City Council - workshop

Thank you. Are we good? Alrighty, I'd like to call to order the study session of July 27th, 2026 at 6 p.m. All members are present. Good, all right. So with that being said, I'd like to start with item one, the State of the Library update. And so I'll call on City Administrator Jason Wilson and Pierce County Library District Executive Gretchen Casarotti.

you mayor and council uh as you mentioned uh executive director casarati is here to give us an update on the sumner library and everything going on with that and i know we're all excited to hear when we're going to start construction and i know she is too so i will turn it over to her for

Thank you, Jason. Good evening, Mayor, Council. There are so many new faces that I have not gotten to know and connect with yet. So as opposed to the, for lack of a better term, the roadshow of the State of the Library, we're choosing to really just focus on a presentation for you all on the new library. I go to visit the various city councils across our service area each year, and I share a little bit about the library and our statistics and how your community use the library. But I think in the interest of everyone's time, this is probably what you all want to hear the most about, not about digital circulation statistics. So with that, some of this may be familiar to some of you who I have presented to before. and some may be new to new information. So I'd like to start, go ahead to the, oh, I have the clicker, I forgot already. Taking a step back, the new library, we really grounded ourselves in some principles and goals with our architects that we worked with, Johnson Architects. They are very well recognized, not just award-winning, which they are, but they specialize in libraries and public works projects in the education sphere and have done some really impressive library projects. They were selected through our request for proposals for architects. And we've grounded ourselves in these principles at every stage of our design since 2023. We want this to be the community's library. We want this to be sustainable, which includes many things today. We did receive a grant, so we are required to have a LEED Silver certification with this project. Resiliency, we want the building to really not just function, but be optimal and flexible. This building needs to last for this community in the environment. It's beautiful here and not so kind to the built environment in our ecosystem here in the Northwest. The process, we really wanted to enjoy the process as the people doing the project, but also really connect with the steps. We've had a lot of staff involved that are learning about doing public works projects and it has been really great to work with the architects through this joint venture. And honorable. We're not concerned about awards, but we want this to be a library that the Sumner community, the East Pierce County area who will likely also use this library can be really proud of. Please moving on if you haven't seen yet It's a little bit of a Tetris shape to the parcel that the library is going to be built on I just wanted to kind of walk back to 2023 a little bit again process because we've been working closely with the city for a number of years now the way that this library is being primarily funded for the construction is through a tool and a in the RCW called the Library Capital Facility Area. It is a way to sort of subset the boundaries of a district as wide as ours, almost 2,000 square miles, to just this area. And so we worked on that in partnership with you all in the city and have created this Library Capital Facility Area as this specific entity, bless you, just for the construction of this library. So there's been a lot of administrative, bureaucratic work that has been happening in the last two years to set that up, to go through all the processes around tax-free bonds and the financing. And currently we have Dave Morrell, Jannie Hitchen, and Paul Herrera is the chair of that LCFA. So we have a meeting coming up in the fall. I forget the date. I'm sorry. I don't know off the top of my head, but that will be scheduled. We're happy to share that with you all if you're interested. So they will oversee the construction funds. Let's see, we did a lot of community engagement early on. One of the reasons this project was fast tracked to a large extent was because of the desire this community has had for a new library for a very long time and our expiration of the agreement we have with the city on the current property. So we have known that something would need to be done as that building would take a lot of money to fix. So we have incorporated all of those elements to get us to where we are now. I just mentioned actually some of this, but we finished all of those. So those are completed steps around the governance for the LCFA. And so the bonds have been sold and we are Tomorrow would be great. Local history, that's something we've been also working with the city really closely. Well, I'm gonna take that back. I was gonna say really closely in the agreement to ensure that there is a local history presence reflected and celebrated in this project. I don't have much more to report from the last time we met because we kind of put a pause on everything while we were getting through permitting and bidding and all of these other steps. So where it stands right now is we have some areas where we've held space for some specific qualities and stories and artifacts for celebrating Sumner's history. The most visible will be part of the building project, which is actually installing the path of the river into the floor. You can see from the image, we've seen other models where you can etch words, text, language. We see that as a great opportunity to incorporate some of the stories of the history of Sumner right into sort of the foundation of the project. We also have some options for where we might have some objects or artifacts that we could store or to exhibit. So this may still change before it's all said and done and we're opening our doors because we will be resuming those conversations now that we're moving into the next phase for the final interior design elements. Once bidding and the site work can start with the I forget what it was, 18,000 cubic yards of soil or something like that. A lot of elephants. I don't remember the preload. And so we'll be resuming some of that this fall as we get into wayfinding and signage and all those kind of interior finish elements. So stay tuned. By the next time I come back here, we will have a lot more detail to share with you. as we pick that back up. Community engagement, I mentioned we've done a lot over the years, specifically for this project. The architects did a lot of work early on. So it's been a pretty quiet phase for us with community engagement on the building right now. Again, lots of kind of bureaucratic stuff happening, so there hasn't been too much to share. But we did a lot of focus groups. We came to a number of events. We had boards and tables and things for people to see in the library. We had the architects work with some specific groups and got feedback. We had open houses, a lot of different activities to gather early feedback. And then as we move through the process, actually, I should say one more thing there. As we move through the process, we continue to have some benchmark places with our capital committee steering capital, steering committee, capital plan, capital campaign steering committee. There it is. I couldn't find it in my brain. The capital campaign steering committee, who are a lot of folks from here, Barb Petetto and Bill Pugh and Georgia Lomax, our former director, lots of folks have been involved in that and have kind of been also sharing a reflection of the voice for the community through this. The community partner space, speaking of Rotary, Rotary has offered a gift to the library of funding and creating a dedicated space for some social service supports to be provided to the community. It's been a really interesting learning experience for us as staff to think through how would we design that space? How would we operate that space? We looked at what the community needs are based on research and information. We held focus groups with service providers to come up with community health department and lots of different folks. And we knew that we needed to be able to have it function while the library was open. We need to be able to manage the space in a way that works with our operating, not just our hours, but the way the library operates. And so we ended up deciding to do a request for proposals ultimately for the community partner space. So we issued a request for proposals in December of 25. And then the staff leading that, we didn't have a ton of responses. I think places like this are still pretty unique and not a lot of the nonprofit organizations And social service agencies, I think, could also envision this to some extent. So it was a pretty small group, but we learned through that process also, libraries are learning organizations, what people's needs and interests are in the spaces, in a physical space, and how would that work. for storing things, for example. So ultimately, facility use agreements are being signed with Tacoma Pro Bono, which we already work with in our libraries, and the Oasis Youth Center in Tacoma is expanding their programming in communities to provide a lot of other types of social services as well. The thing that we also learned from our, even hearkening back to the beginning with the rotary, was around needs for adults that are unmet by the existing resources like the Family Resource Center, right? So we really don't want to duplicate anything that already exists, and we wanted to make sure we were leveraging the partnerships that already exist in the community. And one of the things, we're not really prepared to make a big splash about it, but we also have invested this year in creating a social worker position, which is currently being developed right now. And commonly in libraries, we are seeing more and more social workers that are employed by the library itself. In fact, there was an article not that long ago in Tacoma about their social worker. So we do also see that there's a lot of potential for us as we bring that body of work into the organization to try some new piloting of what that also can look like out in this new library. And we have a little time because we haven't started the construction yet. So speaking of that, I don't have a timeline as much as I wish I did, but we did just issue the intent to award the bid and that's posted on our website, I think just this last Friday maybe. So that's actively happening. And as soon as we have a construction timeline, we can map everything else out we will be launching some external communications to the community, provide much more public updates and engagement, as well as resuming sort of that final phase of our capital campaign for folks that might want to give to the project. pulls over the finish line. We do expect probably 20 months of construction just based on what we're seeing in the markets. But the good news is the bids came in on the low end. So we're really, really pleased. We were very, very nervous about construction costs and the that could cause some real challenges for us. So really exciting that it came in at the low end of our range. Super happy about that. And so we'll map the rest of that timeline out once we have it and certainly be sharing that within the community. We do anticipate we would probably have a little space of time where we would have to close down the operations in the current building in order for the staff to move over, get settled, get trained, all the things that are normal in opening a new building. But we're pretty far away from that date. So I wanted to share and walk you through some of the images, which I imagine were in your packets. And then we'll wrap up and I can answer your questions. So this is probably the most familiar view that people have seen so far. This is a view from Main Street. The silver metal, you know, the metal grate area is intended to provide a natural screen for still allowing light to go through, but to offset the heat. from direct sun. And of course, we love that it has like a bookshelf vibe to it. But behind it, it is not just a flat roof. We actually have the appropriate slopes. But the vision as well is to have the civic presence on Main Street and still retain visibility and warmth to come through from the inside out. And then it sort of steps down into the residential. So we know that this is a bridge kind of from the main street to the residential. And so the building had that intentionality in the design to sort of serve as that slope into the residential. Main Street. And that also did, we had some early versions of the library concepts that we got a lot of community feedback on. And so we did make those adjustments based on some of that feedback. Sloped roofs, lots of wood and landscaping that feel increasingly familiar in building construction. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, it needs to weather the Pacific Northwest climate. The finished building will, feel warm and open and welcoming, the intentionality around light and space, And I've got a couple of interiors to share with you as well. But I'm really excited to share this version, or this image, which we haven't shared yet, because this really kind of shows the idea, of course we still have the finishing touches, of having a community porch. Having this covered space that people can be at, whether it's hot and you need shade, or it's rainy in the winter, where you can sit and have a cup of coffee, or chat with your friend, you can let the kids play. We're going to have an active child play area in this space. And so we're still excited to put the fine touches on what that furniture would look like. And they probably won't let me install the swing that I had in mind, but... I can't hear to ask. So the idea of some of the homes in the central area where we have the stately porch and people can kind of gather and so excited about that. Let me see, I already talked about that, the scale of the roof and the gathering space for year round activities. All right, so let's go inside. This is an updated image of our interior. And we've got lots of, as I mentioned, large windows, warm materials, and the ability to see out into the street and the city. We tried to retain views of the mountain. of course, wherever we could. And there's a little challenge there in terms of height and angles, but certainly the natural environment has been a design theme for this entire project. We have a mix of spaces included in this project where there's open and active spaces where people can gather and chit chat. Kids can work on a group study project, but also some places that you can tuck away to be quiet or to... have a quiet meeting that you might need to sign on for a hybrid meeting. It's a little hard to see, but the red area in the back center of this image, that is another one of these little nooks that's carved out that has almost like booth seating. So there's going to be a variety of spaces within this very open, larger building structure. We have, oh shoot, now I can't remember if it was two or three study rooms. Um, it's been a while and, uh, public meeting rooms, we have a programming area for children. So there's lots of places for people to come together. We know that that is a shortage, um, in really every community in Pierce County as places to meet. Um, so we have a variety of options in this space and it doesn't show on this rendering, but, um, the area for the kind of adults seating area also is included to, uh, or intended to have a, um, It's like the vapor fireplace, so it's not natural gas. So it'll have a community living room feel around this sort of fireplace and cozy seating area. Okay, and then this is actually looking into the teen area. We had focus groups with the teens, and they were amazing. They're such great and fun and interesting kids. So they had a lot of opinions and helped us shape how to make the space work for knowing that teens in a library come and go and they're gonna come in and they wanna do something and then they're gonna go out. So there's a lot of activity where teens are. And the location of this is along Main Street. So we're hopeful that they're going to ride their bikes and walk down the street coming from the school and have that kind of stay on the north side of the building, which will be on the opposite side from the fireplace and the cozy little quieter reading area.

Ch-ch-ch-ch.

Sumner, teens, bold, comfortable, furniture, lots of variety in the furniture. One of the design priorities is also around universal design functionally, if you're familiar with the term for accessibility, but also all bodies. So chairs that some have arms and some don't. Some people like to be able to push up on a chair, and some people don't. So we really wanted to find a furniture style that was going to give people options. Some people don't like casters on the chairs if they're working on a computer, and some people do. So we really are going to be pleased to see all the different types of seating in the different areas. In this area, of course, teens will also move everything around, so nothing is affixed to the floor. In the children's area, we know that People of all ages, all abilities, all types of folks come into the children's library. And so we need comfortable places for a grandparent to sit down at the same time as a mat for a toddler that may want to be crawling around. So we've got a lot of flexibility built into this space. This view is from inside the program room into the open library, which we plan to have open if the library is not using it for a program. expanding the physical space that people will have to be able to hang. just be and read stories and be close. Not shown in this picture, but on the other side is also the first in Pierce County Library System's sensory room. And we have created a space akin to like a wellness room, if you will, but a place where we're going to provide some tools for people with any kind of neurodiverse situation or sensory affective disorder where maybe somebody just needs a quiet place and we can adjust the lighting in there or perhaps someone actually needs to do something that is more physical. And so that is something we're really looking forward to being able to offer this community that is not available in any other Pierce County Library. Let's see. View of the kind of main area from the other side. This is where the meeting room and program rooms and community partner space up along Main Street are. And we anticipate, I don't think I have any other images of the front. A lot of that local history will probably end up living in this highly visible, accessible front area. There's a wall kind of where this image is taken from. as well that we're kind of bookmarking for some of that celebration of the history. I think that covers, yeah, that covers the rest of the design notes I had. So next step I mentioned, once we get the construction timeline, we'll be doing some more communications with the citizens of the community. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Okay, do we have any questions? So Council Member Evers. Thanks, Gretchen.

Hi. I'll get you in the rotary here. I'm in charge of the speaker, so everybody's on my case to get you in there. But maybe we'll wait... A couple months, October or something, maybe. But anyway, so it looks like maybe two years or so, roughly, ballpark. A lot of us are new on the council, but I just think that a lot of our talk informally has been just about, you know, getting things going on East Main Street, and you're going to probably be the first thing to do it. So thanks for getting us going on East Main Street, but I'm looking forward to it. Great, thanks.

All right, Council Member Kenneth.

Hi, Gretchen. Thanks for your presentation. I just wanted to, I had maybe a couple questions, but first just say kudos to you and your team and the partners you've worked with, because I think it looks just really awesome, for lack of a better word. Really excited for our community to have that. The care that you've taken in a lot of the different steps, you spoke about kind of the more sensory room and having space for that, for young families, for teens, of course. And I've been to the youth forum we have at our high school here, and I know that there's a lot of kids over there that really value having that space, and to be so close to the high school is gonna be just fantastic. Really just want to give you a pat on the back and say I love a lot of what I saw there. Just a couple of questions in terms of the availability to the public. Like what's the size comparison to what we have at the current library site and then what, do you anticipate any hours changing or would that be a similar service to the public in terms of like, we love Sundays for example because we get Sundays here. Is that something you anticipate still continuing?

Great questions. Thank you. The square footage is significantly larger than the current building. I think we ended up settling on 17,500 something, something. And the current building is nine, 10, 10, just shy of 10. And then part of our efforts to maximize the exterior space is also to kind of create some pick up some extra space on the outside. And then as far as hours go, those have changed across the system and they're generally responsive to staffing or to a variety of factors. Sometimes you'll see in libraries often if you're running into financial challenges, then operations is usually impacted. So it's a little hard for me to predict, but the expectation is our current hours for the system would transfer over. We may have to tinker with them and see when we are busiest, if we have gaps, certainly be responsive. Having done some other building projects in libraries, it's a good solid eight nine months or so of just high use all the time. And it'll take a little while to kind of settle into new patterns. So we will certainly track it, but it's noted that you're appreciating the Sunday hours.

Yeah, and it is a little quieter on Sundays, but we also love the Puyallup Library in Pioneer Park there, and they don't have Sundays. So I figured that's kind of a win for us here in Sumner if we can keep that. But thank you for your time.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor Elfers. Yeah, thanks, Gretchen.

It's a good update. I just had a couple of questions. I was looking at simple ones. So first one is just the height of the building. It looks like there could be two floors. Is there one, just one, just one with really high ceilings?

Yeah, high ceilings for the light and the ventilation. And then it's sort of deceptive in the framing around some of that on the exterior, just the one floor.

Okay. And then I'm not that familiar. We mostly, our family just goes in and grabs books and leaves. But there's a lot of, I really like the space. I think you've done a good job of explaining that and it's really neat, thoughtful design. So thank you for that. Can you tell a little bit more about the community partners and the social worker? Like what are some of the things that you, I'm not aware of those programs and maybe some people aren't either. Can you share a little bit more about what they do? And you've worked with one of them before. Sure.

Yeah, so a really good actually local example with Tacoma Pro Bono, we do programming with them in partnership, so they'll come out and do legal services for people. We saw a record number of requests for assistance with domestic violence, for example. So we know that they need a private space to have that type of consultation and regular hours or services to be able to provide things like that. So it's really still early to say exactly what it's gonna look like. But the idea was we start by naming partners so that we can start to build that out. It is similarly structured to the family resource centers in the agreements where it gives the flexibility to both parties essentially to adjust whatever might be needed in terms of whether it's furniture or the way that it's being operated. So the library is providing the space and that structure. So I'm not entirely sure yet, but that's just one example we know from working with Tacoma Pro Bono that they provide those types of services out here.

Okay.

And I think a couple of things at the very beginning of the presentation I really liked was that it was really centered around people. And I thought I liked that. And it was for the community. And so I was just, again, like I said, as my main, consumption of the library is just going and getting books. As far as content goes, is there going to be, what's the community involvement in that format?

In the content? What do you mean by content?

As far as the community's involvement in what kinds of books and things are in the library. Is the community going to be involved in that? Is that going to change over time? And how does the community get involved as far as making it a community library?

Oh, well, the library has a material selection policy that oversees the system. So in Pierce County libraries during the pandemic, not during the pandemic, in recent years, We've started to move toward a model that's called a floating collection. And so what that means is items are not necessarily just limited to one building. They go where people need them. And then they'll stay there until someone else needs it. And it helps us save shelf space and save money by allowing the community to float to wherever across the system it might need to be. So collections are never really static in a library because somebody's got that thing checked out and we might get it from over there. So by approaching that as a system, we can really leverage the collection as a whole and then respond without having to do much intervention, frankly, with what the community is looking for, asking for. checking out from that location. So that's one thing that the system is doing in terms of managing the collections in accordance with the policy. As far as community involvement, like please tell us. We have a request to purchase form on our website. So we have great librarians that are always looking for, you know, we use a lot of tools, the selectors, the librarians that select like What's a bestseller? What's being made into a movie? Do we have enough copies of remarkably bright creatures? Maybe. I don't know. So they are constantly looking. That is literally their full-time jobs is to look at the collection, look at the use, look at what's happening in the community. But most importantly for us is when people ask for things specifically. We don't typically put a catalog record in for a new item until there's a shorter window because... just from the way that materials get delivered and shipped. And so usually about four months before what we call pub date, we would put a record in the system for people to put holds on it. So we might be planning to order something already, but by getting a request for a purchase, then we know people want it. And so as opposed to saying, well, it's on the New York Times bestseller list, but who knows if anyone's gonna read it? That way we know that somebody is interested in this and we can purchase it locally, or at least get it if we can't purchase it for some reason. The challenge though, asterisk, is digital content. So digital content is a whole probably different hour-long presentation might feel more like a soapbox. Just because like an original show on Netflix, we can't get a copy of that to loan in any format. So there are some challenges with some of the emerging digital platforms and the rights managements and the costs. And so the way I was describing the collections and the policy, policy governs everything, but the floating collections is for the physical items. The other thing, sorry, I know I'm running along, but this is definitely a little passion area too, is we're going to be piloting libraries of things soon. So libraries across the country for many years now have been circulating objects. And that would be a great way to hear from the community of like, what's the thing that we could share as a community so people don't have to buy it themselves or they want to just try it, right? Maybe, I don't know, could be golf clubs. I don't know what it would be in Sumner, but that's the kind of information we would love to know as we start to design some new collection services.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. All right, Council Member Malcolm. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Gretchen. That's a great presentation. Thanks for the update. I just wanted to, I think Andy already touched on this, but I'd really like to commend you on your focus on the social services needs that we see around all the libraries everywhere. And I think being upfront and being proactive about it is brilliant. I really appreciate that and fully support that you're thinking about that right now because I see it being an afterthought. And we know that libraries and parks are like probably the only two spaces left that people aren't expected to spend money. So it tends to attract a lot of folks. So I appreciate your focus on that. Just wanted to throw that in there.

Great. Thank you. Do we have any other questions or comments? Boy, it was like a lottery there, Council Member Hochstetter.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Gretchen. Excited about the library. I have a six-year-old, a three-year-old. We've been going to Pioneer Park, the library, and especially during the days when a parent needs to get out of the house, the library is a great resource. There's usually something to find that you can do there that's interactive and learning. My question for you is, I see the local history, and I just know... throughout the past when a building's being put in and a lot of times, you know, a mock-up will come and it's got a vision and this could be the artwork or this could be where the history goes, but as budget gets tighter, sometimes the artwork disappears. And then I'm just interested in like, the process of who's selecting the local history and, you know, is there like a committee that is informing what's important as far as what's displayed or how it's displayed or prioritized as far as highlighting some of the local history within this building?

Oh, thank you. That is a great question. We don't have a committee, the short answer to that specific piece. We've worked with Carmen in the city staff. Jasmine has been working with the some of the folks around the Ryan House efforts, but also the Historical Society. So we've been gathering a lot and having a lot of discussions to understand what the opportunities are. And as I mentioned a little earlier, we've kind of put a pause on further detail of that until this next and final interior finishes, basically, phase. So I definitely appreciate the comment about what gets squeezed out of the budgets. And I know, I feel very confident we have so much available to us by way of photos, for example, Sumner has so many places where we have photography that is an easy, way for people to connect with visuals. So I don't really know that there's no existing committee. And as we move into this next phase, we'll be reaching back out probably to some of those folks. But we just didn't get through enough until we could get over the hump with the big stuff So that's not, that's not a really great answer. It feels a little wishy-washy, but, um, but I appreciate that also. And I think, did you mention the library you guys go to is, um, is that the one in Puyallup? Okay. And just to make sure, you know, that's not a Pierce County library system.

Okay. But I do just, I do appreciate as a, as a parent, we got to get out of the house, but we're not getting fast food. We're not doing what it's like park or library, right? Like that's something that's interactive. And so to have something locally on our main street, that's going to provide that to our community here. It's exciting.

Yeah. And to our predecessors, we're grateful in identifying that location because it's much more accessible to the residents. Um, people can come in their stroller and walk in the neighborhood to go to that library and not brave the fryer road traffic. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Wilsey.

Hi. So thank you again for, you know, I'll copy what everybody else said. Thank you for your presentation. I was a little worried, you know, sometimes some of these places can be very static and very simple, you know, so simple that it's not inviting. I'm really liking the furniture that you guys chose and the kind of the style because it feels very much like more of that home feel, which reflects Sumner. We have this passion, everybody has this passion here for how Sumner feels, what they want to see reflected. And so I hope as you get to your final decisions that you continue to look at. I do like some of the, it's a little retro, it's throwback. It's very kind of fun and funky. I think of the red chairs. Yeah, well, the red chairs and then you've got this kind of rounded couch that's very 70s vibes and stuff like that. But we have this kind of this older, you know, community energy here. And so I like that you guys... still keeping that space for everybody to be able to have that flow. And, you know, everybody likes to be able to walk down an aisle without being crunchy. But I do like that your kind of headspace is, you know, how does it look like home? How does it look and still bring that historic kind of vibe? Not necessarily 1800s, more like, you know, 60s and 70s. You know, it's kind of that back to home, you know, green shag carpet kind of vibe. Yeah. I appreciate that. I was curious about the events, the kinds of events that you guys are kind of building around, not just the launch, but the future of this space. I know you've got that decent parking lot in the backside. You've got these outdoor areas and stuff like that. Is the library system planning to do anything? I mean, we... We have some events and we're kind of starting to create these positive community events. What is your guys' plan for the future for this space as far as events go? And do you have a plan yet or is that a wait and see until you get your feet on the soil?

That's a great question. I would say, so the short answer is no, we don't have any plans. We are definitely full of ideas. I know we did discuss at one point just the constraints of the site will limit the capacity to do large events. We pulled back from having an auditorium style because we wouldn't have the parking, right? And so there's some natural capacity limits to the building. We know we won't be able to have four programs all at the same time, right? Um, and then my other thought coming to mind to share is that we've been really working toward more of a regional model in our operations. Um, and maybe a perfect time to introduce Lori Kelly. Uh, if you don't know her, um, in our region, in this area, looking at how do we respond to the evolution of community needs and in a programmatic way and meet and be out with people at these events that you all are doing. not just having a table that people can come by, but really engaging with the community. So there probably will be some opportunities. Partnerships are a strategic goal of ours in our new strategic plan. So there's definitely a lot of potential to look at the right way for the library to participate in that, but we don't have any plans at this time.

I was just curious if you had, you know, we're in the process of the move, creating a schedule that could then therefore utilize the space in the way that you were hoping to be able to plug it in. So that was it. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks.

All right. Anyone else? All right. Well, thank you very much for coming. Great to see you all. Great to see you. Thank you. We appreciate the update. We'll let you know when the dirt goes. All right. We'll be watching it. So we'll move on to item two, public safety sales tax. So I'll call on city administrator Jason Wilson.

Thank you, Mayor. And Chief McCurdy will be joining me as well. All right. Let's wait for Mr. Steffens to get the presentation up. Okay. We're going to be talking about the public safety sales tax. Uh, today we're looking for some direction from council and really is should the adoption ordinance of the public safety sales tax progressed to council for consideration. You may recall that we discussed this at your retreat in may and went over the, at a very high level of what a house bill 2015 enacted and what the options were for the sales tax. Today, we're going to do a little bit of a deeper dive on that. So you may recall that in 2025, the state legislature adopted house bill 2015, and it created two different programs. It created, created a local law enforcement grant program funded at a hundred million dollars from the state. It also created criminal justice sales and use tax a little bit about the grant, um, in order. I'm sorry, grants that cover staffing are generally not advisable for the city to enter into. This particular grant covers 75% of the salary up to a maximum of $125,000 per position. That means you have a 25% local match. In Sumner, that $125,000 does not equal 75%. It's less than 75% of a fully loaded police officer when you look at their wages and benefits. One of the challenges with the grant is it uses one-time money for an ongoing expense. So while it might pay for a large portion of that police officer position for three years, at the end of that three years, the city would need to either downsize its police department or find other funding sources for it. That's why we don't like using grants for staffing. It's an ongoing expense with a one-time revenue. So we will be focusing mostly on the criminal justice sales and use tax, which is a one-tenth of one percent sales tax addition. But what's unique about this is in order to implement the sales tax, you have to meet all the conditions of the grant. And we'll go into those conditions a little bit later on during this presentation. When we talk about the need for public safety, we've talked a lot about population doesn't always match our demand. We're a city of 11,080 people that sleep here at night. But really, during the day, we have 18,000 jobs in our manufacturing industrial center. We have over 20,000 people that are members of the YMCA, obviously. Not all of those are Sumner residents. A lot of them are drawn from other areas in the county. Downtown, we have over 290,000 people that visit downtown each year. Those are unique visitors. And then we have 91,000 people that commute through the city on a daily basis. Now, we know most of those are on the freeway, but we all know if 167 has an accident or 410 has an accident, where do those cars all end up? They end up in Sumner. And that happens more than we like to think about. The other thing to think about when we're talking about officer staffing is, you know, right now we have 21 officers. And, you know, there's a lot of mandatory training they need to do, plus they have accrued leave that they're entitled to use. So that impacts really how many you have deployable at any one given time. You also have long lead times when you hire an entry-level officer. They need to go to the academy, which is about five months. And then there's a field training program, which is another three months before they're out on solo patrol. The wait time to even get in the academy is about two months right now on top of it. I've got too many presentations going. I'm going to. Yeah, backwards. Talking about calls for service, and we have about 13,000 calls for service last year. That's an average of 36 calls per day or one and a half per hour. And the chief will answer questions about this if needed. But, you know, it should be noted that a lot of calls can take longer than an hour to deal with. Some calls take two to three hours and some take two or three officers during those two to three hours. So it's important to remember. The map that you're seeing, if you're not familiar with this, if you go onto our website, you can see crime mapping and you can set the parameters that you want to look at and how many days of the week. I think this is about a month's worth of crime here in the downtown core. And each one of those icons indicate a different police report that was taken by our agency. We'll say increasing staffing. One of the questions we have been asked is, well, what does that do? Is that going to guarantee faster response times or better case closure rates? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. That's a really hard thing to promise when you're talking about increasing staffing. We are still working on filling our 2026 new officer position. We have not been able to fill that. We just filled our 2025 one. So it takes a long time to get people hired. And then, like I said, you have all that training that goes with it. But what I will say is the chief and I, we're committed to, if we increase staffing in the police department using this tax, is that we'll be able to increase the number of officers available to work patrol, and with the goal of hopefully increasing the number of minimum staffing we have. I think a lot of you know our minimum staffing is two right now. Hopefully we don't have a whole lot of days with only two officers working or at different times, but it happens quite often. So, you know, it'd be much better to have three officers when you have calls that take two to three hours to clear. Also in Sumner, you know, we have the demand by calls for service and we have our population, but we also have expectations of our community. One thing that our residents really like to tout on is how good and safe they feel in our community. And really that's because we have a responsive police department. It's the no call too small attitude. We respond to things that some other agencies, neighboring agencies, including wouldn't even respond to and investigate. Um, when we get emails from the public, it typically has to do with, well, can't the police do more patrols or can't they look for more people speeding through my neighborhood? You know, with only two or three officers working in one given time, that's obviously not a lot of extra time for proactive police work when they're answering calls for service. Um, and they can't be everywhere at once. So it's important that we, we staff appropriately. And we've talked a lot during our retreat and over the years about the continuing rising costs and some funding challenges. As you know, the general fund is the most restricted revenue. Or sorry, not the most restricted. It's kind of that bucket that pays for everything that isn't a utility. So that's our police, our parks, our streets. All are paid with the general fund. And we're going to talk about some of the challenges facing the general fund, but we have the property tax, which that revenue is capped at 1% growth per year plus new construction. When you look at that 1% growth per year, that's about $50,000 in new revenue that we can add annually on our property tax rolls, absent any new construction. And we have our sales tax, which is great, but it does fluctuate with the economy. And unfortunately, A poor economy has an inverse relationship usually with public safety. As the economy gets worse, there's generally a higher demand on our law enforcement partners to respond to property crimes and other behavioral health needs. And then growing the pie. It's always a priority for our city to grow the pie, build that sales tax base, bring in more businesses that increase that sales tax revenue, but sometimes you grow and that you're adding businesses that actually generate public safety needs. So Carmen actually put this statement in here, but think about Tukwila, right? We build a mall. Tukwila doesn't have a huge nighttime population, but they have this mall. Well, that mall and the surrounding businesses, that's a huge driver to their law enforcement needs. So we have the funding gap. Um, as you know, uh, the fund, the general fund is structurally imbalanced. Our expenses are growing at a faster rate than our revenue sources. And that's not just wages and benefits. You also look at the other things that impact our expenses and that's things like indigent defense. Uh, the state Supreme court recently changed the, um, the caseload standards for indigent defense, meaning that our Public defenders that we pay for out of the general fund cannot handle as many cases as they've historically been able to. And over the next 10 years, we're going to continue to decrease the amount of cases they can handle every single year. And that's really an unfunded mandate from the state. And that's one of the critical key reasons why the state legislature adopted House Bill 2015 is to help cities find another revenue stream to help pay for indigent defense. Body worn cameras. pretty much a staple now in police work. There are a couple agencies that still haven't implemented them. I'm not sure why not, because they are definitely a good tool. And it's actually, there's certain types of crimes that it's mandated that the police record those types of interviews. But with those body-worn cameras come additional costs. We have a full-time employee that spends most of her time doing body-worn camera redactions. And those costs keep on going up. We just signed a new contract with Axon. about $95,000 a year for the next five years, not including the staff to do those redactions. And then vehicles. We were looking at what a new police car fully equipped cost five years ago, and it was around $60,000. Today it's $90,000. And we replace those cars every nine years, hopefully not sooner, but unfortunately. They're in a high liability situation where they're driving around a lot. Last car that we replaced, no fault of the officer, they got totaled. by somebody running into them. So they get a lot of miles. And then increased training requirements from the state. These are not easy trainings. Andy's going to go into it in just a few minutes. But all that time for training is time that we either have to backfill through overtime, usually not covered by the state, or just it's time away, which reduces us down to minimum staffing. We'll say that one of the things we've heard is, well, a lot of people are feeling the pain right now. I think we all are. We all pay our energy bills. We all pay our gas bills. Costs are going up. And we're all feeling that pressure in our personal wallets, but we're also feeling it here at the city. As PSE raises their rates, the city pays those increases too. As fuel taxes go up, we pay those rates. As the state changes their taxing schemes, we get higher taxes that we have to pay. So it's putting an additional strain on our limited general fund. So the public safety sales tax are bringing in about $850,000 a year in new revenue. It's about one cent for every $10 spent The benefit is that our residents share the burden with those that conduct commerce in the city rather than just our residents paying for this additional service. And what's nice is, as I said, a lot of people travel through the city on a daily basis or come here to do commerce. Those can sometimes result in law enforcement services. This helps us pay for that by the people that are in the city using those services. So as I said, the house bill created the mechanism for the one 10th of 1%. We must meet all the criteria of the grant in order for council to, uh, impose this new sales tax and council has to do this by June 30th of 2028. Otherwise, uh, the councilmatic portion of this, uh, sales tax goes away and it had to be done through an election of, of our residents. I'm going to turn it over to the chief now who's going to go through the required criteria for the grant and what we're doing to make sure that we're in compliance.

So if you're not aware, we use an organization called Lexapol that provides policy content for our policies and procedures. And they're a nationwide organization, and they have quite a bit of machinery behind them. A vast majority of law enforcement agencies across the country use Lexapol because they have attorneys and subject matter experts in just about every category to help write policies. One of the struggles that we've been having in implementing this, and not just us, but most agencies in Washington state, is the Lexapol takes a little while to release new policies. And so a lot of the agencies who've already been accepted into this program and have passed the Criminal Justice Training Commission review had to create the policies from scratch. So we just recently got the release, week before last, I think it was, of the policies from Lexapol that meet the requirements under HB 2015. The problem is they don't meet all the requirements because the requirements are constantly evolving and changing as well. So with that implementation, it's made it a little bit easier. But you look at this list here, it's the Keep Washington Working Act, use of force, de-escalation, firearms relinquishment, those three just by themselves. probably have a total of about 120 pages of criteria that you have to add to your policy. And probably about half of those were implemented in Lexapoll and about the other half we have to write. Some of them are cut and paste into policy, but it's a matter of finding where they go. So there's just a lot of work behind it. Most of it is stuff that we're already essentially doing, but this is kind of codifying a lot of the criminal justice reform initiatives that have been implemented throughout the state over the last couple of years. The police chief qualifications one and the volunteer use ones, those are minor policy tweaks that aren't that significant. But just realize that every time we implement a new policy, it requires new procedures behind it. It also requires new documents, training for the officers and how to use it and such. And so that whole area, just the policy piece of it, there's just a lot of work. I did the Keep Washington Working Act worksheet, which is about 25 pages of requirements and just finished that this yesterday and Should just be finishing up the last couple pieces. There's also other requirements attached to the policies including posting to the public to get feedback And some other changes to how we do things that go with it on the training side of it a lot of then is a continuation of criminal justice reform initiatives, but it's accelerated the pace of what we have to get done and when and So LATACSA, which is the Law Enforcement Training and Community Safety Act, it's patrol tactics, de-escalation training, intersections of race and policing, implicit bias, understanding local cultures, alternatives to booking, first aid, and related statutory requirements. This is another one that the state is constantly releasing new trainings. Every time they release a new training, we have to get officers scheduled. We have to get them off the road to complete trainings and so on. So we're working through that list. The crisis intervention and trauma-informed interviewing, they just released the trauma-informed interviewing training. a couple of weeks ago. And that's an in-person class that's I think a week long. So we've only been able to get one officer through that class so far. We did just recently find out, though, that we were able to submit a training plan if we have not completed all of the requirements of the statute. And that training plan, as long as we're setting standards for when we're going to complete all that training, that will suffice. So we're working through it. We've already met the requirements for LaTasca, the crisis intervention. We have somebody scheduled to go next month, and we'll meet that requirement. And then the trauma-informed interviewing one has just been rolled out. Additionally, we have to release some more data and information about things like number of officers, 911 response rates, and case closure rates. Those are fairly easy to collect and publish. One of the struggles we're having is how we have to publish this information so that Criminal Justice Training Center can access it. So those worksheets I mentioned, there's over 100 pages of it. Today I printed out, converted to a Word document, just the submission page on the website that you have to submit when you print it. It's 50 pages, and you have to do it one time. So you can't log in and log out. So you have to be able to sit down and do all of the entries for all the work that we've done in one sitting. So that 50 pages, we're filling out that in a Word form, and then we'll log in when we're ready and cut and paste and upload everything and be ready to go.

So what are the allowed uses for this new funding? This is straight out of the past legislation. It says criminal justice purposes means activities that substantially assist the criminal justice system, which may include circumstances where ancillary benefit to the civil justice and behavioral health systems occurs. and which include domestic violence services, public defenders, diversion programs, reentry work for inmates, local government programs that reduce people interacting with the criminal justice system, including homelessness or improving behavioral health, and community placements for juvenile offenders, community outreach programs, alternate response programs, mental health crisis response. So as you can see, it's rather broad with criminal justice being the overarching umbrella. So anything law enforcement related that may also include these other services. Talking to other cities who have implemented this tax, a lot of it goes to funding new police officer positions, public defenders, co-responder programs, and things of that nature. So the implementation process is, uh, we would need to submit to the criminal justice training commission. And this would occur after you adopt an ordinance, by the way, uh, we would submit to the criminal justice training commission, all that documentation of the chief just mentioned, they'll have 45 days to review it and provide feedback. Uh, then we'll have 30 days to respond to any of their comments with 180 days to comply with requirements. And after 180 days, if we are not in compliance, and the tax has gone into effect, the state would withhold $100,000 a month of the revenue until city complies. We don't anticipate them bringing in $100,000 per month, but that would be they'd hold on to the money until we are into compliance. One thing to keep in mind, Department of Revenue only approves changes to your sales and use tax rates three times per year, January 1st, April 1st, and July 1st. So we would be targeting the January 1st date, and DOR needs 75 days of advance notice for any proposed changes. So for this to go into effect January 1st of 2027, we would need to notify DOR by October 18th. Uh, our target would be to bring this to council for consideration in early September. And, uh, once Andy is comfortable that we have met all the criteria, uh, because that ordinance would then allow Andy to apply to the CJTC for certification. So you might be wondering what jurisdictions have applied and what have been approved. This is the list straight from the Criminal Justice Training website as of last week. Everybody on this list has applied, and those that have been approved to collect the tax are the agencies in red. So Pierce County is one of them. Lakewood is one of them. Tacoma. Those are the Pierce County agencies thus far, a number of other Pierce County cities are having this exact same discussion that we are in the next month or so as, as they start working on their budgets. Um, I will say that as we are moving into the budget process based on our conversations that we've had with council at our council retreat, we were assuming that you were going to pass it. So we were building the budget with this because we will be releasing to you the preliminary budget probably before this ordinance is is even considered. So if it isn't approved by council, then we'd be going back and looking to you to make cuts appropriately to incorporate the cost change. So what would this do to our sales tax? So our current sales tax is 9.7 percent. If you adopt the public safety sales tax, it raises it to 9.8. So you see where we land in the in the mix with everybody. As a reminder, the grayed out cities, while they are local to us, they are not part of the Regional Transit Authority or Sound Transit. Therefore, they already have lower sales tax because of that being included in the RTA. So we are here to answer your questions and get some feedback on are you ready to see this and anything else you'd like to share with us.

All right. Thank you. Council Member Evers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. First of all, Chief, I guess I want to make sure, how many total staff in the police department?

In the commissioned or total?

Or just how many people work in your department?

About 30. 30.

And then 21 or... Correct. Patrol people that are out on the street?

No, 21 are commissioned, so that would include myself, Deputy Chief, Lieutenant, Detectives, SRO.

Okay, and it sounds like we're maybe planning to add two in the budget coming up?

Correct. That is the ask from the Police Department. It is for two positions, one in 27 and one in 28.

Okay, so the goal would be as much as possible to have three cars on the street at once? Ideally, ideal world.

Yeah, so ideally, so right now we have three or four officers assigned to each team. So there's two squads with the same days off and a day shift and night shift version. So each of those have at least three, some have four. If we have four on all of those, we theoretically could go to a three officer minimum. But if we do that now, it would create a lot of gaps where we just couldn't fill spots. That's great.

I think we talked about this before, Jason, but On sales tax, we're looking at maybe, which I prefer, I guess, to property tax, but 25%, 30% maybe would be Sumner, and the rest would be, I know we don't have an exact number, but, I mean, a good portion of that, people that buy a car, go to the cannery, is going to be paid by people that don't live in Sumner.

Correct. It's hard to put a percentage on it, but you look at our major sales tax collectors in the city, they definitely draw from outside our city limits more than within. Thank you.

Council Member Kenna.

Thank you, Andy and Jason. Just a few questions. Some of these, Jason, you addressed in some emails. And just wanted to kind of highlight these for the public. So the way this fund would work, technically it might ease the pressure on general fund because sometimes we have to pull from that to help pay for public safety uses as it exists now. But this would kind of create a new pool of money that we technically it would ease that pressure on the general fund. Is that, am I understanding that right?

You are and really what we'd be looking at if council approves the two new police officer positions, one in each year of the upcoming biennium, that does leave you with a balance and at that point we'd be looking at other appropriate uses like indigent defense is a great one and rather than paying for that at a general fund we'd be paying for it out of the public safety sales tax. It's all general fund but it'd be coming from that revenue stream. Same with like prosecution could come out of their probation. Any of those types of services could come be attributed to the public safety sales tax freeing up other general fund dollars for other services.

So from a technical point of view, like the money we draw in from this sales tax, it would go to a couple new officers, it would sound like, and then the rest of it we would decide on how to use that. Does that stay in that bucket so that it doesn't get pulled into other areas? So indigent defense sounds like one of those areas that we would have, like kind of, earmark to say that's one thing we know is going to cost a lot of money, we have some money for that. Is that technically how it works?

Yeah, it's a little more nuanced, but it is all technically general fund revenue, but we do have to report on it annually to the state on what we're using it for. So we need to be able to attribute whatever we collect in public safety stacks to an appropriate use of those funds.

Okay. Just in terms of like a space issue, I know at City Hall we're pretty stretched thin as it is. If we bring in a couple new officers, what does that look like? I know we've got, there's some other things going on here, Heritage Park, and that may use some pressure here, but what does that look like?

So we are getting ready to do a kind of mini remodel. Our patrol room, our whole investigations area and our records area are in dire need of replacing furniture and so on. So that will create a little more space and capacity. We're adding some lockers to our locker room because right now we don't have enough for the existing officers. So I think we can accommodate it. But in the long run, with additional growth and training and everything else requires equipment. Uh, so, you know, we are busting it. It seems like everybody else. So at some point we're going to need to figure that piece out too.

Uh, maybe the last question, then I'll, I'll toss the ball to somebody else. Just, um, I think we, we talked about, uh, you have a staff person, for example, that the body worn cameras is like a, almost a full-time job. That person is redacting, uh, that information. So I'm just thinking, you know, if we have a couple new officers, hopefully we've got more people on the street, you know, looking into things, detective work, that sort of thing. Does that almost create more material that all those support staff then, that almost needs to grow as well and all the All the other accessories that are not just officers, those have to grow as well? Yeah.

Well, and I'll take that even farther. Even detectives' investigations needs to grow. Because at some point, with more officers, they're creating more work for follow-up detectives. And so when you look at systems, I would say we added a third person in our records unit a year ago, about a year ago. And that's helped a little bit. So they're able to take on some of the duties that were being farmed out to other people who also got busier. So that person's actually doing halftime records and halftime evidence. And so, you know, in the future, even that, like to your point, I think everything grows a little bit. I don't know if we're to the point where we need another records person, but we're getting awfully close. And the, you know, more body-worn cameras, more footage being created and so on, it just, it all compounds. Sure.

Yeah, that level sets it for me to kind of help understand. It's not just officers. There's going to be other things that this covers and can help and assist with. I think To the question of the presentation, if council is still in support of this based upon the retreat, I'm really happy to support this. I think you guys did a great job laying it out for us. And I don't really see a future where we don't have this lever that we can pull to get some additional funding. Because as you've explained, things are evolving and changing so rapidly. We have people coming to our community, which is great. That increases the need for officers and all the other accessories that go with that. So yeah, support for me.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor Elpers?

Yeah, thank you both for the presentation. I appreciate that. I don't have a lot of questions, really. I think it's something we've thought about for quite a few months, and I think sales tax is a pretty good source of revenue that people can be flexible with, and it takes care of people inside who live here and who travel here. support that. So I'm in favor of it. I think it's important to keep the general fund not too stressed out so we can be healthy financially. And I think this is a less burdensome way for the community. So I support it.

Thank you. Council Member Wilsey.

Um, thank you very much for your info. Um, I again, don't have a whole lot. Um, I am in support of this. I like the idea of it, not just landing on our citizens, but creating that, you know, diversification of who is, um, paying into this because we do have people who visit and then also may potentially need that public safety. So, uh, creating the, um, the, you know, set up for, um, us to be safe 24 seven.

kind of the goal so i appreciate that thank you thank you council member hockstetter thank you mayor thank you chief uh i think once i got on the council and and learned more about how our city operates jason our city administrator brings up a really good point when he when he talks about the responsibility that the city has with how many people we do serve it's not just 11 000 people that live here um and Jason listed the jobs, the amount of commuters, and the other thing is the parking garage we have coming in, right? Our schools that are growing, right? We have all the kids coming off the hill that come down to school. The amount of people that our city services, as far as taking care of our police officers to be responsive to, is much greater than our neighboring cities. And that's a point that I've really learned once I've learned more about how our city operates. So I'm definitely... in favor of this Sumner's safe community and we want to continue to stay ahead of the curve and keep it safe, so.

All right, thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, you guys. Thank you.

So, Mayor, just to put a bow on this, this will be coming back to council for consideration either the first or the second meeting in September. Chief and I will be working on that date.

Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Chief. This will move us along to the City Administrator Report. Do we have anything?

Yeah, Mayor, just a couple things. All of you should have received an email today from Lana Hoover asking for some volunteer help with judging at the Chalk Art Festival and also helping maybe man the booth there. So if you're interested and available on August 8th, please respond to Lana. And then I just want to make sure that you all saw that we did confirm the date for the next council retreat, which is Monday, August 31st from 1 to 7 p.m. at the YMCA. And then one last reminder, our council vacancy closes on July 30th. So that's Thursday of this week at 5 p.m. Great. More information on our website.

All right. Thank you very much. All right. Agenda setting. Do we have any council meeting agenda calendar changes that you guys need to make? We're all good? And any council committee meeting agenda changes that we need to be aware of? All right. Awesome. There is no executive session tonight, so I will adjourn this meeting at 7.12 p.m. Thank you.