Law and Justice / Human Services Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Welcome to the Snohomish County Council Health and Community Services Committee. Today is Tuesday, January 27. It's 11AM. We're meeting the Jackson Boardroom and also remotely. Before we get into the agenda, I'll read a brief public comment script. We'll be taking public comment beginning in person and then remotely. In Zoom, you'll click the hand icon to raise your hand. If you're calling by phone, you'll press 9 to raise your hand. When called upon, press 6 to unmute. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak, and please start your comment with your name and your city of residence. Now do roll call.

Committee Chair Mead? Here. Vice Chair Lo?

Present. Committee

Member Nearing?

Here.

Committee Member Dunn? Here. Committee Member Peterson? Chair, there are four members present.

Great. Thank you. So with that, we'll go ahead and get into public comment. We'll open up public comment for anyone that would like to give comment in person. Go ahead and step up to the podium. Seeing none, I'll verify we have no hands raised online. Oh, we do have public comment. Welcome.

Or if you're this poor guy on a scooter trying to get past this, the propane tanks, and oftentimes too, they actually park their van on the right of way and on the sidewalk. And this is the Starbucks over here in Mill Creek, and there's a veterinary clinic here. And where they set up is actually on the grass and on the sidewalk in between two trees at this particular stand. I know there are other ones in all the jurisdictions. My sister even sent me an article from Tacoma where, they've got this you've probably seen it, but where they have this big hunk of meat.

I don't know if it's frozen on the inside or worms crawling around or what, but it's kinda disgusting. But, anyway, there's a picture, the Tacoma News had of, like, four of these outside of a house next to gas cans, which I assume are the generators. That's what those gas cans are for. And, you know, they they cook these out of a home. They have no health permits. I don't know if I'm on a time limit here. But

We've got your yeah. Maybe we don't. Yeah. We do have

your time. Right? Is it two minutes?

Yeah. Three minutes.

Three minutes. Okay. And, anyway, I guess, today, as I just wanna express, I'm not anti immigrant. I'm actually pro legal immigration. And my friend has a taco stand, which is actually visually in line with this illegal stand. And when I say illegal, I mean no health department certification at all. No handwashing. I mean, the list is too long to go down, and I'm sure they'll go over that today. But, anyway so it's it's fairness. It's it's a fairness issue.

And my friend Carlos can't be here today because he's opening his taco stand legally. He has the health department, all the permits, three compartment sink, the whole works. So, anyway, I just wanted to say

that I think it's really

a fairness thing. It's a hazard. They used to put the tent poles right on the edge. I know I'm overtime, but, anyway, I just wanted to, you know, let everybody know that I I think it's not fair that this group of people are, you know, skirting all of the legal processes. They're not paying federal tax, sales tax, any of the county fees. They're not using the health department. And, anyway, that that's just what I wanted to say today. And my friend is here, Carlos' wife, and I think she has something to say as well. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Thanks for joining us. You have additional comment in person? No. Okay. No worries.

You got three minutes.

I didn't have that much time. Welcome.

Hello. My name is Rosario. I live in Monroe, Washington. I'm here in regards to also support my husband and his business. He does have a taco a food stand over in Lynnwood, Washington.

And it is it has been complicated with these street vendors, since he is gonna be in a year since April since he's been open. And since the street vendors have been basically on the street, it it's been making it really difficult, really difficult. And I do have, like, a lot of friends and a few family members that do live in, in Everett and Lynnwood. And but, you know, they like to go around and see how, the street vendors are and stuff like that. And that the stuff that they would do is kinda disgusting that they would, like, you know, dump their grease, like, on the side of the, I would say, like, the the traps down on the cement.

And and, of course, there's no sanitary, nothing at all. And, of course, we do things the right way, and it should be the right way. Of course, we go to the promissory and all that stuff, and we try to make everything nice and healthy so nobody gets sick and all. And to be honest, like I say, it's just been it's kinda like, a competition in a way. But to be honest, we're doing the things the right way and while the street vendors just making it just much more complicated on my husband's business. So we're here to see in which ways that we can support and do all that and make it much more easy for for businesses around him.

Well, thank you. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

Do you have any other comments in person? All right. I'll turn to see if we have anyone online.

No hands are raised.

Great. So we will close public comment and we will jump into our discussion items. So we have two discussion items today. We have DEM joining us, but we going do that second. So first we have our unpermitted roadside stand briefing. This stemmed from councils getting a lot of emails from constituents talking about what we just heard in public comment and and some other comments around these illegal street vendors. And some of the council members had conversations with their health department, I know that I have in conversations with our law enforcement team as well. And it seems to make sense to kinda get everybody here to be on the same page. So council can be asking kinda questions in unison, and I'll be hearing the same information make sure that the public is getting that information as well. So I appreciate the health department, for joining us today.

Have Tony Kalinas here who is going to, I think, start us off with a presentation and then stand for questions. Alright. Well, thank you, and I'll turn it over to you.

Great. Thank you. Getting everything set up here. Well, good morning. Thank you again for inviting us here to present on this topic.

Again, I wanna point out to the pictures. Those are the two stands we're typically talking of. They're umbrella cart stands, and then they're also gonna be the 10 by 10 canopy selling the the meat on a spit as we go through the discussion today. I am unable to advance my slides. Just a sorry.

Thank you. I wanna take the opportunity to to do a quick run through the food program in the county. Our primary mission is to safeguard public health and provide consumers food that is safe and not unalterated and honestly presented. We do 3,600 permits in the county for routine food. Last year, we had over 1,000 complaints that is for sanitary conditions as well as foodborne illness. Of those 1,300 were for food illness. Do We 1,200 temporary event permits. And so temporary permits, so you think of festivals, fairs. We had over 400 plan reviews, that's new businesses opening plan revisions that we deal with. And we lead first with a health education.

That is our primary focus is before you go to enforcement is trying to educate folks on the rules and the code. Our regulatory authority. So the FDA oversees all retail food in the state in the country. They allows states can choose their own food code or adopt the retail, the FDA retail food code. State of Washington adopted its own code. And so we all of our authority comes from the retail food code adopted at the state of Washington. The Board of Health, the Stomach County Board of Health can adopt code and change code that way to make it stricter. Right now, our code is adoptions outside of the state code are primarily on fee schedules. But

there

is that's where our regulatory powers come from. Again, what are we talking about today in these unpermitted roadside stands? They are they're they're primarily we have the umbrella carts selling, chicken products and and melons cut fruit. And then we'll have these 10 by 10 stands that set up doing, it's taco, tacos pastore on the spit. I wanna these are not food trucks.

There are permitted food trucks that are that are allowed and are permitted. These stands as they currently operate are not permitted by us, and it's highly unlikely we would ever be able to permit them. Just so everyone knows they're they're not permitted. We see them operating. And the reason is largely around they just they have no ability for water or wastewater to acquire it or dispose it.

And they also don't have the ability to separate food or keep food at proper temperatures. So that's the primary risk we're seeing out there is lack of sanitation. There is no hand washing facilities, no employee bathroom access. The food storage, in fact, this picture here, you see the temperature that is we're working with law enforcement and we're able to go through and take temperature of the meat when we shut one of these stands down. And we've seen that this is how exactly the temperature of 53 degrees where you would grow bacteria.

And there's no separate areas to store the food. And so the food is cross contaminated. It all gets packed into a vehicle, sand containers. And I will tell anecdotally a story that as we've I'll go further as we've shut these down, we'll go late into the night shutting down. We've shut them down early in the evening and moved on to other locations and seen the same operations set up again later in the evening. The food inside has never seen a refrigerator. So it sat out for eight hours in the back of it. That was in August, just for an example of the roadside stands. And it's been a massive growth. The proliferation has been, we went from hardly having any of these to we've closed over 40 this 2025.

And besides, I want to also mention, the health risk, we're other agencies are running into waste disposal issues. Some cities in the county have had issues with these folks dropping their wastewater down into the storm drains and having to bring factor trucks out to unclog the drains. It's a big problem in King County as well. Transportation, as I mentioned earlier, the sidewalks are blocked. They're impeding travel on the sidewalk. When these stands first started in the county, they would set up on private property. And when we discover them, we would reach out to the private property owner and work on trespassing and it worked. But other than the away, as you know, it's difficult to trespass folks in the right away. So that's these operations are are in the right away, right on the sidewalk, walking the sidewalk. And I receive a lot of complaints about the stands being open.

But one of the reason I wanted to mention it today is one of the complaints I do receive is about the the danger of the propane tanks. I had a gentleman call last year to let me know that he actually hit one of the propane tanks, the vehicle on the side of the road. So the test where show that there. So it is a transportation only impeding the traffic, you know, just a safety issue in general. And then again, economic fairness, the unpermitted roadside stands takeaway business from properly permitted establishments, who have business licenses, both city and state were required, a fire department approval and are following labor rules.

So what do we do? So what we currently are doing is we see a stand in operation or if we receive a complaint for the stand from the public. Our staff will go out and visit the stand, issue a cease and desist letter. This letter lets operators know they need a permit to continue operation. We wait for them to shut down.

We also provide them information on how to obtain a permit. We provide that information in both English and Spanish. And to date, we've had no none of these operators have turned in a permit to try and get a application to get a permit. What we've what we've done as they've moved mostly to after hours responses, we try and pair up our after hours response with an event we're already working at temp event. As the past couple months, we've been teaming up with law enforcement teams and we go out in the evenings with law enforcement.

We try and get when our complaints we try and get to them as soon as possible, but we need to coordinate with law enforcement to go out in the evenings and shut the stands down. But as I said earlier, they tend to open right back up or the next day. In May, to try and get information out, we activated a closure website to where we can post our closures. So we've been so the public can know that these where these stands are, they're not permitted. And again, we've worked out, we keep and almost notices, we made the decision only keep them up for ninety days so the list doesn't become stale.

So we are getting out there. So we'll reinspect a lot of the closures up there. We've closed multiple times and we'll keep doing it, but I didn't want the list to just be a stale list because the stands do move around from intersection to inter they're not always at They'll move around. They'll move around to different spots in the same night. We're working on partnerships with, you know, the county law enforcement and the city law enforcement. And we're really putting a focus on this on the supply side on public outreach, on notifying the public about the hazards of eating at these stands and how to identify a permitted establishment. I wanna share on the numbers too. It shows up there. We had we we track all of our complaints. In 2022, we had 16 complaints for these roadside stands.

And then it grew all the way to last year with two zero three complaints. And we did a five foodborne illness complaints associated with these stands from last year. And in kind of a metric we use is we ten percent of foodborne illness is reported. So we can multiply every time you see that you report it by times five. Again, we've had 40 closures of stands, since May 2025.

And then staff time, we started tracking this separately from our regular complaint time in September when we started doing standalone time. Our staff was going out separate of other duties. And so we've had sixty two hours of after hours response, since September to try and enforce on these stands. These are some links I wanted to share today. The first link is our notification web page. It's where we track all the closures. You can go there and see it. We also discuss what a permit looks like so folks know what a permit is and what to look for. Operators are supposed to have their permit on hand. The second link is information we put out just of the risks of eating an unpermitted, food trucks.

And the third link is a story our comms team worked with King five on last fall. And again, the issue is to get information out that this is a problem and really to look for a permit. What does a permit look like? And the last article, this isn't just a Stomach County issue. This really is a region wide issue, even the Western United States all over. Our neighbors in Tacoma Pierce County have the same problem and they used a tax and police enforcement team to get into a home that was a kitchen making the food down there. And those are pictures there of what that kitchen looks like. It is, it is incredibly unsanitary. We wanna share all that information. So why are we having a hard time with enforcement on these?

And so, again, we can only enforce the retail food code. Our inspectors are not law enforcement officers at all. And so we run into an issue of identification of operators. We can't request ID. And in a normal system for us, we would go into civil proceedings. And so until we can identify who actually owns these stands, that's where we would take civil proceedings to. Our enforcement we have now is all based around somebody having a permit. So once you have a permit, there's all sorts of enforcement things you can do. But if you don't have a permit, it's there's not a lot of enforcement set up. Again, civil proceedings, which would be our normal course here, take time and resources.

And when the stands are opening up and closing, switching operators, it's not a very effective tool. And then even for us going out and doing these closures, we're still continuing to do them so we can notify the public, but we really need an actual enforcement step after closure. Like I said, we've closed these down and we seem open the same night and that's working in conjunction with law enforcement. They open up. One of the cities we worked with, they were working, they were trying to close establishment down five nights in a row and it still popped up every night for five nights in a row.

And as of late, we're running safety issues with staff. These stands are not operating during the day. They've pushed into later hours in the evening. And it's not from the operators, we're running more into safety issues from the crowds when we shut them down. So that's why we've really wanna partner with law enforcement as we're out doing this. Ideas, we have reached out to partners across the state, across the country. We've met with out of state health health departments to get ideas. Some of the ideas we're looking at is license plate tracking. All these the stands have vehicles parked there. The umbrella carts don't, the umbrella carts are just dropped off and they're left there all day just on that.

But the canopies have vehicles. We've done some tracking early on. A lot of time it goes to rental agencies or it goes back to a house and we'll send the cease and desist letters to them and get no response. It's an idea if we're able to partner more with law enforcement, that's an option. That kitchen picture from Turguma Pierce is really focusing on the centralized kitchens, is putting a focus on finding out what the centralized food is being prepared, the homes or warehouses where the food is prepared at and really putting an enforcement focus on those, getting in there shutting those down.

Confiscating food and or the equipment is an idea. Right now, do the cease and desist letter, there's not an economic penalty associated just with that. It's a cease and desist letter, we wait till they close, they turn around open up a couple hours later. At being able to take the food and or the equipment will put in an economic cost associated with continuing And one thing we want to do is if we hopefully get a next level enforcement is we do want to actively enforce this and put a focus on it when we do get that option to spend a couple of weeks and months to really get the message out there once we get that new tool. And as I said earlier, we really are focused on increased collaboration with our law enforcement partners.

I think the big message I want to share with everybody is in order to be effective for this, it's going be necessary to adopt some code changes and we're going to have to work in partnership with other agencies. Next steps, again, statewide issue, this has been a big issue for almost a year and a half now at the state level. The Department of Health has convened a work group with all the local health partners along with the state to discuss next steps, share tactics and what works on how to enforce on a permitted roadside stands. The work group has had three meetings already. They're in early stages of discussion with State Attorney General to develop a legal path for food served and unpermitted establish establishments to be discarded.

So that's in the early stages right now. We have the same idea here locally. We've heard of successes from other agencies around the country having local work groups. We're proposing to convene a work group of the local cities and county partners and other agencies to share ideas and tactics to find some enforcement ideas. And then we want to double down our efforts to get more information out on the public campaign about the risk of eating an unpermitted stands and how to identify whether an establishment has a permit or not. And then I just we are working towards a solution, and, we're just gonna say, we're gonna need assistance from other agencies to have some success. I'd like to open up for any questions.

Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for being here. Is that me? That's not me. Okay. It's fixed. You have questions from council members? Council member Dunn.

Thank you, Tony. I appreciate the presentation. I appreciate that there's more of a multipronged approach. Trying to, like, educate the public, I think, is really important so that they understand the potential health risk and the fairness aspect. I know that this is statewide. I appreciate that we're also trying to correct some misinformation. So so you sharing how much time was put in for, overnight response is also really critical. I would say we've outlined the concerns. I'd say, like, I can't speak for the board of health, but as a chair of the board of health, we've had updates on this a few times. I'd say, like, we stand ready if there's some code changes that need to be done.

So I think it's on our agenda throughout the year. But if there are some code changes, that's something that I know that we're happy to work on. And I know that you've been working in partnership with law enforcement, including the city. So not just our sheriffs, but also connecting directly with city police and law enforcement. Do you have an idea of the dedicated resources that you've been able to track for some examples of success either in other counties or other states? Do you have an idea of what it would take for, like, dedicated emphasis for something like this to get control of this?

It's gonna depend on what path we take. For example, on and we're in the early stages of food destruction, and it depends, like, if we would have to store the food for some for chance of appeal, you'd have to refrigerate that. And so there's the the county would have to find a way to store that food. And so other so it depends on how our rule to state of Washington ends up looking like as far as cost. If we can dispose of it on-site or dispose of immediately in a dumpster, that would lower the cost dramatically. Other success stories have been around taking the actual and hauling off the equipment, which would involve getting a truck hauling it off and storing it to site locations. And then, yeah, there would be some costs associated with just the it's all evening work, so evening response time for sure.

Just a quick follow-up on so the state, we're we have we're we have to wait for the state to decide what you can do with, for instance, the food storage or can localities decide? We don't care, like, if you we can pass a code that says, if you don't have your permit readily available and you're not willing to cooperate and show us your ID or whatever it is, like, we can write this code that says, then we give our health department or maybe law enforcement, whatever Yeah. The ability to discard the food? Or do we have we have to wait for the state to tell us?

I I think as far as our authority comes to the state, there'd be a question for the the PA's office and whether would it be going too stringent if we were to then allow it?

Well, like, for instance, with when we were doing Blake a couple years ago, this is has nothing to do with the health department, obviously, but individual jurisdictions were able to decide what penalties we wanted for what drugs that were used. And there was the state wasn't superseding us until the Blake decision. So that's what I'm that's what I'm trying to figure out is we don't have our own abilities to say, we actually don't want this here even if the state think it's okay or if the state wants to require certain steps to be taken, refrigerating the food, etcetera. If we just said no, in Sonoma County, this is a huge problem, it's completely unfair, it's unsafe. If you're not willing to show us your permit,

we're going

to throw your food away.

Right. It would something we'd have to look into with the PACE office. But I think it would be doable and the question would be is it from the health department standpoint is would it be going against the what the code is saying in a in a more strict way or not? That's the question, I think.

Right. But I I don't wanna cut your line of questioning off if you were still doing questions. I I'm on a different line now. Okay. I'll come back to all of this stuff, I promise. I

was done with my questions.

Yeah. Alright. Never mind. I'm gonna keep going then. Do you have questions? Yeah. Okay. So we, as a county, you're saying we have to figure out if it's against our code or not. I brought this up three months ago, it might have been more than that, with the health department because I sit on the board of health as well. And you're saying that, you know, we've closed 40 we've had 40 closures since May 2025. You gave us the numbers of closures or complaints, 16 in 2022, I think you said, and then over 200 in 2025. So you've you've kinda seen this escalation. I I know I'm not the only council member that's brought this issue up either. So what I'm confused about is you're saying there could be code changes. We still got a lot of work to do and a lot of coordination and all this, but it's been months.

I and it's probably been I think I'm being generous. It's probably been a year plus that we've had this issue multiple years that we've had the issue, but a year or two since we've had council members, like, getting involved in in in complaints and all this. It's it's very it feels very frustrating as a community member. I I live in Mill Creek, and I know the stand you're talking about, but also there's a stand on Boff Lever Highway 1 64th, like, in everybody's face blocking a very utilized sidewalk. I even know for sure that I literally have made a complaint, and there are many many constituents that have made a complaint about that stand.

Like, it's been it's been over a year, at least, since we've been making these complaints. What is taking so long for even a code change proposal to come to us?

So so council member Mead, if you may, I'm Kim Van Pelt. I'm the health department director. I've been with the health department since late October. I I do believe that the health department recognizes that this is a significant concern for, many constituents within the county, and it is a significant concern for the health department. I I just wanna be clear that when we talked about confiscation of food or confiscation of equipment, that we had received a prior PA advisory letter talking about our authorities.

And our authority in this area was confusing, basically, from the PA's response. And so one of the things we looked at is in these discussions at the State Department of Health, they believe they are investigating themselves whether there isn't currently authority to take food. And so it seems that the most expeditious path forward would be if once they get that clarification, if there's already the authority, there doesn't need to be any other change. So we're right now trying to get clarity about that issue in particular. That will help inform some of our future actions.

Is that authority that you're saying our PA gave? And they're saying, there's ambiguity about we

They say there's ambiguity code or the state law? I believe it's the state code.

So if I was to pose a question to our PA and said, okay, let's assume the state doesn't give us authority.

Can we something more restrictive? Right. I believe we probably could ask again for the PA's clarification on that. But again, our thinking is that since DOH is already investigating and seems poised to quickly be able to render some sort of reading of the state law or the state code related to authority to take food, that that's the most expeditious path forward.

I I hear you you saying the word quickly, but I don't I mean, it feels frustrating that I've been working on this for months or a year, and I know Yeah. The California's Yes. And we're now it's like, well, let's wait to see what the state says. And I don't trust that the state is going to do this expeditiously. So I feel like going two prongs with this, asking the prosecutor's office, let's assume the worst with the state. Is there something we can do at the the local if they just say no, the state supersedes, period, whatever the state health authority says is what it is. I don't know. Right. Right. But we haven't even asked that question yet.

And and I I hear what you're saying. I think our next step is we are poised to very soon have that convening that Tony talked about of local partners and look at what our next steps are in terms of this issue, we are not just waiting for the state to take action. We are looking at a simultaneous track of trying to take action at the local level.

Okay. Got it. Alright. Councilman Wahgnioni?

Yeah. Thank you. So question, and this would probably require a change of state law, but I guess just just a question on potential enforcement mechanisms. Have we considered treating this in a similar way as we treat, like, a traffic infraction, for example? I'm just thinking if I have somebody who's just constantly speeding through school zones and causing a danger for students and whatnot, if we're politely saying, please don't do that anymore, but we have no way of of making that individual feel some pain, you know, in the form of having to pay a a fine or or having their license removed or whatnot, you know, that the enforcement is what allows us to get ahold of that and and prohibit that activity from continuing.

So is there a way to treat these in a similar fashion where we do have the ability, whether it's through state law, to say, we need your ID and we're gonna issue a a civil infraction. You're gonna have to pay a fine, and maybe that fine increases as as time goes on. Is that something that's been considered?

That is something that's being considered, and that's where it comes to partnerships. Since we're not law enforcement, it would have to come from the law enforcement side to do misdemeanors. But we are that's why we're excited to get the convening of all the local cities and county partners together because that is if we go the misdemeanor option, that would be something we could do with law enforcement.

Can we adopt that as a county or would we need to wait for the state?

That I'm not sure of. I'm not sure on the PA's process for that at all. Okay.

I'm not And then okay. Thank you. That's helpful. And then just a a separate question, but I went on a ride along with law enforcement, and we're taking a look at some of these in person. Yeah. It's you know, the the pictures tell the whole story. I mean, this is, you know, causing causing significant issues for the community, both for health concerns, and we heard about the issues it's causing for people who are trying to operate the right way. It seemed to me from my conversations that there was some sort of coordination behind all this, like the stands were in some way coordinated. Is that your understanding?

Anecdotally, yeah. When we when we shut stands down, they're on the phone to somebody else and they're moving locations and getting moved around. We've heard stories from cities where they've done a job good job of closing with the city and they set right outside city limits knowing exactly where the city limit line is and waiting for the next enforcement opportunity. Yeah, I do believe they're coordinated.

Is there a thought to again, this is multiple counties, it sounds like. It's an issue all over the place asking the state if they can convene some sort of a task force if this is coordinated at a multi county level?

That's what we're hoping we get out of both the state convening we have currently in place and getting out of the local convening. It's just some direct because I think there is some definite partnerships with that across enforcement lines here for sure.

Got it. Okay.

We are looking into that.

Thank you.

Other question? Counselor, we're done.

So inspectors do not have law enforcement authority to require or request identification.

That's correct.

What are some pros and cons of changing that law if if inspectors were allowed to do that?

Well, the one of the cons would be would just change what our inspectors are doing with that Education First function. You know, the pro would be is we would we'd be able to enforce quicker and we wouldn't have to search for other support from other agencies to do the enforcement for us.

And are you seeing safety risk for inspectors when they go out?

We are. Are. That's when we started getting agitated crowds. That's why we started sitting either in pairs or with law enforcement. So law enforcement's our priority to go out with first. And then if we don't face tough complaints, we'll go out in pairs.

I appreciate the effort to coordinate with law enforcement, but also recognize that they're also strained by resources. So a review of kind of understanding understanding the impacts financially and resource base would be, like, both the health department and our law enforcement partners. Thank you.

Other questions from council members? Anyone online?

Yeah. I have a question. Yeah. Thank you for the presentation today. I've been asking for this for a long time, so thank you. Do think we should confiscate the food. I do think we should confiscate the equipment. This is clearly coordinated. But my question is, have we worked with the Department of Revenue at all to maybe go to one of these taco stands, pay through their Venmo so we know what their Venmo is? And then, clearly, I don't think they're paying any state, local, or federal taxes. So is there any opportunity to partner with them?

Possibly. Again, when we convene at the state level, we're open to get that information. From our levels, local we just haven't reached out to revenue agencies yet. We've been working with local law enforcement primarily, but it is an option.

And thank you for that. Also, I think you closed down a stand last week, and it's my understanding. I think it was closed down at 04:00 or so. You guys did a great job. But three hours later, it's open in the same location. So, I mean, we talk about these closures, but they're closures for a few hours. Is is that something that you guys have experienced through this process?

Yes. I would say of the 40 closures, most of them are duplicate closures, same location. Yeah. Our team went out last Thursday with the Stomach County Sheriff's Office and shut down eight stands, and that was the first one. And as the inspectors are going home for the evening, they saw that one open again at 01:00 in the morning. So, yeah, we do see that frequently.

And then I I wanna close with this. I mean, this was first brought to my attention about a year ago or so from one of my minority business owners who runs a restaurant, who pays the fee to the health district to operate, pays rent, I think, $7.08, $10,000 a month in rent, and having these set up within half a block at their location. I'm very familiar with Carlos and his location. I've eaten there before. I I know the struggles that Carlos has had in opening his stand where it's taken, like, six months of no income to him and his family in order for them to be licensed properly and have the proper stuff.

And it just kills me to have a business, a minority business owner who's come to this country to to open a business legally, to have other businesses set up within a half a block who are basically making it, so he's probably not gonna be able to provide for his family. So I really hope we can work together to really get to the bottom of this. And like I said, I'm I'm all for confiscating the food. I'm all for confiscating the equipment because this is too big of a health crisis in our county, and we cannot afford to have people getting sick and going to our emergency rooms because we haven't taken proper steps as a county to shut this down. So that's all my comments.

Thank you for the presentation today.

Thank you. Other questions from council members? Council member Dunn?

So can you request that that state work group includes commerce?

Well, I'll I'll bring it up at our next meeting for sure. Great. It's a great idea.

And then is the concern risk? So if we were to confiscate food or equipment, the county would be liable for lost profits for

The concern is

just bad.

I'm sorry. It's take a property. Okay. You know, with when we have the permit, it it's outlined that we can take property and and ask you to close down and cease operation. But when without a permit, it's how do we take the property from somebody on the street, because it's essentially government seizure of property when we do that. So what's the justification for it? And the state's looking through health channels if they can find it and working with the state attorney general to see if that exists in the current code that we can use it or there's something they do at a state level that we can use to then justify confiscating the food without a permit.

Can we also look at whether or not businesses where property owners can file as a trespass area so that if you have on record that you're a no trespassing area, then, if if a food stand opens up there, then, that gives more tools for law enforcement to trespass a business operating there or one of these food cards operating

there.

Haven't looked into that. Something to look into for sure.

Other questions from council members? Okay. So I have a couple more questions. So you have done the 40 closures, and presumably, these closures have incorporated law enforcement?

Most of them.

All of them. Okay.

Most have.

So I get that you have limitations if you don't have law enforcement with you, and you can't take stuff. You can't even ask for ID. I get it. But with law enforcement, you can.

So The law law enforcement isn't asking for ID.

Law enforcement is showing up to a unpermitted or you're not even sure if it's permitted yet. Health department said, hey, do you have a permit? They say, f off. You don't know what to do. You ask law enforcement. Law enforcement says, hey, do have a permit? They say f off. And then law enforcement walks away.

They have an issue, the same thing. They don't know what justification they have. They have to have a cause.

Aren't these guys in right of way, blocking public right of way? That's illegal. You can't sleep in the right of way. Can't a tent in the right of way. We take

I can't speak for law enforcement, but that's they are not asking for ID either.

Okay. How do you know if a food truck has a permit or not? You just go to the food truck operator and you say, do you have a permit?

That's correct. They'll have a permit. Supposed to

have know and then what do you do?

For us, we look back on our records, know they have a permit. If they don't, they would issue that cease and desist letter. That's how we would do it.

And then you have a cop next to you with a badge, and then that cop can do nothing different than what you can already do as a health?

Again, except for the law enforcement agencies, what they're doing right now, they're not asking for

Okay. But then but why do you even have law enforcement with you then?

Staff safety.

Just for the safety of the public getting mad because they're

not We have been we worked with a couple of cities and and the county sheriff's office really to go out and get some information about what what the limitations are on enforcement. Yes. Right right now, they're they're not. I mean, Everett's working really hard in getting their their ordinances changed and something there for sure.

Okay. That's that's really frustrating and and annoying. It doesn't make much sense to me either. I get that you're not the sheriff's department, and we should have the sheriff's department here as well. I'm going to ask the sheriff department these questions and figure out why they wouldn't be asking those questions. It seems incredibly reasonable to me that they're doing something legal already just by being in the right of way. You cannot do that. But secondarily, they're also operating illegally without a permit giving unhealthy food. Okay. So why okay.

So I'm gonna ask law enforcement that piece because I don't understand it at all. If law enforcement says, no, yeah, we could actually ask for ID. That seems to solve this problem, then you can instead of using whatever dollars you were gonna allocate to public awareness, which I don't think will work, I think that would be useless to tell the public, hey, don't eat unhealthy street food. They're doing it. They're gonna do that. So don't waste money doing that. Have another permit person go out with another law enforcement officer and do more than 40 closures. Ask for IDs. When you realize they don't have IDs, what do you do there? What what do what do they are you're able to you can't find someone without a permit, you said.

So we're only punishing, like, the law abiding businesses. So I get that. So we're then we're not gonna punish the ones that are breaking the law, but then we're also we're not gonna we're not gonna find them because they don't have ID and you don't get to ask them for ID. So you can't even give them a fine. You can't arrest anyone. You're not gonna take any of their stuff. Why wouldn't they just why why would they have a permit? Why would I ever go to the health department and get a permit ever? And this is this is why it's proliferating because we said, hey, please don't do it, but we're not gonna do anything if you do do it. And now it's like goes from 16 complaints to 200 complaints over three years.

So I'll ask law enforcement that piece, and I get that you can't fix that. We we will do this again within a month, and we will have law enforcement decide to you and we can decide this. But then my last line of questioning is just the timeline. So you said you were gonna do the state and you're gonna, you know, work with local partners, trying to figure out what to expect and get a little bit more aggressive about when we can expect something. I know we can't figure out the state. They gotta deal with but our coordination and and I have homework to do that I'm committed to doing, figuring out the PA ruling. Is it a I don't if we don't have to wait for the state, I will propose the code tomorrow to give you authority. But if we do, okay, we'll wait. But what about our coordination that we're doing? Do you have a timeline on that? Is it, like, this month? Is it Our Summer?

Is it Coordination. We're looking to send the invite out. That's okay. Just figured it wouldn't

Hello, council member Mead. Hello, council member Mead. Again, Kim Van Pelt, director for the health department. We have drafted the invitation, and I have the invitation list for the local convening. We're expecting to have two two hour meetings in the month of February.

And our do we have some, like, local permitted businesses invited to, or is this just

Invite list includes some association members for for example, Hospitality Association, Economic Alliance, etcetera.

Food Truck Association

Association is specifically on there also. Yes.

Okay. Great. Yeah. Okay. Then you expect your so you said you're sending that out, and then it it when is the date that you guys is it multiple meetings?

It's two two hour meetings. Two two hour meetings

you just said.

Okay. In the month of February. So one is February. I think we can't remember the exact date, but two in the month of February. What we're going to be doing at those meetings is review our existing authority, what's been done by not only the health department, but by localities across Snohomish County, what's happening at the state level, what's happening nationally in terms of best practices. And then we're going to have a discussion about how what are the next steps in terms of either enhanced enforcement needed or collaborations needed to be able to address the issue.

And that second conversation will happen in the second meeting? Correct. Okay. If your two meetings are done in February? Yes. Say the next health committee meeting in March, we could do this again. That Have you here,

but also

have the sheriff, maybe the PA, or the I think that would be great timing. Okay. Yeah. Then we'll we'll I'll plan on scheduling that then.

Terrific. Thank you.

Alright. Do you have any final burning questions from council members before we move on to our next discussion? Okay. I see none. Thank you both for being here. Thanks for answering all those questions. Thanks for the presentation. We'll see you next month.

Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Our next presentation is from DEM, and we have I think Lucia's here. Lucia's here. Hello. Welcome. And you also have a presentation?

Yes. I can get the presentation queued up now. Oh, can you make me a there we go. Alright. While that is coming up, my name is Lucia Schmidt.

I am the director of the Snomish County Department of Emergency Management. Thanks for having me here this morning. I just wanted to I think it should be it's a little slow to catch up. I wanted to come and just share with you some stories from the historic flooding we experienced last month. So I'd like to just give an overview of of the flooding event, of the the coordinated response across the county, some of the remaining challenges, and the next steps because we are still in it both in terms of the government side, but also more importantly in terms of the impacted population.

So when I say historic flooding, this map shows the extent of what was underwater at some point during the event. So it does include well, so that's a total of 36,000 acres of the county we're underwater. That's 56 square miles. And as you can see from the map, there it is, You know, that does include the the river beds themselves, so it's maybe a slight overestimate. We weren't able to subtract that out from the total, but it's still an impressive amount.

And then also on this map, you can see the areas that so the the levees, the coordinated diking council back in the, I believe, the nineties established a standard, levee height for the structures along the Snohomish River. And what we saw during this event was that process worked as designed. So up on the slide now, you can see the river gauge, the measurements from the Snohomish River gauge at Snohomish. You can really see how it just flattens out and stays there, and that is because the levees were overtopping as designed at that point. And so that is why, you know, Marshlands, French slough there, received so much water, but the good news of that is it did divert that water away from more residential areas.

So the other thing that I think is impressive about this gauge is is looking at it, you can see that the Snohomish River spent over eleven days in the action phase. So this event was not only historic in the, you know, the height of the flood, but it also was just a very prolonged event. You might have seen during the event that the the atmospheric river we received was 7,000 miles long, so essentially stretched from Washington State to The Philippines, and then all of that passed through over dumping the water. And then we also had the high atmospheric tides, the king tides at the time, and those just kind of served as a wall and and made it harder for the water to drain out because the the sea level was higher at at points during the event. So just a tremendous amount of water in our systems leading to flooding in all of our major river basins.

It led to four evacuation orders were put into effect. So when my slides catch up, you will see that that was Eby Island, the Tualco Valley, parts of Downtown Sultan, and then the 3 River Mobile Home Park at one point or another during the response were under evacuation orders. That's a total of 790 residents were under evacuation orders. In order to meet the immediate life safety needs, we had swift water rescue teams up and down the river valleys, working around the clock. So, as of December 13, so just in the first, four days of the response, there were 68 people pulled from the water, and 19 pets were rescued during from water rescues.

One of those one rescue alone was a family of 11 people who were who were pulled from their house. And then we did, in Snohomish County, receive the one fatality that happened in the state during that flooding event. That was a person who drove on a on a closed road that was flooded and, you know, just floodwaters everywhere. You couldn't see where the road turned. And so the driver ended up in a ditch where the water was quite deep.

We activated the county emergency operations center from December 9 until, the twenty fourth. And so we had about 20 agencies in the EOC representing county departments as well as some of our our partner organizations. We had, you know, fire and, the weather service there and as well as some of the local cities, participated at the EOC as well. In that time, we were put a lot of the focus was on pushing information out to the public, and so there were over 2,400,000 views of DEM's Facebook page in that time and a 175,000 views to the public safety hub. So there was a lot of interest in the community of what what government had to say, what government was doing for this response.

Here I want to show you this is one of the areas I was under evacuation zone. So we have the Google satellite imagery here so you can see what it normally looks like. And I just like to play a video. Hopefully, it's gonna work. I don't know if it's going to work.

I can share this video with you offline if you would like, but you can see here the tremendous impact on the Valley. Oh, now it is starting. Is it yeah. Well, I had ended up having to do my my hotspot because I wasn't getting Internet at all. But that, I think, is impacting us now.

I don't know if it's going to be worth doing the videos. So this is one area. You can see that there's, you know, 50 mobile homes here, and this was one of the first places we evacuated. And then have been working with the residents throughout recovery. Alright.

I'm going to give, yeah. Well, it's not gonna give us a pretty image. So I'm gonna give up on the the videos. So in response to places like the 3 Rivers Mobile Home Park, we did work with the Red Cross to stand up a shelter at the County Fairgrounds, and approximately 70 individuals stayed there at one point. They we also stood up the livestock sheltering at the Fair Park, and received over 500 animals at the Fair Park at its at its highest census.

So a 171 horses, over a 100 cows, 96 goats, 16 pigs, a 140 chickens, three rabbits, and two turkeys. And I think one of the the more statistic more impressive statistics is that we actually sent home more animals than we received because there was at least one birth of the fairgrounds during the event. Don't know why I'm no longer sharing. Got booted off of Zoom. The next area that I wanna talk about is the impressive work that was done by the public works crews.

So there were 52 emergency road closures, hundreds of unique locations requiring response from debris removal to shoulder repairs or washouts. They inspected more than 30 scour critical bridges and activated the solid waste voucher program, which you all extended through March, which has been a tremendous help because there are places that were still underwater when when it initially expired. This photo here is from an effort that they did along the Mountain Loop Highway due to some washouts, some active landslides there. We couldn't open the primary road out, so they they had to go out and open portions of the Mountain Loop Highway so that families that were stuck behind the washout could could make it out or stay put for for the winter, essentially. These are, you know, per public works, the locations that still require repairs.

The total estimated damage is 3.6. It I recommend talking to public works directly. Only some of some of that is federal highway eligible. Some of it would be FEMA reimbursement. I don't know the the fine details of that, but about $2,400,000 of those damages are what we're submitting in in the FEMA declaration request.

So for the the FEMA declaration, you know, that is split into to two declarations. There is the individual assistance package, which we've already sent up, and that's the assistance that would go directly to the individuals who are impacted Based off of the data collected from us, from Whatcom, from Skagit, from King, and Lewis And Pierce Counties, the state says it is the strongest IA package they have sent to FEMA that they any of them can remember. So we are hopeful we will receive good news from FEMA, but it is it is entirely presidential prerogative, so there is no way to to accurately estimate. On the public damage side, traditionally that has been a little bit more cut and dry and there is the statewide threshold, which was just published in October, is $14,900,000 worth of damage for the state. We don't the state is still gathering information.

They are out in the community now, joint with FEMA, kind of investigating some of those sites of bigger impact. But just anecdotally, I think it's easy that the state will be over a $120,000,000 worth of damage. So that is bigger than $14,900,000 It's also bigger than the anecdotal four times the declaration threshold, which is what the administration has signaled. And it's higher than the $81,000,000 which is a formula based off of total taxable resources, which is something that they've signaled they ultimately want to go to. So by all numbers, we have a very strong case for a public declaration.

The concern here is that a lot of those impacts are in public utilities, are in road repair and the current administration has signaled that they feel that the federal government is more appropriate in the initial response phase and less so in the long term recovery phase. So as you can see in that second chart here, it's really the first two rows in that second chart of debris management and protective measures, which is where the current federal administration likes to believe the federal role should be and not in those more expensive buckets. Here is another we'll just call it an aerial view because we're not gonna try out the the video of of the Snowmish Basin. So you can see this road here is Highway 9. Oops.

It accidentally thinks I tried to start it. And so this is the framing shot, and then I'll wait for the slides to catch up. There we go. So you can see that the I mean, the area around Highway 9 along the Snomish River is completely underwater. This image does not capture what's going on, south of the river, but I can send those videos separately.

Oh, it thinks I'm it's gonna try and play it. Pause. Hopefully, it doesn't kick me out again.

There we go. Alright.

So community recovery. Some of the work that we've been doing in the community to try to help them recover. We while we were still in the thick of the response, we held a couple of events out in the community to help them report their damage to us and get some initial supports to community members, as well as just guidance on what to do if you've lost documents in the flooding, how you know, help on submitting insurance claims and following up insurance.

Just want to note that we are at time for committee, but I know I don't know if you just have a couple more minutes left if you want to I have wrap up. I know we have the slides accessible too.

Yes. I have a couple of slides left. I can go quick. The impact survey that that we completed, we had a 184 people submitted surveys, household submitted surveys with over 5,000,000 worth in structural losses. We held three disaster assistance centers at the Sky Valley VOA where we assisted 65 households.

You know, we had representatives from state government there, representatives from county government, as well as representatives from a number of nonprofits that were able to provide immediate assistance to our impacted residents. Some of the outstanding remaining impacts. So looking at our the economic impact on our agricultural community in particular, they really got a brunt of the impacts just nature of where farms are located. So there was tremendous loss of hay, of feed, of fences, farm equipment, greenhouses, nurseries lost a lot of their plants and their bulbs. Hearing anecdotally from some farmers, like, you look at the blueberry crop, you know, even the plants that survive, and they won't all survive, they're looking at, like, 40% bud loss stat.

So that's 40% lower crop this coming year even if the plants survive. And there are some some crops like strawberries that we just don't know if they're gonna survive until we get farther out. Greenhouses and hoop houses are are another tremendous loss, and and a lot of these so there was a USDA declaration. A lot of these costs aren't eligible, and the USDA assistance comes in slowly. So our agricultural community is going to be hurting this this coming season.

Similarly, the impact of our in our tourism areas up and down Highway 2, around the Mountain Loop Highway. So the for Highway 2, that period when kids are out on winter break around Christmas, that is their busiest time of year. And so they lost that entire season this year. And then what we see here, I think this is Forest Road, I want to say 22. You can see the guy in the yellow hat standing in the ditch there for scale.

But that is not a county road. That is not a road that the county has any part in in maintaining, but that is a road that connects the county to the forest and then and all of those backpackers, all of those hikers that will come in in this in the summer. And so it is we are working closely with the Forest Service to ensure that they can do the repairs they can. And then, yeah, again, if you talk to Public Works, she can talk about the coordination on the portions of the forest roads that we do maintain as a county. And then my next last slide is simply talking about the remaining needs.

Strengths. And the big things that we are hearing from the community in terms of oh, good grief. Okay. Is assistance transporting the debris? So we have the solid waste vouchers, but those require you to transport it either to a drop box or to the transfer station directly.

So we're working now with some nonprofits to see if it is possible for us to assist with the transport, have trucks go around with volunteers who can upload stuff because not everyone has access to a truck. There were a lot of folks living in RVs in the flood plains that were severely impacted, and so there's a lot of RVs that are going to be suffering from mold that will not be healthy homes for people to continue inhabit. So finding ways to connect people with resources to replace those RVs or travel trailers that are their primary residences. The uncertainty of federal reimbursement, it had some impacts during the response. There was a lot of back and forth.

We had to any resource that we were getting from the state had to be for immediate life safety rather than instant stabilization, which created some delays that we'll look at in the after action review, things like getting LiDAR flights. There was lots of landslides happening around Darrington, and, you know, we wanted to get flights up there to to confirm that none of those landslides were impacting populations. And that was just an ongoing conversation of, is this life safety or is this incident stabilization just based off of where we were concerned the land was sliding. Things like that. I think in a in a if we had had more confidence that federal reimbursement would have come in, then those conversations would have gone more smoothly.

It would have been less we would have been able to make those calls without feeling immediate impacts on on budgets because both the strain the county's budget and the state's budget are, as you know, constrained at the moment. Recovery, roads and trails are the biggest area that is going to require ongoing investment. This here is the White Horse Trail. This washout is one of the places where the White Horse Trail does serve as a flood control structure, I and believe it washed out in a number of places. So the section is closed right now.

It will require some significant engineering to repair that. And so if we don't get the federal reimbursement, it'll likely just stay closed. And then like I said, we are conducting an after action review like we do every time there's an incident to find out what we can do better in the future and to look at what we did well and build on it. That's all I've got.

Alright. Well, thank you for the presentation. Sorry for rushing you. Was trying to squeeze two presentations in one day. I will not do that again. Do we have any, like, burning questions from council members? Council member, we're done.

I just wanna give a quick shout out to animal boarding at the fairgrounds and appreciated all the updates to council during and so just really appreciate all the current updates. So thanks.

Council Member Neri?

Yeah. Just piggybacking on that. Thank you to it was heartening to hear all the community members who stepped up and were willing to lead, you know, donation efforts and and do what they could to help. So, so I appreciate all that.

And there looks like there might be future volunteer or needs for volunteers for debris cleanup and all that. I am going to an event this weekend with some, like, high school football team that's trying to do some help clean up in Snohomish. And so I know and they've reached out to me specifically to say, where can we send all this energy? There's a lot of, you know, students that wanna help. Okay. So where would you recommend? Is there a contact form on the DM website that volunteers can sign up or something?

Yeah. So right now, most of the ongoing recovering needs is being coordinated through the Salvation Army. They have a disaster case management contract through the state. So I think the best bet for is is having conversations with our local community, finding out if there are people who need help clearing the debris off their lawns. I think keeping it local is best, for the kind of county wide cleanup. We're looking we're hoping to partner with the Washington Conservation Corps there. So they we know that they've gone through training on

That's more

like safety.

Official and Yeah. Coordinated.

Yeah.

Got it. Alright. Thank you. Uh-huh. Any final questions? Anyone online? Okay. Seeing none, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Alright. And with that, counsel will be adjourned for the day.