City Council - workshop

It's a workshop of July 14th, 2026 to order. Reminder that this is both a physical and a virtual meeting. The meeting may be viewed on YouTube and on Facebook following the meeting. Public comment is not normally taken at workshop meetings, although the council may allow or request public participation on action items. We have no action items on our workshop agenda today. Welcome to all of you in attendance. And at this time, I will call upon council for your reports on any boards, commissions, or committees in which you serve. Don't all speak at once. Council Member Arms.

We did not have another advisory meeting because we didn't have a quorum. But I would like to personally thank Chief Slovik for him coming out to the marina today and using his little drone, which gave us some information. Yeah, just a little joke. That gave us some information about what the breakwater is doing so that Moffett Nichols that was there could have that information. So I want to thank you again. That was a delightful time.

So just a quick follow up to are you having a problem with people showing up for the meeting? Do we need to make phone calls or

It's because we know better in the summer. Oh, okay. So, you know, and we keep trying, but it doesn't work.

That's okay. Okay.

Mayor, there is a discussion about whether or not they need to revise their bylaws to talk about not meeting in the summer. Okay, gotcha.

Just making sure. All right. Sounds good. I do not have a boat, so I don't understand these problems. Yes, Council Member Romero.

No new news with regard to the transit district since last report. Great thank you.

Councilmember Marshall.

Mayor parks met yesterday we had a great presentation from center place and from Kendall sold in and tenant Krasinski about some work that's being done out on the scene catch trail for Marsh and so that was great and then just a congratulations to Craig on his new position.

Yeah, thank you. It's awesome. All right, yes, Council or mayor pro tem.

I'm still a council member, that's right. The Clean Air Agency doesn't meet in July, and LTAC isn't going to get together until later this summer, so I don't have anything to report.

I do have one new item for you to discuss offline, too, regarding LTAC. Council Member Peterson, did you want to say anything? You kept looking at me, so.

I'm just paying attention.

Oh, okay. That's good. Glad you're paying attention.

Thank you. Okay. But I think at the last council meeting, I think I said we had just had the Arts Commission meeting and we're moving right along and getting things done and learning the process.

Awesome. Sounds good. Yeah, we were able to meet with Cynthia last week, I believe, and Craig and talk about how you guys are prioritizing the projects and how they're hitting the new grid. And yeah, that looks good. And sounds like that's all moving forward in a really good way. So and Sandra is a part of that process. Yeah.

And another benefit is staff is doing a really good job of reminding the Arts Commission at the meetings that we are following a process. So the word process was probably used 20 times during the meeting. Awesome. So with Cynthia's help, we are really working as a team to work through the steps in the process, talk about the process, and make sure we're following it as we bring up new items.

Yeah, they're really working hard to work with staff and making that happen. So that's all good. Good things, all right. All right, we're gonna move on then to community partner presentations since we have no other council reports. And next up is an ICOM presentation. And here to present that is the executive director of ICOM, Sophia Cofield.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, City Council. My pleasure to be here today to give you a presentation on some updates from ICOM. So let's see, we've got it up here. This is going to be updates from the last time you saw me in 2025 up until today. Over the last year, we had a lot of great visitors, citizens who are wanting to come and see what actually happens at ICOM in the actual 911 dispatch floor and also behind the scenes with the technology. There are some pictures of some of our visitors. And as you all know, the sales tax passed in April of 2025 and it got certified in May of 2025. And so thank you to everyone for the support of that. There's a picture of the administration team where we are beginning to plan for what's going to happen next. And so because of the rules, the rules dictated that the new sales tax was not going to go into effect until January 1st of 2026. However, that didn't stop us. We went straight to work and right into a planning stage. And so that planning stage, the board of ICOM decided that it was really necessary to have a needs assessment. We created a committee that was made up of several members, as you see there from the slide, the sheriff, Chief Slowik, Fire Commissioner from Camino, Ms. Sandra Place from the city, and myself. And our job was to create the actual RFP and the process for selecting a consultant. So after that process, we recommended that to the board for ultimate selection. And we did select a firm named TSSI Consulting, which they began work with us in January of 2026. And that particular consulting company was going to look at everything operationally, but also technology and radio infrastructure. At the same time, we were already in the process of another project. So I just wanted to highlight that project. This is known as the Little Mountain Project. And if you're wondering where the heck is Little Mountain, it's actually over in Mount Vernon. And you can see on the map there, really the importance of that is we wanted to add 30 feet to that tower. And for lack of a better term, to be able to beam back the microwave back toward Camino and Island County and Whidbey Island. So we were successful in that. We added the 30 feet. This was funded by a state grant and completed December of 2025. So since the sales tax began January 1st, what have we been up to? We've established a finance committee to help us understand where we might be able to invest that money or utilize that money. And that's made up of community members that have finance background. We received the first payment in March of 2026. and of course that needs assessment that i was talking about has been ongoing it started in january and we're getting to wrap it up in august so next month that involves stakeholders from the start and it has all of icom's staff that was involved with it and we've been intensely working with them in every area of the operations and radio and technology So what's next? I'm really excited. There's a lot of good coming up. And so we're right in the middle of getting ready to see that presentation from the consultants in August. And that's going to create a lot of conversation and ultimately a roadmap for the future and our priorities for spending. So I would love to come back and give more information because that is all going to come to us next month. I also put up on this slide, just in case anyone was curious, how that sales tax money is spent. The RCW is very specific in how we can spend that. So as you can see from the slide, it states that it's for the sole purpose of providing funds for costs associated with financing, design, acquisition, construction. equipping, operating, maintaining, remodeling, repairing, re-equipping, all of that great stuff for emergency communication systems. And I know that's short and brief, but I would like to take a moment just to say thank you. Thank you to the citizens, the first responders. We do take pride in serving everyone. And we do love giving tours. So this is my plug. If anyone did not get a chance to come visit us last year, please sign up. You can go to our website. You could use that QR code. And we'll be more than happy to give you a tour of inside 911. And with that, I would say thank you, and if you have any questions, please let me know.

Council Member Romero.

Thank you so much, Executive Director Cofield. I wanted to mention to you that I've had a number of constituents wondering about the tax money and the progress with regard to, because you don't have a public facing agency as much. So we're just delighted that you're making progress with regard to utilizing the funds that have been brought to you both in terms of grants and taxes. I did want to mention too as a matter of public record that these are incredibly complex systems and you can't get in a big rush with them because they'll be non-functional or they won't work right and so you have to do it just exactly right. So just press on and I much appreciate you bringing this message to us so that I can go to the constituents and say we're making great progress with regard to ICOM.

Councilmember Stuckey.

That 30 feet, I'm assuming, does that help with like dead zones and things like that? Is that the thought?

It absolutely does. Yeah. Just for reference, that tower was 160 feet. And so we raised it 30 more, which was 190 feet.

Not something I'd want to climb. No.

Me either. I was up there.

Someone has to. As far as 911 radio service being encrypted, is that just being done on an agency by agency? Or is there going to be a day where it's just, you know, John Q. Public is not going to be able to listen on the scanner anymore?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I mean, for us on the island and the agencies, that's been a conversation and a direction that we ultimately want to go. So I think there will be a day. There are plenty other counties that actually do that. So I think there'll be a day. I don't have a date right now, but I think that's where we're heading.

And the last question is, and I don't expect an answer because you're working on your financial review and that'll take another month. is the idea of not obtaining as much funds from the agencies in the conversation due to the increase in revenue from taxes.

Yeah, so this is perfect timing. ICOM's in our budget season, so we do a typical calendar year. We start our conversations usually in June, and then it gets presented to our board in July. So that conversation will be part of what we do here in this month and next month.

Excellent. Thanks for coming out.

You're welcome.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor. Your website says that you're hiring dispatchers. Are you still hiring dispatchers?

We are still hiring dispatchers.

Okay. I just wanted to put that out there if anybody was interested. Thank you. Is texting 911 in our area a thing?

It certainly is. The whole state of Washington went text to 911 enabled in the summer of 22, I think it was, 22 or 23. It's very simple. You pull up a regular text and in the two part, you put 911, in the message part, you would be able to put, we prefer your address first, obviously. Then we would be able to correspond back and forth via text. If anyone comes out for a tour, we love to do test text to 911 so you can see it in the moment and how it works.

Very cool. Thank you.

You're welcome. Yeah. Aren't you guys averaging like three or four a month texts?

We are. Yes.

Anything else? Yes. Council member Peterson.

Thank you, Sophia. One of my groups came and did a tour and it was very fascinating and they're asking to come back. Excellent. Like nothing has changed yet. Yes. A couple of questions. We added 30 feet to Little Mountain. What kind of result have we seen from that? What are you seeing that that helped?

Great question. So ultimately, it's helping Camino Island and then also kind of the middle south part of Whidbey Island where there were a lot of dead zones. Okay. So that's where we're seeing the most improvement so far.

Okay. And as I recall, getting rid of dead zones, et cetera, was actually a large part of the 911 request from the voters?

Absolutely, yes. Okay.

So you're talking about... doing a needs assessment, which I'm certain is not free. But I guess I thought that the needs assessment had already been done when you went out to the voters. So what are we adding or subtracting or why do we have to do that?

Certainly. Great question. This is a more in-depth assessment to the point where we have subject matter experts in radio that is actually going and using proprietary software to get it down to the household. so this is very in-depth and then they're going to have recommendations on which pathway to move forward in order to get the best coverage so what i know today is that there's more than likely three different recommendations or pathways that we could go with the radio infrastructure and then we're going to have a discussion at the board level which direction we want to proceed in and then ultimately be able to provide that so To answer your question, mainly it's just to get more into the weeds with the assessment to see exactly which pathway we need to go.

Okay. And then one final question. When a person is doing texting to 911, can they also do talk to text or do they have to digital it?

Oh, they could do a talk to text, and it would just come across as text to us. But what we have seen is that people who are using text to 911 are in situations that they don't really want to talk, so they're actually texting us. But you could do that if you wanted to with your cell phone. Okay, perfect.

Thank you so much. You're very welcome.

Anybody else? So I have one quick question for you, Sophia, but I was also just going to piggyback on what Sophia said is the consulting is also providing a holistic approach to how the ICOM organization is growing with the community so that they're growing with the community and meeting all the needs for a 5, 10, and 15-year approach as well. So we're looking at purchasing for future needs as well so we can grow into those things. It's a very holistic approach. Can you just speak to the first quarter revenues that came in based upon projections from the levy that was passed? Just whether they were benchmarked, they were there, or they were under, over. You don't have to give exact figures, but just so the council has an idea that the revenue projections came in based upon what we thought they would and that kind of thing.

Sure. So this being the first year, we're still very much in an estimation mode. And so this year is going to be our basis moving forward. We did a lot of work looking at what potentially it could be for this year based on information that was out. And so the first payment that came in March was actually very little in my opinion, but that was just because of the way taxes roll out. And so after that initial shock of, oh my gosh, did we really mess up the estimates? Then I realized, no, April is going to be the true first full quarter and how taxes are paid to the Department of Revenue. And so when April came in, that was right on par with what we thought. And then when May came in, that was actually a little bit higher. So what we're kind of seeing is on par, higher, down, and then higher. And so we're waiting for these next few months to really see What is it like with the summer quarter and then ultimately the fall and winter quarter? So we're still in an estimation mode, and next year is going to look a lot better because we're going to have a full year to be able to look at what that looks like. So great question.

Thanks, Sophia. Thank you so much for your presentation too.

You're very welcome.

All right.

Thank you.

comment there?

Oh, yes, go ahead. I'm sorry, Council Member.

I did want to mention because it came to my mind when I was reviewing the slides and that was the 30 extra feet. I wanted to emphasize that that is huge efficiency using existing structures because it's orders of magnitude difference. I'm not a cost accountant, but having to start from scratch. So I just, as a matter of public record, want to urge an optimal solution of improvements on existing structure and new. That's all I have.

Great. Thank you. Yes, Council Member Wiegandstein has a question. Sorry.

Back to the texting in 911, is there a way to disguise the numbers so if their phone gets taken, nobody knows? I'm assuming it's a large amount of domestic violence situations which would, the texting to 911 would be very beneficial. These little things that we need to be thinking about.

Right. So when you text a 911, the phone number that you're texting from will populate on a dispatcher screen. So we would see that number.

That's okay. Yeah. And they can disguise it or if they don't, I mean, like, yes, it's the perpetrator getting the number and figuring out what they've done that can escalate stuff. So yeah.

Great. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Have a good day. All right. Next, we're going to move on to the proposed ordinance number 2047, adopting a new Oak Harbor Municipal Code section 1.04.050 relating to student representatives. And here to introduce this is our city administrator, Sabrina Combs.

Thank you, Mayor. No, it's OK. I just needed to flip a little bit. So real quick, we have had a conversation for a while in the executive office about adding a student representative. It is something that the mayor heard about, and some of you who attended AWC may have heard about, where some of the cities are putting students on councils. It allows us to hear their input and feedback about the decisions we're making. They would not have a vote, but they would be able to participate in the process. And we've already talked to the school district about this, and they love this idea of engaging our students. So that is the proposal with the change. Thank you, Tim. I'm sorry. No, what you have in the packet is what you have. I'm just giving you the breakdown of it. And then the ordinance is number 2047. And so it's just creating the code that would allow for this change. So we wanted to bring it forward before we brought it forward for a vote. But this is to tell you about the process and the information for that. And again, we've worked with the city attorney to look into the process and written the ordinance so that you would have all that information. We do want to limit it to a student from our Oak Harbor High School because that is the school district that we're working with and that also that they are resident of the city of Oak Harbor.

So the other thing that's worth noting, I think it's in the ordinance, which you guys have, I believe, but just in case you haven't read it, this would only pertain to council meetings. They wouldn't attend workshops because that would conflict with their school schedules. So obviously, they won't be participating in workshops, but they will be at council meetings. And then this is open for discussion amongst you all at this time. Council Member Wittgenstein.

I think this is a great idea. I'm in favor of it. There was one thing I wanted to... Seniors, are we going to limit to whether it's just the seniors, sophomores, juniors? I mean, if the sophomore gets in there, it's potential the sophomore could stay, right? I just was curious if that's been considered or whatnot.

That's a very good question. I don't think that we've actually...

We didn't talk about limiting it. The school district said that they had some students that had applied for some of their leadership programs.

Specifically, the students that applied for the school board position that weren't selected, those were going to be the candidates that they put forward for the city council position because Dr. Kusabula felt they were all strong candidates to be on city council. So that was the thought there. And I believe all of those students are juniors or seniors.

Yeah, so that's why I was saying I don't think we want to limit to seniors. One of the other considerations with that, too, is she also talked about the excellence of those students. And not all of them, it's academic. Some of them have different skill sets that would qualify, and they've done their own work. process, so it would be good to start with that pool of students who have been through that process.

Okay, yeah. Yes, Mayor Pro Tem.

I think that's a great concept to, you know, build on what Councilmember Marrow said at the last presentation, you know, to build on existing infrastructure is a lot more efficient than starting from scratch, and so if there is already a batch of candidates that have expressed their interest in serving on the school board and have gone through a review process, have their resumes together, then, you know, there's only one spot, but they might have lots of qualified candidates, then I think that's a great idea to be able to say, hey, we've got a spot for you over here so that, yeah, so that perfectly good candidates aren't just kind of left flapping in the wind. I love that.

The other thing that I think is important that we didn't talk about when we talked with the school about this, but council member arms and I were sitting with one of our commissioners at the Juneteenth event this year. And we had been talking about young people getting involved in the community and how we don't have enough young people standing up to run for office or sit on a board. And this is another way to engage them in that. If they're seeing the opportunity, they're seeing that their voice is being heard, it allows for that engagement. And then the last thing I do want to say is because of the space on the current dais, we have talked to Julie. And when that student is showing, we'll move Julie over here. So we have talked about that because we have limited space right now. But we do want to make sure that they're sitting up there with you on the council seats.

Thank you. i you know this is something that council kicked around like 10 years ago we actually had revised the code because there was an ancient reference in our code to a student council member and but that hadn't actually happened for as long as anybody could remember and so we're like why is this you know even in here if if we're not doing it and so it got stricken with the intent of revisiting the subject in the future because everybody loved the idea, but the language was just antiquated. So I'm happy to see this revisited finally. And to speak to Councilor Wittgenstein's question, the code, it says that they would serve a one year term, but I don't see anything necessarily saying that the same student couldn't be appointed two years in a row if they were interested in doing. So I'm not sure. Yeah, we can feel that out as we go. Yeah. So I absolutely love it. I think that those voices are valuable. And if they're willing to spend the time, then I 100% want to hear what they have to say. Thank you.

Thank you to Mayor Wright. This is something that he has really been asking for and really been talking about and working with us on staff so that we could get it through. And then to Hillary for putting together the ordinance.

All right.

Council Member Stuckey.

To be clear, when we stay in good standing with Oak Harbor High School, does that mean folks in alternative programs or homeschooling that may be in the system? What does that mean precisely?

So we have said focused on Oak Harbor High School because they have the programs to support that. And again, they would do the vetting in the initial phase to say that that student is in good standing. And good standing is according to their qualifications. We did not get into the detail of homeschool versus the other. But our concern with homeschool is we have had problems in the past where, depending on the actual location of that homeschool student, where they live, and all of those factors. So we wanted to make sure we were being very specific about being a high school student in Oak Harbor that would be participating on this. But we can clarify the homeschool or other standards with the school district to just confirm that.

Sure. And then a couple of things, because I like the idea, a couple of things maybe for tidying up just to take out the ambiguity. Can we have some attendance requirements or something like that? What I don't want is someone who's gung ho. They're here twice. We don't see them for four meetings. They're holding up a spot. It would just be nice to have something like this many you can miss or...

We can look at that. I think one of the things we do have to consider, though, is if you're a senior in high school or a junior in high school, especially students who may want to participate in this, they may have other commitments that we need to be aware of. So I think we just need to think about that. And in our follow-up conversations with the school district, we can ask that question. Because I know when I talk to staff who have students who are in high school, sometimes especially with our Running Start students and other factors, they have some commitments. So I also don't want to limit or exclude students who need to have that consideration. But that's why we also want to do this in advance so they can plan for it.

Fair enough. And the last thing is, I don't, and this could just be me, I mean, I don't see anything that there's any real council involvement in the selection process.

No, what we're doing is, again, utilizing the school district system and then bringing those forward to the mayor so that the mayor can finalize that selection.

It would be nice to have in there some some council involvement, whether that be in writing or not in writing, since it's, you know, with most appointments, mayor appoints, we confirm. Let's think about this practically. If mayor appoints someone, we're not gonna not confirm a high schooler who's trying to get in. However, it would be nice to have some council involvement, being that they're the people that we'll be mostly interacting with through the process, if possible. So I don't I don't know what that looks like. I'm not suggesting the mayor appoints and council confirms because we know it's just going to be confirmed. I'm suggesting maybe one or two council members be on the committee or looking over applications or at least having a conversation with the individual ahead of time to kind of speak in a way for council, just so we have some involvement on who's joining us up here during these meetings ahead of time.

OK, as I do some follow up on that, I'll look into that.

Great. Thank you.

Council of Arms.

Well, I agree with Councilmember Stuckey. I think it would be good for them to know who we are, even if we only have a couple people on our council. Then, you know, they know us. And, you know, then we have questions and they have questions. And maybe what one person thinks is going to work, maybe it won't. So it would be nice to get to know them a little bit before we put them. So they're comfortable and we're comfortable, you know. I don't have kids, so I have no idea what's going on, but it would be nice to get them involved to do the civics and do all that. I think it's a good alternative, but I think also we should have some involvement so we have an idea of where they're at, what they think rather than just something written. That's all.

Council Member Peterson.

Well, In the briefing it said several cities have a student council advisor. I looked and Washougal and Edmonds have a council student advisor that sits with the council. What many cities and counties do have from my research are youth advisory committees. They range from junior high-ish up to 25 years old. From my perspective, what they call a YAC allows for broader youth engagement if that is actually our goal, teaches more kids about leadership, civic skills, that sort of thing, and does not, I'm sorry, pick a golden haired child to sit on the dais. I think that one person does not have the bandwidth to bring opinions of an entire student body or youth population to the council. Again, if that is our goal is to hear what the youth are wanting, one person doesn't do that for me. also agree that the council should have input as to who is their representative on the dais. I would be very willing to look at something broader like a YAC. I'm not as interested in looking at a student advisor at this point. Depending on how my fellow counselors feel, of course, that's my opinion about students and teaching them civics and leadership.

Okay, I appreciate that feedback. One of the things I will say is comparatively to the school district, they have a student serving on their board. So there is a student that serves in that role, and that's why we are copying a system that is similar to that for the local students. Also, as stated before, there are a variety of students who come into this. So it is not the... one selective special student that we're picking from. Several students do apply through their process to be a part of that. In fact, a lot of really great students don't get to serve because there's one opportunity to do that. About perspective and hearing from everybody, it is an opportunity for us to hear from the young people in our community. And I'm not saying just like with each one of you that that one person represents everybody, but it is a voice and it is a voice that helps us engage with our young people in the community because they are a person who can go back and share that perspective. They are also involved with shows young people that we care and see them as a part of our community and our process. So that was our thought process in this is that it's giving them a voice and an opportunity to be heard. They won't have a vote. So to the point about them working with you guys and talking with you, that would be part of the process of them being engaged. I think what I found really exciting is when I went to a school district meeting recently, it was watching this young person get involved, participate, be engaged in the decisions and the discussions, talking about how these schools are going to be today and in the future. And I think as we as a growing community are thinking about that, this is an excellent opportunity to start that engagement. We've done a lot of work with our communications officer in this administration to add a lot more opportunity for community engagement that's equitable and fair. And I think this is just another way to engage them. Creating our own separate council for students is something that as a government body we can consider in the future. But considering how difficult it is to get adults to show up and volunteer for these boards, and then when we factor in the number of things students nowadays have as their responsibilities. I participated in the CQC scholarship program for AWC. And I got to tell you, looking at these kids' resumes makes me exhausted. The amount of things that these students are doing in their free time. So we were just looking for a way to find a window into that and engage them in this process. And I think the more that we bring young people in, the more likely they are to participate in other ways.

Well, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we should not engage the youth. Um, from based on what I'm hearing, this was a, cause I've only been here six months. This is a more of a mayor staff driven issue than a council ever brought this to you guys before, except back when I think Patty Cohen was mayor. Is that correct?

Well, from what Mayor Pro Tem mentioned, there have been discussions in the past, and I think that's the thing. We hear about it over time, but this is something that Mayor Wright had on his list of things that he would like to see, and we as staff see the benefit of it because we are improving our engagement with our public, which is one of your goals and one of the executive staff's goals.

Well, I'm not saying that I don't want to engage students. I'm just saying, from my perspective... More is better. Less is usually more, but this time to me, more is better. And I didn't say, just so we're clear, I did not say to set up a youth council, but a youth advisory committee that can bring to the council. These are the things we would like to see in our community. That was more my goal.

I appreciate that clarification. I think my thought was just whether it's an advisory board or a council or whatever title we put around it, it's a group of students and a staff member that's having to be the liaison for that, potentially a council member that's liaisoning. And then we have to come up with a list of their agendas and their items versus them just being able to participate and be a voice in this group. So that was the thought process in seeing these other examples that that might be a great way to incorporate that. Thank you.

Council member arms.

Think about it. When we had the royalty, when they came, they are the ones Nolan, especially he engaged us. He fundraised it. He did everything. He came, he brought his, his team, his ideas, his purpose. That's why we're here with the rec center. Because he is the one that pushed it with council. Council member Marshall helped with that. But he is the one that brought all of that to the forefront. And that has precipitated everything, getting grants and all that stuff that we needed. So it was a useful purpose. We just haven't seen them at all this time around. And I don't know why.

So I will say the would be royalty as I understand it picks certain projects that they're working on. So that's part of it. Um, but Nolan is a very great example not to call Nolan out publicly, but we all loved working with Nolan. Um, Nolan also was an intern for the city and I would say last summer that was another spark of us saying we really need to do something more with our young people. Um, having those two interns in the office, couple times a week and engaging with them and talking about some of the policies and things that we were considering as a city it really sparked excitement and I gotta say as an adult working in government sometimes you get stuck in the process and the policy in the system and it's nice to hear somebody sitting in the back of the room that's a young person say that'll be really cool if we can pull that off we forget to have that energy that we had when we first started out in some of these roles so I I think having a young person here for you guys to talk to, for us to hear that input would be very helpful. And again, we're talking about students who have an interest in this and want to be involved in the future of what our community is doing.

Okay, is that it? Yes, Council Member Marshall.

Thank you, Mayor. Sabrina, are all of our student representative positions on advisory commissions full?

I'd have to check with McHale on that. I think we had one that was vacant if I remembered, but I need to look at the list. But that is another opportunity for students and I will say it's another place that it's been really fun whether it's arts or it's been great to see those engagements because not all commissions have them. But when we do have students, it's great to hear their feedback or them share information that the advisory board may not have known about from the young people in the community.

No, and I understand that I guess more more my reasoning for the question is if this school board or the the school district has the students available how come at to this point them and pushing them towards just being our advisory boards.

I know that we forwarded information to them about that, but they have this other process, and I know for students sometimes, especially as I talked about with their busy schedules, I think sometimes they're picking and choosing with the different things they have what they're putting forward.

It also may not be an area of interest of theirs, too. Yeah, if it's arts or parks. They may not be interested in that area, so...

This would be a broader focus.

You can't make a choice for them.

No, I understand. But if they want to get involved, that's an area that they can get involved. And so that would be just a recommendation.

And we can bring it full circle, too, and say, once we start this process, hey, these were students who maybe didn't make the cut or whatever term we want to use. And so we can remind them that, hey, there's an advisory board opportunity for students as well. So we can, again, use this as another way to plug those opportunities. and get that information out to students.

So looking at the school district website, it looks like they have actually two student board members on their board. Do we know what the selection process is for them? Who makes the determination as to what students get selected for that board?

I believe the school board does.

The school board does.

And it's an application process from what?

It's an application and an interview process they go through, yeah.

And so I think it would be appropriate if if Council did the same sort of thing. I mean, like when we're filling a vacancy to make them.

I don't have a problem putting a couple of you on the interview. Yeah, that's fine.

So yeah, that's those are my thoughts at this point. Thank you.

Councilman Romero.

So I've agreed with practically everything that the council has stated with regard to this. I did want to mention Council Member Peterson is very incisive and analytical about getting a grasp of what's going on. So I just wanted to thank you for that because it's notable. And then also with regard to anything that we do, I'm always looking for underlying issues or benefits. So the cost benefit analysis is not simply just a knee-jerk reaction. I would state that an intergovernmental relations between the school board and the city with regard to student involvement has the benefit of getting buy-in from the broader citizenry with regard to what we do. I'm always thinking with regard to what will build up the impact of our actions in the eyes of the citizenry so that we have a base of support to get stuff done. So I strongly support this concept and the details, though, I'm not going to speak on. Thank you.

Council Member Wittgenstein.

I'm going to circle back to a couple of things actually. The hand-in-hand school and the students that are seniors or juniors in that regard, they should absolutely be allowed to be here as well, and so they should have the opportunity. I just want to make sure because that wasn't real clear when Ryan asked the question.

No, I'm just saying I was going to clarify. I didn't want to say yes and find out that it wasn't true. So it was my understanding, but I wanted to double check that.

I'm just saying I'd like to make sure we include all those people as well, because I think they should have that opportunity to at least apply and go through that process. If we end up filling all our student advisory positions on our advisory boards, you'll have a council.

Mayor for attempt.

Thank you. I yeah to the best of my knowledge to hand in hand or any anything remotely attached to the school district those students are eligible to apply for the student representative position to the best of my knowledge and so I I think that they are um eligible so which is good. I do want um council to be realistic about our, our like attendance expectations. These, I mean, I've, yeah, having my niece just graduated. So having had a teenager just go through high school and involved in that, you know, if they're doing sports, it's five days a week. And then weekend tournaments, if they're doing a choir or band, they might have a, concert or a practice, and those things are mandatory for students. If you miss a band practice, you do not participate in the concert. And so if students are having to make those decisions, then I would absolutely want them to prioritize their school-required things. So while it would be nice to have them here, I do think that we need to be realistic about their expectations. delighted with like, you know, 50% attendance or something, honestly, because those kids are so heavily scheduled and overburdened. It's, it is remarkable, like you were saying, going through the resumes and seeing the things that they're involved in. It's like, when, when do you do this? Cause you know, you won sport five days a week and it prevents you from participating in, in anything else. And, you know, depending on the season. So just, you know, just want us to keep that in mind in terms of standards. And I, I want to thank council member arms for her bringing up Nolan as an example, because that, that was a great example. That was a, a kind of a ground swell, you know, he represented a group and then came and brought that group's message to us. And we had that point of contact and we, everybody knew his name and then he ended up being an intern with the city and it, getting involved on a much deeper level. And so that one participant can really evolve and expand to become so much bigger than just one person sitting in one chair. And so while it would be great to have a whole group of students advising us the logistics of putting something like that together and maintaining that, probably isn't realistic. It might be worth, I mean, this might be so successful, this thing that we end up that we want to expand. But for now, I think that building on the existing process is an excellent start. And I'm anxious, I'm curious to see where it's gonna lead.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Temp. Anybody else? All right. Thank you, Sabrina. I was just going to add, Dr. Custable actually shared with us there's a student that's in the alternative learning program that is one of the candidates that would be put forward. So they are absolutely a part of this process. That's how I know that. So I'm not going to divulge anything else for that person. But I'm just saying.

And I think a big thing, too, is that we'd be starting from their application pool. So I think that's the other piece of this.

All right. All right. So we're going to move on to the last item that we have on the agenda today. That's the Police Community Advisory Board presentation. And here to introduce that is the chief of police, Tony Slowik.

All right. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council. I'd like to introduce Rachel Paul and Melinda Buchanan. They're both our chair and vice chair for our Police Community Advisory Board. And they are giving, this is just an annual update on CAB and what's been going on. And so I'm going to turn it over.

And you're going to have to hit the button on the front so you have a green light.

I'll turn it over to them, and I'm happy to take any questions at the end.

Button on the front? Is it on?

Sure, just hit it. It takes a second.

There we go. Hello, I'm Rachel Paul. We just wanted to start by saying that the purpose of the presentation is just to fulfill the annual requirement. We actually didn't know about the annual requirement, and I think it's been about two years. We're coming close to the two-year mark. We're going to rotate back and forth on the slides, so you want to...

OK, so the work that we've done throughout this past year, we've done a lot of learning and outreach as a cab. We took a field trip to pellet shelters out in Mount Vernon, and we discovered that that was something that we really wanted to investigate more and try and bring to Island County. We also met up with quite a few different individuals that came and presented to us. We had some CADA representatives and some domestic violence situations come out or housing. We've met with like resources, county officials. We did the coffee with a cop thing, which was a great success. We also did our survey throughout last year. We got that out during National Night Out, which the results were amazing. We also changed a couple rules to our bylaws, like we went from meeting every month to meeting every other month now. I'm pretty sure that's it for this slide. Sorry, I knew it this.

I think overwhelmingly our concerns that we have identified going forward for the police department have involved staffing with the police department. In the last couple of years, I've participated in a promotion board and two hiring boards, I think. Chief Slowik has been reporting back to us about the staffing issues. It sounds like we're making some progress in that. And the advisory board has been becoming more involved in that process. I think the thing that we have spent the most time discussing in our meetings is the concern within the community about the increase in crime in the Barlow area around Spin Cafe. So when we've had people come in and talk to us, for the most part been the topic, either from the business community or from SPIN Cafe themselves. We participated in the community forums that involved concerns about SPIN Cafe. So most of our time has been focused on addressing the intersection of homelessness and drug abuse and mental health. We've had some meetings with the county as well. And particularly the outreach we've done and the field trips that we took to Burlington and to Mount Vernon made us sort of consolidate around this idea of a pallet shelter and increasing resources within the city with or without the county. I guess that's what I'm thinking about that. This is much slower than the one that I use at work. Yes, there we go. Go ahead.

So we decided going forward we were going to put a lot of our focus, this going forward, into more recruitment of officers or supporting staff, really getting out there in the community. Engaging with the community letting them know that cab is out there and active pursuing more research and helping the county or Not the county if they don't want to be part of it But getting that pallet shelter here making it a resource making it something that is attainable we also want to pursue The transitional housing, there's an increase in it and we want to try and help with that any way we can. We also want to show our support for the direct outreach for either regional or anywhere really, but we would like to show our support as a CAB to you guys.

so our future challenges involve first of all just supporting the city and recruitment of officers i think that the last meeting especially we're talking about that a big challenge for us has been filling board positions um so i i think sabrina and i were talking off to the side we've had a very difficult time trying to recruit somebody from the high school to participate as the student representative we had a student representative for the first year but I think that student attended one meeting maybe two we've reached out to the principal we've reached out to ROTC you know there's an application process but we've had trouble stimulating interest so I hope that feedback is useful to you as you're thinking about recruiting students for city council advisory positions as well. We have requested from the police department some sort of abbreviated form of Citizens Academy that we think ought to be a requirement for CAB. We would just recommend that and I say that having not done Citizens Academy but I think that it really is a good idea. And then we'd like to see some sort of liaising between the community and the city to humanely address both the business concerns and the concerns of the unhoused and the people with mental health problems in the Barlow area. So we're really thrilled about the Soda District uh we think that that was a great step in the right direction and we're hoping to serve as essentially communicators or advisors on that particular issue because we think that's what the community is most concerned about right now so our next question is what would you as city council want from cab what do you want our focus to be we would like your recommendations

Council member Peterson.

My very first question, because I'm new enough at this, is would you please explain your mission to me?

We're the community advisory board, so our mission, I think the best way of articulating this is to say that we are communicating between the community and the police department about citizens' needs. We've had a Marty Malloy, for example, has gone door to door. I went door to door collecting survey data. And we've had a national night out as well to find out what the public safety concerns of the community is and passing that along to the police department and then to you in an annual report.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Pardon my ignorance. What is a pallet shelter?

So the pallet shelter program is and I think the we start by saying the program in Mount Vernon where we visited, we thought was just kind of phenomenal, both in terms of price and the way that it is organized. It is an effort to increase housing availability to those who are unhoused. It's really transitional housing that can have I think if we were to develop a pallet shelter program, we would have to decide what the level would be, you know, where a person is, for example, in addiction recovery or where they are in mental health recovery. But they are essentially... What is the word for that? Well, they're like apartments, but they're, they're temporary. They're the back of. Yeah.

So, so there are, so it's a low barrier, um, shelter alternative. It's for transitional, typically zero to 90 or zero to 120 days. of somebody who is willing to get into some supported housing or transitioning to that supported housing. And the term pallet shelter actually is a company out of Everett. The structure that they make, the reason they call it a pallet shelter is when it's all collapsed, it can be loaded onto one pallet. But all of the, it's typically like an eight foot by eight foot a single occupancy shelter, it has a bed, it has electricity.

We're going to load pictures for you. We just visited yesterday. We're going to show you.

Or you can send them to me.

No, but I mean, I think it's important for everyone to see.

Yeah, I had not heard that. It sounds like a great idea. Some kind of low barrier.

And then just to add a few things that both Melinda and Rachel spoke about is that as for the recruiting piece of it, we We have to work with our civil service commission. We have added a citizen rep to our hiring process. That's that screening through for civil service. We are pulling that citizen rep from the police community advisory board. So it's somebody that's already been vetted by the city as that citizen representative. we are we've been using them for that public safety survey to find out about services and then as council member peterson asked you know what is police community advisory board the ordinance says it advises and makes recommendations to the mayor city council and the chief of police concerning the provisions of the police protection and services within the city. So that's really CAB's mission. And it's a community access. So it's not somebody that has to always come to council or make a complaint directly to police administration. They have this other tool as we onboard additional representatives of the community for that.

Fantastic. And you mentioned the survey at National Night Owl. Have we seen that survey? Has the results been shared with the council?

So we provided that survey to city council back, I believe, in September. Okay. And I can provide some more updates with that. But really, that survey led to some of the higher concerns being the concerns with homelessness, drug use, those things being a lot of that. A lot of those are public safety concerns where people feel endangered or unsafe walking through that corridor of town um and so with cab we've uh you know done some outreach in that area um gone and talked to businesses um the mayor myself and sabrina and maggie have all done outreach with spin and that group as well and just trying to figure out how do we um how do we mitigate some of the concerns that we have and then we have had open forums over the last two years as well

Yeah, I do recall last fall there was some feedback that was kind of the catalyst for the soda district and all of that. So that specifically goes back to the survey that you did at National Night Out and that Marty did door to door. I love that. OK, good. Yeah, it's nice to be able to connect those things. Because to your question about council's expectations or questions, Sometimes as an advisory board, you know, we might expect a group to come to a meeting and talk at us about You know, this is what the community is telling us. But when When we have results that are driven by the feedback that you are collecting and a lot of that is happening behind the scenes and so we don't necessarily you know connect that with the work that you're doing but it's I think it's really incredible to kind of going back in history other than having a group of people that just kind of comes and reports general concepts to us once a year. that you guys as a collective are actually making things happen behind the scenes. You're actually doing the work and then reporting to us about the work. And I appreciate that so much. I think that that's much more effective. And I appreciate that you are you know, your eyes and ears and the boots on the ground and you are collecting all of this info from people that we wouldn't necessarily have time to talk with and so the things that you come back and tell us or that Tony, or sorry, Chief Sloat comes back and tells us after having met with you and done your events, that really does help shape our decision making. So I, which is the whole, that's the point. so it it's a little convoluted how it but it seems like the information always ends up getting where it needs to go and we have to just kind of trust the process and i um i appreciate that i like how the cab's been um really visible and active and i'm troubled to hear or i guess confused to hear that we've had a hard time recruiting specifically a student member i would think that that's one of those community engagement things that a student would be really interested in. Maybe if we emphasize maybe some of the results, things like shelters and ordinances and the actual progress and changes that are being made, a student could be part of that as opposed to just sitting in a meeting. I'm not sure what your recruitment currently looks like at that level.

I think right now, This topic is very, excuse me, this topic is very, fueled and high emotionally fueled and there's a huge level of high tempers in the community i'm sure we're even getting it right now on facebook in response to this meeting people have a lot of opinions but no one's coming forth with things and suggestions and offering to help with solutions to the problem you know we're working diligently behind the scenes to to vet out some different things which we're gonna we're gonna get to here in a few minutes but my point in bringing all of that up is to say that students don't necessarily want to immerse themselves into that type of environment sure they might not want to yeah jump into the fray so to speak yeah is that your experience as well

I actually wanted to answer this. I know personally we have two people on our board who actively have been reaching out to the high school and repetitively asking students or even the administration at the school. River and Marty reach out almost every couple of weeks or every week trying to get us applicants for even just interests and we're not having any luck but we have two seats that are actively trying to recruit so we are we are absolutely trying our hardest it's just it doesn't seem like there is much interest to sit on that board sadly yeah Rachel yeah yeah I'd like to add something to that I mean I think that this is a um

politically fraught time for a community advisory board for a police department and that that may have something to do with it. But I also think that going through the superintendent's office might be a better direction than continually reaching out to the high school.

We'll absolutely do that, too. I agree. I think that with the idea of the student council representative and the school board students, if they have already a pool of applicants that have expressed an interest, that maybe you didn't make the cut for the school board or that might not be the best place for you but we have this other opportunity here since you've already expressed an interest and we need that feedback and and the mayor touched on one of my observations which was this is something that people sure have a lot of opinions about but when you say okay well we have we have this opportunity for you to come and be a part of the solution. It's crickets. And that is really frustrating. It's really frustrating. So hopefully we can give the board some, some visibility, I guess, and, and try to fill up those seats so that we have those voices. So if there's anything that you need from us, Please let us know. I know how we can help. So now we know that you're having trouble recruiting. So I'll definitely put the word out there amongst my contacts and the students that I know and see maybe what we can do to make that better. So thank you so much. I appreciate the time that you put in. It does make a difference.

Council Member Stuckey.

Yeah, I was a little surprised about the student representative as well. I feel like there's always at least a couple that want to become police officers. And I'm thinking, that's a heck of a resume builder.

Do we still have the police explorers program? We do have an explorer program. We don't have it filled right now. The person that was running the program has left employment with the city. So we're just going to take a little time off. And all the explorers have graduated. So we're just going to work probably through this next school year and then start it up again.

Shoot, I was going to say, if we still had that, that would be a place to pull from. How many officers are we short?

Seven right now. So one sergeant, six officers. Of those, three of them have to be entry level because they're Department of Justice grant-filled positions. Just so everyone's aware, we've actively put out openings. We have a new civil service examiner who's doing really well in getting that process for applications processed quickly. And we just did a recent set of interviews over the last two weeks where we interviewed laterals, an exceptional hire and AT LEAST 14 ENTRY LEVEL PEOPLE. AND OUT OF THAT GROUP, ONLY FOUR PEOPLE WERE RECOMMENDED FOR TO MOVE FORWARD WITH CIVIL SERVICE. SO THE QUALITY OF CANDIDATE PULL IS THE CHALLENGING PIECE. And then the other part is people passing our background exam. So we often have two people that we're trying to hire, but then we find out that they are disqualified either through an omission or an action that occurred in the last few years.

That's too bad. I know part of the push when we approved more officers was to try to do that community policing. And I remember at one point there was even... for lack of a better term, an officer that was kind of not assigned to Barlow, but at least was well known.

We've had an officer as a co-responder up until just a couple months ago. So that person has been working that Barlow neighborhood, working with our social worker, who is a county employee that's embedded with the PD. And then we find that's helped a lot. However, right now we just don't have that position filled. And that's through... light duty assignments and things like that.

It's interesting to hear about the pallet shelter. What have we done Or what are we looking into from the CAV perspective about a more holistic approach when it comes to things like inpatient rehab? Has that come up? I mean, we have a detox, but we don't have inpatient rehab. And I know that takes the private entities, but still, is that something we've discussed?

So one, there's very limited resources within the city, in the county in general. We do have a TUA, which is our stabilization center. Island County spent a lot of time and energy, probably about eight years getting that thing funded and built. But that's a voluntary stabilization center. Often when people are taken there, they walk away from the stabilization center. It's not an inpatient treatment as in involuntarily held. It is a 10-day inpatient if you voluntarily want to be there. And it's based off of the type of services that they have. So often they have services for drug and alcohol treatment. Mental health is hit or miss depending on if they have a doctor psychologist available or not. And then we have no other. uh, impatient type of treatment within Island County. Um, even the hospital does not have a safe, secure bed, um, um, space down there. They just have regular ER beds that they put people in. Um, so, so think something we just have to be aware of is that The state pays for funding for regional or local services based off of a five-county approach for our region. And so we're one entity within a five-county approach, which is Snohomish, Skagit, Whatcom, Island, and San Juan County. And so we do have some regional services that are going to be starting up soon in Cedar Woolley, but they're going to be quickly filled because they're Medicare only paid for so many beds and they're limited to like 15 beds per type of service. So it's pretty challenging. And then providers, there's just not providers available. So CAB hasn't really worked on any of that. They have heard about some of those challenges, but they also have heard about some of our other challenges with designated crisis responders, social workers, those type of things.

And then another thought, and always I have to give my caveat of obviously I own a business on Barlow. You know, a lot of times we'll hear those that care loudly will say about not enforcing the rules on the books. And it's difficult. you pretty much got to see someone if there's open drug use, you got to see it. You can't just hear from somebody who calls it in and take out their word. With that in mind, has there been a thought of the city, I'm not suggesting paying for it, but I'm suggesting facilitating a conversation with the businesses about perhaps everyone putting their resources together, the businesses down there, for some security. someone who could monitor that. I mean, it's a little tricky because as a business, I'm not going to go to another business and say, hey, will you pay in? Because if they're not going to pay in, but I'm going to pay in, it's not equitable. But has anybody thought of the city maybe approaching businesses in private security or something like that?

I would say that's up to a city, I mean, up to private businesses getting together as a co-op or an association and figuring out if that's what you, some service you want. For us, We have to provide services within the entire city. We've met multiple times with businesses and concerned citizens from that area. It's something that the businesses down there can decide. That's something that we would put.

Can I just ask Hillary to weigh in here legally, please? We need to be careful about giving this type of advice to or recommendation for what we could potentially be on the hook for litigation-wise.

sure can you hear me yes you see me no yes um sort of oh here we go uh yeah i mean i think that's a very well-timed comment mayor i mean as we as much as we can encourage private businesses to do what the council member just suggested which is create coalitions and work together to help clean up their community um from a city's perspective we have limitations i'd be happy to meet with I mean, the chief and I talk a lot about this very issue. So I think, you know, if any council member wants to meet with me and the chief and talk about creative ways to address community solutions, we're happy to do so. But we do have pretty strong limitations in that regard as well.

Great. Thank you. Let me reframe the question a little bit. year, I think it was last year, I remember you putting on an event downtown for Barlow, inviting the businesses. And immediately it wasn't super well attended, not of any fault of anyone in the city. It seems like something like that, while businesses could on their own say, hey, neighbor, could you come meet? Is there any thought about maybe facilitating something like that again? Or is that pushing outside of our scope?

Definitely. We are always looking at facilitating those type of interactions throughout the city.

I think another one of those, especially that they could meet more CAP members. I think getting the business down there to all talk while we could just figure it out. It does help when it's the city saying, hey, come to this event. Again, not suggesting just a facilitation.

And then just to add, just to follow up on the question you had about witnessing crime. So when Washington State decriminalized drug possession, which for about 18 months and then eventually turned it into a misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor offense, that made it that the officer had to witness those crimes occurring in their presence. So any report of it is suspicious activity, but the offense needs to occur in the officer's presence.

And just for clarification purposes, Councilmember Stuckey, are you asking for business owners only to be in attendance at this meeting? Or are you inviting the public to attend this meeting? That's a good question. Because if the public is going to be there, it's going to be chaos.

I would lean more towards the business owners as they're the ones that are vested down there. We did do that before. I mean, I think if a community member showed up, I don't think we would kick them out, but you could certainly focus it on the businesses. I remember that's how it was advertised. It wasn't like on social media, come one, come all. It was someone going to the businesses with a flyer, if I remember correctly.

So I attended, I believe, the meeting at the movie theater that you're talking about. Yeah. And I actually thought, given the number of businesses, it was pretty well attended, at least the one that this was two years ago.

I think those were two different times. Okay.

But I also want to be careful that while this is a public safety issue that we don't assume that the problem is entirely drug related. So I have spoken to family members of a few people who are in mental health crisis who are unhoused and there are security public safety concerns for those individuals as well. They are likely to be victimized by people who have ill intent. This is not just about, just not a public safety issue. It is also a community safety issue that we ought not to be necessarily associating with.

I agree very much so. Thank you.

Council Member Maryland.

Much appreciate the cab and all the wonderful things that you do with regards to our community. It's an open secret that organized crime, they generate a lot of money and the ways they do it involve coercive threats and also luring people to get involved into drugs, sometimes through coercive threats and other times just like peer pressure or vulnerability. And then they become, those individuals who are street level users, then become criminals because they have to support their habit. And the money, of course, goes on to the dealers. And they do burglaries. I mean, this is standard law enforcement information with regard to criminal activity that's drug related. So until you approach the source of the issue, I mean, because organized crime has known this forever. that unless you deal with the dealers, unless you contend with them and suppress the supply and cut off the money side of it, because they're going to constantly be recruiting. And I'm just going to put it in economic terms. Every drug addict that's not working or constructive in the city is likely draining sources and resources from everybody else. And all the people that are law-abiding, working hard, two, three jobs to make ends meet, and they're having to spend $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $80,000 a year, some drug addicts, and taking care of them. So I'm stating this as a matter of public record because the cab is doing great. But until the city and the legislature and the judges and the prosecutor actually address the issue, which is the suppliers who are also recruiting. I mean, for every drug addict that dies or for some reason or another is no longer part of the customer base or client base for the drug dealers, then they're gonna have to find somebody else. I'm saying this as a matter of record because it's beyond the scope of the city council really to be able to address it in full, but I did want to state as a matter of public record that I strongly favor local law enforcement to deal with the dealers, the people that are making the thousands, hundreds of thousands, tens of millions across the region, that they should be held accountable. Thank you.

Council Member Peterson.

Sorry, I have a question about the palette thing. A friend of mine in Bellingham puts together something very much like that. And he was talking to me the other day about how it's all adjudicated, sort of, and how the people are picked. And they have, because you didn't know, They kind of have like a place where they all do communal bathing, communal eating, and then they all have their little eight by eights or whatever. It's actually kind of a cool thing. And the ones up in Bellingham that I'm aware of, the people get to pick who goes there. There's like an application process so they know who they do and don't want in their area. My question about that is, does the city have, and I don't know who knows this answer, a particular responsibility to find that land? Or how do we do that? I mean, if we're looking at pallet communities, what's the sitch?

I'm happy to address this. When you guys are all done with all your questions, we're researching this right now. Anything else?

Can I respond to council? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. So completely agree with you, but except for this is beyond the purview of the city. My understanding and Chief Sloat could comment on this is that we have been shorted drug task force officer cooperating with Skagit County. We have somebody from that position. Okay. I wanted to make sure that that was...

Council Member Romero.

With regard to the purview statement, what I really meant was that we can have the best law enforcement in the entire state or even in the entire country. But if we don't have prosecutors that will... prosecute and we don't have an executive that will keep them in prison they'll be out on the street again so I didn't want to leave the impression that we're non-active in fact the exact opposite our police department is moving forward with steps you know the soda district and these other things but I just the scope of it is so huge it's just hard to imagine Oak Harbor taking on the whole deal but thank you Council Member Wittgenstein um

What we're describing is the gaps in services, that's what's missing. So what's been missing for the whole treatment programs, I mean the effective treatment that will get somebody off the streets and into independent living where they're a producing member of society because that's what our society expects of us. In order to get there, they need continuous care from start to finish. We don't do continuous care from start to finish. We do intervention, get them into the detox center so they can stabilize. And then if there's a bed available in the state, they might get a chance to go to inpatient treatment. But most likely they won't. They'll get released back into their own community at their own homes. where they're still dealing with their same stressors and the only way to cope with it that they know how to do is to survive is to go back to the bad behaviors because it worked. It kept them alive. It's a whole survival instinct. That continues. We've got to address the gaps. We have to address the gaps. And there's one way the city can do it. There's other cities that are going to do it. Other cities are doing human services departments where they're addressing it themselves. I'm a huge fan of that. You're stealing my thunder. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of it. I think that is the way that we're going to go to be able to get where we want to go. Because the police department isn't the right tool down there. They're just trying to keep everybody safe. And they'll agree that they're not the right tool down there. Nobody really knows. What can you do? Yes, there is an expectation that the laws of 35 years ago should be upheld. But what people are complaining about, we can't do. Chief Sulik's been saying it for quite a while. We're limited because of the state legislation. We want to incarcerate people who are having bad behaviors due to whatever reason. We can do that, right? That's what we've been. That's how we've dealt with addicts. Addicts is a bad behavior, right? But addiction is no different than breaking your arm. It has to have time to heal, right? But what are we healing in addiction? Do you know? Does anybody have a clue? The brain. The brain is the organ that is at fault and then breaking. Addiction also works from another perspective. I want you to think about it just real simple, right? We have instinctal things that make us stay alive, kill, death, sex, right, and food. We got to eat, we got to reproduce, and we got to survive for public, our own safety. And those are the three instinctals. You know, they happen at 15, every 15 seconds in our life, and we have no control over those. That's what keeps us alive. That's what tells us when we're hungry. We don't go, oh, I think I'm hungry, and then the body says, oh, yeah, you're hungry. No, your body, your brain, everybody's ahead of the game, right? Addiction works the opposite direction. When the frontal cortex is keeping the midbrain in check, and the frontal cortex is your choice, willpower, you know, those kind of things, when it's keeping it in check, it works great. When it's not in check, it's in survival mode, this takes over. And so no matter what it takes to get whatever it is they need, alcohol, drugs, porn, food, gambling, jumping out of airplanes, video gaming. I mean, we go down the list, right? The process in the brain is the same. It's affecting the same way. That survival is what keeps people alive. So we have to give them a long enough time for their nervous system to reset and recalibrate and come back in. And I'm a big proponent of that. So I was going to talk about the H3 that they're doing in a couple of our communities with Paulsbo and Gig Harbor. And we're both doing that. And they're human services departments, essentially, to make it simplistic. And again, why should the city do it? I think the city owes it to its residents to do it. I think as human beings, we owe it to each other to do it. period. And divisiveness, because we assume somebody's situation is their own choosing and making, and that they can pull themselves out of it if they just have hard enough consequences, is bullshit. It doesn't work. It doesn't. It works when the person or individual has got enough support around them in their system to get what they need. And that support has to come from also the city, the county, the state. The state's been telling the county to run it and do it and take care of it. Your job. And the city lets the county, up until recently, take care of it itself. We pushed it out of town. We pushed it out of town. We're the central hub for Island County in a way, and for at least Whidbey Island. We got the commerce. We got the population. People got to come through town. And so we have to take care of the people that are in there. So again, the gaps have to be addressed. What that looks like and how to address them, I think, is still the thing that we have to discover. But in order to change it, we're only doing Band-Aids when we do it at the city or the county or the street level. That'll never stop the problem. The problem is the legislation that prevents the law officers from doing what they need to do in that moment. That's the problem. That should be changed. That should be fixed and set to the right way. It also should match where we're at in society and culture. We're in 2026. We're not in 1940. We're not in 1960. We're definitely not 1970. I wish we were 1980s. I like that year. So we evolved as a society, but we still have populations that live within us that are from the 80s. They're born in the 40s. Those, they have their own lifestyles, and they got their own ways, and they think how they think, and they've earned every right to have it. Yet politically, they're way off base with the society of today. Because some of the comments they would say normally would be very racist, right? And so are we adjusting the system to go with societal growth, or are we going to always play catch up? I guess that's the question they'll be with.

Thank you for sharing that. I enjoyed having that conversation with you in Spokane as well. Council Member Arms, yes.

Well, you know, I agree. I'm that child. But I grew up with all that. I grew up with all the drug culture. I grew up and watched it in living real color. I also was a licensed practical nurse for over 40 years. I dealt with all that situation. I dealt with all that. And I saw what happened. We tried. We gave it our best. We were compassionate. You know, we did all that. And, you know, we did all that. We saw it. But I also saw what our, what people did. They required everybody would have a master's degree. They didn't look at you could do something simple, be the intake person, didn't have to have all that. So they made it harder and harder for those people to be out in the community doing the help they needed. They haven't changed the rules. They've made it harder. Just like nursing used to be a two-year degree, now you have to have a master's. Does that mean you're any brighter than the next person? Probably not. But this is the problem. We have made it incredibly hard to help because we have had all these crazy rules. And I watched it in real time. People were doing stuff that had major... degrees than me and I'm looking at him like, what are you doing? You are not getting it. So we've made ourselves into this little cocoon that has to be a certain way. And so now how do we reverse it to get enough people interested to get into those schools to do the things, even on the basic level, instead of requiring everybody to have a master's or something like that to your degree. You can do the intake. You can do all that. I've watched it. I've lived it. I know it. And I've been around it a lot longer. And it's very unfortunate. I watched the system crumble right before my very eye and have been arguing about this for way too long. that this happened even with LPNs. All of a sudden, you couldn't work in the hospital because you needed a four-year degree. I'm like, hello, which part of you were stupider than me? So this has always been a problem. We have regulated ourselves out of the position of helping. We have made it almost impossible. So if we don't learn to look at it a different way, we're going to repeat it. And that's exactly what we're doing. We are doing the same thing we've done for the last, sorry, 50 years. And that's how I feel. And I am sad because I've watched it in real time. It breaks my heart. And I have seen it. And I don't know how to reverse them to get back to common sense, have the education so we can have more people in the field to do what Chris says. And that's how I feel.

All right. Thank you very much. I want to first ask you ladies, were you done with your presentation before I speak? I feel like you got kind of railroaded there. So are you guys done?

I think we were finished. I would like to respond and say that there is a statewide community health worker program where you can be certified and it is, I did it. I'm not a health worker. I've been through it just to see what it's like. Anybody can do it. And I think that recognizing that this is a community problem where the community has a responsibility, whether that's through law enforcement or that's through health care, is the first step. But we should recognize that the state has created a program that lowers that bar. You do not have to have a master's degree. to be a designated crisis responder or to be someone who is doing outreach. I don't think a lot of people realize that.

We don't advertise it well that this is the way to help. We have a friend that's going for a master's right now because that's the only way she can work. That's why I'm saying we need to push it, put it out there and do those things so people know that they have a job waiting after they do that and if they can't afford to go on. That's what I'm saying. there it's not out there the information that's all it's not your fault i mean it's just the way it is

All right, so I wanna first, I wanna thank everyone for their comments. This is a very sensitive issue that we're all passionate about in different ways. I understand that and I respect that. I also understand that there are those that are gonna view this and they have their own opinions and they're passionate in their own ways as well and I respect you as well. We don't have to agree 100%. That's part of the wonderful country that we live in. It's called democracy. What I will tell you that we are doing, though, is Chief and I have gone and toured the Pallet facility. We have also met, we're working closely with the city of Bellingham. We've also worked with the city of Burlington, or Mount Vernon, it was Mount Vernon, sorry. I get those two, they're right there. So we took a lot of information from them. We're trying to mirror their programs that they have, their CJSTC funding at the state level. Is it, am I saying that wrong too?

Yeah, it's House Bill 2015 funding. Thank you.

Okay. So it's late in the afternoon. So we're going after that for to stand up the program. I would like to stand up another department within the city. This is the first they're hearing about it. Obviously, I'm still working on it behind the scenes and we'll be bringing all this forward to them. So this is all news to them. But I would like to see us be able to bring in four social workers and bring those and put those inside the police department to work on behalf of our or in tandem with our police department, I think it will decrease their response time to these incidents down in this area specifically 25 to 30% based upon some of the data that we've heard from other cities. We're working with these other cities like Gig Harbor and what was the other one, Chris? Possible, thank you. We're also working with their experts that have done this in their cities to figure out exactly what worked, what didn't work, and what we need to do differently. I've also researched the RCWs for ongoing funding so we can fund this on an ongoing basis. Going forward, I'm working closely with your husband, Representative Dave Paul, to assist us with this. So he's on board and he is championing this as well at the state level. In addition to not just standing up the department within the city, we are looking, we do have two plots of land that I'm potentially investigating to see if this will work to potentially put the pallet shelter on. So we wouldn't need to acquire any additional land. We would just need to go after a grant to actually put in the 40 pallet units on the land. So we would have to do some grading. We would have to put the gravel in and then we would have to put in the, We would have to put in the fencing and all the other stuff that needs to go in there. Yes, the infrastructure that goes in there. We've got a ballpark idea of what that would cost and where that will go. Again, this is all very infancy stage. We're still working this all through and we're going after the money hard. I'm confident, though, with Representative Paul's backing, and I'm going to also contact Senator Mazal's office, as well as Clyde Shaver's office, and then Senator Lubbock's office, and I'm going to get as much support as I can to jump on board with this and throw in support for this. That is the plan, though. This doesn't stop here, though. I had a conversation with a council member earlier today. Even once I get them into a pallet shelter, this is only a 90-day to 120-day solution. Then I've got to, where do I put them after this? We don't have the next step in the process. So we've got to continue to develop this, and this has got to be an ongoing thing. So, you know, and I looked at that person and said, maybe when you run for mayor then and you succeed me, then that becomes your problem. But, I mean, this has to be something that we continue to work on and we have to evolve and continue to develop. So it's what's going to make our community better. We have to look out for everyone. So, yeah. So that is the plan. We are working on it. Yeah. Yes, you can.

Just to kind of share with you, there's also the city of Raymond was part of that presentation. So Raymond, Paulsbo, and Gig Harbor, all doing a little bit different things, but very similar. They call it the H3 in Paulsbo and Gig Harbor. There's one common theme that all of them had. down and it was community buy-in. If the community doesn't buy into helping save the humans within our community, we're not going to be able to save them. That is where that starts. Whenever this starts kicking off, if we go down that road, we have to have a lot of community buy-in, which means town halls, meetings, whatever it takes to get them in so people can be heard. Every side of the problem needs to be heard. Everybody needs to be. They need to feel like they know, like, hey, this really bugs me, and we hear it. Can we fix it? No. As a group of people and a team together, can we start to make it better? Oh, hell yeah. We should. It's our responsibilities as humans.

The one thing that's definitely coming through loud and clear is the state is saying, the state is not going to fix this problem. It is now upon you as local municipalities to solve your problems in your own communities. If we don't start getting creative and solving these problems for ourselves, this is only going to get worse. We need to get in front of this right now and start solving the problem. That's what we need to start doing. That's why we are working as hard as we're working to try to make this happen. We're right in the beginning of the biennial budget cycle for the next two years. So it fits in perfectly and that's the plan. So, yeah. All right. Anything else for the good of the order? Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you both very much. Yes.

Sorry. I appreciate council's support on this, and as the vice chair to CAB, I am sure our chair agrees. CAB would love to be involved in any way we can, and any help that you guys need, please don't hesitate to reach out and ask us. We are more than there to be your helping hand.

Thank you very much. We appreciate you guys, too. All right. Well, thank you. There being no further business, the city...