City Council - Regular Meeting

Good

evening, and welcome to the Tuesday, 03/24/2026 regular business meeting of the Olympia City Council. For the record, we have a quorum with all council members present tonight. So before we move on, I just wanna mention that we will not be having any business meetings until Tuesday, April 14. We are not scheduled for a business meeting next week nor the following week due to the spring break, and we'll return here in the chambers on April 14. So with that, I need a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

Move approval. Second.

All those in favor of the agenda as published signify by saying aye.

Aye.

We have an agenda. So our first item tonight is two a, which is special recognition swearing in of our police chief, Shelby Parker. And so I'm gonna invite up Jay Birney, our city manager, for a few comments. AJ.

Thank you, mister mayor. Council members again, for the record, Jay Bernie, city manager. As the mayor said, I'm here tonight for a very exciting occasion as we welcome Shelby Parker to her new role as chief of police for the city of Olympia. Chief Parker brings more than two decades of dedicated public service to our community. She has served her entire career with the city of Olympia.

She has consistently demonstrated a commitment to leading with integrity, listening, and responding to our community's public safety priorities and always seeking a balanced approach to keeping our community safe while moving our community members towards wellness. Chief Parker leaves with optimism and is dedicated to strengthening relationships both within and outside the city organization. She has successfully built partnerships across Olympia, fostering trust through dialogue, collaboration, and responsiveness. Chief Parker's leadership philosophy emphasizes equity, connection, and shared responsibility for community safety and well-being. She is committed to advancing Olympia's public safety goals through innovation, transparency, and accountability, while supporting the dedicated professionals in the Olympia Police Department to make sure they have the tools and resources they need to serve this community and stay safe and healthy.

During her interim role over the past year, Shelby has led the department through challenging issues, demonstrating care for the community and her staff while building trust along the way. She graduated from the FBI National Academy and the Police Executive Research Forum's Senior Management Institute for Police and holds an executive level career certificate from the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, which is the highest level of professional certification offered in the state of Washington. Shelby is uniquely qualified to be Olympia's next police chief, and I couldn't be more pleased to welcome her into this new role. I also think it is fitting to acknowledge that March is Women's History Month. In a profession and a position that is held primarily by men, I'm honored to welcome Chief Parker as the first female chief in the history of our department.

With that, I would like to ask Chief Parker to come forward to introduce her family in attendance. I'm then gonna administer her oath. We'll do a pinning ceremony, invite her to make some remarks, and then I'll turn it over to the council. Chief, come on up.

Good evening, everybody. To say that I'm humbled is an understatement. My goodness. My family, I owe them everything, all of their support in bringing me here today. So I'd like to start with my husband, Tim Parker, and my daughters, Lily and Lulu, if you'd stand up.

And next, I'll recognize my parents. My father, Michael Nutter, if you'll stand up, and my mother, Betsy, and my stepfather, Les Stevens. And last but certainly not least, I have my aunt Jane Bobel, and my cousins, Eric Murphy, Lemiya Murphy, and Anne Murphy, if you'll stand up. And a very special nod to my aunt Jane. She was the individual who sent me a job posting back in 2003 for a police job here at the city of Olympia because at the time, she was the head of parks, arts, and recreation.

Okay.

I, state your name, do solemnly swear

I, Shelby Parker, do solemnly swear

that I will support the constitution and laws of The United States

that I will support the constitution and laws of The United States

That I will support and enforce the constitution and laws of the state of Washington

That I will enforce and support the laws and constitution of the state of Washington

And the ordinances of the city of Olympia

And the ordinances of the city of Olympia

that I will abide by the rules

That I will abide by the rules

regulations and ethical standards of the Olympia Police Department

and

the city of Olympia

the city of Olympia

that I will, to the best of my ability

that I will, to the best of my ability

faithfully perform the duties of police chief in and the City Olympia

faithfully perform the duties of police chief in and for the City Of Olympia. So help me, God. So help me, God.

Congratulations. Thank you.

I'm now gonna invite Tim and the girls up to do your badge pinning ceremony.

As I said, I am so incredibly humbled with the support that is here today. I did not anticipate so many incredible people being in the room and lending their support, so thank you. Good evening, mayor Payne and city council members. Thank you, city manager Bernie, for the incredible opportunity to lead the Olympia Police Department. I will keep my remarks brief tonight because there is a packed agenda.

I am honored and so humbled to serve the community in this position, and I am excited to continue serving alongside the talented professionals of the Olympia Police Department. I am looking forward to meeting with community members next Tuesday evening at 6PM in the Council chambers. I'll share more about who I am, my commitment to service, and my vision for the Olympia Police Department. This will be an exciting opportunity for us to engage in meaningful dialogue and for us to continue building relationships. Thank you.

Thank you so much, chief. Any comments from the counts council? Councilmember Madron.

I'm gonna keep it brief, but, chief, I remember my first walk with you when you were downtown walking patrol, and I'm just so pleased to see you take on this leadership role and not an easy job to support our community. So very, very grateful. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Gilman.

I am so pleased with the city manager's decision. Chief. One one measure of, of a person is certainly all the accolades and and the work that's public facing. But the conversations I had with some of your family and colleagues from across the region speaks to how somebody is when she's not at the podium or in charge. And I I think that's the measure of the character, and I know that I've been able to benefit and witness from above and beyond after hours work that you've continued to do to advocate for our community. And I I couldn't be more pleased and proud to have you as chief.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Green, followed by councilmember Barron, followed by mayor Pro Tem Nguyen.

Thank you, mayor Payne. Chief Parker, just I echo everything my colleagues have said. Congratulations. I'm thrilled to to yeah. I was thrilled when city manager brought this as as his recommendation. I have only had the opportunity to work with you for about a year or so, but but from everything I see, you lead with empathy. You lead with care, and I think that is absolutely the the best qualities we could have in this position. So congratulations, and I look forward to your service.

Councilmember

Thank you, mayor. Chief Parker, congratulations. I I echo everyone else. This is a great a great day for Olympia. It's it's it's so great to have you because you're such a reflection of our community and our community values, and you lead a department that reflects those values also. And and and I'm just really proud of that. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem Nguyen?

I am so happy for us. I am so happy for us as a community. And I feel with my whole being that this is the right choice, to have you as chief. I've, you may not recognize it, but I've gotten to see you, do your thing from a number of different angles when you're explaining things to us in, in study sessions, in in council meetings, giving presentations when you've when you're explaining things to community members, written and, verbal communications. When you're really, really frustrated that people don't understand, there seems to be a lack of understanding for what police officers did and what the protocol is in a certain really intense situation.

And you've had to take a breath and exercise patience with us and try to get us to learn alongside and also advocate for your folks too. And you have a real empathy for people in a profession where people have lot of opinions, You know? And rightfully so, to a certain extent. Right? Because you have a lot of responsibility in your police department, and you are open, and you are here for it.

And I I just couldn't be more glad. I couldn't tell you how many people even when the announcement for you as interim police chief, how many people came up in my day job, you know, out in the community, to tell me they were so happy, and and some of them even wanted to know, why is she interim? I said, okay. Slow down. And, when it was announced that, you would be our new chief, similarly, a lot of people approached me, without prompting and so happy. I mean, a a lot of these folks are you know, they're here for you tonight. Yeah. And I'm so happy for us. So thank you, and thank you for accepting.

Council member Vanderpool.

Chief Parker, congratulations. One of the things I value is that you answer my questions. You answer the public's questions. You deal with a lot of hard questions all the time, that in fact. Right? The fact that like, when we I did the, all night, event in August a couple years ago, we were I asked questions about why is the police vehicles black? Why are we doing it this way and that? And you answered those questions honestly and direct. Right? And I think that that is important for the city of Olympia to ensure that we're meeting the community's needs and having that trust and ensuring that, you know, our police force is our is a part of our community, right, and making sure that we have that relationship. And so thank you so much.

Congratulations, chief Barker. I, you've heard the word empathy, quite a bit from us tonight, but I'm gonna add one more word to that, patience. I don't know how you are so patient, but you are. I've seen you show up every single day to this job with that smile on your face, and I'm not even kidding. I know it must be a tremendous burden, but also a privilege to lead a police department.

You are advocating for the officers that are on the front lines that are policing our community, right, serving our community, and you're also responding to some really tough issues. So while you certainly exude a lot of empathy in your role, I know that you are somebody who isn't afraid to hold those who need to be held accountable as well. And so I think you've been a wonderful example of that balance in your service. You've been an active deputy police chief. And so it's no surprise that you would be here now as our as our chief, our first woman chief of the city of Olympia in its history.

So it's such a privilege to be here at this moment, sharing this moment with you. It's such an honor. So thank you for everything that you have done to serve our community. Thank you for everything that you will do, for sharing your family with us tonight. Hello to all of you. Welcome. Thank you for sharing her with us. And what an example for all of the young folks, but specifically our young girls who are watching you in this very moment, which is really, really special. So I hope you take this moment with you and very much looking forward to you, building even more relationships with our community as you've done so well already. So congratulations.

Alright. So at this time, we're gonna go ahead and take a recess just so we can allow those who wish to congratulate the chief to do so, but also to allow everyone to make their way out. And then we will come back to our business. But for everyone who I see here who is in uniform, to our police department and our firefighters, from everyone here on council and also from our staff and our community members, thank you so much for everything you do in service to Olympia. So with that, we're gonna recess for five minutes.

Okay. We're gonna go ahead and make our way back. Congratulations again to chief Parker. Alright. So we're gonna move on to item two b on our agenda, which is special recognition proclamation recognizing Transgender Day of Visibility. And we have a shared reading of the proclamation beginning with council member Madrone.

Whereas Transgender Day of Visibility was founded in 2009 by transgender activist Rachel Crandall, the executive director of Transgender Michigan, to acknowledge and honor the successes achieved by transgender people and.

Whereas the city of Olympia celebrates the significant contributions transgender, nonconforming, and nonbinary people make to Olympia and affirms that they are vital members of our community. And

Whereas Transgender Day of Visibility provides a forum for transgender communities and allies to raise awareness of the need for visible support and resources for transgender non binary and gender non conforming people, and awareness of the persistent transphobic prejudice that permeates our society, and

Whereas transgender, gender non conforming, and non binary community members are business owners, artists, educators, advocates, activists, family members, and friends who deserve to live free from discrimination and harassment of any form and

Whereas the city of Olympia honors the transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people of Olympia for their resilience and activism within our community and acknowledges that work still needs to be done to address anti transgender violence, particularly at this time when transgender rights and existence are being threatened and

Whereas the city of Olympia recognizes that our transgender and gender diverse community members deserve a safe place to not just survive but to live and thrive and

Now, therefore, be it resolved, the Olympia City Council does hereby proclaim 03/31/2026 as Transgender Day of Visibility and urges all of its residents to respect and honor the right of our transgender and gender diverse community members to live openly in an authentic and accurate representation of who they are, free from violence, harassment, and discrimination. Signed in the city of Olympia, Washington this March 2026. Olympia City Council, Dante Payne, mayor. And now, we do have a couple speakers who are here to share a few words and accept the proclamation, and we'll begin with Aster Averdine, who is a cofounder of the Olympia, Queer Feared.

Hi, Aster. Stay. Alright.

Howdy to, mayor Payne, the rest of city council. I was originally gonna have something kind of heartfelt, cheery, and all that sort of thing, which, for people that know me, they're like, that's not you. But, circumstances instead have, changed that. Ultimately, one of the big things that is very important for people to remember in this very chaotic world is that it's very easy for coalitions to fall apart. And especially, doing a lot of community and activist work both with the city business owners and all sorts of community groups here in Olympia, we very much have a fractured and shaky coalition.

And the stress of the outside world, whether it be an influx of trans individuals that are coming here to try and make sure that they have a right to exist, People trying to flee away from abusive relationships in other states, trying to flee from a state that invalidated their identity cards just recently in Kansas, where over 3,000 of my own trans kin have no longer considered valid citizens in the state of Kansas. We are in a safe haven here, but it's a safe haven that doesn't have a solid foundation, as people that have interacted with any aspect of the community care, they know that there are a lot of issues and cracks, and the only way to work out of that is to actually come together and have all facets of of our community work, whether that be the clergy, the city, and the city hall members themselves, whether it be members of the trans community, the colleges, what have you. And that takes a lot of work and a lot of leadership. I've had the privilege of working with a handful of the city council members in the past, and I hope to continue to do so in the future.

But that alliance is easy to fall apart under outside pressure. And while there may be things that are considered trust building efforts and things that are viewed as positive in a sense, it's very easy to blindside a member, a section of your alliance and a section of your community that elsewise, you know, you've been spending years trying to build it up in one false swoop can cause a lot of rifts and a lot of trust that was built up to kind of vanish in its own in its own vein. There's a lot of sentiment within our actual I do I have a timer, by the way? I just realized I don't see a clock ticking down.

You do not have a timer, but because it's special recognition, but please be courteous.

I'm so sorry

about that. No worries. But please be courteous since it's a long meeting, but you do not have a timer.

Okay. I apologize for that. I thought I was supposed to just talk. I'm like, where's my timer? But, ultimately, we have the same common goal.

Our goal is to have a safe community and a place to where our love can trickle up. And for a lot of people and a lot of my own kin, they view that things are going to stay the same, that no matter what actions we take, nothing ultimately is gonna change. The same harrowing and destructive, efforts that we are doing as a people to our planet, to our communities, to our minority groups will ultimately all our efforts will be for naught. But I'm somebody that's willing to call that bluff, but I'm only willing to do that so long as people are willing to talk and people are willing to work together and continue on with a common cause. And with that, I'm done.

Thank you very much, Aster. And now I'm gonna invite up

Sam Kelledy.

Kelledy. Yes. Thank you for a few words. Hi, Sam.

Hi.

I would like to pose a question to those listening. When you think of a day of transgender visibility, what image do you hold in your head? What comes to your mind when you think of the lives of your transgender neighbors? What actions do you take to know them? To dive deeper than the surface of trans people exist, and that's okay.

True visibility necessitates a broader perspective than simply acknowledging our existence. To be truly visible, we need to be seen as whole people, bearing our scars and our tattoos in the sun. Our baggy clothes and binders, first skirts and nail polishes, our bleeding wounds, the echoing lines of our laughter and tears, blotching of our rage and dullness of our our despair, would be exposed in a way that is all too vulnerable and overwhelming to expect any of us to withstand. When I look you in the eyes and I tell you we are dying, Do you understand how far our terminology extends? Do you recognize that this does not end with those who will die today or tomorrow or a year from now?

That new lives, untouched by our present, will be born, and they will one day look inward and see their truth and know they will be persecuted for it. Do you accept us as natural, as inextinguishable, and inevitable as long as life yet breathes? Our country calls for our eradication. It claims we are sick in our heads and that we may be cured if we but cast off our twisted visage and rejoice in our born forms. It rejects the idea that we are only our most natural selves when we take heed and add on the pressure building in our chest that screams back to us, wrong, I feel wrong, this is wrong, I am wrong.

To be visible, to be understood, you must not simply celebrate our presence. You must bear witness to our pain. The United States ranks third in the world for trans people who are violently killed. Anti transgender legislation has driven up trans youth suicide attempts as much as seventy two percent in the last eight years. We are repeatedly slandered as pedophiles, groomers, sexual predators and deviants who aim to manipulate and brainwash children.

How well we pass as a gender simply changes the form of abuse we can expect to receive. Every day, we must fight to be gendered correctly, to be named correctly, in all settings. We must at every moment be ready to make the choice of standing up for ourselves or staying safer and putting up with cruelty, ridicule, and belittlement. And so I ask you, what have you actually done to acknowledge our suffering? What actions have you taken to really protect us?

How are we meant to survive, let alone thrive, whilst we are constantly under siege? Will you simply stand by and watch as we are drowned?

Thank you.

Thank you, Sam, and thank you, Aster. Are there any comments from the council? Yes. Council member Vanderpool.

Thank you both for coming. And and I'm I'm I'm short for words because that was a very strong and powerful speech, and I appreciate you delivering that. What I wrote down here is that, you know, you are welcomed and loved in this community. But beyond that, you're you're challenging us in a lot of ways. Right? Concrete policies. Right? That that that is beyond just saying that we support you and that you're a member of a community, but what can we do as a city and as a state and as a country to better improve those conditions? And it is and it is a challenge in front of us. And I and we've we've worked in the past together, we should continue to work in the future.

And I will continue to be open to having those conversations in order to make our place a more perfect place for people. Thank you.

Thank you. Additional comments? Councilmember Gilman.

Thank you, everybody, who came today. It's I mean, literally a day of visibility. And so thank you for being visible on this this day and and being present with us here. And I I really appreciate what camp what council member Vanderpool said that keep challenging us, keep coming through the door, keep showing up to to to demand a spot and a voice here. I I think that that it it is it's both true, everything you said, and it's difficult to hear that what we've done isn't enough and that you still don't feel safe.

That's and that's so that's that's the challenge I hear from you, and and that's, I think, our commitment to continue the work of trying to make a place where you can be who you are. It's an awesome T shirt that says just be you. Right? And and why y'all isn't always y'all is is a a problem and a challenge that we'll continue to work on. So I'm I'm really grateful to each one of you for coming today, and I'm glad that we recognized Transgender Day of Visibility today.

Mayor Pro Time Nguyen.

Thanks for being here, and thanks for both of the folks that spoke. I'm still processing some of those things. I wonder about what we could do. I think you all know that we do more than the proclamation each year. But also, I see it as it it's a muscle, you know, and and you gotta practice using it. Right? And so how are you practicing that, and how are you remembering that things are not so rosy even though we are a sanctuary city?

I don't know about y'all, but

I like to travel. You know? And and it's hard. And if something happens to people that are like me, even if I don't know them, a state away states away somewhere else in the country, it impacts me. And so, yes, I'm just thinking about the things that you're saying and, and how can we continue practicing that muscle and, what makes sense, at the city level.

Know, is is there more that we can do? I hope you'll let us you know, beyond right now. Yeah. And I just, while we are, proclaiming this day as Trans Day of Visibility or at least the thirty first, and we're talking about it today is that there's a long road ahead. Yeah.

And I can imagine how you're feeling. Our city seems to be a bubble for a number of things, so I don't relate to exactly your experience. Absolutely not. But I often think about, you know, there's there's life right outside of the city, and and it's tough. It's tough to it's tough to come and and and celebrate something and be excited about something. And, it seems like things are crumbling across the country. And so, anyways, kinda going on a thing now. But I just wanna let you know, thank you for being here. I'm listening, and, I'll keep on, asking those questions for myself, and my colleagues. So thank you.

Additional comments? Thank you for being here again. I I believe it was last year, I wanna say, when we did this proclamation. And I presented them to you all, and we stood up here in front, and we took a photo. I believe it was for this for this proclamation.

And we shared that on our social media, and it had the most reactions and comments. I'm pretty sure it was probably one of the top ones probably all year long. And that wasn't necessarily because it people were celebrating it. There was a lot of hate that was coming through on those comments, making the point as to why days like this are important. When we're looking at what's happening around the country, that's the reason we have to do this.

That's the reason we have to take time out of our agenda to do a proclamation to recognize transgender transgender day of visibility because there are people who are actively, on a daily basis, trying to erase you. And we're looking at you right here, right now. And I am so sorry that that is your experience. I will also say that everything that's being said about you is what they said about gay people back in the seventies and the eighties that were diseased, that were confused, that were corrupting children. All of those same words are being said about you now.

And that's that's really hard to hear, especially when it's coming from the top. I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not getting defensive, so please don't take my response to your question as a defense. But I did just wanna say the things that we have done, like proclamations, like supporting capital city pride, like passing an LGBTQ sanctuary city resolution as one of few cities in the nation to do so, to make sure that employees at the city of Olympia aren't complicit in harming transgender people with our policies and administrative procedures within our organization is important. So those are things that we have done, just to name a few. And I understand and I hear that that's not enough.

And as you all heard, we're listening. I thank you for your patience, your collaboration. I'm sure you feel you have plenty to be angry about, and rightfully so, but you come you continue to show up here. You have worked with us, for example, on that LGBTQ sanctuary city policy, And that's how we're gonna make sure that we can continue to protect you and members of your community with that collaboration. So I appreciate that.

I thank you for your words. I thank you for continuing to show up year after year, publicly, which is a risk, and we know that. Thank you. I have the proclamations here. If you wish, you can come forward and accept it.

And if you would like, you could take a photo with counsel, but you are under no obligation to do so. Alright. Thank you all so much again. So we are gonna move on to our next agenda item, which is our final special recognition for the evening, which is item two c in our agenda, and it is also a shared, proclamation, beginning with council member Behrendt.

Whereas since establishing its first advisory body in 1935, the city of Olympia has looked to community members and their perspectives and advice in the creation of policy and development for our city's future and

Whereas over the last ninety years, the city has established advisory bodies focused on areas such as city planning, the arts, heritage, bicycle and pedestrian issues, parks, utilities, social justice, cultural access, design review, lodging tax, and law enforcement oversight, and

Whereas the city council appointed advisory committees, boards, and commissions provide a way for residents to share their perspectives, study issues, and develop recommendations that help to inform the decisions of the Olympia City Council. And

Whereas for more than nine decades, hundreds of Olympians have generously volunteered their time and expertise in service to this community by serving on city advisory committees, boards, and commissions. And Whereas every year, the city council has the honor to appoint new and reappoint continuing members while also recognizing the tremendous contributions of those advisory body members concluding their terms of service and?

Whereas currently 19 advisory body members are departing from the following bodies Art Commission, Arts Commission, Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Cultural Access Advisory Board, Heritage Commission, Olympia Metropolitan District Board Advisory Committee, Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, Planning Commission, and Utility Advisory Committee, and

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Olympia City Council does hereby proclaim its deep gratitude for the service of Jim Burlingame, Kristen Green, JC Hoag, Marty Slite, Garen Shreve, Jonathan Hutton, Mariella Luce, Paul Parker, Roussa Cassell, Ingrid Golden, Eleanor Knight, Stacy Hicks, Garner Miller, Jamie Military, Brent Barnes, Jeff Privos, Tammy Adams, Shauna Mershan, and Sherry Chillcutt, and urge all residents to recognize and value these community members for having so generously shared their valuable time, expertise, and perspectives in service to the City Of Olympia and to the Olympia community at large. Signed in the City Of Olympia, Washington this March 2026, Olympia City Council, Dante Payne, mayor. And now I'm going to turn it over to our assistant city manager, Debbie Sullivan, for a few comments.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor and council. For the record, I'm Debbie Sullivan, assistant city manager. By way of background, the city supports 14 council appointed advisory committees, boards, and commissions. These bodies are made up of nearly 90 community members who volunteer their time to offer their expertise, lived experiences, and differing perspectives to help inform staff counsel on policy and program decisions.

Members generally serve three year terms with the opportunity for reappointment for up to three terms or nine years in total. Every year we take a moment to recognize and thank those members whose terms of service are ending. This year, as you mentioned in the proclamation, we are saying thank you to 19 community members. And joining us tonight to share their experience are two departing members, Jim Burlingame, outgoing member of the Arts Commission and Marty Slight, outgoing member of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. But also in attendance tonight are Rousseau Cassell, J.

C. Hauge, Jeff Prevost, and Garner Miller. And so on behalf of city staff, we sincerely and enthusiastically thank our departing volunteers for their invaluable contributions to our community. And so with that, I will invite

Jim.

Jim. Hi, Jim. Come on up. Alright.

Thank you, mayor Payne and city council members. Thank you for honoring my time on the arts commission. Seven years. So that's before, during, and after the pandemic. And, of course, for selecting me to serve on it, in the first place so long ago.

In my time on the commission, I went from a regular member to vice chair to chair and back to regular member again, always happy just to have a chance to participate in media discussions with my peers from the Olympia Arts community. I served on several juries, I think, once each for the Personal Plinth Sculptures project and the Arts Walk cover posters, as well as the jury that recommended the anchor tenants for the armory, or I should say now the Day of the Arts Center. My cohort my cohort on the Arts Commission was the one that watched former mayor Shaul Selby's longtime dream of a civic arts campus come to fruition, providing input at various stages as we did for many city arts projects. It would take too long to list all of those. And anyway, the most important project of this experience for me was simply the chance to meet and interact interact with so many cool people.

I have always advocated for the Arts Commission to be thought of as the hub at the center of the wheel of Olympia's arts community, which has so many spokes doing great things these days as connectors and as a visible example of the importance vivid self expression holds in this capital city. Finally, I would like to thank several people who helped get me here and helped me along the way, starting with my friend, I don't think she's here, Jenny Huber, who works for the State Arts Commission and who first encouraged me to apply for an opening on the City Arts Commission back in late twenty eighteen. Of course, I have to thank Stephanie Johnson, who as staff liaison has been a gentle and knowledgeable writer for the Arts Commission for many years, and was a great help to me in particular when I was chair. I must give a shout out to current chair, Kathy Dorgan. I'm not sure if she's here, but she was also my vice chair when I was chair, who began serving on the commission at the exact same time as me, and she is continuing on, with great leadership.

While I thought it was time to open up a spot for a new representative from the arts community, I'm not going anywhere. In fact, next month, I'll have a show of my collages in the lobby of the Olympia Little Theater in conjunction with a play that Kathy Dorgan is directing there. Oh, I also want to give a shout out to the support of my girlfriend, Hallie. When I first interviewed, it's beyond the commission. I said I wanted to find ways the city could make the arts a bigger part of children's lives. And, of course, I have my own kids, Robin and Cedar, in mind. They could not be here because of my son had an accident with a samurai sword. No joke. But he's he's doing fine after a couple stitches. A story for another time.

I'm proud of not not not to steal a spotlight for myself, I'm proud to have helped make vibrant art so visible to everyone, young and old, here in Olympia. But I'm especially proud to have helped raise my own children in a place where they've grown up to be not only kind and intelligent, but also because of the examples all around them, comfortable expressing their unique identities through various art forms themselves. So thank you once again.

And thank you, Jim. Alright. And we have our next speaker, Marty Slight, who is the outgoing member from the bicycle and pedestrian committee advisory committee. Hi, Marty. Thank

you, mayor Payne, council members. I wanted to take a moment not to deter from the concerns of the rest of my community, but I wanted to say that as we recognize transgender day availability, I happen to be going through the majority of my visible and significant transformation during my time in transition, during my time serving the city of Olympia on the BPAC. I want to be absolutely clear here. I have never, not in sixty years of my life, been so proud to be born an Olympian. Not once did I experience even the hint of anything less than full and complete support every time I interacted with a member of the City of Olympia staff.

And that needs to be said. What also needs to be said is I appreciate the opportunity to serve on the on the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee. During my time on the BPAC, I helped welcome a new adviser, Max, to our committee. I was serving as vice chair only to have our elected chair, Robert Vanderpool, leave our committee at the late hour when appointed to serve on the city council. I chose not to step into his term as chair because I had my own business I was taking care of, and I was glad to serve as vice chair under Tom Dillon, who I believe was an excellent choice by the full committee.

When I applied to the BPAC, my reasons were personal. Bad sidewalks and poor pedestrian infrastructure puts my life at risk. My frustration is that I don't feel our streets are meaningfully safer than they were three years ago. I've learned that the BPAC in its present form lacks any mechanism to influence maintenance schedules or city safety. In a moment of pure irony, on 06/30/2024, returning from a pride event downtown, I was nearly killed crossing 5th in Washington, the exact intersection where their paint is there celebrating trans people.

I was there to photograph the sidewalk or crosswalk. A combination of poor driver visibility and an outdated curb cut that launches disabled people into the center of intersections caused that accident that caused that almost accident. The video went viral, but the intersection remains as dangerous today as it was then. We need safer streets for all pedestrians and cyclists. Cyclists.

Olympia is not just for automobile owners. More and more people are finding vehicle ownership beyond their means, especially in an area where we have free public transit. This is multiplied for disabled people, for whom representation in Olympia is severely lacking. I ultimately moved from the West Side rather than wait for Harrison Avenue sidewalks to become safe to roll on. In my new neighborhood, Briggs Village, came with its own broken pedestrian promises.

We also need disability representation in every facet of city government. Disability rates have risen since 2020, from roughly one in five to one in four people in our country. That is a substantial portion of our community without without adequate representation. When I applied to this committee, it was my fellow disabled community members that I most wanted to represent. I hope that most that more disabled residents apply to serve on all of Olympia's advisory committees. Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to serve.

Let's give a round of applause and an ovation to all of our members who served on our advisory committee. Thank you all so much. Alright. So before we present you with the proclamations that we have, are there any comments from council? Councilmember Vanderpool?

Marty, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to point out an an issue that is that

is dear

to me. I appreciate every bit of you serving and continuing to serve and being a part of advisory at Intercity Transit and continuing to do and push for the things that we need in our community. As a council member, it's not just what we do. It's the community need and the demand behind that. Right? It's an it's the need to make those changes. Sometimes it's time consuming. Sometimes it's expensive, but we need to get that done because our community needs to be accessible. And I appreciate every bit of you bringing that perspective. Every time I talk to people about accessibility in the community, about transportation, cycling, walking, I always put rolling in there because of you, because you always bring that up.

And even though I was on BPAC for only a year, I will remember that forever as an important need because that is the gold standard from which we need to do things. Because if people can roll, they can walk, and they can cycle, and they can use public transportation. Thank you so much.

Yes. Councilmember Gilman.

I just wanna appreciate in this after hearing two really amazing stories, I just wanna appreciate that we have 90 community members who step up to put together 14 boards, advisory committees, and commissions that bring us voices like Marty just did and people who show up in spite of a samurai sword accident to give us a presentation. That's that's that's a lot. And I so I I just I thank you to everybody who's outgoing. And and as we said a moment ago in our our proclamation, congratulations to the folks coming on. So I just appreciate it.

Thank you. Additional comments? Alright. Alright. Well, I'm hearing in my ear gratitude. So I'll just say on behalf of of the Olympia City Council that, obviously, we are so thankful for your service. We we know that it is is thankless because it's thankless for us at times. Right? And a lot of the times, the we're the faces, but you're doing a lot of the work behind the scenes, and people don't know that you're doing that work. And it's so important that you're here to do it regardless.

I encourage you to go back. You know, I I often find myself thinking about what have I done so far in my time on council. I encourage you to go back and take a look at each time there was a action that we've taken that said the arts commission recommends or the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee recommends, that's also a part of your legacy and the work that you've done as well on advising this body. We don't do it alone. And I know that our process for engaging our advisory board members could be better.

We talk about this all the time as as council members, and we're slowly but surely getting there with trying to improve it. And I know that, frankly, some of you have felt that there hasn't been very much engagement. So I'm just gonna state that for what it is, but we are working on improving that for the future and the people who will serve here at the city. I'm also hearing, Marty, specifically, you called it out about having more influence, and that's something we talk about as well in terms of the work that you all do and how that can play a better role in, ultimately, the decisions that this body makes. I encourage you to please, especially if it was a positive experience, go out into community and tell people about what you've experienced as an advisory board member here for the city and encourage them to get involved and continue to serve this community because it all doesn't happen, you know, just by accident.

There are people behind it who are helping make it happen, and those people are you. So thank you for everything that you've done. I do have quite a few copies of this proclamation here. So if you would like, you are welcome to come up and receive it and take a photo. And thank you so much for your service.

Anyone who's an outgoing member, yes, please make your way up. Okay. So that concludes the special recognition portion of our agenda for tonight. We are gonna move on to public comment on our agenda. We do have quite a few people who are signed up in person as well as online.

So I am going to turn it over to the mayor pro tem.

May I take a liberty?

Sure. Okay.

I also see that there are some as we are celebrating our outgoing advisory body members, I'm also seeing that there are some incoming advisory body members. And so, for folks that may not be, used to our processes, we do have, our, we will be voting on our consent, calendar, which is part of our agenda comes after public comment, for folks that are incoming. So if you'd like to stay for that, you certainly can. And, if not, that's alright. But please know that we see you, and we're excited for your service with the city.

With that, we have a number of folks signed up for in person public comment, and then we also have virtual public comment. So I'm gonna, start with the fur I'm gonna start first with the people that, took the time to come in person. So I'll call a few names. So we have quite a few public commenters, so please listen for your name and, get in queue. And you have two minutes.

Once once you begin speaking, the timer will automatically start. The timer will be right over there, starting at two minutes counting down and then also right in front of you, there's, a green light, a yellow light for when you're at thirty seconds and then red for when you finish your comments. Should I cut in and say thank you, I'm telling you to please wrap up your comments. And if you have any additional comments that couldn't be heard, please know that we do accept emailed public comments as well. So with that, we have Dawn Baker, followed by Mark Kitabayashi, followed by Dave Champagne, followed by TJ Johnson.

Good evening, mayor Payne and council members. For the record, I am Dawn Baker, president of the Thurston County Realtors Association. Thank you for your continued work on the proposed home energy score ordinance and for the updates that have been incorporated since prior discussions. We appreciate the addition of a one year implementation period as well as the extension of score validity from eight to ten years. These are meaningful changes and we recognize the effort to address concerns that have been raised.

That said, we continue to have significant concerns with the ordinance as currently drafted. As practitioners working directly with buyers and sellers every day, realtors see firsthand how policy decisions interact with the realities of real estate transactions. While we support consumer awareness and climate goals, it is critical that any policy adopted is clear, practical and workable in the marketplace. At this stage, there are still important implementation and technical issues that remain unresolved, including how this requirement will function within the transaction process and the potential for unintended impacts on housing supply and affordability. For these reasons, we respectfully request that the council pause adoption of the ordinance and allow for additional due diligence.

We believe a collaborative work session involving council members, staff, and a small group of industry practitioners would provide an opportunity to work through these issues in a constructive and solution oriented way. Realtors want to be partners in this process. Our goal is to help ensure that once adopted, the policy works as intended without creating unnecessary disruption in the housing market. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Good evening, mayor mayor Payne and council members. For the record, my name is Mark Kittabayashi. This evening, I'm not speaking as an officer of a realtor's association, but I'm speaking as a practitioner of the real estate in our community, Olympiana and Thurston County for the last twenty six years. So first of all, I'd like to thank the staff, multigersional staff for working hard on this TCNP and HES scores. But I do have some concerns still.

I do recognize that, yes, realtors has been in part of the discussion in the beginning before the TCNP was passed and also ATS scores was discussed, but we're never part of when the actual ordinance was written. I think they'll devils in the details, and that's why we there are some concern that's there from us. I do personally like to have this as a voluntary, but I know that given the current situation, that might not be possible. But there are certain area that needs to be looked at. One will be the enforcement.

The Northwest MLS is not an enforcement power and just realtor owned and also ex exemption. I personally do not believe on exemption that's presented because the energy efficiency and ordinance does not stop if there's not an economic border. So I think if it's anything, it should be for all. And, also, HES alone will not fix the issues that we have. And so I do ask for the pause so that we could pass the right ordinance and also have us be involved.

And I do, again, appreciate all the hard work the staff and the council and all the juicing have done. But, please, let's pause, and let's work together to pass the right ordinance that is acceptable for all parties involved. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello, council members. I agree with everything, Don Baker said and Mark Kibayashi, colleagues of mine for many years. My name is Dave Champagne. I'm the owner of Castle Realty. I've been a real estate professional for over thirty three years, and I've owned Castle Realty for twenty six years. We opened our first office four blocks from here. I'm not really speaking as a real estate professional. I was when I went to the Board of County Commissioners to speak in opposition of the HES ordinance. But since that time, I've done some investigation. And I think it was pretty unbiased.

I asked some professionals in the Portland area who do these inspections for a living, and I talked to real estate agents who are involved. This ordinance, once passed in their cities, did not present specific financial hardship to the tune of thousands of dollars, but it was something that they incorporated quite easily. The people provided these inspections were home inspectors and HVAC companies that were able to make extra money off of this. And when it first started, they made a lot of money off of this. And to every person I spoke with, they all agreed, it is ineffective.

It doesn't solve any problems. It doesn't benefit homeowners. It doesn't benefit home purchasers. You might think it would, because who wouldn't wanna know about their efficiency of their home? Ask anyone down there. This is not about efficiency. The word efficiency will get corrected if you bring it up. This is about comparative consumption, energy costs based on your home. I'm going to wrap this up by saying this. If you think this is about energy efficiency, it is not.

Pause this ordinance long enough to go get educated. Talk to the cities. I've talked to four cities that are doing this right now. It is not about efficiency. It is about comparative consumption for the purpose of building out enough homes with an energy score that one day, these cities can go get federal grants for climate issues. I think if you investigate it, you'll find that.

Thank you, Dave. All right. So next, we have TJ Johnson. After TJ will beat Tom Crawford, followed by Michelle Horney, followed by Gordon Wheat, followed by Jesse Simmons.

Good evening. My name is TJ Johnson. I am the chair of the Thurston Conservation District Board of Supervisors. With me tonight is Mary Anne Tompkins over here, our vice chair. For over seventy five years, Thurston Conservation District has been working with private landowners to identify problems and solutions to environmental challenges and encouraging and supporting voluntary stewardship that makes Thurston County a better place to live for all of us.

We're nonregulatory. We bring funding, technical expertise, political advocacy, and community trust to help local jurisdictions meet their community visions and goals. Our base funding is provided through a rates and charges system paid by almost all the property owners in Thurston County. And that system brings in about $565,000 per year, which we use to dramatically leverage other sources of funding. Our current budget is $9,700,000 and the rates and charges is 6% of that budget.

Everything else is coming from outside of the community. This is the largest budget in our history, and this is going to give us unprecedented opportunities to have positive impacts on regional conservation priorities. Last year, we worked with the community to develop a new strategic plan, 2040 and beyond. And that's what we wanna share with you tonight. Mary Anne is gonna pass that out, as well as our most recent annual report.

This is the most ambitious plan in our history, but given the urgency of the problems in front of us, it's needed. We're rapidly losing farmland, forests, and habitats. We have watersheds that are threatened and degraded, and, of course, the accelerating impacts of climate change. So this plan is about acting now to avoid irreversible loss. I could say a lot of other things about the plan, but I'll just, in closing, say that this isn't about a set of conservation programs. This is about building a future where conservation is a shared way of life in Thurston County. We're ready to lead, but we can only achieve this vision together with our local partners like the city of Olympia. So thank you for your time, and we'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you. For folks that are as Tom's coming up, for folks that are hoping to have, possibly a response from council, we'll be taking all of the public comment, and then there will be, an option for council to respond at the end for anyone that's newer to public comment. Go ahead, Tom.

Thank you very much. My name is Tom Crawford. I am a founder and board member of Thirst and Climate Action Team and a member of the Thurston Climate Mitigation Collaborative's Community Advisory Workgroup. I'm here to speak in favor of the residential energy performance rating and disclosure ordinance you will consider this evening. Thurston Climate Action Team has been promoting energy efficiency since 2009 when we partnered with the Thurston Economic Development Council to establish the Thurston Energy Program, which resulted in energy audits and improvements for hundreds of homes and small businesses throughout Thurston County.

It saved people money and reduced our carbon footprint. The ordinance you are considering tonight is the result of six years of community conversations, careful research by staff, regional collaboration with Thurston County, Tumwater and Lacey, and thorough legal review and analysis. And I will also I'd like to contradict something that was said earlier. Actually, realtors have been involved throughout this process. The result is a well designed ordinance that is reasonable, inexpensive, addresses the needs of low income homeowners and helps consumers make better decisions in probably the largest financial investment they will make.

It will also promote energy efficiency, and that has been demonstrated through a recent study by the American Council for Energy Efficiency Economy. I can share that with counsel if you like. That's why the Thurston Lewis Mason Central Labor Council, representing 20,000 workers, has passed a resolution calling on you to approve this ordinance. Because legal legal concerns have been raised about this measure, I wanna emphasize that the legal staff for all four jurisdictions have found no legal barriers to adopting this ordinance. So let's focus on the big picture here.

The world is on fire. We need to take action now. Our grandchildren and children, when they look back, they won't care about whether a home energy score audit costs a $150 or $250. They will care about whether we took steps to protect them from climate change. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello, counsel. I'm glad to see you tonight. I'm glad we're bringing up this topic. I'm Michelle Herrany, and my husband and I live at 1900 Hudson Street Northwest, here in Olympia. We bought our house out there in 2018, and we are aware of energy costs. We've made upgrades and updates to our home. And I think we all agree, yes, we want energy efficient homes, and we want good information so we can make good decisions about the homes we buy. But my message to you all tonight is this, table this ordinance. And here's why. This proposal speaks to how much something costs or might cost in the future.

It doesn't, address affordability right now, and that is our most urgent need at this moment, table the ordinance. I believe this is government overreach too, and I generally side with government on a lot of programs, but this is not one of them. If you prevent an owner from even listing their property for sale without this required report, that's just wrong. Table the ordinance. If you would like to create a formal program in place of this, throw in all the bells and the whistles, and make it voluntary, great.

Owners can buy into that. They can put that little stamp of approval on their their listing. It'd be like having an Olympic medal, and that would be great. And I'm really not being facetious at all. I think that'd be really, really wonderful. But other owners can continue to use the PSC information that's currently available to all. And, also, buyers do look at homes. They know how old things are. They get inspections as well. But most important, I do not find in any of the materials from the climate mitigation collaborative that owners of homes were involved in the development of this plan or the ordinance before you tonight. Table this ordinance. This is invasive, punitive, and wrong. Table it, please. Thank you.

Please try to hold our applause so we can make it through public comment. We'll also be hearing a variety of opinions tonight. And so, for that reason, we want everyone to feel welcome to express their thoughts. With that, we have Gordon Wheat.

Hello, counsel. My name is Gordon Wheat. I am a public health physician who's lived and practiced medicine in Olympia for thirty eight years. I chair the Olympia Physicians For Social Responsibility, and I'm on the board of TCAT. I do support the home energy score.

We should provide homebuyers with information about their energy efficiency. However, I would also encourage you to provide buyers with information about their home energy safety. This is very easy to do. If an inspector spends an hour assessing the energy efficiency, that inspector could also take one minute or less to inspect the ventilation system above any gas range or cooktop, if there is one. Poorly ventilated gas stoves often lead to dangerous indoor air pollution and very high levels of many toxic pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and benzene.

These pollution levels are frequently much higher than would be permitted outdoors, and we spend much more time indoors. These risks are higher for low income families, particularly dangerous for children with asthma, adults with COPD, heart disease, and anyone at risk for cancer. Children have an overall thirty two percent increased risk for developing asthma and for having more severe attacks if they live in a home with a gas stove. These risks are mitigated by functional ventilation systems, though we should eventually move towards induction cooking. It would take less than a minute for an inspector to check that the ventilation system exists, functions, and ventilates outdoors.

This problem is easily and inexpensively mitigated, but most people don't even know they're at risk. This is basic public health.

Thank you.

Thank you. As Jesse Simmons is making their way up, next, we'll have Lynn Fitzhughes, Rhonda Hunter, followed by Brock Gale, followed by David Webb. And if I did mispronounce your name, I do apologize. Please do just correct it for the record. Thank you.

Good evening, council members. I'm Jesse Simmons. I'm the government affairs director for the Olympia Master Builders. We are your local homebuilders here in Thurston County and across four other counties in the South Puget Sound. I wanna be clear about what this ordinance does in practice. We we have our concern our builders have concerns about the home energy score ordinance, and we do support a pause. This is not simply providing information. This is a mandatory requirement placed on sellers before they are allowed to list their home. It adds cost, time, and friction at the front of every transaction. In a market like Olympia, where home prices are over $500,000, even small increases matter.

That's how families get priced out. The research on home energy scores does not support the outcomes being claimed. I invite you to look at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab study that I presented in my letter that I submitted earlier today, and I hope that you read it. What they found is that these scores only have a measurable impact where they are mandated, and it's a very minor impact even if they do have an impact. That impact is about half a percent increase in value per point or roughly 2% to 3% across the full range.

That's about $12,000 to $15,000 on a typical home. At the same time, the cost to meaningfully improve that score can be 30,000 to $40,000 or more. That's not a return on investment, and the study shows most homeowners don't even make those improvements. The score functions as a label, not a catalyst. Even the city's own focus group raised these same concerns.

The truth is the science is outpacing the advice the advocacy on this. The evidence shows modest impacts and limited behavior change, but the policy is being presented as something much more. Housing works as a pipeline. When you add friction at the front of every transaction, mobility goes down, inventory tightens, and costs go up. This ordinance doesn't require a single upgrade. It requires a report. If the goal is affordability and sustainability, this adds cost without delivering meaningful outcomes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Lynn Fitzhugh, executive director of restoring Earth connection. Olympia has previously passed the 72 items in the Thirst and Climate Mitigation Plan and has taken most of those items into their master plan. As the consultant creating the plan stated, all of it has to be done. It is not an ala carte menu. There have been a five year process for both stakeholder groups and focus groups and staff from all four jurisdictions working together on this.

It needs to be regional to work smoothly and the county passed it as the first big step. There is some popular confusion of people thinking that the information from the audit is available from PSC or from home inspections. The idea here is to help buyers be able to compare homes that they are considering at the point of inspection is way too far along past putting down earnest money, Nor would it provide the same measurement as being done to another home. PSE is not allowed to give out someone else's usage information nor are homeowners required to disclose that. Even if they were, that only tells you how someone else uses energy in that house.

It does not tell you how much insulation you have nor make recommendations for energy improvements. Having that information may enable some to choose to take out a larger mortgage so that they can make those changes at the beginning of ownership, which will pay itself back in a matter of a few years in energy savings. That would add a very small amount to a monthly mortgage over the life of the loan. As energy rates are only going up and only predicted to go up, this is a significant good for homebuyers. As for the fact that there is no trained auditors yet, the year delay in implementation is for recruiting and training of auditors.

Climate Collaborative already has been approached by groups interested in doing this. Thank you.

Thank you.

Don't start yet. This is just information. Barack Gail, won't be on the list. He's left already.

Oh, yeah. Rhonda, is that you? It is me. Oh, okay. Okay. Go ahead, Rhonda. You have a few minutes.

Thank you.

Good evening, council members. My name is Rhonda Hunter, and I'm speaking on the home energy score. I've lived on the forest edge in Thurston County for about fifty years, and I now fear forest fire as the climate is changing faster, hotter, drier with longer summers. And as an ecosystem biologist, I know the old science maxim of if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. The inconvenient truth is that measurements show the climate is heating up and destabilizing faster than our efforts to slow it down and soon will be hit by unmanageable tipping points.

In Olympia, PSC energy is over half fossil fuels, coal and quote natural gas, really nothing. And the price of energy is relentlessly rising. All of which is why this ordinance for a home energy score is valuable for buyers and sellers of homes in Olympia. Multiple states have cities with ordinances like this, including Oregon and California, and these scores often raise the sales price by thousands of dollars, lower some mortgage rates, and inform improving energy retrofits. Given the average sales hover over $500,000 in Olympia, the cost of that 2 to $300 home energy score amounts to pennies well spent.

Call it efficiency or consumption, it helps show your future energy costs. In my own home, I have done the energy audit, added a heat pump plus solar arrays and my home is free of energy cost for nine months of the years and so is my car, which is an EV car. So I am aging out of that small farm and big house and my home will sell for more because of its efficiency. I wanna look in Olympia for a smaller home, and I wanna know the energy score before I buy it. It's very important to me about those costs.

So please pass this ordinance. If you meet with the realtors, please also meet with homeowners, buyers, and sellers. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. As David Webb is making their way up, next, we'll have Rob Penny followed by Rhonda Larson Kramer followed by Corey Ghani and Talana Reid.

Hi. David Webb, city of Olympia. Like the last person just said, if you're listening to realtors, please also listening to the other side. So, anyways, thank you for recognizing the existence of trans people and meeting the bare minimum of humanity by doing so. You're going need more than discussion of balances and claim of integrity and caring about equity.

Pretending to have obtained trust through dialogue while having demonstratively ignored so many communities isn't a good look for the city. I'm seeing encampment sweeps in contradiction of the mayor's promise, and we all saw cooperation with ICE when the police depart when they kidnap someone on our streets. Certifications don't make a police force less depressive, especially from agencies doing nothing about pedophile rings. In the same way, having a black gay mayor doesn't make a city any less systematically racist or homophobic. Having a woman as police chief doesn't magically make your department less of a tool of white supremacy or a function of the patriarchy.

The Olympia Police Department still hunts our unhoused neighbors. They still discriminate against black and brown and indigenous communities. They still support fascists driving in from Lacey and Aberdeen over the women who live here seeking reproductive services at Planned Parenthood. The ethical standards of the Olympia Police Department, quote unquote, are too low, and a new chief does nothing about that. There's no equity or shared responsibility.

Transparency and accountability are currently nonexistent. The police department doesn't actually accept anonymous complaints through its web form. Its independent auditor doesn't appear to actually review complaints. And the public records office delays, denies, and withholds records, claiming it'll take over a month to provide things in their possession. You'll hide behind problematic practice policies instead of taking responsibility or making departmental change. So having a chief who can plaster on a customer service smile is nice. But if they have real empathy, as our mayor pro tem and mayor seem to believe, they're gonna have to walk the walk, not just make the propaganda. So this question is for chief Barker, I guess deputy chief Brady, but also manager Bernie, his staff, Debbie Sullivan, and Stacy Ray, and, of course, Mark Barber. Who do you serve? Who do you protect?

Who do you serve? Who do you protect?

Thank you. Sure. We have Brock Gale, who, thanks to Rhonda, I know is no longer here. And then we have Rob Penny and Rhonda Larson Kramer. There we go. And then after that, that'll be you, Corey.

Hi. My name is Rhonda Larson Kramer, and I live at 1814 Eastside Street Southeast in Olympia. And, the home energy score is fundamentally a consumer protection and transparency measure. It is most helpful to people of modest means on fixed incomes. For these buyers, the biggest risk is that the monthly cost to heat and power the home will exceed what they budgeted for when they were house shopping.

And by the time they find out that this is the case, it's too late because they've already bought the house. The home energy score helps prevent that. I've heard it said that buyers can already get this information by asking for utility bills or relying on inspections, But in practice, that doesn't work. Utility bills reflect how someone lives, not how the home performs. And they aren't comparable across homes.

Inspections look at components, but don't provide a standardized estimate of energy use. So this home energy score fills that gap with consistent apples to apples information up front. I've also heard concerns that this is just another cost. In reality, this is a small one time expense in the context of a home sale, and that modest cost can help buyers avoid much larger ongoing energy expenses after they've bought the home. And importantly, this doesn't mandate retrofits.

It has been implemented successfully in several cities for years. In those places, realtors initially opposed these programs, but they adapted. Some realtors have said it's quick, low cost, and doesn't disrupt sales timelines. Change can trigger pushback because the unknown is settle unsettling, but the home energy score isn't new. It has a track record we can look at. At the end of the day, this isn't about affordability. This is about affordability. It's not just the price of a home, but whether people can afford to live in it. Thanks.

Thank you.

Good evening, mayor of pain council. My name is Corey Ghani. I'm a resident of, Olympia. I have no interest in real estate or in any other business. I'm here as a concerned citizen and a study person who studies business and economics. I have solar panels on my home. I have a heat pump. All these incentives were brought to me by my own interest to save my own cost. I I don't see a problem with the home efficiency rating, but I think it should be voluntary. There should not be a mandate.

When we talk about affordability, We look at affordability in our home. Let's go over the history. We have reparations on our bill that we pay for anytime there's a transaction. The council wanted to pass a natural gas ban, which would have added cost. We have fire sprinklers in our through ordinance, which increase the cost of housing. We have a rental registry for homes, which increase costs. The snowflake never blames itself for the avalanche, but eventually, there is a tipping point. I would caution the council. Please move forward with it. I think the intent is very good.

I really like it. I would use it as a product differentiator when I go to sell my home. I'm gonna differentiate my home from another home showing that it has solar panels, showing that it has heat pumps. But what I'm not gonna do, I shouldn't have to pay an additional $2,300. Let's not forget that in price elasticity of demand, those costs are bore by the end consumer. And when they're getting a home loan, that home loan is gonna carry on for thirty years. It's not the $300 upfront. It's the $300 amortized over thirty years of loan. It's gonna cost them a whole lot more. I think it is massively an affordability issue that you need to consider.

Make it voluntary by all means. I'll I'll participate. I'll put it in when I go to sell my home. But do not make this mandatory and add additional costs to our already strained housing market.

Thank you. And as Tawana is making their way up, we have Mark Neuvel followed by Amelie O'Connor.

Good evening, counsel. I'll break it up a little bit. And on behalf of the NAACP Thurston County branch, I write to express a long or my enthusiastic support of the construction and final completion of the Rebecca Howard Park in Olympia. This park represents more than a recreational space. It's a recognition of Rebecca Howard, a black pioneer, entrepreneur, and civic leader whose legacy is deeply rooted in Olympia's history.

Rebecca Howard was one of the earliest black women to settle in the region. Rebecca Howard's contributions exemplify resilience, leadership, and community building in the face of systemic exclusion. Despite the significance of her impact her in her story, like those of many black pioneers, has historically been marginalized or overlooked. The creation and completion of Rebecca Howard Park is a meaningful step towards correcting that erasure and honoring the full, diverse history of Olympia. For the NAACP Thurston County, this project aligns with our mission to ensure equity, representation, and justice in all aspects of civil life And, excuse me, by investing in the in completing Rebecca Howard Park, the city of Olympia affirms its commitment to racial equity, historic historical acknowledgment, and inclusive community development, which advances the well-being of black people.

We also recognize the importance of ensuring that the park is complete with integrity, fully funded, thoughtfully designed, and accessible to all residents. This incomplete this includes incorporating educational elements that uplift Rebecca Howard's legacy and ensuring that it is a protected space. The city must prioritize the safety of those who utilize the space. Additionally, the plan must have must have a plan for ongoing maintenance. Thank you for your leadership and for your consideration of this important matter.

This

is very impressive. Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening to the council of mayor Payne. I'm Mark Neville, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union one seven six five, and I rise in support of the home energy study or survey. They for our part we are members of the Regional Hydrogen Alliance and we're trying to lead the way into a clean energy future. But we also know that small savings now result in less tension and we're already at a point where having to share energy at PSC will be limiting, you know, energy.

Our ability to go to electric is severely limited. So I rise in support of this because it's a small savings and awareness now pay off largely in the future. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, council. My name is Amelie O'Connor, and I'm here just as a concerned resident. And I'm here to ask that the council not follow Thurston County's lead in adopting the home energy score requirement for sellers. I believe strongly in climate goals and policies supporting those goals. But a policy alone isn't good simply because its intentions are good. Thurston County's EDC has called what's happening here a cost of living crisis. Home prices have roughly doubled over the past decade. PSC rates went up again this year. Tax rates are up. Food prices are up.

Child care is up. I am sure we are all familiar with the pressures we are facing. The effect of that is that first time buyers, working families and those on fixed incomes are increasingly pushed to the margins. We are being squeezed in every direction. My concern is that, like Corey was mentioning, the snowflake doesn't say it causes the avalanche.

We have a layering effect of many different policies and ordinances that are amounting to a much bigger issue for many working families. In addition to higher costs for buyers and sellers, administering and enforcing this new requirement will take staff time, budget and oversight capacity, none of which the City of Olympia can spare. Every dollar and staff hours spent on compliance is not going toward a pressing city need. Regulation isn't the only path forward. I would ask you to consider voluntary disclosure programs, utility partnerships, targeted incentives for low income homeowners, and public education campaigns.

Those are all effective ways to help push the needle toward energy efficiency without adding costs. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Before we move to virtual public comment, just want to do a a last call for Rob Penny. Are you with us still, Rob Penny? Okay. Maybe next time. So moving on to virtual public comment, we'll ask, staff to turn on the screen and bring forward that Kurtz.

Can you hear me?

Yes. We can.

Hi. I'm Thad Kurtz. I live at 113 17th Avenue Southeast in Olympia.

Dad, will you hold your comment for just a moment? We're having some audio, issues. We can't hear you very well. So I'm gonna ask staff to turn up the volume. I wanna make sure we can catch what you're hearing or what you're saying. One moment. Thanks for your patience. That let's try it now.

Do wanna restart?

Is that any better?

Ah, you sound great. Yeah. Go ahead. K.

I live at 113 17th Avenue Southeast. The cost of getting one of these scores is really trivial compared to what's involved in selling a house. If it were $300, it'd be about a tenth of 1% of the prices for the cheapest houses you can find in the county. At 2% or 3% for the buyer's agent fee and the seller's agent fee, the fees for the agents involved in selling one of these cheapest houses come to something around $16,000. At $300 the cost of the score would come to less than 2% of what the agents get through the sale of a house like that.

This is about the smallest easiest step I can imagine us taking to help people think about what the energy bills for a house that they're buying might be and to give them some information about what investments they might make in reducing those bills. The score will suggest steps that help pay back that can pay back investments completely in less than ten years and keep saving homeowners money after that. It turned out, as one of the realtors said, that the real point of this exercise was to provide the jurisdiction with a basis for getting federal grants for energy efficiency. That would be an additional significant benefit from my point of view. This ordinance was supposed to be the first joint regional climate initiative for the three cities in the county.

It's already a year behind schedule. We have taken time to create a climate plan. We've taken time to hire staff. We've taken time to develop the ordinance. It's easy to think about our climate plan in terms of a goal, but the goal is not really the issue. We could wait until 2050 and then reduce our emissions to the target in one year, and it would be exactly as if we had done nothing about reducing global warming until then. The cumulative emissions are really the

issue. You, So Yeah. Thank you, dad. I've it seems a little bit more abrupt online since our staff are able to move things online. We do really appreciate you coming, and I know that you emailed us as well. So thank you. Next, have Court Olson.

Hello, Olympia City Council. My name is Court Olson. I live in Bellevue, and I'm not a stranger to Olympia. I once oversaw the design and construction of Washington's first lead platinum building there in Olympia. Later, I oversaw the design and construction of the Olympia City Hall as Jay Burnie can attest.

Occasionally, still visit when I advocate for bills in the state legislature. Recently, I coauthored a bill to create a statewide home energy score reporting form. Unfortunately, the building get passed this session because clever opponents filed dozens of time consuming amendments that kept from getting a floor vote. I was thrilled when Thurston County passed a home energy score ordinance last week, and I'm hopeful that Olympia does the same. Having heard much misinformation about home energy scoring, I'd like to share six facts with you.

First of all, twelve years ago, Oregon created a statewide home energy score reporting form. First Portland, then several more cities there adopted ordinances like you are considering. Initially, Portland realtors were opposed, but once adopted, several have publicly extolled the benefits in aiding homebuyers. Many homebuyers love home energy score reports because they are a simple standard way to compare energy use and carbon footprints before they purchase. The reported cost of a home energy score is just 250 to $300.

Because a technician can do the HES report without having to visit the home, Oregon technicians could easily do the work here in Olympia until local people get qualified. PSC's home adviser program is different from a home energy score. PSC advises homeowners on improvements that could save them energy, but it doesn't provide a simple standard comparison form to aid prospective buyers. Thanks for listening, and have a good evening.

Thank you. You too. So next, we have Teresa Allen.

Hello. My name is Teresa Allen. I am a homeowner in Olympia. Thank you for listening to me tonight. I am here to oppose the HES requirement. I'm with the homeowner who spoke earlier. Table the score. I consider the score redundant and wasteful in money in the sense that PSC provides information including comparisons with similar buildings. I look at it all the time. PSC has recommendations and general guidelines as do other organizations about improving performance of homes, and that is a better place to put the money.

The studies I read related to this showed a lot of scatter in the data, which is normal. That means that this is not a special specific always great score that tells you everything you need to know. Ordinances cost money as one of the recent speakers pointed out. My preference where I want to spend my money both personally and with regard to tax money is to make actual improvements. So table the score and combat the climate change by spending the money on actual improvements such as the Energize Thurston campaign.

It supports discount and purchases of heat pumps with additional financial support for low income households. Get some group discounts going. The state of Washington Department of Commerce is currently developing the inflation reduction act home energy rebates program. Work with them. Work with that program. Create a parallel program for folks who don't qualify for the income based rebates, but want to take advantage of discounted group purchases. Don't just follow the crowd and give in to inertia because time and money have already been spent on this. The money wrapped up in the HES will be better spent on energy saving improvements. Table the score. Thank you.

Thank you. Just wanna ask staff to see if there's a Tom Crawford signed up online. There is not. Okay. Per perhaps right here, right in front of us. Okay. There could be two in this community. Okay. So next, we have Ayesha Harrison. Okay.

Hi. My name is Ayesha. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can.

Okay. I am here to I'm an artist from from Olympia, and I'm here to excitedly support and enthusiastically support the Rebecca Howard Park project. I was on one of the later advisory committees for that project. And I think that the designers as well as the people who worked on the on the design early on, like Shawna Hawk, I think they just put so much effort and time and love into this park. And I can't wait to see it become its true and bold and beautiful black form that it's going to be.

I'm excited as an artist to engage with that park, and I think there's gonna be a lot of really exciting things happening there, including the coffee shop and a place to connect with the library. There's just a lot of aspects about the park that are really amazing that we really need in the city. And I think we need a place for black folks to be and to be our genuine full selves. And I think that even the events that have taken place in the park thus far have shown that. And so I want to solidly and enthusiastically encourage you guys to support the park and the funding that it will take to get the park completed in a reasonable amount of time.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next, have Betsy Norton. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. We can. Betsy, you can begin.

Okay. Can you hear me now?

Yes. We can.

Okay. I live up on Evergreen Park Drive in Olympia in multifamily housing, and I do have a heat pump, which I love. Thank you, Energize Olympia. And so do my neighbors who have heat pumps as well. Some of them use other, public agencies' programs to help help them with those costs as well.

I would like to enthusiastically, support the home energy score. The first reason is because climate change is an existential problem, and we absolutely need to to act on it now. We cannot wait or take pauses. Secondly, as a homeowner and a retired senior, I got a 2.9% cost of living raise on my Social Security this year, but PSC just announced that they are, proposing increased electric rates of 30%, three zero, for 2027 to 2029. It's it's an affordability issue with us, with seniors who are on fixed incomes, and it's very important for us to see how much our home is going to cost in the future so that we can stay here.

If you're serious about promoting affordable housing, helping us keep our utility costs low, and fighting climate change, please make this mandatory. Please pass it right now. Thank you very much. Bye.

Thank you. Next and final public commenter, we have Christopher Van Dallen. Is Christopher with us? Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Christopher, can you hear us?

I'm sorry. I had my mute button, pushed. Let's start over.

Let's. Go ahead. We can hear you now.

Good evening, mayor Payne and members of the city council. My name is Chris Van Dallen. I live in Northeast Olympia. Some of you may remember a few years ago when I was the director of the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild, I was involved in developing the concept for the home energy score proposal that's now before you. I'm frustrated that it took six years, during a declared climate emergency to, get on the docket, but I'm gratified to see this proposal is finally nearing adoption.

This is a cost effective, simple, and common sense policy that will help homebuyers make informed decisions about the single biggest investment they'll ever make. For the small cost of energy assessment, we can create transparency for buyers and harness market forces to help reduce utility bills and carbon emissions for everyone. I hear from the realtors that they would like to see more collaboration and, make it voluntary. I'd just like to remind them that we've already had collaborative discussions back when we were talking about the person climate mitigation plan in the first place and developing this idea. Mark Kitabiyashi said said he was involved, and he was, and I remember that very well.

And I think it's a reasonable request to to wanna be able to make changes to the policy. But I don't think you know, given how long it's been so far, I don't think that we can justify further delaying and potentially making this, voluntary because we we've had voluntary home energy assessments through Thurston Energy through the county, through the cities since 2009, and that has made a big difference. And the workforce has been developed to meet those to meet that need. So we actually have a good workforce here, a strong number of inspectors who can do the work, and a and a history of that. So I urge you guys to support the policy and adopt it and implement it, as quickly as possible. Thank you very much. Thank

you. That concludes public comment. Turning it back to the mayor.

Thank you, mayor pro tem. So that concludes our public comment, portion of the agenda for tonight.

Oh, mayor, have a hand. Yes. Sorry. There was one person signed in who was not called Brenda Wilmuth. They were right before Christopher on the list.

Oh, okay. Well, thank you.

Well,

okay. Let's bring them forward.

Thank you, Susan.

Good evening, mayor Payne and council members. My name is Brenda Wilmoth, and I have lived in Olympia my entire life. I was born at the here up on Saint Peter's at, on Harrison Hill. I have lived in East Olympia, which historically was Chambers Prairie. I'm a residential homeowner, and I have some other properties. And I have some concerns over the home energy score. Some of them, I'll just go through quickly. Government overreach and privacy. So what is the legal authority that allows government to require a pre listing energy score? How does this respect homeowners privacy and property rights?

Using homeowners to meet climate goals, why are individual homeowners being used to meet the climate commitment targets? When generally home seller you rather than home sellers, the emissions when the largest emitters are transportation, commercial, and industrial sectors. Why target private sellers instead of public buildings or large developers? Also, legal authorities, state law conflicts. HB ten fifty fifteen is not law.

Cost burden and equity. Financial analysis needs to be done to understand the impact on seniors and low income homeowners. Tractability and enforcement, how will it be enforced? What listings will be blocked or delay? What happens if a seller refuses to comply? These are all concerns. So I'm asking that you table it and pause it, and I'll try to send in a written comment. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Thank you very much, Brenda, and our apologies on skipping you. But we're glad we caught that and got you in. So thank you. Alright. So that concludes our public comment section of our agenda for tonight. But before we move on to adoption of our consent calendar, are there any comments from the dais? Council member Madron.

Just very quickly, I wanna speak to the the only folks who aren't here for something on the agenda this evening, our friends at the Thirsting Conservation District. Thanks so much for bringing your annual report. Really look forward to reading through this. And, also, I think we're all really grateful for the partnership that we do have. I know just last weekend, there was a new community garden built at The Landing, which is affordable housing that's managed by the family support center, and that's one of several projects that have come forward because of our partnership.

And as you're aware, we're also moving forward with the development of a food system plan and, you know, what does the what the the role the urban community has, the city of Olympia has in having a resilient local food system. So I know you guys have that on your radar and gonna be engaged, but just wanna thank you for coming tonight and, you know, sitting with the the celebration at the start and the the the public comment that we had this evening. So thanks for being here.

Thank you. Councilmember Gilman.

I wanted to thank Talana and Aisha for coming to shout out an item we have later on this evening's agenda, the Rebecca Howard Park plan. I am, really excited that we're we're going to consider that this evening. And and then, I'll I'll reserve my comments about the home energy score for our conversation during new business. But I just wanted to briefly say that I am also interested in bringing more voices together at the table as as I as I hope that we're working towards implementation. And it's been a challenge and a frustration across my thirty years of being involved in local governments that these kinds of discussions so quickly become a battle of wills that there's no room left for a conversation at the table.

And several of you have been here on different issues over these last couple of years. I have great hope that we can have a real conversation. But it's it's just seems to be a really difficult thing to get off the ground and and just know that, you know, I'm personally committed to having more conversation and less battle over topics like this.

Thank you. Councilmember Barrett.

Thank you. Just just very quickly, I too wanna echo. Thank you, TJ, for sharing this report. I have worked with conservation districts throughout my life, and I am thrilled to see that this work's going on. I look forward to conversations with you about it. And I too just wanna acknowledge Tawana and Alicia's comments. And I, being somebody who just loves the parks and spends a lot of time in all of them, look forward to seeing a dynamic vision in in this park. And I I too will hold my home energy score comments for later, but thank you.

Thank you. Are there any additional comments from Hadeus? Alright. Well, I'm so pleased to see everyone who's here in support of the Rebecca Howard Park project. We're gonna have a presentation here in a moment and then take action. But first of all, I just wanna take a moment to say thank you for those of you who participated in the steering committee meetings. There's been quite a few. I've only popped in on a few of them, and I know that this has been a long time coming. And I'm excited to see you here and get the presentation and then take action. So thank you for being here tonight.

And I'll have more to say about that later. And then I also just wanna mention, for those of you who are listening in on the home energy score comments. We will be discussing that more when we get to our business items here in a moment on our agenda. So thank you for your time. And for the folks who are here from the Thurston Conservation District, thank you so much for sharing the strategic plan and being here tonight.

We will certainly review it, and it's very timely because we are having all sorts of conversations around how we can be stronger partners with you all. So thank you so much for being here tonight. Alright. So we are gonna move on to adoption of the consent calendar. I have a few pulls. So I need a motion, and a second, please.

I'll move to adopt. Second.

Okay. We have a motion in a second. I am tracking that we have two polls. Item four b, which is the approval of City of Olympia investment policy updates, and item four c, which is approval of individuals for reappointment to the council appointed advisory bodies. So we'll begin with item four b, which is a request for pull from council member Gilman.

Thank you, mayor Payne. I just wanted to make a brief comment on these updates to the city investment policy. We began a process a little over a year ago to look both at sort of updating the process broadly and adopting an ethical investing statement that would incorporate some previous actions by counsel and make it very clear. And I wanna especially thank finance director Michael Gibbons and our investment in consultants, government portfolio advisers, who really worked with us to make sure that counsel is consulted, that finance committee is regularly updated, and and that our policy is in alignment with current practices and and laws. So it's it's it's good work.

And I I'm just gonna give you the highlights of the ethical investment statement. So I think this is a pretty big step. This is that one, we'll strive to invest our funds in ways that promote the well-being of our communities and environment. And that means favoring investment in entities that support peacetime daily life in companies that offer renewable energy and other climate mitigation strategies and in companies with strong environmental labor and social records. And then second, that we'll refrain from investment in companies with primary business functions in harmful industries such as tobacco, fossil fuels, mass incarceration, or immigrant detention, and weaponry of any kind, or in companies with a consistent record of direct involvement in severe human rights violations.

And then the the action that's attached to it is that finance director Gibbons is is willing to review our existing investments and present a plan to align the city's portfolio by the end of this year and to explore positive new investment opportunities and recommend ways to promote similar socially responsible investment principles with other investment funds or financial institutions that the city works with. So that's that's the highlights, and I'm I'm just really proud of the work.

Thank you for summarizing that and covering it, especially since it's on consent. Folks might not catch it. So thank you for the pull. Councilmember Madrone has requested requested to to pull pull item item four four c. C.

I actually meant to pull four d. Four c is about the reappointment of members three advisory bodies. And so I'll just quickly say thanks to those who are willing to continue to serve in that role. In terms of the new appointments to our advisory bodies, I wanted to thank the Community Livability and Public Safety Committee. We had two nights of interviews.

Wanted to thank all the committee chairs, advisory body chairs that participated in those interviews with us. And also just we talked to so many dedicated, fabulous members of our community in those two evenings, and we it was actually a tough call to choose who gets to sit in these voluntary positions. And I used to serve in that role when when CLIPS was general government, and it was it was fun to be a part of the process again and just to see that that interest in civic engagement and that passion from our community coming through in these short ten minute interviews. But we just have a wealth of, you know, experience in our community. I'm grateful for the folks that wanna serve and just wanna congratulate those who will be serving on our advisory bodies.

We look forward to having having you help shape the work that we do here.

And all of that to say that when you hear this vote, that will mean that you were appointed or not. We'll see. Alright. Alright. So are there any additional requests for polls for questions or comments? Seeing none, we have a sec a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes.

Congratulations. Okay. So that takes us to our only two business items that we have for tonight on the agenda, and we'll begin with item six a, which is the approval of the Rebecca Howard Park development plan. And we have our associate planner, Sarah Gianobo, who is presenting tonight. Hi, Sarah.

Hello. Yes. I'm Sarah Gianobo, Parks Planner with the City of Olympia. I'll also be joined at the end

of the

presentation by Silvana Niehauser, the director Parks, Arts, and Recreation. And we're excited to be here tonight to present the Rebecca Howard Park development plan. I wanted to start off with a quick timeline of the project, which led us to the park development plan. In 2018, the city purchased this property for economic development purposes. In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests, the focus of the site shifted from housing to healing as a need arose to provide a safe place for community members to find peace, connection, and belonging.

A stakeholder committee was formed to imagine what that place could be. In 2021, the property was officially transferred over to the Parks Department to become a park. That same year, the park was named after Rebecca Howard, a well respected black businesswoman from the late eighteen hundreds who owned and operated a popular hotel and restaurant. In 2023, the stakeholder group created an early conceptual plan for the park. And in 2024, the city hired a design team create a park development plan to help guide future development.

Right after the design team was hired, they started reaching out to black and African American community cultural advocates to form a steering committee to guide the site design work and community engagement. The steering committee met nine times from October to July to help co design public engagement, review engagement outcomes, and give feedback on designs. I want to express our immense gratitude for the steering committee members for their time and the insight that they brought to this project. Another part of the community engagement process was hiring two community design advocates to build relationships and plan community events. The two community design advocates for this project were Shauna Hawk and Stephanie Chamondale.

Shauna has been a part of this planning process since its inception in 2020, and Stephanie joined the project in 2024. Their commitment to the project and planning events that activated the park have carried it forward and brought many more people to celebrate and learn. Olympia's black community members and the broader community were invited to participate in feedback sessions, workshops, surveys, and celebrations. There are three phases of convenient engagement. Phase two, we asked who do we need to invite to this conversation.

Phase three focused on what stories should be told and how would they be displayed in the park. And phase four asked for feedback on the design and exploring how stories can engage people of all ages. This project went out to the community through a combination of approaches. In person approaches included workshops in collaboration with the Growing Home Collective and the Downtown Olympia Library, community events and tabling during Black History Month, Juneteenth, and Read the Park, paper surveys and flyers at black owned businesses and community spaces. Digital approaches included an online Engage Olympia landing page, two online surveys with over 80 responses, online meetings, and a storytelling website.

Early on in the planning process, the stakeholder group helped brainstorm this list of purpose and goal statements for Rebecca Hardpark. These guiding principles have been the foundation for the design process and the report is largely built around them and how community responses reinforce these statements. To celebrate, honor, and recognize the local history and contributions of our African American African American and black community members, to find common ground with each other through storytelling, performance, and art, especially stories, performances, and art from or promoted by and led by our African American and or black community members, to provide a safe place for peace and healing that honors representation and fosters a sense of belonging and inclusion, to promote equity, respect, and learning as we build community together, to build strong connections with the surrounding neighbors and organizations. So here's a planned view of the design layout. The circular forms evoke connection between past, present, and future, a welcoming embrace by ancestors.

Flexibility is key for such a small space, and the park spaces need to support gathering at many different scales. Large celebrations on the lawn lawn to small group gatherings in the gathering circle to quiet solitude in the garden. This design extends beyond the boundaries of the site. A festival Street on 9th Avenue slows traffic and be and can be closed with bollards to support large community events. Community members envision a place that elevates black artists through art and storytelling and performance with a large lawn and stage to support that.

A community hub offers indoor space to gather and document local histories. Here's a bird's eye view of the plan. So the cafe and hub area for indoor gatherings and workshops, porch and stage for outdoor seating and performances, the lawn for large gatherings and day to day relaxing, a garden in the back for quiet contemplation and reflection, a gathering circle for smaller group meetings, a festival street that be can be closed for special events, and a reading nook near the library for story times and workshops. Here's a close-up of the gathering circle designed so you can see everyone's face around the circle. Flexible seating options depending on what is needed.

Opportunities for art to adorn the seat walls. Here's a close-up of the garden area. A path elegantly traverses the topography of the site and is lined with planting beds that are filled with culturally significant plants that convey the deep spiritual connection to the land that is fundamental to Black communities. Here's a close-up of the Festival Street and how it expands the park for large community gatherings, a slight curve and narrowing of the road to slow traffic and limited grade change between the sidewalk and the road. This design easily transitions to a plaza like feel when closed with bollards.

The additional space can accommodate food trucks during events and additional seating areas to encourage conversation and community building. Site storytelling and activation have been an important component of this design. The community wants to see art throughout this site and in many different forms, embedded in the pathways and seat walls, in large sculptures, as way finding signage, plant ID signs, and murals. The art should be clear visual expressions of African American people and culture. The art and storytelling will focus on the stories of Olympia's black community members, of creators, community builders, trailblazing pioneers, land and food stewards, and entrepreneurs.

These stories are captured in a website the design team created, pulling largely from the stories of doctor Thelma Jackson's book, blacks in Thurston County, Washington, from 1950 to 1975. Special thank you to doctor Jackson for all the amazing work she's done gathering and preserving these stories. Future selected artists will use these stories to help inspire their creativity to design in the park. In this park, there is a community hub. This structure will replace the existing structure that is currently on-site.

In the community hub, there's a cafe with views out towards the park, rotating art displays, a lending library, and an outside walk up counter. Future designs could include a restroom to serve cafe visitors and another to serve park users. In the community hub, there is a multi purpose room, a flexible community space for gathering, programming, and education. In the park, there is porch and stage, outdoor coffee shop seating, a quiet spot for reading, rest, and reflection, or a gathering space during park events, doubling as a stage for music, storytelling, and celebration. There's some inspirational images that include a mural idea for behind the stage area.

This slide shows sustainability and climate resilience recommendations that are included in the design. We will be exploring solar and rainwater reuse options on the building. Plant selection will focus on drought tolerance, pollinator friendly, and cultural black cultural significance. The goal is to preserve existing trees where possible and add new trees for shade. The site includes pedestrian and bike friendly infrastructure and amenities to encourage alternative modes of travel to the site and also exploring the use of natural, permeable, or reuse materials throughout the space.

The design consultants consultant team hired a sub consultant DCW to do a cost estimate for this project. They broke it into three different phases because we'll need to build the park through a phased approach. They also provided a budget range for each phase that generally separates on a more standard design for things at the lower end, like a standard building design, and more specialty added items at the higher budget level, adding solar and or rain catchment. The low budget total comes to $5,500,000 and the high budget total comes to $6,500,000 Here's a big picture workflow of the next steps in the process. The park development plan is complete, and we have an understanding of the overall cost of the project.

This project is supported by the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, the Olympia Arts Commission, and the Community Livability and Public Safety Committee. City Council is the final approval for this project, and then we will jump into our first grant application. We will also be searching for additional grant opportunities to help with adding art to phase one of this park. Thank you for your time. I'm inviting Silvana Neehauser to come up and chat about some, next steps.

Thank you very much, Sarah. Hi, Silvana.

Good evening, mayor and council members. Thank you, for listening to our presentation tonight. And I wanted to bring forward a recommendation. So Silvana Neehauser, sorry for to say that, for the record. And, Rebecca Howard Park plan was in our last, planning cycle, and the park development piece, the construction, was not in the last planning cycle.

Through this process, Rebecca Howard Park represents significant opportunity to invest in a space that's intentionally designed with the black and African American community and providing cultural representation, honoring local history, and recognizing the contributions of black and African American residents, entrepreneurs, and leaders. So our proposal is that we are recommending that Rebecca Howard Park be prioritized ahead of other new park developments that have not yet begun, including the Lily Road Neighborhood Park. Compared to other projects that are in the queue, Rebecca Howard Park has strong community momentum and a near term partial funding opportunity. Resequencing these projects that have not yet begun allows us to be more intentional about timing without disrupting projects that are already underway, Allowing us to translate planning and community contributions into visible progress has a real impact, and it speaks volumes about our commitment. With strong momentum from the steering committee and a timely opportunity to pursue a $500,000 statewide grant in the coming months, now is the time.

Lily Road Park development will be pushed out several years, but it will not be removed. It is still a priority. It remains a priority in our Parks Plan, and we will move forward after this. At its core, this recommendation is about delivering on our values, equitable access and community responsiveness, while also ensuring we follow through where there is clear community momentum and readiness. Advancing Rebecca Howard Park now is the right next step for our park system and an important step in delivering on our our commitments to the community.

So this is staff's recommendation for this project to be the next one in line for development.

Thank you very much, Silvana. Alright. So, with that, are there any questions or comments from the council? Councilmember Vanderpool.

I support going forward in rearranging and ensuring that this is a higher priority. I just wanna say it's for the council. But I also you know, I am I'm exceedingly excited about this. And I'm but I'm also gonna ask a few questions because this was in public comment about concerns about ensuring its safety and maintenance. Right? Making sure that it continues to be protected into the future and that it's a safe place for folks in the community. That was in the comments. I'm just asking, what's our plan around that?

Yeah. Our design team definitely took into consideration crime prevention, through environmental design, CPTED measures, in order to ensure that the park, has good, you know, lines, visibility lines through the site and several other factors that that help ensure safety where where they can. And maintenance, you know, it will be added to our our our inventory of of parks for for maintaining, which is

you know, I don't know if

you wanna add anything to that, but

yeah.

We we purposely added in the consultant contract to to be able to give us estimates on the cost for operations and maintenance. So those are in the plan, and that is an important kind of move that we've shifted towards in our planning documents so that we can plan for the operational impacts and and any staffing or resource increases that we might need. We currently do a minimal level of maintenance at the park, such as mowing before summer starts. But and our park rangers visit quite frequently. We also have some great neighbors who help keep an eye on the park and reach out to us when there are any concerns.

So I imagine that we'll continue that partnership and that our rangers will continue to make time for that space.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Madrone.

Yeah. I just wanted to say a word about recommendation from the community livability and public safety committee. This was that was the last stop for this project was that it came through our committee. And just wanted to share with the council that we're very, very excited to recommend that this moves forward. And we also discussed what Silvana Silvana's request in terms of bringing it to the front of the queue in terms of undeveloped parks because it was a it was a long time coming through this process, so we don't want that to cause unnecessary delay in terms of being able to move it forward and grant applications and things like that.

So I just wanted to make sure you all know this has been thoroughly vetted by CLPS. We approve. And I also wanna give some credit where credit is due is the whole idea for this project came about from somebody who's no longer with the city, but Kelly Perspaseth, who used to be our strategic communications director. This was an idea that she had in term when we were facing a lot of just civil unrest after the murder of George Floyd, and she was thinking about what what could the city do to help bring people together and create a place for peace and for healing. And so just wanna just wanna give her a quick shout out while this is moving its way over the finish line.

Yeah. Thank you for doing that. Yeah. Kelly definitely was excited about this project. I believe she was inspired by a park in Idaho that was, like, based on Anne Frank or something like that, piece space for peace and healing.

So thank you, Kelly. We know you're watching us in your spare time. Not. So are there any other questions or comments from the council? I will just say thank you very much so much to the park staff for your work on this project, for facilitating all of the meetings with the steering committees, and certainly for bumping this up on the list of projects.

Very much appreciated. I I'm very excited about the the design of this. Even it's hard for me not to smile even just looking at it. I can see that it's gonna be such a reflection of who we are as Olympians, especially in our black community. It actually makes me think about the fact we just came back from the National League of Cities conference in DC.

And myself and the city manager and assistant city manager, Stacy Ray, we attended we went to the National African American History Museum just before hopping onto our flight in DC. And it just makes me so excited to think about how we might have, you know, similar almost like an outdoor museum. There'll be exhibits and and things like that. The greenery, which is beautiful, that connection to the land of who we are as black people, as African Americans. That goes back to our history of being in Africa.

And I'm so excited that you'll be able to see that connection of who we are and share the space with the broader community where they'll be educated on the folks who have called Olympia and Thurston County home for decades. And so for everybody that's here tonight, that's here in support of this project, thank you for being here. Thank you for your contributions, first and foremost. I know there's a lot of different opinions about what happens with this project. Some made it to the conceptual design, some did not.

But I just thank you for your contributions thus far and looking forward to getting this project moved along. I know that it will be a a difficult road ahead considering the fact that budgets are tight. We'll be relying on grant funding, and we will do all that we can to move this faster. But it's very difficult when you don't have a budget that is specifically allocated for a project that's already set aside. So I just kinda wanna be be upfront about the fact that it's not gonna happen overnight.

It will take a lot of work on the part of the city to apply for as many grants as possible to get the funding to bring this project to fruition. But please know that we're fully committed to doing that as you have heard, and we're certainly looking forward for any other suggestions or opportunities about how other community members wanna be involved in the project. I really appreciate the questions around park maintenance, but I also encourage us to think about how we protect community members in this space because, certainly, we wanna make sure that people that it feels like a welcoming space. And so it'll be important to figure out how we balance a sense of safety with a sense of welcome in this space, and that'll be really important. So just something to keep in mind as right on the heels of our conversation with our transgender community members about their sense of safety in our community that will certainly apply to this space and this project as well.

So we should be thinking about that along with our maintenance discussions. So are there any other questions or comments? Alright. Well, thank you so much. We do have a motion, so I am happy to entertain a motion to approve, the development plan.

So moved.

Second. Alright. We have a motion and a second. Yes. No? Yielding? Okay. We have a motion and a second to approve the Rebecca Howard Park development plan. All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Alright.

So that takes us to our final business item for tonight, which is item six b, which is approval of an ordinance adopting a residential energy performance rating and disclosure policy. And we have doctor Pamela Braff, who is making her way to the podium, who is our director of climate programs presenting tonight.

Thank you, mayor, members of council. Good evening. For the record, my name is Pamela Braff, director of climate programs. I'm here tonight to present to you about the, proposed residential energy performance rating and disclosure ordinance, also often referred to as the home energy score. You may hear me shorten it even further and say HES.

So if I say that, that's what I'm talking about here. So just a quick kind of overview. I know it's been a while since we talked to council about this, so I wanna give you all a little bit of background on why we brought this why we're bringing this policy forward, how it was developed, what's included in it, go over the kind of policy development process that we went through. I'll give you a little bit of information about program implementation, so what happens next if this is adopted. And then I I wanna I'll address some some frequently asked questions before bringing up the recommended action for you all.

So first, a little bit of background. So, really, why are we here talking about this? In 2019, the city of Olympia declared a climate emergency at the urging of the youth and the community and set a goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2040. And so when we're trying to figure out, right, how do we do that? We have to start by looking at where our largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. So this pie chart shows you the sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Thurston County. You can see the built environment and transportation. That's the blue and the orange chunks. They're two of our biggest sources. And on the right, it shows the breakdown between residential, commercial, and industrial energy use from our built environment.

You can see that residential energy use is a really significant piece of those overall greenhouse gas emissions in our county. So as we're I presented to you as the as a part of the comprehensive plan and the our climate study session, earlier this year, we talked about these six key building blocks to climate action in Olympia, and this is how we achieve the city's commitment to achieving net zero by 2040. Producing a 100% renewable energy, adding rooftop solar, electrifying and improving the efficiency of all new and existing buildings, reducing vehicle miles traveled, electrifying passenger vehicles, and reducing solid waste generation. So you'll see the, you know, the one that's highlighted here. This is really what this policy is meant to address.

Electrifying well, I'll say, really improving the efficiency of the buildings in Olympia. And I wanna just note that when we talk about how we achieve our climate goals, it is it's not a question of should we do this thing or should we do this thing. It's really a yes and. There's no one action. There's no one policy.

There's no one incentive or program that can achieve these goals on their own. So we're talking about doing all of that incentive programs like Energize Olympia, other approaches and standards towards achieving those goals. This is identified in the city's comprehensive plan, so policy, PL 5.5 to partner with regional jurisdictions to develop and implement a local policy for assessment and disclosure of residential energy performance ratings at the time of lease sale or rent. And I'll note that when we were working on the comprehensive plan update for the climate element over the last couple of years, we received hundreds of comments from the community both on these policies and others that they telling us that they wanted to see this work happen. It's also identified in the Thurston Climate Mitigation Plan and two different actions there.

Action b 1.1, residential energy performance ratings, and action b 1.2, residential energy assessment. So the Thurston climate mitigation plan, this our shared framework for climate action across the region between Lacey, Olympia, Tumwater, and Thurston County. Residential energy disclosure policies aren't a new thing. This map is a couple years old now, but it shows you really the distribution of different types of energy disclosure policies that you'll see throughout The US. So some of them are based on the home energy score, some of them are based on different types, they all function a little bit differently, but the intent is really to to do the same thing, to disclose energy performance at at a certain point within a within a transaction.

So I wanna talk a little bit more in a little bit more detail about the home energy score as a specific, energy disclosure mechanism since that's what's before you all this evening. So the home energy score is we selected this as it providing the best balance, between a really, kind of time and and cost intensive energy audit. Energy you can have a you can get a six hour energy audit on your home, which will go through every little detail. So this is meant to be kind of a balance between between that kind of time and efficiency to get to an energy assessment tool that helps folks understand the energy performance of their home. So the home energy score, HES, is a nationally standardized home energy rating tool.

It was developed, I think, probably fifteen or about fifteen or so years ago, maybe a little bit longer by the US Department of Energy. These assessments are kind of like a light assessment. They typically take about a 100 sorry. They typically take about an hour to complete, and they cost about $150 to $350 per assessment. We got that value by checking in with, peer cities throughout the region, largely in Oregon, to see how much it costs for folks to have this energy assessment done in their home.

A home energy score is is different from comparing an energy bill, or or kind of disclosing energy information, and that's because it looks at the physical assets of the home that influence, the home's energy performance. And so, you know, some cases of this are really visible. Things like, you know, you can see windows. You can see a heat pump. You can see a solar installation. All of those things are are important, but they're visible. There's a lot of other things about the condition of a home that influence its energy performance that are otherwise invisible to someone who might be walking through the home. And that's when we're talking about things like the building envelope. So how well insulated is the home? What's the condition of the attic?

The condition of kind of the ceiling around windows and skylights, the foundation, those types of things, they all influence the energy performance of a home. One thing about the home energy score also to keep in mind is that it's independent of occupant behavior. So, you know, the way that people use a home has a really big influence on what your energy bill is going to be. But the condition of the home, that creates the kind of the base level of what the energy performance of the home could be. And so that's the purpose of the home energy score is to really, really evaluate that independently of how someone's using a space.

It provides a standardized rating that can be easily compared across homes as well as estimated annual energy costs, that can also be easily compared. One thing that's unique about the home energy score, it's more than just a score. It also provides you information, including recommendations for cost effective upgrades, the cost effective here being defined as upgrades that can be paid back within ten years or less based on the energy savings. So this is just a sample of what one of those reports looks like. So this is an example from the city of Portland's home energy score program.

So on the left hand side, you can see the front page of the little two pager, and and on the right is the back page. So if you look kind of at the top of the page, you'll see here it'll give you the home's energy score and then the home's estimated average energy cost. And then, you know, as you go down that front page, it gives you a little bit more information. It'll talk about if there's other solar on-site and how that might offset those energy costs. When you go to the back of the page, that's where it gives you more information about how you could improve the energy efficiency of the home.

It estimates, it provides these cost effective improvements here at the bottom. They're gonna look different for every home depending on what the condition of that home are. Those are kind of custom generated. And then at the top of the page there, you'll see the potential energy score with the improvements as well as the estimated annual energy savings if all of those improvements were implemented. This isn't meant to, suggest that folks should go out and do all of those improvements all at one time when they buy the home.

Though some people may choose to do that. It's really about providing recommendations of investments homeowners can make over time to help improve energy efficiency and reduce energy demand. Wanna talk a little bit about the benefits of of the home energy score policy.

Doctor Brown. Doctor Brown, can you go back

to that? Councilmember Barron, just one moment.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Yes. We have a question from councilmember Barron.

Thank you. I I think I heard you say, if there was home generation, if there was generation on the site, it would affect the score. It it it did you say that?

It doesn't affect the score. The score itself is focused on how much energy does the house consume. What it will affect, though, is the home's estimated energy costs. So if you have on-site production, that'll offset that.

So, I I do have solar panels on my house. But when I'd had previous conversations with you, I was under the impression that that wouldn't make a difference in the home energy score, but I kind of hear something a little different now.

So this is the score, right, which tells you this It's focused on the house's average annual energy consumption. Total energy consumption is different from energy consumption offset by energy production. It accounts for energy production right here. This house doesn't have any, but it would be in this line right here where if there was solar production, it would, estimate what those energy, savings are from the solar production right there and then use it to influence the total energy cost per year.

So so that energy production would be indicated on the score sheet?

On the score sheet, just not on the scoring number.

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay.

So, let's talk I wanna talk a little bit about the benefits of of a home energy score disclosure policy. So, we know from looking at examples from other communities that have implemented similar disclosure policies that these programs can result in in pretty immediate and and long term sustained energy efficiency improvements as well as resulting greenhouse gas emissions reductions. And this is because we've seen that informed buyers are more likely to implement energy efficiency upgrades. Studies have shown that 12 to 30% of buyers implement recommended energy saving upgrades after receiving home energy assessments. And and kind of a alternative look at this in Portland, they found that homebuyers who received their HES report were 10 times more likely to utilize a state energy rebate program than other homebuyers in this in in that area.

Part of the reason for this is that the time of purchase is a really key time in a home buying and kind of like the a homeowner's life cycle. We know that most improvements and upgrades are made within those first one to two years of purchase. And so when folks have this information at the time of purchase, they can plan for these upgrades alongside all of the other improvements that they wanna make in their home. The home energy score also has a lot of other co benefits that come with it. For folks that are selling their home, it helps to show the value of those home energy features, ensuring that the home's listing reflects energy investments that have been made and many of those energy investments which might otherwise be invisible to to home buyers.

If you're buying a home, it means you'll now know your home's energy use and costs. You can understand and plan for that total cost of homeownership, which also includes the the cost of of heating and powering your home. As a part of that home energy score, you also receive a list of those energy efficiency upgrades as well as the estimated cost savings that would come from implementing them. There's a couple of other benefits that that happen alongside of this. For folks that have a home energy score or similar energy report, you can access some different, mortgage products, energy efficient mortgages, which are kind of provided more broadly at the national level, as well as a Washington Energy Spark loan, which can help you access, more favorable interest rates and or, finance those energy efficiency upgrades if if you so choose to do so.

I wanna go over just a couple of the key policy criteria for how we've constructed this proposed policy today. So there are a couple of different decision points along the way where as we're constructing this, you know, we could have made one decision recommendation or the other. So the first is to use the Department of Energy Home Energy score as the scoring framework, for this energy assessment. We would develop custom reports much like the one from the city of Portland that we just showed with you that would then be disclosed on all real estate listings that puts all of the information into a convenient one page front and back information sheet. The trigger event or the time that this would occur would be at the time of listing, and this is proposed as a mandatory disclosure rather than a voluntary measure.

It would apply to all single family detached dwellings, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, cottage housing, townhouses, attached ADUs. These types of housing were selected because of just the types of housing that this tool can be applied to. Other types of housing such as stacked multifamily, mobile homes, they they don't currently work with this tool. Exemptions are for federal and tribal land, transfer of real property which commonly has accept exemptions for real estate transactions in instances of undue hardship for sellers. The policy includes a low income assistance in the form of subsidized assessments for low income sellers, and the proposed effective date is 05/01/2027.

I did wanna highlight this because there's been some confusion around this one. When we presented to counsel last year at the study session with the intent of this moving forward that year, We showed an effective date of May 2026, but since the, adoption has been pushed back, so too has the effective date. So potential regional impacts. We took a look at, you know, what we could expect to see from a policy like this based on other studies, other programs, and the estimated annual listings and sales within this community. And so this is looking at the expected impacts of a county wide home energy disclosure policy.

We would expect to see nearly 3,000 homes rated in the first year with about 560 of those homes having energy efficiency retrofits, resulting in about a little more than $300,000 of cumulative energy cost savings across those households, 586 metric tons of CO two E and carbon reduction, increased real estate value, and we expect that we would need at least seven seven full time energy radars in order to, serve the demand that would be generated from this type of program during the peak listing time frames. One thing that I wanna I would also like to point out about this is these are just the year one impacts, and you could expect that the the energy savings, the emissions reduction, those would accrue exponentially over time as more and more homes go through this process. You can expect it to nearly double on an on an annual basis. So I'll talk a little bit now about policy development, how we got here, the work that we did to help develop this before bringing it forward to you all. So this has been a fairly lengthy process.

So we, the TCMC, the Thirst and Climate Mitigation Collaborative, started working on this back in June 2023 when it was selected as a regional initiative for the four jurisdictions to work on together. One thing I do wanna point out though is it's not the first time that the community started to talk about home energy score disclosure policies. Back in 2021, community advocates, led several discussions with local real estate professionals and lenders to discuss a potential HES policy. We reviewed and considered much of that material as we started to launch this program to really try and honor the work and the conversations that had already been done around this. So we picked it up then in June 2023, and then we did stakeholder engagement in 2024, really focusing on policy research, and focus groups with some stakeholder groups to to really have more, kind of focused conversations about potential impacts, concerns, how we would how we would manage this.

The regional first and climate mitigation collaborative then considered all of that input, and we prepared a a draft ordinance that we brought forward for to the TCMC executive committee. They reviewed that and recommended approval of that ordinance and to forward it to the jurisdictions for their consideration. We then brought it to the Olympia Land Use and Environment Committee, in February 2025, And from there, it went forward to city council for a study session, in March. At that point, you know, we had been anticipating that all of our regional partners were going were gonna be planning to move the home energy score forward at that time. But as we learned that there would be some delays in our partner jurisdictions, we made the decision to pause consideration of the home energy score.

That was for a couple of reasons. One of them being one of the things that we heard from from stakeholders in those focus groups was really important to do this at a regional level and and to not do it independently. And so we paused it to give time for our partners to be ready to to bring it forward, which is bringing us where we are here today in 2026, where now the TCMC jurisdictions are beginning to consider adoption of the ordinance. Thurston County went first just last week, and they adopted it on March 17, 2026. And, the city of Tumwater is currently in the process of having some study sessions with their with their council, to bring this forward.

So what research and stakeholder engagement did we do? We reviewed a lot resources that are out there to help jurisdictions who are considering developing energy disclosure policies. We also did interviews with local government staff and cities with disclosure policies, throughout Oregon as well as Michigan and also spoke with staff from state and regional agencies who, have kind of similar related work to get their perspective on how this could be implemented. We also hold held a series of stakeholder focus groups to propose some of the concepts, get some feedback, and understand how this could be structured. We talked to real estate and home financing professionals, builders, contractors, home energy, service providers, low income service providers, as well as energy efficiency program managers.

In your packet, you'll find a a summary of the outcomes of that stakeholder engagement and focus groups that we did. And then we also did a lot of engagement through the Thirst and Climate Mitigation Collaborative, including their community advisory work group and the executive committee, which also held public comment throughout that process. Just a little bit of kind of high level focus group feedback. We heard from folks that the home energy score has the potential to be a valuable informational tool. There's were concerns about transaction transaction complexity, cost to sellers, market impacts, and the lack of enforcement capacity.

So with participants really emphasizing that the program would need to be simple, streamlined, integrated within existing transaction systems, participants, noted that if this were to be mandatory, that the preference would be for the disclosure to occur at the time of listing. To be very clear, it's not this does not mean that all of the focus group participants were interested in this being a mandatory disclosure, but they noted if it were mandatory, time of listing was their preference for the transaction timing. And then also noting that compliance should not refer solely on municipal enforcement because it's already taxed and and has a lot to keep up with. Member participants noted that voluntary programs would likely not generate meaningful uptake and that education and incentives should accompany any mandate, including targeted assistance for low income sellers.

Thank you. Doctor Braff, council member Green has a question.

Thank you, mayor Payne. Doctor. Brav, I want to spend just a second on the compliance question because that was something that I heard in public comments that I'm particularly curious about. So when it is a requirement at the time of listing, How much what what would compliance look like either from the county, the city, whoever that is, or is it just we've required it, MLS requires it, and that that is done?

I have a slide on this.

Okay. If it can wait. Okay. Thank you. Great.

Okay. So I we considered all of this feedback was considered, include in addition to the kind of policy research that we did to help craft the the model ordinance. We then had, an additional listening session with the Thurston County Realtors Association in February 2026. This was largely because, you know, we had taken a pretty big pause on this work. So we just wanted to reengage with folks, provide an update of where we are, and and just check back in.

And so what we heard were questions about the structure, approach, and necessity of the policy, questions and concerns about capacity to provide home energy score assessments, questions and concerns about potential impacts to housing costs and low income households. I would say a general preference for voluntary disclosures paired with jurisdiction funding for outreach and incentives to encourage uptake, and then an overall preference for more incentive based programs like Energize Thurston rather than regulatory approaches to climate action. I'll go over, you know, some of the answers to those. I've already talked about some of them and we'll address some of them in the frequently asked questions here in a a short bit. So really quickly because this gets to some of these questions on, what happens next, what does enforcement and compliance look like.

So the next steps that this is adopted. The first would be to identify and contract with a third party home energy score partner. So these are national service providers that are identified by the Department of Energy to help administer home energy score programs. This is a required step. A big part of what they do is is support training, for home energy score assessors and they provide quality assurance on those home energy scores to make sure that that they're accurate.

So we would contract with that third party, partner. We would then develop our home energy score reporting template, and then we would coordinate the disclosure form with the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. So councilmember Green, to your question, this is a big part of that. And in our conversations with the national service providers as well as staff is this looks a little bit different in every community, because each multiple listing service works a little bit differently. And so we've had some early conversations with the Northwest MLS to get a sense of what that would look like, how that approach would go.

But, ultimately, what we heard from them is that, first, the city needs to adopt an ordinance that requires us, and then they could work with us to then integrate it into the listing service. And so that's not the piece that ensures compliance or ensures enforcement. That's just the piece that, creates the mechanism for, the home energy score to be included with the real estate listing. We would then have some more work to do to kind of work out some of those internal processes, for compliance and enforcement, and that could take a couple of different forms. And one of that is doing reviews of the listings on a regular basis.

That's really the biggest part of it, right, is doing those reviews and and checking what's there. And I'll talk a little bit more about that here in a second. So we would coordinate that disclosure form with the Northwest MLS and then support training and onboarding of home energy score assessors. We would then reengage stakeholders to refine the program implementation approach. You know, we can only take it so far until it's an ordinance.

Once it's then, been adopted, we can do a lot more work to to refine those details. We would develop our protocols for subsidized assessments, compliance review and enforcement, develop our program web page, and and conduct education and outreach on the propose on the policy. So, the funding for program development management and subsidized assessments was allocated in the city's 2026 budget, and this is meant to be a shared program with costs shared across the jurisdiction partners who implement this. So you'll see some cost ranges here because it really depends on the number of partners who move it forward. So the cost for program development, this is a onetime cost, about a $100,000.

The cost of the City of Olympia would range anywhere between 25,000 and $50,000. Ongoing costs for program management are about $25,000 a year shared across all participating partners. And then the cost for subsidized assessments for City Of Olympia residents would be would be funded by the city specifically, and we estimate that to be about $5,000 per year, but not starting until 2027 when this is effective. The HES, supporting program, so this is kind of the program infrastructure that makes it all work, would be implemented through a partnership between the TCMC jurisdictions and a contracted third party home energy score partner. So the home energy score partner is responsible for the quality assurance review on 5% of ATS assessments.

So they'll do a random selection, picking 5% of those reviews, check them, rescore them, and if they notice any discrepancies, then they'll do additional training with the home energy score assessor, that provided that score to make sure that that everything is aligned with their quality assurance requirements. We would then do, really continue to do communications and outreach. This would be done in in partnership with the third party ATS partner as well as the TCMC partner jurisdictions and Olympia Climate staff to make sure we're continuing to to reach out to real estate professionals, ATS assessors, and buyers and sellers about the about the requirements. And then compliance. So I think this is one of the big questions.

Right? So a big piece of the compliance question is addressed would be addressed through a required form on the Northwest MLS. And what this just does is it helps ensure that the home energy score is included with most listings. About 95% of home listings are posted through the Northwest MLS in this area, so it really captures most of those listings. They would then be up to the city staff, so climate staff and partnership with code enforcement staff to, review those, make sure that everything has been included as it should and then provide notification and enforcement as needed.

Okay. So, we're getting towards the end here. Just want to go over some of the frequently asked questions. So first is, will the home energy score disproportionately impact older homes and lower income households? So the first piece, I'll address this question around lower income households.

There's no evidence when we look at programs in other communities that lower income households systematically receive lower home energy scores. Characteristics associated with lower scores, such as older equipment and deferred maintenance, are often offset by characteristics that drive higher scores, such as smaller home size and a lack of central air. When we're talking about just the the cost of procuring the home energy score assessment, the subsidized assessment will help mitigate the impacts of additional costs to listing for low income sellers, and all buyers will benefit from improved understanding of the total cost of homeownership and the ability to plan for that. Older homes may receive lower scores due to lower efficiency standards at the time of construction. This is expected.

We know that Washington's buildings are continuing to get more efficient over time with updated building codes, but addressing the energy efficiency of existing buildings is also really critical. When we look at observed impacts on sale prices, they closely align with actual operating cost differences over twenty to twenty five years. A 100% sorry. A $100 increase in estimated annual energy costs is associated with a point 4% decrease in sale price. This is about $2,000 on a $500,000 home.

And similarly, a one point increase in the home energy score is is associated with an average point 5% increase in sale price. What this tells us is that buyers who are looking at homes value this information. They understand this information, and they're factoring it into their home buying decisions. How will the need for home energy score assessors be met? Right now, we don't have many HES certified home energy score assessors to provide this service within this region.

But that's really common. That has been kind of the standard that has been seen in in all of the other jurisdictions that have implemented this type of policy. And they have seen very quickly after the policy is implemented really high uptake and and as folks wanting to get certified as home energy score assessors. We estimate that we'll need 68 assessors to meet the demand for HES for a county wide energy score disclosure policy, and the proposed ordinance includes a one year delay as well as dedicated funding, which is in that in those program launch costs to support ATS assessor recruitment and certification. We've had a lot of questions about using PSC energy assessments or using PSC energy bills instead.

So there's really two different questions here. The first is on energy bills. Energy bills are really are highly dependent on occupant behavior. They don't provide recommendations for those energy efficiency improvements that could help improve, energy performance over time or help the home buyer access some of the energy efficient mortgage products. PSC has at times and continues to kind of start and stop, home energy assessment programs.

They had a regular program that was discontinued in 2020, and then they've had several pilot programs since then where they will provide a small number of free energy assessments in the community. We did recently talk to them about a new program that they're planning to launch in 2026, so coming soon. And that's really going to actually focus on getting customers signed up for their flex demand program. They noted that it's less comprehensive than the home energy score, and is limited. They're only gonna provide 10,000 assessments throughout their entire service area, so it's really a quite limited program in scale.

And right now, they're not sure if they would be continuing it beyond that time frame. So just to hit this enforcement question one more time, how how will compliance be enforced? So there's two questions here, ensuring that it's posted the home energy score is posted with the listing. And then the second question is ensuring that the home energy score is accurate. So the first piece is to the a required form for the Northwest MLS is really just gonna help ensure that most listings have the energy score associated that.

A desktop review by city staff or third party home energy score partners will help verify this. In talking with other communities, they interact with their local multiple listing service in a lot of ways to help verify this. Sometimes the multiple listing service will provide access for staff to review, and other times, they'll provide weekly reports, of of all of the listings. So that would be a conversation that we would need to have with the multiple listing service over the next year to figure out exactly how that would work. We would also be able to enforce it on a complaint basis or just general periodic reviews, by staff.

And then if we determine that, a listing is is not, had not included the home energy score, then city staff would first provide notification, providing an opportunity for the listing to come into compliance before moving it into enforcement. The second piece is ensuring that the home energy score is accurate. That's where we really rely on our third party home energy score partner, that national service provider who provides quality assurance review on the home energy score assessments on a quarterly basis. And then they're also responsible for providing ongoing training to energy assessors to correct errors found during their quality assurance review. So that's it for my frequently asked questions.

I can move forward. The recommended action before you this evening, is to move to approve the proposed ordinance adopting a residential energy performance rating and disclosure policy. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much, doctor Braff. So, before we, put a motion on the floor and have discussion, are there any additional questions or comments for doctor Braff? Obviously, that doesn't mean you're free, but just before the motion. Yes. Councilmember Green.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. Thank you for those additional slides. You answered a lot of my questions with those. And and thank you just in general.

Like, this is I know this has been a very long time coming. I know that anytime we try to do something, especially regionally, it adds extra layers of challenge anytime you're working across the cities and the county and with elected officials and all of the things. So just, you know, I I appreciate your your patience through all of that on a on a pretty complicated situation. A couple of follow-up questions on the compliance side because that is like like, think this probably wasn't figured out when we saw the when we went through this in our study session last year. So I'm a little bit concerned about the the capability of staff to keep up with that.

My guess based on what I what you estimated in first year listings in that would be, I don't know, conservatively five to 700 listings a year in Olympia that I'm seeing some potentially higher numbers. So anyway, that gives me pause. What would be the penalty if you if somebody said, hey, I saw this listing. It does not have an HES. Then what? Yes. Let me pull this up for you. So it's con it would be

a civil penalty. Mhmm. And so there's just a standard the city has a standard approach for what that is. And that is, so the the first offense so this is really for any violations to comply with it, with the term or provision of the ordinance. Each day is a separate infract is considered a separate infraction. So the first offense, is $50. The second is a 125, and then, the third is $250. What I will note though is that it's always our goal to bring things into compliance before moving into penalties.

Sure. Yeah. No. I appreciate that. I just, where my brain is going is if I'm an unscrupulous seller and I've listed it and sold it before you ever hear about it.

Yeah, that does happen. That could happen.

And then separate topic, I assume having a HES partner is a cost. Is that cost included in that that annual Yeah.

The cost is included in that annual budget. And part of it is also paid for through an administrative fee that the that the national service provider, the HES partner, assesses on the home energy score. And so when we shared that a 150 to $350 estimate, that's inclusive of that.

Okay. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you very much. Any additional questions for now? Alright. So is there a motion for the recommended action? Alright. Councilmember Madron.

I move to approve the proposed ordinance adopting a residential energy performance rating and disclosure policy.

Second. Alright.

We have a motion in a second. Now there's time for further discussion. Any comments? Council member Barron.

Thank you. I I'm I'm just gonna keep this really quick. I'll just have one statement. I I I'm gonna support this this ordinance because the world is burning up. You know? It it's kind of a base issue. You know, what we see going on in The

Middle

East is plumes of carbon going up in the air. Our federal administration has really gutted most of the carbon progress that has been made in previous administrations. Home energy scores are a powerful tool in reducing carbon emissions because they make energy performance of of homes visible, measurable, and actionable. By giving homeowners and buyers clear information about efficiency, these scores encourage investments in insulation, heat pumps, and upgrades that cut energy waste. I just wanna thank doctor Braff for your thorough presentation, and I intend to support this.

Thank you.

Thank you. Additional comments. Councilmember Madrone.

Yeah. I also wanna thank, doctor Braff and all the regional partners, who helped to bring this together. You know, one of the hardest parts of our climate mitigation plan is retrofitting existing buildings. And so I'm I'm really excited to support this as a step forward in helping to empower people with the information they need to know what they need to do with a home that they're considering purchasing. There's there's actually a major voluntary component to that.

There are some people who think that this does not go far enough that we should require those retrofits at the time of sale. And so the voluntary component is this is that the people who are purchasing their their their new home have the information they need to to take action as they are able to do so. And also, you know, the some of the public comment we got earlier was about the cost of things going up, the cost of energy going up, the ongoing cost of owning a home should be fully understood by people when they purchase it. And I think a lot of people are surprised to hear to to see what what it does cost to heat homes that are lacking in energy efficiency. So I think actually one of the one bit of feedback I have, know, if if and as we move this forward is helping folks understand that the energy savings in that home energy score are based on current rates because we are seeing the rates being proposed by Puget Sound Energy that are gonna skyrocket.

I had somebody, you know, I recently reinsulated the attic in my house and somebody said, oh, did you see the drop in your energy bill? I said, I saw it, no, not go up as high as I thought it was going to. So helping people understand that, yes, there are cost savings here and part of that is that their bill didn't go up as much as it was going to because I'm I'm really nervous about watching energy rates go up and how that's gonna impact people's ability to, you know, maintain their households. So, I'm very, very excited to support this. It's a long time coming.

We did delay already. We did pause already because some of the big feedback we were hearing at the time was, please don't do it alone. Please do it as a region. And so we did delay. We did pause so that we could allow our partners in this more time to move forward. And I'd say we're ready as a city. And I wanna thank our friends over at the Thurston County for for for moving first.

Thank you. Councilmember Gilman.

I also wanna thank you, doctor Bratt, for leading Olympia's effort. And I know you had colleagues in each of the jurisdictions, and and we've had a a regional collaboration working for several years on this. I just wanna sort of restate my understanding and and my reason for supporting this. So I I was thinking about what is the problem we're trying to solve, and I was thinking about some of the early lessons we had from doctor Breff. That we know that much of our greenhouse gas pollution comes from residential heating and cooling.

And we know that while the rules for new construction are improving those new structures, we have a really small rate of replacing buildings, and we have a lot of existing housing stock in the town that's not going to necessarily be replaced, within our time frames of our climate goals. So we also know that consumers are most likely to invest in improving a home either as they prepare to sell or when they first acquire a new house. And, you know, that might often be granite countertops instead of air ceiling. But but that's that's that's the motivation here at the at the center of it for me is that this is a moment when folks are more likely to make an investment, and and we'd like to provide them this information. The home energy score rating system has been around for ten years with the Department of Energy.

We started work on this over five years ago. And and at its simplest, it's a one to 10 scale, least to most efficient, that estimates a home's energy use and recommends ways to reduce the amount of energy needed to save energy, to cut costs, and to improve comfort indoor air quality. It's been adopted in communities across The United States. There are national inspection companies that are conducting inspections all across, including in Vancouver and Seattle offices. Those inspectors have conducted 290,000 according to the Department of Energy's website yesterday.

290,000 home, energy score inspections have been conducted. So I'm I'm ready to pass this, and I'll just close with I was looking at the American Society of Home Inspectors, the trade association to see what do they think. They think it's hooey, are they doing it, where they're at. And and here's what what they had in a blog post about this this program. They said home inspectors are becoming very efficient at doing home energy score assessments for a profit.

Homebuyers appreciate knowing the energy performance of the home they're going to buy and the sky has not fallen for real estate agents who, for the most part, are beginning to recognize the benefit of serving better educated clients. That's the American Society of Home Inspectors. So I support this, and I hope that we'll pass it this evening. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Council member Green, followed by mayor pro tem Nguyen.

Thank you, mayor Payne. I am I am in support of this, and I just wanted to say that because I I have been dubious on it in the past, and I'm still a bit of a skeptic on the the ultimate effectiveness of it. I'm very concerned about the client's p compliance piece, but I recognize we have a year for implementation. So I just hope that we will take seriously exploring options that don't your department was just recently staff was reduced. Other departments were reduced.

I don't think we can take that lightly. I think we've seen some of the impacts of that in some other programs that we've moved forward. But the two things, just quickly, I think for me are sticking out are that I do want to say and I said it when we did our study session is I was one of the we should not do this alone. And so I really want to recognize the county for I know it was controversial. It was tough for them to be the first to go.

But I do think this will be much more impactful as a regional effort than as a city effort. And then the other piece that's sticking out for me is and a couple of of commenters on both sides said some version of this, which is this alone is not a tool that is something or or this alone is not gonna get us to our emission goals. But but I do think it's a piece, and I I've seen the incredible outcomes from Energize Thurston and some of those programs. But at the end of the day, consumers or homeowners are not going to take advantage of those if they don't know that they should. And so I just yeah. I'll remain skeptical, happy to support it.

Alright. Mayor Pro Tem Nguyen.

Yeah. Thanks for your presentation, Pamela. I'm gonna be in support of this. I've also heard, similar to council member agreeing, like, is, this is not gonna help solve our our climate issues, or it it is not gonna, make it better. But I think that alone, I should say, though, I think that if people don't even have that foundation, they don't even have that measurement, how do they like, where do you go from there?

I also recall not too long ago a study session where we had you and your staff. And there was kind of a lengthy discussion about how are we measuring our climate, our progress, and our efforts in in climate mitigation or I guess climate change mitigation. And

I

think this is a part of that. This is absolutely a part of that. I think you've done well to address some of those frequently asked questions. And we always want to make sure that folks are, as much as we can, involved in shaping the policy. And so I appreciate your reminder of the different stat points with stakeholders and a point where we just even even paused.

I'd say there's there's always room for improvement as it comes to, involving folks. I know for us that it has been, a five or six year process. And for some people, they're finding out and commenting for the first time. And heck, if I was a non council, I'm definitely not tracking our agendas. No way.

So I think there's still more work there, not to say that you haven't done a lot already. I really believe in the merits of, of this program, and the intention behind it. I hear a I I sometimes wonder if, for the the folks that were in opposition of it, not everyone, but I feel like there's a little bit of, like, death by a thousand cuts. You know? Like, what what else are you gonna do to us?

What else are you gonna do to, to layer on and layer on? And so, and not necessarily, like, we're against, energy, like making sure that energy is being managed well. And I really empathize with that. And I'll say I know that politics in the room, I'm sure, are different. But we are sometimes at local government levels, have to try to close those gaps with the tools that we can and kind of nibble around the edges.

And I do think that there is a layering effect. We've seen that in some of the other efforts that we've done. When it comes to tenant protections, we've also acknowledged that, hey, there's kind of a lot of things here. So I hear that. And then then ultimately, it's hard for me to vote against something that would give consumers more information, especially now with the rising costs and the lessening of consumer protection. So thank you for all of your work.

Councilmember Vanderpool.

When I think of the home energy score, I think of two things. Right? I think of the massive amount of people that are renters that are trying to get into buying a home or find stability in their lives as rent continues to rise. Right? I think about these folks and how much it takes to save in this economy to buy a home.

Right? And the fact that housing is just going up and up and up and up. And I think about the fact that, you know, part of that is because we live in a country where the private market is a monopoly against affordable nonprofit development, right, alternatives to that. And I think about the fact that, you know, if someone wants to finally save out to buy a home and they finally get there and they finally finally build, like I I, like, I live in missing middle housing that was built in 2009. I live in a townhome.

And if I had known that my the the heat boxes that were installed in my house were so inefficient, I would have asked in the negotiations to have heat pump put in because that could help me, as a consumer, know where I'm going from here. And so for me, it's I I think about I'm not thinking about people who currently own homes. I'm thinking of people who are struggling, people who are marginalized historically, who have a hard time getting into the housing market. Because those people are you know, they're they're they'll we want those people to live in stable housing. And then the other side of this, I think about where we are with the climate.

I think about how do we get folks into into housing in a way that they it reduces the amount of impact on the environment. You know? For a long time, climate policy in this country has been buy a Tesla or do that investment privately. And it has been very it's been a struggle to think about working class people and the environment. And for me, this does both of those things. And I think that makes sense. And so I I can't I'm I'm looking forward to passing this, and I also wanna thank doctor Braff and our staff for working on this for all these years and the folks who've commented for years. And I'm just I'm ready to move forward. Thank you.

Okay. I actually do have a couple of questions before my comments. Well, really just one around could could market competition, like, drive up the cost of home energy scores over time? So for example, if we don't have, you know, folks that are that are gonna be performing these assessments just yet, I imagine there would be a competitive market for that, right, that folks will want to come in and and and do that for us. And then over time, of course, with inflation, we have to think about that.

So I'm just curious about have we thought about those things, and and what does that picture look like for us in ten years?

Sure. So a couple of things. One is that I I looked to some of the communities in Oregon who have more recently implemented similar policies, and they saw, like, a huge number of people who are interested in being certified as home energy score assessors when they first brought forward the policy, and they were providing the the the onboarding support for new folks to become, trained as home energy score assessors. They then did see a natural attrition over time as that kind of home energy score assessor market kind of evened out for the folks who were really wanting to provide it over the long term. And they have seen their prices.

This has been since, 2039, I think, is when it first became effective, really remained fairly consistent over that time. So long as we have a robust energy assessor market of certified home energy score providers, that's likely going to help maintain, competition, which will help kind of keep the prices more affordable. When everything gets more expensive, there's really right. Home energy scores may get more expensive as well. That's just kind of the nature of inflation.

It is something that we will we can track, and try and pay attention to. It's much harder, I will say, to track the cost of an energy assessment than it is to track the outcome of the assessment. We'd really be relying on program participant survey data, and people really being willing to share that information. So it is a little bit just to be totally upfront, it's it's more tricky to monitor.

Yeah. I appreciate that. And we're, you know, we're talking about a a modest fee for now, and then we also have, you know, the subsidization for low income sellers. But I'm I'm just asking that because there is this narrative of burning burdening folks that are are low income, but we also are concerned about burdening folks that are not. Right?

And, also, my comments are similar to council member Greene's. I I I don't love adding more regulation. This is not something that is, like, exciting to do and and to make requirements and mandates. But I will say that we are at a moment where local governments need to have courage when it comes to climate change. And, unfortunately, we have a national government that is not incentivizing communities across the country to do so.

We see the exact opposite. I also have had my reservations about this policy even I'm gonna be honest. Even as early as today, I was still thinking about, well, what if this and what if that and entertaining all of the hypotheticals in my own head? And I can't get to a place where I could reject a policy such as this that we may not necessarily see all of the benefits for our action immediately as in next year, but we also can't continue to pause and stall and not do anything. And meanwhile, our emissions get higher and higher and higher.

At some point, we have to do what we said we were gonna do in the thirst and climate mitigation plan, and we have to act. And at some point in history, we have to do something different so that we can start to see something different. And that's how I feel about this policy. I think the concerns that were raised here are legitimate concerns. I don't think that the folks who are speaking in opposition are totally incorrect about everything.

I think you have some fair concerns, and I know that we we have, you know, a a one year period until implementation. And so I hope that we will continue to work with folks and also make sure that we have a robust education outreach plan to homeowners across the city as this goes into effect. And I hope we create continue to keep that door open to hear those concerns expressed from the folks that showed up today. I will say that as we do with every other policy we adopt, we monitor how it's going. Once it's implemented.

We can make adjustments, as we have done with other policies. I understand that there are concerns of facing litigation and all of that with this, but I will just say my response to that is that if we did not act every time somebody threatened to sue the city for something that was controversial, we wouldn't do anything. And so just look at missing middle housing, for example. Now that's state law. And so I I just have to say that I I think that this is something we just need to have the courage to act on now, and we can always make adjustments later if we need to.

But, meanwhile, we need to do our part in the corner of the globe. So is there any other comments? Alright. Seeing none, we have a motion and a second to approve the ordinance adopting a residential energy performance rating and disclosure policy. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you, doctor Braff, for your work and to your team, and thank you to all of our community members who showed up in support or opposition tonight, for stating your physicians. Thank you very much.

Okay. So that takes us to council reports. I am gonna begin with the mayor's report, just very quickly and state that, myself, the mayor pro tem, city manager Bernie, and assistant city manager Stacy Ray all attended the National League of Cities conference in Washington DC this past week. It was a wonderful, productive time in DC. The conference was really wonderful.

My most significant takeaway from this year's theme of the local government delivers is a session that I attended on opioid settlement funds. I'm looking forward to bringing, some of what I've learned from that session to the opioid abatement council. And so, that was a great session. I appreciate it. I also just wanna say, this is I'm kinda joking a little bit, but I'm also being serious when I say this.

You know, I one of the most significant takeaways coming from this conference was just how much we really have it together as a council and as a city, as an organization. Because I can't tell you the number of members that came forward, frankly, venting about some of these dysfunctions of their own governments or bodies and always giving us that reassurance that, wow. We're if if the length of meetings is something that is a a big thing for us to figure out, I will take that over some of the things that I heard from some of these other folks. So we really are doing wonderful work here together as a body. We had our meetings with representatives Strickland and our senators Murray and met with senator Cantwell's staff, really, on our top three issues on our federal legislative agenda, which include housing and home homelessness and affordable housing, which there is a bipartisan bill that is moving through congress.

It's known in the senate, the senate version as the Roads Act, and so very much looking forward to some action happening from congress on that. And then we also advocated for the surface transportation reauthorization, which is expiring for our projects like the Nisqually Bridge and the road diet project for Capital Way eventually. And then, also, we obviously advocated for our sanctuary city policies and for more appropriate constitutional approaches to federal immigration policies. So those were our our three areas that we had discussions with our delegation. And it was a wonderful trip with everybody.

Got to got to business, but also appreciated sharing the time with you all as well and getting to know each other a little more. And so, with that, I am going to start to myyou have a question for me, Mayor Pro Tem?

Yeah, just a point of clarification. What is a road diet, Mayor?

Oh, yes. So yes. We are having discussions around bringing capital away from having multiple lanes on both sides of the road to limiting or rather shrinking the road for to address the issues of speeding. And so you could do things like have less lanes. You can also add things like trees and other things that encourage people to slow down.

It's sort of almost like a natural behavior that occurs once you take those considerations into in mind when you're thinking about design for projects. And so that's that's what it is. Alright. So alright. And I'll start to my left with councilmember Barrett.

No report. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Green.

Thank you, mayor Payne. Nothing to report.

Thank you. Mayor pro tem Nguyen?

Nothing to report. Thanks to council colleagues that held it down on the seventeenth for us.

Alright.

Council member Gilman.

Okay. I held back all night, so now I'm gonna talk trash just a little bit.

I see what's in

it. Alright.

Finance committee last week spent the evening talking about the current situation and the potential future for waste resources. Yes. Mayor Pro Tem nailed it. It's waste resources. We have had our our waste resources, our refuse collection based out of the east side maintenance center for over fifty years now, and there's no space on that parcel of land to grow.

And we're looking now to support 40 staff, 20 collection vehicles, seven support vehicles, and a ton of carts. We so we just we just have that need as well as a need to have a earthquake safe building so that should there be a big seismic event, city services could continue on. So we we've been looking at the former police firing range site on Carpenter Road just on the north side of Martin Way. Remediate site remediation is complete on that site now. We recently received land use approval from Thurston County for our project, and we're at 10% initial design for a new project.

This if we were to build a new facility there, it would be about a $50,000,000 project. It would be a 24% increase in residential collection rates and and a and a commensurate increase with other rates. And that would come out to about $8 a month for residential customers. So we recommended that this issue come to the full council for discussion, and we tagged on a couple of particular requests that we'd like to have. We'd like to understand how our current rates compare with our neighboring cities.

We'd like to know how our current service compares with our neighbors and what alternatives might exist to this big expansion. So I I wanted to prime the pump tonight because I I think it's a really important issue and one that we we can't really punt for a number of years or put a pause on. So, yeah, that's my report.

Alright. Thank you. Any questions or comments for councilmember Gilman? Alright. Seeing none. Thank you. Councilmember Vanderpool.

K. Just a couple items. So transportation policy board, which feels like we met a long while ago, We had a conversation about call for projects and process criteria. So on the other flip side of federal funding and state funding is what do we do regionally for our call for projects. Right? What do we do with the money wins here? How do we rate rank that? I was part of that process last year, and it's we're looking at what do we do with the process in the future. And I actually had a pretty good conversation with mayor rye Ryder about this, about the need to ensure that our point system towards our goals include some level of joint projects. Right?

So Martin Way and other places that we talk about a lot about being things that we need to jointly, like, come up with a design for, for example, and make sure that it is that we do the road diets. We meet we put in the bus lanes for interstate transit, all of that stuff, ensuring because, you know, we often work on projects separately on separate streets in our in our community, and those are all important. But it's also very important if we're gonna be looking at money at the regional level, why don't we think about a little bit at the regional level also at the same time? Because we talk about it a lot, and those are huge projects. Millions of dollars to take something that used to be like Mike Martinway used to be highway before I five.

And how do you make it into a urban area that benefits multiple communities? And so that was a really good conversation that we had. We also had a a very quick preview about multilevel modal or multimodal levels of service. So let me break down the technical of that. So levels of service is, in the past, you would if you had levels of service around automotive cars, you would you would say, hey.

Okay. We predict in the future there's gonna be a need for more lanes, so we built built more lanes. That's the way we used to do levels of service. Multimodal level service says, We're building an apartment in the street, and there's and there's some, like, a cluster of businesses on the other side. We need to ensure we need to look at how do we ensure bike lanes and sidewalks and ADA compliance as a level of service into the future, as kind of a a thought process to the demand for future density in folks.

Right? I think if the Capitol Mall is an example of that. Right? As you start to see projects, hopefully, in the future get built, you need to make sure we meet those needs. And then I have a couple of other items that I wanted to mention to council because I I was thought I could I I probably should've emailed you, mayor, about this, about about a council dinner, but you know how time is.

The whole concept of of of how long our meetings are is an interesting thing, isn't it? So I wanna I wanna entertain a conversation about having those at the MOU for neighborhoods. Our our CNA and, like, and and thinking about the community forums that last month, we had that conversation, and we need to find a time to schedule that con schedule a time to meet with the CNA and folks in the neighborhoods to actually sit down and start drafting an MOU because we've been talking about that for years. Been talking about that longer than I've been on council. And so let's get let let's let's find a time to schedule that, and and who wants to be involved in that.

So I don't know if, Jay, you wanna talk with folks and their one on ones about that, but I I think we should be having that conversation soon. And then let's see. I'm just gonna save the rest for our land use environment meeting that's coming up. Yeah. That's it.

Alright. Thank you. Questions or comments for councilmember Vanderbilt? Alright. Yeah. I'll just say on the MOU discussion, I think it was prior to your arrival. So council member Gilman and I and Tim Smith and city manager Bernie, we had a

I was there too.

Yes. And mayor of Proton went. I'm like, something on my nose. Like, it's just like We had a discussion or, excuse me, a meeting around the MOU. So there is we're not starting from nothing, I guess, is the point that I'm I'm trying to make here. So I think it's important we really just kinda push pause, so we just need to pick up from where we were to continue work. So and and maybe other things will come out of that. So yeah. Thank you. Alright. Councilmember Madron.