City Council - Regular Meeting

amendment I have tonight is the 2012 zoning code amendment. It involves revisions to staff titles and responsibilities, clarifying planning commission hearing examiner authority, reclassification and standardization of land use application types um including some information about uh some new types that will be coming forward later on such as that are calling them types instead of maybe a zoning. Um then it also includes um removal of the design review board per the title two changes. There's a few sections of our code that have that, so um you'll keep hearing that until we get them all out of there. Updating security and financial assurance provisions and making chapterwide edits, providing new, updated, and revised code language to ensure clarity and of the regulations. Um and then I would like to thank uh Mayor Vanny for catching a typo um in section 2012 310B. U missed a T in the word 'the'. Um so I will make that change as well. Okay, any questions?

None seen. Okay, we'll then move on to our next item. Item number two, ordinance amending Arlington Municipal Code Chapter 20.36, zoning districts and zoning map. Again, Am.

Thank you, Mayor Vanny. This amendment involves updates to revise and clarify the regulations as well as provide new updated and revised code language to ensure clarity and consistency of the regulations. Uh section 203630 manufacturing districts was revised to add reference to the Cascade Industrial Center and define light and general industrial separately. A new section was added for sub areas and 2036105 uh lots divided by district lines was removed because with chapter 2020 amendments we put it over there into administrative interpretations.

Okay. Any questions on this one? Okay. None seen. We'll go ahead and move on to the third item. Ordinance amending Arlington Municipal Code Chapter 20.68 signs.

Thank you, Mayor Vanny. Uh so for the science code amendment uh it involved removal of incentive provisions for exceptional efforts uh provided a new section in compliance with Senate and grow Senate bill 5206 uh relating to the cannabis retailers advertising amending location and height requirements of signs attached to buildings and updating commercial corridor regulations um specifically to the south of 172nd and provide new updated and revised language to ensure consistency and clarity of the regulations throughout the chapter. We also with during the time with planning commission um added some changes to the regulations around menu signs. Uh so that was kind of a last minute update that just said it you could have one menu sign uh per lane, not just one sign for the entire site. Um, and I wanted to do uh provide some additional clarification on it looks like there's a lot of places that were changed. Um, but it's because each section goes over the same regulations each time. Uh, so we decided that if you look at say Epic a design over on 172nd, their sign is up at the top of the building. But if they'd had a second floor, then they wouldn't have been allowed to have their sign that high. So it didn't make sense to regulate based on stories. um it made sense to be consistent regardless of the stories because the building is the same height regardless. Um so that's why that one was changed. Um and then the marijuana signage was from the state. Uh so we just added verbatim what the state required for that.

Great. Thank you. Any questions on that one, Tim? Yeah. Um if you look under section 20.68-330 68-330 a chapter and the run together. Thank you. That was the one I caught. I didn't catch the missing T, but I caught that one. Perfect. So, I I think Yeah, I I I had no other questions other than to just point that out. Make sure we got that addressed.

Any other questions? Okay. None seen. Thank you. Um, and I don't think I missed it, but just in case I did, there was nothing in here about the freestanding signs as in like um like the little yard signed ones, right? We're only talking about the big building signs. That is correct. Yes. So freestanding is like your six foot plus signs. Um the other ones are under temporary signs. Six foot plus signs. Yeah. Okay. I'm just trying to figure out how we can clean up. Yes, sandwich boards. Yeah.

So, there are regulations around um only allowing those for I believe it's about two weeks at a time. Um however, when we can go back and look at that a little bit deeper and put it on if we have some tidying up we can do, uh we can put on the docket for next year. That'd be awesome. And I'm just really frustrated too is seen a lot of them that just kind of get left behind between political and then just the car washing or air airplane cleaning or mattress sales and that's a big one. garage sales and um I so I'm just taking advantage that we're talking about science. Absolutely. How do we get clean up that cleaned up? Some of that's got code enforcement that we can we can work on those.

It's an ongoing battle. I mean they they they do pick them up but they they seem to multiply. Great. Michelle, did you have a question? Some of them have been out so long they're faded right in I'm just saying so they they don't get picked up probably often enough. And then um this probably isn't your area but like on the poles um telephone poles or electrical poles whatever they are um people staple signs to that. Is that um something that the city or trees exactly um is that something that city or is that not? I don't know off the top of my head uh whether we regulate that or not. I'd have to look back at the code, but I can certainly get you guys an answer to that.

Yeah, I agree with Ivonne. I feel like it's um there's just so many of them sometimes. I'm not even talking about political signs. It's just the advertisement and roofing and like you name it, there's a yellow or blue sign out there. So, thank you. I appreciate it.

Okay, great. Nothing else. Okay. Thank you, Amaresa. Okay. We'll move on to our next item. Purchase of the coaster or co-star property on the north side of Stellaish River for future potable well site. Jim. Thank you very much, Mayor Vany and council members. Uh this item before you is for the purchase of a property for a future well site. Uh currently 80% of the city's water comes from the Hower well and then we have another well over on the airport that's failing and it's going to be uh abandoned pretty soon. We have been looking for an alternate well site for many years. We started in 2012 and we have narrowed down to a place where it would be a good investment for us to put a uh another potable water well and that is on the north side of the Stella River at a property that was put up for sale by an owner who owned five parcels. He didn't want to sell just one parcel. He wanted to sell all five of the parcels. Uh we negotiated with him for a couple years. We've gone out there. We performed the phase one environmental assessment. We had the buildings tested for lead based paint and asbestous and um we sampled the water quality in the wells. So we have a very good understanding of this property. We put in a test well on the property. Uh it's high it produces high water. The depth of the the lens that we're looking at going to is 98 feet below grade surface. We came to an agreed price of $1.2 2 million. Of that $1.2 million, the owner

has agreed to donate $200,000 for the city to the city and we would sell the pro we would buy the property from the owner for $1 million in cash. Thank you, Jim. Any questions, Tim? Yeah, looking at this. So, the buildings that are included are just the industrial type buildings, right? not the this has been a farm

for many many years. Um and it's still being farmed today. We went over and we when we were doing our phase one assessment, we met with um oh Richard was one of the clients, Richard Klein who lived on there many years ago. He actually grew up on the on the farm and he told us what was in each one of the uh sheds. There are some of them that we're going to be tearing down because um they're falling apart. Yeah. But again, that goes back to my question. So, there is a six parcel that's just a private residence that is actually going to be sold separately. Correct. The the six parcel is that one that's uh up against SR9.

Yes. that that person lives in that parcel and there is a shared well that's on actually the property that we're buying and that's part of there's a covenant that goes uh with the purchase that she gets to get that have water from that well. Okay. But she's going to continue living there. No, that's kind of where I was going with that. Thank you. Good. Any Nathan?

Um and I was doing some research with FEMA and stuff. It's in a very interesting area where it could flood and I know that well fields that are allowed to be in flood planes. I was reading that. But what we also have in the same process at the same time uh flood mitigation standards that we are looking at at the same time instead of just building putting together and then not realizing oh our weather as we have known this winter and spring could be a little bit catastrophic. So um is that also on the plans with this uh budget?

Um not with this budget. This is a multi-phase project. This is just phase one, property procurement. There's five phases. We have to go through permitting, installation of a well, design of the well field, and then construction. And to answer your question, yes. Okay.

Um when when flooded, when we had the flood last year in December, um we went over and we took pictures. our wells that we had right right now over on the south bank of the Hower River. They were underwater um underwater to the point where they the water wasn't in the wells, but there were six cuz they're about 8 in high above ground, but it was the water was all around it just ready to go into the doors. Um this too is in a somewhat flood zone. We went over there, we took pictures of where we want to put the whales, and during that flood uh period that this area was dry. However, we are going to raise the ground. Okay.

Uh this is in Snomish County, so we're going to have to do all of our permitting through the county. Okay. And if we do raise the ground in the flood zone, we do have to do compensatory storage. Yes. We'll have 30 acres. We'll have plenty of room to do compensatory storage. Yeah. Cuz I know the one just to the north of that I know who used to live in that property and that's what they did is raise their whole living residency and they had to do all that, too. So, thank Yeah, we would be doing that for the warehouses. Perfect. Any other questions? Okay. Okay. None seen. Thank you, Jim. We'll move on to the next one. The Division Broadway Restoration Project change order number two. Again, Jim,

thank you very much, Mayor Vany and council members. This item come be coming coming before you is the last change order for the division and Broadway overlay project. And it's a very minor change order, $2,285.95, but uh contractually we have to have this entered into the contract. Um there was a reduction $33,000 of landscaping that we removed and by also uh changing out some of the plants that were proposed for the corridor. Uh we had there was a lot of street signage that was missing from the project. So we added street signage. And then for the additional street signage, we needed some traffic control so they could install it. Uh after the deduction plus to do two additions, the net increase is $2,2885.95. Good. Thank you. Any questions? Okay. On the scene. Thank you, Jim. Okay. We'll move on to item number six, amendment number five to the RH2 contract for the 67th Avenue sewer upsizing project.

Um, I believe this one the uh the amendment inadvertently got left off the council agenda bill and I believe Chris handed out a copy of that to you this evening. RH2 is a consultant that the that the city contracted with in addition to five other ones uh about four years ago to perform various water and sewer improvement projects as on call consultants. RH2 designed a sewer improvement that is very much needed for our 67th Avenue trunk infrastructure up to 204th Avenue and across it the sewer size is 24 in. on the other side past that it goes down to 12 inches. So, we've been having a lot of growth coming in and that existing sewer is ready to be replaced with another 24 with a 24in sewer. The overall length of the project is approximately 5,900 ft, which is an exorbitant amount of construction on such a major arterial arterial road. So, we're breaking this up into two phases. Phase one will install approximately 2,900 linear feet of sewer that will go from 204th up to the BNSF railroad crossing on 67th Avenue. Uh the next phase, phase two, will underground horizontally directionally drill under ground underneath the railroad crossing and then continue with approximately 2,000 linear feet of 24 in sewer main installation via open trench cut. and that will be completed in 2027.

Good. Thank you. Any questions, Tim? Yeah. Now, this is more on phase two, but with BNSF having to go under, do we have to get per permits or permissions from BNSF to do that? Our sewer main already goes under the railroad. We do have to get permission, yes, but we already have an easement. The hardest part is getting an ement from BNSF. project. Thanks. Okay. Any other question, Heather? So, um there's going to be construction on this road. Um do you know about how long it's projected to take place and if it's going to impact traffic in that area?

There will be no No, it's going to impact traffic. So, um we estimate that the project from start to finish will be two and a half months. Okay. And uh the good thing about that is a long a large part of this road where the construction is going to happen is a three-lane road. You have a center turn lane and two travel lanes, a northbound and a southbound. So we will be able to control a lot of the traffic by putting it into the center turn lane. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? Okay, none seen. Okay, we'll move on to item number seven, procurement of the rightaway and temporary construction easement from Bellan Investments for the 180th Street roundabout project. Again, Jim,

thank you very much, Mayor Vany and council members. Um, as the city moves forward with completing the design for the 180th and Smoky Point Boulevard rounder bout project, um, with the design complete, we have also have to get all the necessary rideway. We have all the rightway over on the east side and we are now looking at we're working at getting the rideway on the west side. This procurement of right away from uh Bell & Investments is at the northwest corner of the roundabout. Um, we've been working with uh a contract negotiator um per our rightway procurement policies. Our city adopted rightaway procurement policies. Um, we've negotiated back and forth. um this price is about 13% higher than the market price and with the other um included impacts to the to the site to the property, but it's fair and um I'm recommending that the the council accept it for $220,000. Any questions? Okay, none seen. Okay, we'll move on to item eight, procurement of filter trains for water treatment plant expansion project. Again, Jim,

thank you very much, Mayor Vanny and council members. Um, the water treatment plant is coming to that point. Uh, we submitted the uh construction drawings over to CED to get our permits from them. We submitted it over to the Department of Health for their permitting for their permitting. And we're now ready to procure our filter trains. Uh our current treatment plant um has what's called Keystone filter trains. Keystone was a Washington-based uh company and they made water filter trains, fluidized upflow clarifiers followed by sand filtration with a patent on it. And uh that company got sold. The patent was purchased by a company called AWC Water Solutions in Canada and we are buying the same filter trains uh or the same process a filter train from AWC. Uh we talked about this with the department of health and they have approved that and they've given us a letter and authorization to buy these trains. Um these trains are going to be larger. So, we currently have three 550 uh filter trains in our current building. In this expanded building, we're going to have three 800gallon per minute filter trains. This is a a phased procurement. The first phase of the contract was paying for the design. The design has already been completed. That was $20,000. And now, as we enter in for the manufacturing and delivery of the filter trains, it's going to be phased over four different phases. The first phase is to issue a purchase order and that will be in the amount 10% of the contract price and then as we keep going forward with the contract or as time goes on and we get closer and closer and they start manufacturing there'll be

subsequent payments of uh 20% 30% you know and then 50%. And those are all spelled out in the procurement agreement. Any other questions? Okay, none seen. Thank you, Jim. Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, we'll move on to item nine, the police quarterly report. Jonathan, good evening, mayor, council. This is the first quarter report for 2026 on the police department. Um, as you're aware, I returned to duty on January. Um, actually I was back uh late November uh in a limited capacity. And we'd like to thank Commander Gilbert for filling in um while I was gone the last quarter of 2025. We did receive a grant that you heard about this last uh council meeting from the Still Gwamish tribe for $125,000 that will be providing protective barriers for special events. Um these are the same type of barriers you see in Seattle when you're at events down there around Seattle. Um like the big Seahawks parade and you see them around Mariners games and other types of things. These are military grade barriers that are intended to stop intentional acts of violence or accidental vehicle intrusions. Um they're they're quite effective when used and um we've already had requests from other cities to borrow these things and we haven't even received them yet. So that's how popular they are. Um so we are looking forward to getting these. Um, we did hold our annual banquetss uh an awards ceremony in January. I know some of you were there and we do appreciate your attendance. This is a big deal for the department. It's our opportunity to celebrate uh the department. Uh we do community awards. It's time for our

families to see some of the great work that the officers do. And some highlights from that event are um the employee of the year as selected by their peers was Officer Schuman. Um, our number one traffic officer was officer McKay Braniff and our number one DUI enforcement officer was officer Abigail Shrank. Uh, we did conduct a sergeant assessment center um here in March. Uh, this is a very important thing that uh we try to do every couple years. Um this prepares our agency um for the potential of replacing future leadership within the department. It also gives us an opportunity to develop uh future leaders and kind of assess where the department is um with um development within that department and gives uh aid different officers an opportunity to kind of test where they're at in their own personal development. Um this is arguably one of the um most critical um roles within the department. Uh maybe only behind that of the field training officer and the field training officers are those officers that develop um every officer within the department. So you can see how critical um both of those positions are. So we'd like to thank everybody who contributed to this process. It is a very important process um from from the people who develop the testing to the assessors, the civil service board volunteers and the role players and the candidates themselves. Um so um we did not have a quorum at the civil service to um finalize the list, but the um participants were given their scores. So although they're not official, they do know where they rank and they've been provided that feedback. So, um it is good for them to have that information.

Um as the council is aware, we are going through some major staffing challenges right now. Uh we have um declared some uh staffing declaration within the department. Um we lost a number of employees within a short period of time. What's unusual about such a heavy loss of employees during this short period of time is uh in the past when we've had such a a loss of employees, it's been for tremendous growth in the area with other departments. Um a lot of times um you'll see other departments offer huge um incentives. um as other departments incorporate or other cities incorporate, you might see a huge influx of money where they're trying to recruit people with huge signing bonuses or a city will incorporate and they'll have a big influx of money um and or they'll get a big contract or they'll have something that they can have to recruit officers. In the past, it's been take-home cars or $50,000 bonuses or whatever it is is something that's very lucrative or very attractive. And what we're seeing right now, we're just not seeing that. Um, right now, um, our biggest loss has been young people leaving the industry altogether. I've mentioned this before. A couple years ago, we read an article that said that the average person coming into the industry, we're going to lose within 5 to 8 years. I didn't believe it at the time, but uh we are that's exactly what we are seeing now. Uh for the first time in recent interviews, uh one of our standard questions is where do you see yourself in the next five years? And now we're seeing people actually answer that question. Ah, we'll see how this works out and uh maybe we'll do something else. Um, and before it was, well, I'm going to be a sergeant or I'm going to be a detective or I'm going to be a canine handler. Um, we always thought we were, you know, trying to recruit that 20-y year employee. And

now we're talking people leaving in 5 years. So, that was just unheard of. So, of the people we've lost recently, we're only losing one to an agency um for money reasons, and that is uh one of our Seattle recruits, and um it it's hard to blame them when they're getting later in their career. Um our retirement system is based on the five highest years of pay, and they're offering those we we did great when we recruited all those people from Seattle. um they came here knowing that they were going to take a pay cut and they came here because they wanted to be here. So it wasn't that we recruited them because we were offering them more money. We recruited them because we were offering them a better job and a better way of life and we were offering them a better community. Um this person is going to stay living in this community, but they're getting closer to the end of their career and they're going back now for the money because they're offering them a $60,000 signing bonus. They're going to pay them to drive to Seattle every day and they're going to pay them to drive back. They're going to let them choose what shift they want to work, what unit they want to work. They're going to pay them any specialty they want to work and those additional pays. They're going to pay them to work out on duty. So, when you start adding all of those incentives, um that's it's getting very hard to compete with that. So, um but you still couldn't pay me enough to drive to Seattle. So, um, uh, so hopefully we don't get too many of those, but again, the majority of our losses have been to people just leaving the career alto together. So, uh, we're real heavily focused right now on wellness init wellness initiatives um, and trying to keep the people that we have healthy and happy and um, and really focused on our community and the people coming in. We're doing a ton of interviewing right now. We just made an offer today from uh from another agency. Uh we're making another offer within the next two days of another agency. We're

still getting people wanting to come to Arlington from other agencies. Um so we're still an attractive agency to work for and so I'm happy to say that and happy to report that um we have trained three additional uh in-house background investigators. Um, we're doing so many interviews that the contract people that or the people that we contract to do our background investigations, they're overwhelmed. That's how many backgrounds we're doing that we we're actually using our own, um, investigators to do backgrounds, um, to stay ahead of the pace of interviews and backgrounds we're doing. So, um, and we're using our own officers to go out to recruitment fairs to colleges and, um, our social media has picked up to an all-time high. Uh, we're using officer, uh, Kid Zimmerman. Um, she's one of the young, energetic people that is in touch with the social media stuff. I'm quickly becoming old and irrelevant and uh and she's young and hip and in touch with those type of things and she's been doing a great job. She's working with our city PIO and they've done a great job partnering on that type of stuff. So, our um online engagement has been up quite a bit and we're seeing that in the number of um hits and interviews that we're doing. um in order to do um address some of the staffing shortages we've had, we've had a to bring detectives down back to the patrol. Um this has been a temporary reassignment of those duties. Um what that has allowed us to do instead of posting um a ton of overtime on the patrol shifts, now what we're doing is we're posting overtime in the detective shifts. And that's really cut back on

our our overtime. So, um that's saving us on the budget on the overtime. So, now our detectives can now um work that overtime as a detective rather than um all of our detectives just working overtime in patrol shifts. And so that saves us the budget, saves us on some hours, and we're getting those um shifts filled without burning out our patrol guys as bad as as we were. And um that's helped us out quite a bit. um helps with morale a little bit as well. Um we do have one gentleman that's um getting close to graduating um in the academy right now and this last week we had a new officer start with us. Uh her name is Abby McVey. She joins us from the Department of Defense Police where she's worked for several years. Um she's been assigned to uh Naval Station uh radio station Jim Creek up here in Arlington. Um she is a trained officer through the federal law enforcement program. Um unfortunately that program is no longer recognized by our state. It is unfortunate that our state used to recognize that program but however due to politics. Um ICE is also trained by the federal law enforcement training academy and ICE is not popular right now. So the state will no longer recognize that program. So um she will have to go to the academy uh through the state where they did not used to have to do that. um through some more politics because we have an academy here in Arlington. She'll have to go through the Arlington Academy. However, we are um in negotiations with the academy to see if we can get her into an earlier academy um because we have some other recruits we're looking at getting in. So, I have a meeting with uh the

head of the regionalmies tomorrow to see if we might get her into an earlier slot knowing that we have some other recruits in the pipeline that we'll still send to the Arling Arlington Academy uh here in a few months when the next academy kicks off. Um, one thing I didn't mention during that annual awards ceremony was we had an officer that received a um, life-saving heroic medal through Mary'sville Police Department and that was uh, in response to um, a call that happened in Mary'sville where they made entry under live gunfire um, at a Mary'sville call and that was um, our officer Chandler Dean. And so, um, we recognized him as well, but, um, I thought I would call it out separately because he was recognized separately in Mary'sville there. Um, officer Jen or I'm sorry, um, police service manager Jen Bo completed her first level and mid management level career certification. Um that's quite a honor being as that's not a requirement for her to do but that just shows her level of dedication and her commitment to the department. Along those same lines, Sergeant Justin Olsen uh completed his first level career certification um which is a a big um accomplishment. Um in addition to um that certification, he had recently completed his 40hour of credible leadership elective training, which is a big level of um training for him to complete. So he's a fairly new sergeant. So that was a huge level of commitment for him to complete. And then um we've mentioned it before, but you can't mention enough that Commander Barrett was selected to attend the FBI National Academy, which is a very prestigious honor. Only the top 1% of

all law enforcement administration gets selected for this honor. It's not selected by the city. It's not selected by the department. This honor comes and the selection comes from outside of our agency. that means that he was recognized for his activity not only within the city within our department but for his leadership and dedication outside the city. Um and I think that largely comes from his role uh leading the smart team um leading the department through accreditation and then um his significant achievement through IEP pro blue team and um and everything he do does for the community. Uh he was recently involved in um through his activity on the SMART team on uh trying to get um some of the local tribes involved in um the SMART process and getting them recognized by the US District Attorney and the investigations there. They're usually overseen by the FBI, but the FBI has their hands tied in a lot of things, and they would like to see the Smart Team take on a lot of those investigations, which is a real tip of the hat to the Smart Team itself and to Commander Barrett's leadership. So, um, that got a lot of recognition by the FBI, um, which is a credit to our agency and, um, and to his leadership there. So, um, it's quite an honor to be recognized in that way. So, um those are kind of the highlights from the first quarter. Um we're working on our annual report which you will see um for our retreat that's coming up and there'll be a lot more information in there. So, happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Chief. Any questions, Tim? Yeah, Chief. Um how long does it take with like a lateral uh to get on the force? I mean obviously the one we have to send back to the academy which is unfortunate but if we were to do a lateral about how long before they're capable of being on on

usually it's just the background investigation and that just depends on what you run into in their background and then their training is usually quite condensed. It could be as as um little as 20 shifts um on their background or on their on their training period. So instead of uh three to six months in their training, it could be 20 shifts. So it could be, you know, about a month, a month and a half once you get them through the background. The background could be anything that holds up the background. It could be it could be done as as quick as a week and a half to two weeks to if they have an extensive military background. That's where our biggest holdup sometimes can be is military records just depending on where they're at and what they've done. So, um, full speed ahead. Everything goes swimmingly well. We could have them on the road within two months, um, on their own. I mean, so pretty pretty quick. So, we're we're very lucky to have those lateral applicants.

No, appreciate understanding that. Thank you. Any other questions? Michelle, um I sent you an email and asked you this question, but um be besides COVID during that time, um how long has it been, not including CO I guess I should say since we've experienced such a dramatic change in staffing? Has it been a long time or Oh, we go through these waves. CO was the last the the last big one. Um, but I mean to be Well, I don't want to say the number out loud because I don't want to I don't how whatever we're down, right? So, yeah, down about six people. Six.

Well, yeah, six. We might be down seven, but we're we're replacing them right now. So, it's a it's a moving target, right? Yeah. And they come in cycles. Um Paul might be able to help me. It might have been about five years before that um before COVID. Yeah, pro probably. you know, that's you go through these hiring cycles. Um, and so you might have a mass retirement that'll lead into something similar. Yeah. I mean, it was so drastic, right? So, I was just curious, um, how many years back? Yeah. Had it been. So, yeah. Good. I do apologize. I I think it's

any other questions. Thank you, Chief. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to our item 10, the North County Regional Fire Authority quarterly report.

Good good evening everyone. Uh quarterly report from North County Regional Fire. Little bit different format than you've historically seen. We're just trying to keep it fresh a little bit and show you some diff different information. Uh across the top, this this first page represents the entire RFA. of the entire 120 square miles that we cover. So, um the top line there off to the right, 2420 is where we finished at the end of March as far as call volume, which is right on track to end at about 10,000 10,000 calls for the year. And that's right where we've been the last few years. Uh below that, it just breaks out the different types of calls that accumulate to to that to get to that number. Um, it's just it's interesting to me as we as I look at the data month in month out just how kind of consistent the numbers are as far as what our call volume is per month and the types of calls we go on. And the reality is is that population drives call volume. And so as the community continues to grow, our call volume will creep up. But the you look at the the number of calls we run per month, like down in the lower right on that first page, just our EMS calls are all within like 50 calls per month. And it's it's kind of a little funny when you think about it, but it's just it's population based. Population drives call volume. Uh we consistently run um about 75 to 80% EMS related calls. It's the the breadandbut stuff that we do every day. And these are the same addresses day in day out. This is um just um for example, some of them here in the city. 20909 Olympic Place, which is Olympic Place. Um 8,400 207th is Cascade Valley Senior Living. Uh 3823 172nd is the Cascades Scader Clinic and it's the senior it's the senior living facilities and care facilities uh and the ERs the clinics that really drive drive call volume. A lot of people will go to the walk-in clinics and uh be seen and then they the doctor and nurse wants them seen in an ER. So then we'll transport from like

the Cascade Cascade Scadget Clinic to to Providence or or uh Scadget or Cascade. So, um, the the medical facilities back 10 years ago, Paul, eight or 10 years ago, the city went through kind of a a boom where we had we had a lot of senior living facilities that were being built and and we we saw this coming. We knew this would drive call volume and it certainly did. Yeah. Um, kind of breaks out the second page on the bottom half breaks out the call volume per shift. Nothing too irregular there. I I will I will share with you that in the middle of the 94 that you see, this is the transports and this is specifically looking at the medic units, the three medic units, uh medic 46 here in downtown Arlington, uh medic 48 out on the west side of the airport, and medic 99 in downtown Stanwood, they run pretty similar call volume. The the 94 at um I without even looking into it, I can tell you what this is. We transport ALS, advanced life support, which is paramedics, and BLS, which uh basic life support is EMTs. It's very common that a paramedic will what we call downgrade a call. So, they may respond to a call. They interact with Nathan who's called 911 and decide determine that this call can be transported at an EMT level, not a paramedic level. And so on that specific shift, I can tell you that it's and this gets flagged from our county medical from our medical control is that sometimes we have paramedics who downgrade too many calls. So as I look at this report, I go, I know what's happening right there. Right? So we have some QA QI stuff that takes care of those problems. On the back page, this is a heat map that kind of shows where the calls take place in the city. And this is again population based. When you look at the entire RFA, we see the the highest call volumes are in downtown Arlington, um, Smoky Point, and in downtown Stanwood. It's just where the population bases are. And then on the in the key, it breaks out which the type of calls they are. And in the lower right,

we see uh mutual aid, both mutual aid given and received, how much we help our neighbors, and how much our neighbors help us. I never pay too much attention to the number of responses in mutual aid. It's more tracked um what the hours are. Uh, an example of that would be that if we if we respond to Mary'sville and we do an EMS transport for them and we so then we transport to the hospital, it's a longer out of service time versus if they respond to us and just assist with a call, there's no transport and they go back in service, you're talking like a quarter of the time. So transports will really drive the mutual aid numbers up. So we do we do watch that. Uh, about a year ago, Mary'sville added an additional basic life support unit because some of the numbers in the Smoky Point area were were consistently off. we were providing an im unbalanced amount of mutual aid. So, we communicate with our neighbors and watch that closely. Just some other things that are occurring that's not in the report um kind of in the first quarter of the year. Mayor Vany attended our banquet in early February up at Angel the Winds. Uh we had a board retreat in February using the airport office. Um thank you for that. We got uh two retirements that are coming up. uh two battalion chiefs, Battalion Chief Jason Nylood and Battalion Chief Phil Neper are both retiring on um Thursday, May 14th. So this creates a domino effect. Um so two captains will promote to battalion chief and that is uh Captain Shawn Rice and Captain Kirk Normand. Uh and then that creates two firefighter vacancies. And so that is two entry level positions that are in the in the Stomish County Academy. Now, they will graduate on actually that same day on May 14th. So, we timed this out and did our hiring in late 25 and got them into the February academy. So, two will leave, two will get promoted, and two will graduate the academy kind of all literally within the same week. Uh, so we look forward to that. And then we've had the assistant chief of operations position vacant for

right about a year now. This was my previous position. I was intentionally left vacant. Um, I'll be honest and tell you that I hoped it we would fill it in the fall, but I we got busy on it too late and when we started mapping out the hiring process, it was going to push right up against the holidays. So, we decided to wait. Uh, so we began that process right after the first of the year, gone through the process and uh made an offer. So, I'm happy to say that on Monday, May 4th, uh, gentleman Rick Jesus that has spent most of his career in the Mary'sville Fire District will be joining us as the assistant chief of operations. known Rick for a long time and look forward to him joining us and I will bring him to a future meeting and and introduce him. Uh we continue to do some buildout of things at the fire training academy, different props and different things occurring there uh with new units on service. We have on order on average about 1.5 new EMS vehicles per year the cycle that we go through them and we have two new fire engines on order that they've been on order for about a year and they'll still be on order for a few years. It's about a three-year cycle to get order and get those get those built. Uh all of our line positions are filled. Um and we are currently recruiting for a facilities technician is the only vacancy that we have since Chief Jesus accepted the offer. So we'll fill that here in the coming weeks. Um crews are preparing for the upcoming wildland season. Uh and then we'll be busy here soon with all of the summer events and street fairs and Fourth of July and all all of those different things. Wednesday, I'm hosting Michelle and Tim and Nathan on a tour of station 46 and 48 and lunch. So, I look forward to that. Any of you are always welcome to join us for things like that. And much like Jonathan, I'll have our annual report here completed in the in the next few weeks. I'm just I was actually sitting over there doing another edit. So, we'll get you all a copy of that.

Great. I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions? None seen. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Rob. Did you survive tax season? Couple more. All those extensions. Okay. Paul, do you have anything to report? Uh, nothing else this evening.

Okay. And yeah, I have nothing for tonight either. Any comments or reports from council members? Okay. None seen. Do we have anybody from the public that would like to speak? Okay, none seen there. Okay, I guess we going to review the consent agenda. I do have I do have a couple things I'll be adding for next week. So, um just while you're walk while you're going through them, just give you a heads up. Right.

Not seven and eight. I'm thinking one, two, three, and five. So these purchase um if they need um like edits for like typos, does that matter if we approve it now? like for one they need they'll still get approved if even if they go on the consent agenda the those minor um typos and stuff will get fixed but okay so not four seven and eight I was thinking wait what did you say

not Is this for are we saying no to four because it's a purchase?

Well, I always thought it was like money, right? If it's dollar amount, that's how I thought it's entirely up to council. There's no uh there there's no dollar amount or anything that Well, I don't know if we've ever really discussed what should be on and what shouldn't be. So, I don't know if we have a criteria or not. No, we don't. It's really just up to the council their comfort level on on an item. Yeah. Even our standard process doesn't say what goes on the consent agenda other than what we approve to go on the consent agenda. So

I mean there's no dollar amount that goes with it. But again, if you don't feel comfortable, if you think there needs to be more discussion around it or or you yourself need to feel that there's more research, if one person doesn't think it needs to be on the consent agenda, then we don't put it on the consent agenda. So at least that's based on our policy. I think it's good to have this discussion further discussion. Monday.

Um, I'm going with four and seven. No, four and seven. Wait. And are you doing four? No to four just because there's a dollar amount part of this discussion. Just No, no, I think just four and seven. I might have a couple more questions. Okay. Cool. So, which one's you? So, one, two, three, five, six, and eight on the consent agenda. Yes.

Yes. with four and seven left off the consent because there might be further questions.

Thank you, Rob. Okay, with that I think we're ready to adjourn. A motion to adjurnn. Second question. All those in favor? I. Any oppose? Meeting adjourned.