First is public defense, and I should have left out the word funding. I don't expect funding to actually be a possibility in the upcoming session, but I do think there could be a path forward on perhaps revisiting what those caseload standards are. And the only reason I say that is because the caseload standards have been set by a national study and there is not a Washington specific study that supports the standards. And so perhaps doing the legislature funding a study to look at what the standards should be for Washington is a path forward. it could backfire. It could come back and say that actually the caseloads need to be even lower.

Where's AWC on this? Because I think we just are going to line up with...

so awc is there they haven't finished their legislative agenda setting process but so far they they have discussed this um and they're kind of of the mindset that the state has an obligation to fund this at whatever the caseloads are um so there i wouldn't say that they're advocating for a study to change the caseloads yeah i would i'm personally and and you know we've got an aspiring lawyer over here but um

but I'll put my one-year business law classes up. I would say we are behind AWC on this. My feeling is nobody has said otherwise that it's not a state obligation. The only people who say that are people in the state legislature who don't want to fund it. Everyone else says, oh, yeah, it's supposed to be funded. We're with AWC on that. That's where I would go with this.

Councilmember Lindholm, please. Am I right in thinking that this was established by the Supreme Court, not the legislature?

Yeah.

So can the legislature change it?

Good question. Potentially, but not without perhaps some legal repercussions, which is why kind of the baseline assumption is okay, well, we just they just have to fund it. The conversation about perhaps looking at different caseloads hasn't really ever surfaced. And so that's why this idea of a study to provide some weight behind it is emerging.

Do we have any sense as to whether the legislature wants to take on a case like this?

I mean, I think to the mayor's point, if there is an opportunity for them to not have to spend as much money for the bill to be a little bit lower, there may be interest.

Yeah, that would be true, right? If they felt any indication that they were going to foot that bill. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you.

So no on that one, which is great. I love the clear direction.

Is there anything else we can do in public defense that's not that?

Within your policy manual, you already have the statement that says we want the state to fully fund the state's obligation. So I think that will already be our guiding light. I think the question is, if we elevate it, what do we elevate it to? And other than this concept, I haven't heard of anything else that is politically feasible.

Okay, thank you. Okay, Mike, we're coming up on an hour, so we need to, Mike, go ahead.

The only one new item that I think that I'd like to put into the policy manual and it's has to do with sound transit. And I think that we should be in opposition. I think the community would like us to be in opposition of the legislature granting sound transit any additional Dave Kuntz, avenues of funding to Texas, you know, in successive years, the legislature allowed sound transit to have property tax where they never could. And then it allowed them to increase some things. And they keep talking about, well, we're still, and they're going to the legislature and asking to sell 99-year bonds, you know, to be able to go and do that, which is going on, which just creates public debt, okay, to be able to go and do that. And I think that until Sound Transit can demonstrate that they are actually, a responsible building of transportation infrastructure, the legislature should just not stop accepting the excuse, with more money we can be less inept. Okay. And that we should be, that we don't want any additional funding structures to go to sound transit without them coming up with something that it would indicate to do that. And I think that the legislatures, past legislatures for the past four years have been, if sound transit says, well, we need a new tax, they've just said, okay.

Do we need to do that? I mean, are they asking for money this go around?

I do know there was a bill last session, and I know it will be coming back for Sound Transit to have authority for longer bonds.

Yeah, I'll just leave it to the rest of the group. I mean, if they do 99 years, I'll tell you, at current interest rates, with the 30-year rates and long-term rates going up worldwide, And then wanting 99 years, they will pay dearly for that. The taxpayers will pay dearly for 99-year bonds. They'll sell them, but it's going to be at a price because there's not much of a market for 99. And the people who want it will name their price and it'll be... one of the dumbest ideas that has ever come out i think they're actually they're looking at 75 years 75 but maybe the principle still applies yeah yeah well good luck i mean i mean no we're we're opposed to that just because it's reckless i i'll just say it's reckless it's just But we'll put in our manual if that's okay with you guys and we want to see you and i'll tell you i'll post just about anything I want us to have a seat on the board and we'll have that discussion. The Council member table brought it up, we used to have a seat on the board, now the seat is. at Fircrest, for God's sakes, and we want a seat on the board. And I can't speak for the other six members, but we are essentially opposed to anything Sound Transit wants until we get our seat on the board, and then we can have a discussion about that. We want a seat on the board.

Sound Transit legislative policy.

Well, Vargas, when he comes down, but yeah, we're not crazy about 99-year bonds.

The last thing that I will mention is I have started hearing rumblings about legislation about less restrictive alternatives. And the city already has a statement in the policy manual about wanting the state to work towards geographic equity and discharge from state facilities. One of the challenges with that has been that there aren't adequate facilities all around the state. When other communities hear that facilities can be sited in their backyard, there's a lot of resistance. legislation that is being circulated or potentially developed at this point would give cities I guess more discretion over where within their jurisdiction that an LRA or type LRA type facility would be cited but it would basically say it has to come into your jurisdiction and so I wanted to float it by you all to see if that's something you would want to proactively support. We already have guidance in our policy manual to support it, but is this something that should be elevated to a priority?

What kind of facility are you talking about?

So an LRA, less restrictive alternative, is a facility that is kind of, I guess, a step down from the Special Commitment Center. So it could house someone that has already served treatment for being a sexually violent predator, someone who is just experiencing behavioral health challenges and is an alternative to a total confinement at a state facility. um trying to think of the the third individual but essentially it's a it's a confined facility that is not total confinement so 16 bits so do we end up with all that's an enhanced service facility which is a type of lra yeah and we already have one of those yeah um

I don't know. I mean, they all go into adult family homes now. We had a guy first day in stabbing people in his adult family home. So the state's clearly putting dangerous people into adult family homes, into neighborhoods. We have a group of folks that have let our delegation know that they think that with adult family homes, they want some kind of geographic equity on that. We're fully in support of that, but I don't know that we're going to lead on that. But there's really good reasons why, you know, if you drove around my neighborhood and saw that Eventually, I think every other house will be an adult family home. So to deny that they're ghettoizing these people is wrong. So I think we would be supportive of that. I don't know because I worry that we'll just get all those facilities. So, you know, part of me is like, should we just stay out of that fight? And if Snohomish isn't allowing them, we just start putting on, you know, moratoriums on stuff and tell and do whatever anybody else does.

I don't know.

So love to hear other people's opinions.

So the the lra so what's can you go through that again, so we have Western state and there's other lesser levels of those and and they want them in the same area that there's other. facilities or or i guess i would i would just generally be opposed to any more facilities in lakewood like they need to be spread around elsewhere we can't just be having tiers one through four of all of the facilities in lakewood because we have a big one that you know now you have to have all these outer rings of smaller ones it's like can we

push stuff away right we don't we're at our capacity on dealing with you know challenges i don't think we need to have little lesser scales of challenges as we move through the city so yeah yeah i i think the the the challenge that lakewood has faced in in achieving geographic equity is that there is there are not facilities in other portions of the state because other communities are using other tool i don't know what tools they have to prevent facilities from being cited and so in order for their

never even come we've always been scared of moratoriums and so and and part of me is just like i'm so done with with all this stuff yeah and being lied to actually or being misled i guess i mean we were told that they were going to build more mental health facilities all around the state of washington then the people from western state were here they said yeah they built it in vancouver the one and they didn't fund the operations of it. I don't know what they did with the one in Snohomish County, but we were promised all that. And instead they're ending up in adult family homes for a fact. I mean, this guy was probably, so I mean, if this council's ready, we can just keep on more, just start writing moratoriums. on everything, and then everything can go to Superior Court. So if you want to do something, okay, we'll just go into Superior Court. We'll lose. They can build it. Then we'll slap on the moratorium again, and we'll go through the routine every damn time. And we'll do it with adult family homes pretty soon, too, because we're just not getting any satisfaction at all. It's really bad. And the state misled us. in that they were going to do all this stuff, and instead, you know, it's just gotten worse. So I don't know what else I'm looking for anybody else involved. We have played incredibly nice. The city has not wanted to use, because they didn't want to appear to be anti-business or whatever, they've never wanted to use moratoriums. Mike?

Dave Kuntz, I think, though, the question is held there is is really asking us that if there is legislation introduced in the legislature that is going to limit. The ability of other municipalities around the state. To refuse to cite such facilities, you know, we should be supportive of that legislation so that the state can, in fact. do all around the state what DSHS has done to us, if you will, which will maybe won't cause us to have fewer facilities, but that's the real thing to try to discourage or slow down the pace of our growth. And so if the legislature can do some things that takes discretion away from communities around the state to disallow them, we should be in favor of that.

Yeah, but I think we need some wording in any legislation like that that protects us. So we'll leave that to you, you're the lawyer. We haven't had a discussion around flock safety cameras. I'm assuming from a meeting I went to at AWC that there's going to be people who are going to be fairly worked up over flock safety cameras. I believe, and again I'm not speaking for all six of us, that it has been a very powerful tool to catch criminals who have committed crimes, felonies, and whatnot. Our police claim they have evidence that they could show us at a legislative session of how many people they've caught, not just stolen cars, but people who were wanted for crimes. At AWC, I went to a meeting, got heated because there were people that knew somebody that had a friend that knew somebody that was related to somebody that got picked up. By ice and they there's this assumption that it's always flock, but this flock is just catching all these people. It's all anecdotal information. Well, we have actually crime statistics to prove that our crime numbers have drawn So I think they did a good job last time and helping us on the public record side. I think it was really positive. And there's probably some skosh room, but if they want to complete ban or I'm opposed to it. I don't know about everybody else, but I don't know how many you know that that's how I feel it's just it's just I think we're running into a lot of anecdotal evidence that. it's possible that somebody might have seen something and. We just don't know none of it's been shown to be true that it actually led to any arrests by ice, but we have evidence that it's worked for us so. Anything else for the good of the order. City Council Chambers.

Thank you. Just briefly, are there places where we would be at an advantage to partner with our neighboring jurisdictions in an approach to the legislative agenda. So working with university place or DuPont or Steilacoom to have a stronger voice from multiple groups.

I mean, yes, it's always good to partner with other jurisdictions. I think it makes most sense, probably, as I think through the items we've discussed this evening for the Nisqually River Delta project. I think that is one that having a regional support for makes a big difference. um but in terms of priorities outside of what we discussed tonight i think the capital requests are kind of definitely specific to um to lakewood and um yeah other jurisdictions have though i do think there is benefit to particularly stilicum from the community partnership program um there hasn't been engagement from neighboring jurisdictions on that okay thank you

Pearson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Not a question for you, Shelley, but more so something for us to think about. Shelley mentioned that other jurisdictions, they don't come every single year after year for small asks, and they'll have a focused larger ask every handful of years or three years or whatever. Not on a cycle, right? Not every year or every other year. And I think that We get a little bit too much. We're trying to focus on what can our projects be instead of having our city staff and and us focus on what is the big project or what is our, our ultimate priority that we want to do versus Hey, you know, can we drum up a project request in the 29th right like that's kind of a weird way to go about it. You know, we should be focusing on what are our priorities and how do we get our priorities you know we don't need to come every single year with an ask if that's not part of our structure you know our strategic plan to get xyz project done in four years it's not going to be to come with an ask this year or next year or the year after we're going to have one big ask in 2028 or 2029 but it also allows our city staff The ability to focus on a finite number of projects, rather than being so spread out with you know oh there's you know we did get some funding for six or seven little projects and now they're spending a bunch of time doing little things I mean just potentially but. i i think that if we can focus in on on the the projects that we really want to commit to versus trying to drum up ideas for asks you know i think that we would we'd probably fare better and i think that um would end up seeing these projects actually come to fruition sooner unlike what's happened with with edgewater that's kind of yeah, we got this money, but now we're asking for other monies to do other things and we still haven't, you know, we still haven't finished the one thing that we started, right? So that's just my kind of general opinion on that.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. And I think that's why they have to be shovel ready. But anyway.

All right.

Mike.

Since COVID, the legislature has become more reclusive in terms of trying to get in front of them to testify or even send them a letter to be able to go and do that. Is that gonna ease or is it gonna get even more, restrictive to be able to go and do that. I know you had to do quite a bit of work just to on the occasions when one of us wanted to come and testify to get us to just be able to have a seat in the room to see whether there was going to be enough time to get everybody who was going to testify. But is that going to

I don't anticipate the access to public testimony from anywhere and anyone. I don't anticipate that shifting back to pre-COVID. So it used to be that you had to be in person to testify, and now you can testify virtually from anywhere. I don't think that that will change. There's some major renovations that are being done in Olympia on the offices where the house members sit in the John L. O'Brien building. I'm really curious to see how, based on the new footprint of that office, how they restrict access because we've the last since covid we haven't been able to walk into offices and visit with legislative assistance it's required an appointment in order to get in the door um i i don't know if that's going to continue with the new building design but we'll find out okay and are there any through the remainder of this calendar year any um legislative

meetings, agendas, opportunities to testify before the session begins that we should be aware of?

um committees will start um there will be committee action days in the first week of december um and that's i like to think of it as like a back to school night for the legislature it's like everyone comes to olympia the committees meet they do work sessions so they talk about various topics they expect to hear bills on for session so depending on the agendas for those work sessions there may be an opportunity Those work sessions, though, are typically staff presenters. So if it is if there is an opportunity for Lakewood, it would be likely a staff presenter on a particular topic.

OK, OK.

I think any other questions from Ms. Helder?

Thank you very much. And we have some homework to do, so we'll take care of that before the session. Thank you. Thank you. OK, Michael Vargas. What page are you starting on here, Michael? Was 70, 59, something like that? 57. 57. Pocket.

so good evening mayor deputy mayor council members uh here to go over your um pierce county manual here um now honestly i'll just open up the discussion uh with the following um you know unlike the other two policy areas if you will the federal and the state policy areas you know we don't really legislatively advocate for county policies to the same degree we do with the other two, if you will. Right. You know, we don't put the same time and resources into sort of pursuing those county policies. So it does ask the question, you know, do we need a county policy manual? And if we do, you know, if the council, you know, chooses to keep one What are really those, again, to follow the agenda model, those top three to four policy, you know, bona fide requests, if you will, that we would actually go out and advocate for with our, you know, our county body here, especially with our county council members. So I'll just open the door with that. And yeah, let's leave it at that.

Okay, looking for some opinions on county. I mean, we now are joined at the hip on the URA, but Councilmember Pearson, do you want to say anything about sewers? Is this something that we should talk about with the county council or is it going to work itself out? Okay. Does anybody have any county specific ideas? I mean, we have a pretty long Council Member Lauricella, please get us started here.

Thank you, Mayor Boeke. The only things I can off the top of my head think of with county is the potential for transfer of ownership of properties like Seeley Lake. There's another large property adjacent to McCord, east of I-5, north of Springbrook that is county property that might be attractive to us. Let's look at the map, I think. Yeah, it's a big piece of property out there. I think those are both really good. Yeah. And the other piece that I've been involved with other representatives in the county is the climate sustainability group and making sure that We're continuing to be a part of that, but I don't know if that's necessarily something that goes into a legislative agenda. But it's continuing to support that. Yeah, I actually get asked about Seatley Lake by people, interestingly enough, and it's not really a lake, but it is what it is, I guess.

and people ask me like are you gonna get and and there are improvements that we could make to even had somebody at the county you know said oh once you get a hold of it you know you have to improve the trail because a portion of it water for a good portion of the year so yeah so i we do want that and the question is do we want the adjoining property yeah or are we going to let them knock it down the community center and the lake property basically all of the counties

property that's right there, I think we would have an interest in making better for our community.

This other property?

I can show you. Okay.

Councilmember Talbot.

Yeah, I would support that. I would support whatever we can do to acknowledge and come, even if it's a joint master maintenance plan of Seeley Lake, you know, whatever I mean, it sounds like we still need to get to a final word or some sort of conclusion with what we're either jointly doing or not doing with the community center. But I feel like that is something that would be good to reach a conclusion on. by the end hope you know ideally by the end of the year but at least by the end of 2027 because that conclusion is also related to the vision that we have for other things so we need we need to understand that but if we aren't going to do something with the community center property I do think that it's worth talking with the county on some sort of joint maintenance plan for Seeley Lake because just letting it go neglected and doing this stuff is not providing a safe space in that area.

You got that, Michael? So we want to talk about the transfer of both those properties. It's not, I mean, we'll worry about the details later if the community center becomes problematical for us or them. But we really want Sealy Lake.

So a land transfer item focused on Sealy Lake, perhaps to include the community center, but that needs to have a ribbon tied around it first.

I would look at those as two different things. I do want to say that We have increased our cooperation with the county over the years. We're in shape. We're now in the URA. So I think on the homeless side, we've done that. Opioid ones, we've gone on our own. But the one that I'm thinking, and I do this, and with the caveat, I'm on the floor, right? And I kind of hear it tangentially, but I stay out of it. We pay into the behavioral health and therapeutic courts tax, but I don't know because of certain things certain. I think ways we've handled our business, for instance, we don't have a first responder have the mental health person who has helped and we're we're very, very proud of that, but there are other you know higher. or more intensive kind of behavioral health interventions that are available through the behavioral health. And I don't know that we've been engaged, and I don't know what we get back from that. Everyone pays into it. Tacoma went, everyone else pays into the county and then the county doles out these funds, but I don't know where we're at and how much stuff that we're getting out of it. So I think, I don't know who, if there's a board, I think, and I don't know if we have anybody on the board from our city. So I think we should put about something about engaging on behavioral health and With the county to help improve services and in the city of Lakewood what that means I don't know. Sure we're paying into this thing.

So there's an item already in the manual that kind of speaks to that point actually discretionary spending of public health resources referencing that tax so yeah I mean keeping that item sort of expanding on it yeah.

Chambers Creek Canyon is great. That's still in there. Seeley Lake was in there last time, but I think maybe a little bit stronger language around that. And then the Camp Murray boat launch, I guess, is in there because is it in the county? Is that why?

Sort of a leftover item, yeah. I mean, we do talk about annexation further in the manual, I mean, earlier, so.

Council Member Pearson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

The Lakewood Library is in here, and I fully support what we do have. I would almost say if there's like a – we talked about the – conservation futures last night as a potential and I don't know if that would be something worthwhile of putting in here that we would entertain an ila with the with the pierce county library system. or explore you know conservation futures to somehow kind of make this always dedicated as an open space protecting the gary oak you know stands that are there and making it a a passive recreation or a little bit of an active recreation with you know in the areas that were parking lot or whatever so you know somehow kind of building that all into into um there that would be my only i guess maybe tweak to it do you have a question michael

So on that point council members are referencing this interim public park sort of item. underneath the lakewood libraries. Page 64.

yeah yeah the yeah yep so it'd be the interim public park that could be accomplished through an ila or if we can get it through conservation futures and you know then it's dedicated as open space or whatever they have to i don't know that process but it sounded like that may be a potential

So that request be towards. The pierce county library system or towards the county right I was actually going to bring this item up because we have had it was.

The county controls the the conservation futures right correct but. But the library needs to be a willing seller whatever However, that works that so there's kind of two facets to that is is why I would understand.

Yeah, but then the question becomes, should this be in a county manual aimed at, well, you know, with the audience being the county government, right?

The county government is the ultimate authorities. Right. We don't have our other conservation futures in there either. They're the ones that approve it, so.

Yeah. Nice. Okay. But we haven't. Yeah, we need to decide on what stuff we want to put in there, though, right? We could talk about disposition of the property and that we're interested in making it for public use or something like that. I see the community health and resilience. I really want that changed because it just talks about public, like we're talking about the health department. It needs to be behavioral health and stronger in that way. Something like that. Rather than public health to be directed more towards the health department. Okay, that's my ask.

I'm teasing out items to keep at this point, right? So it's sounding like the land transfer to the lake, an item to do with the conservation futures grant for that interim park improvement, if you will, behavioral health. Chambers Creek Canyon, just to touch upon that, looking at that position there, if that's still the council's

What page is that on?

That's on page 69 of your packet. Because it talks about supporting the continued partnership there to improve the trail. But it also talks about sort of a conservation piece with increasing salmon population and all that. So just sort of looking for confirmation to keep that item as language.

yeah i mean there is some movement now on the bridge down below and therefore the the eventual dam removal at the mouth of chambers creek and you have to be really careful about that i was at a meeting and they're like oh they're taking out the it's like no you know you have to jump on it right away um so yeah you just kind of update that a little bit but yeah we're supportive of the partnership with the county to improve the the trail and also working on conservation efforts because that's another one we may end up doing instead.

Okay. So I'll add that item. So yeah, I'm looking at those four items really to keep and par this down to the more concentrated agenda, if you will. Yep.

Yeah. Give it a shot. Anybody, anything else for the good of the order and the County agenda? Yeah. Yeah. So updating some of the language and then you're going to keep some of the other stuff in there too, or no, or that's the plan.

Yeah. So sort of the sport items we talked about that would compromise the agenda really, since these are actually, you know, action items that we can, you know, you as a council can meet with, you know, um, representatives with the County and actually advocate for and yeah.

Okay. Any other questions for Michael suggestions. Great. Thank you, Michael.

Of course, thank you.

Okay, we have some homework to do. It sounds like for this on the state stuff, trying to figure out how much money we should ask for and Precisely what we should ask for words like and

Yeah, I'll go back and dive into them. Some of the stuff I was looking at looked like it incorporated phase three into the project we did. So I'll go back and I'll see what there is or see if there's an option to add on.

Yeah, maybe.

So let me get that back. I'll also give you an update on Edgewater Park. It's still moving through design and permitting right now. Last update I'd sent out was anticipated construction in 28. So we're working it into the budget. So it has not stalled. So, but we'll get more of that status up there. I'll also send out the potential for what potential street ends could be that next project if we want to look at one of those.

Yeah, that's maybe where we end up going.

So those are the things I had noted down here to get information back out to the council with.

Yeah, we might want to look at two and three on priority list on the street ends. Because if we could get half a million or something for it,

Yeah, I think we were at around 7 to 750, I think was the number we're at on that right now.

Yeah, we should probably discuss that.

So that's information I'll get back out to council.

Okay, Council Member Branstetter.

I do know that we were able to... Dave Kuntz, Combine a number of items into the words late project that were originally planned to be phased differently, but there are some things, but I think that Councilmember Lindholm. Dave Kuntz, suggestion about by moving the. we can connect into the trail system by going just from Ward's Lake Park across 84th, down four blocks, down Pine Street, and then to hook into the city of Tacoma's trail system that then takes you all the way downtown actually, able to go and do that. And to look at what that would entail would add an asset that's actually been asked for. People have been asking about how is Lakewood involved in the regional trail system? And the answer has been not much yet. The bridge across Chambers Creek so that you can go up into Kobayashi Park is about the only thing we've done. It's just that you got to get down to the creek first.

Yeah. Well, let us know we don't want to force feed. boards lake. Right, I mean if we don't have something we don't have something but.

i'll get some information at Council.

All right, anything else for the good of the order enjoy Labor Day. three weeks. But there's a lot to do there's something tomorrow night right. I think Deputy Mayor Bell has promised me that she would be at the Neighborhood Association meeting tomorrow night. Because I don't know that I can keep going. Is anybody going to the Neighborhood Association meeting tomorrow night? Fort Steilacoom Park Neighborhood Association. I think it's at the... At 7. It says 7. Oh. And then after that, Tuesday the 8th, yeah. But the youth council kickoff then is the next thing at 2 o'clock on Saturday. And I should be able to make that. So there's nothing Thursday and Friday. Okay. I'm going to adjourn. Okay.