City Council - workshop

Good evening and welcome to the City of Pasco Council workshop meeting. The Council thanks you for being a part of your city government. At workshop meetings, the Council discusses issues but no formal action is taken. Agenda packets are available on the City of Pasco's website at www.pasco-wa.gov. This meeting is also being televised on PSC-TV channel 191 on Spectrum Cable in Pasco and Richland and is streamed on the City's Facebook page, website, YouTube channel, and Microsoft Teams webinar. This and previous council meeting video is available on the city's website. Lastly, the public may submit their comments and or questions by contacting the city manager, city clerk, or by using the Ask Pasco app. With that, Madam Clerk, would you call the roll, please?

Campos?

Here.

Carter?

Here.

Figueroa?

Present.

Hernandez?

Present.

Perales?

Here.

Milne?

Present. Grimm? Here. Thank you, with that, if everyone would stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Before we move on to number four, we're gonna accept a motion to amend the agenda.

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to amend the agenda to allow a public comment period prior to board reports today.

I'll second that. More specifically, Mr. Perales?

Yeah, we're going to limit it to the Tri-City Animal Services situation with Russ and Sam. We're going to limit it to 12 minutes.

12 minutes, so we will take, oh yeah. Okay, so I'll second the amended motion. Okay, discussion.

And so this is just, I guess I will say, just to accommodate our audience, typically we only take public comment during workshops on the agenda items, and this is actually a new thing. When Council Member Perales and I got on, they used to not do any public comments during a workshop at all, but just for the opportunity for open government, amended all of this to allow public comment on at least the issues we're speaking about and Mayor Pro Tem Milne went along with that too at that time to allow more opportunity for public comment and this is further amending the agenda to accommodate those who are here to speak about that specific issue. So with that said, all in favor of amending the agenda say aye. Aye. Those opposed, nay. All right, the motion is approved. Let's open this up for public comment then. According to Mr. Perales' motion, there is time for six public comments of two minutes each. If you would just state your name and city or county of residence for the record, please. Oh, press the little button. There's the red one. There you go.

Dallas Barnes, Pasco, Washington. I was here last week and had to leave, but I did watch the council meeting. So I'm back again to talk about the Martin Luther King Center and public access to that center. I noticed that we still don't have public access to the center as member of the community and as members of the public, although phase one has been completed. My recent investigation into that, we won't have any public access to that community center for another five to ten years. You can take a look at that, but in effect, that sort of negates the purpose of the remodel because you have leased it out to tenants for that long period of time. Now, if that was a mistake, OK, because mistake can be corrected. If that is a product of redlining and general intentions like it is in some other cities, then there have to be some opposition to that. And the other part of that is that I know that on the agenda that you're going to talk about $18 million worth of land purchase for the soccer field in Pasco. But no money has ever been allocated by the city for the finishing of the remodel of Martin Luther King Center. You bought some property downtown Pasco. You are now considering 18 or whatever the millions of dollars for a golf facility. And those of us who are concerned about public access to the Martin Luther King Center still have to wait for grants and good wishes and no redlining or whatever the calls for us not to have access to a center that we fought so hard to get. So I ask that the council consider that when they spend $18 million to direct some of that money toward the finish of the Martin Luther King Center so the public can enjoy that facility.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Barnes. Point of clarification, Mr. Drew. Council Member Perales' motion was to keep the comments to the animal shelter. Can we do that, or is it open for other comments, too?

You can limit the comments to the shelter as a topic. Perfect. Okay.

The spending of the money?

Oh, no. No, not this evening. Yeah.

Oh, I'm all right now.

You're totally good, Mr. Barnes. Always happy to have you here.

Thank you.

All right, good evening.

Many of you know me to be verbose. I'll keep it down. My name is Rob DiPiazza. I'm actually a Kennewick resident but a strong Pasco advocate. I've been a shelter volunteer for two and a half years. I know Stan and I know Rusty very well. They are two of my favorites. We as volunteers do so many things other than just walking dogs. We advocate for them, as we are doing tonight, but we also try to socialize and be part of their lives so that they gain trust and confidence with other people. They don't exhibit any issues with most of the volunteers or the staff. There was a mention that it is safer for them not to be at the shelter. They've been there for in excess of a year. We all know them. The safest place for them, honestly, is the shelter right now, even though they do have, on July 13th, they have a reservation in the Seattle area for a board and train. which is going to be magnificent. We've had several dogs recently that have been taken through s'mores rescue who specialize in this type of situation, and all of them have done extremely well. Several of them have been placed with forever families. We feel very confident that if you would just be flexible on the policy, you don't have to amend it or anything, but two weeks. We're asking for two weeks. We have fosters kind of lined up, but those are kind of an emergency situation. The best place for these two dogs is at the shelter with us. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. DiPiatta.

Good evening. My name is Jessica Bolliard and I am the founder of S'more Dogs Rescue, a foster-based rescue serving the Tri-Cities area and beyond. On June 14th, we confirmed July 13th as an intake date for Rusty and Stanley with a professional board and train facility in the Seattle area. We notified Monica and Ben and on June 18th, we paid the required deposit to secure their placement. This was not simply an expression of interest. We evaluated these dogs. found qualified professional support, secured a confirmed training date, and committed rescue funds to their rehabilitation. Angela Passion stated, while we appreciate that Smart Dogs Rescue has expressed willingness to take the dogs on July 13th, TCAS cannot guarantee that placement will occur at that time. Respectfully, why are a confirmed reservation and paid deposit not a guarantee of placement? What more could a rescue responsibly do to demonstrate a firm commitment? Liability has also been mentioned. However, volunteers have waived liability and can continue to enter the shelter and care for these dogs. If that is acceptable now, it is difficult to understand why it cannot continue for the short time needed to reach their confirmed training date. The shelter is not currently full according to multiple volunteers and video evidence, so space should not be the deciding factor at this time. We are asking for an exception to the current policy to give Rusty and Stanley the amount of time they need. We are also asking the city to change this policy going forward so that dogs with a confirmed rescue commitment and a documented placement plan are not euthanized simply because the placement cannot happen within the arbitrary deadline. In a world quick to judge, Grace blows down to listen. It offers second chances, sees the good in hard places, and always leaves room for redemption. Grace makes room for everyone. Please make room for Rusty and Stanley.

Thank you for your comments.

Good afternoon. My name is Christy Kessler. I've been before you guys quite a few times, including the Richland council in Kennewick too, whenever we have an issue with this shelter. Um, I hope eventually we get to a point where we don't have to do this every council meeting and we've actually made some strides forward. So here tonight we're talking about rusty and his buddy, you guys, we should not be having a 10 day. I mean, it shouldn't be an issue. This should not be an issue for these dogs. They've been there for a year. And the biggest thing is the liability, like she's talking about. You don't want them going into a foster home. I've been fostering since 2015. I've actually had over five dogs from Tri-City Animal Control, including, I have two right now that were scheduled for euthanasia. One had a shepherd shutdown, was misdiagnosed as a neurological issue. She is running and playing with dogs in my yard. It'll be two years in November. I've also got a little old lady who the shelter said they couldn't touch. No one could get near or anything. And she lives with, I'm not going to tell you how many other dogs I have because I don't foster, but a lot of other dogs. She's doing great. So we need a solid plan moving forward for not just these dogs, but other dogs as well. And we've said we need an advocacy. And the biggest thing is the training. They're willing to do training. I've had two dogs, Prince in 2015, and then another dog, that were literally gonna be euthanized because of their issues. We paid for training, and they went on to be amazing dogs. This is where these dogs need to be, is a future. And there's no reason, if you have volunteers stepping up and saying, we're gonna pay for food, we're gonna do this, You guys, your liability is really minimized then at this point. And so we're asking you to make this change, make it for the future, and let's make this a shelter again, and let's not just make it a revolving door. You guys already tell people, hey, we can't take the dog, so space cannot be an issue. You tell them to figure out what to do with it or put the dog back. And if you want me to find those comments when we call the shelter, I could find them for you. but we get it all the time. We're full. We can't take a dog. So if you're not full now, keep those dogs and tell everybody else now they've got to find a new place.

Thank you for your comments. Appreciate it. Not including Mr. Barnes, there's room for three more.

Good evening, folks. My name is William Lambert. I am the owner of Dancing Tree Rehabilitative Dog Training. I am trained on the psychology of dogs, and I did evaluate Russ and Stan, as well as Riggs, who we have rescued through S'more Dogs Rescue, and he is doing beautifully. Through training, I have seen countless dogs change their lives just by leaving the shelter within 5, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, a day, a week. We're asking for more time when we have security for these dogs, we have a place for them to go. I'm a mobile trainer, so I don't do board and train, but we got recommended with these folks. These folks are great. They have space for him, but all we need is time. Time is of the essence all the time. Like this, I have a minute left to speak on two dogs' lives who matter greatly to many of the people here, if not all. The volunteers, the staff, they all know these dogs. They have been placed in the shelter under behavioral restrictions through the evaluator who, in my opinion, the evaluations that they do cause dogs to be behavioral and act out. I do believe change needs to be made and it needs to happen quickly because lives are on the line and countless lives before that. Rest in peace to all the dogs that have been lost because of this situation. And hopefully we can get this changed. Hopefully it affects each and every one of you today as you hear all of us. You see the presence of us. You see the facts of Riggs is doing better and many of the dogs that were rescued through S'mores Dog Rescue placed into beautiful areas and are doing well. I've been before you guys a couple times last year, but my heart goes out. This is a case that means a lot to me, and I know it means a lot to everyone behind me, and we are asking for just some time. Time is all we need. Thank you guys for listening.

Thank you. We'll take two more on this. Yeah, step right on up. Just name and city of residence.

Jody Stark, West Richland. I wasn't going to speak, but I was here a couple years ago. There was a dog that was up 10 days for euthanasia, and we actually came in at the very last day. Samantha ended up going out to Maddox during this time and actually took a dog into foster, so there was a spot. So we were actually, Mike was able to pull him at that time. Great dog. I had him around my newborn grandson. That dog was not mean. He was not horrible. His life is saved. He has a wonderful home. He has foster siblings in and out of the house. He did not deserve to die. If Samantha wouldn't have stepped up and took a dog to make a space within that 10-day time frame, he wouldn't be with us today. He wouldn't be the dog that he is today. So I really, really, really would hope and pray that there is some sort of policy change that if you do have a commitment with the rescue, that 10 days is not a lot of time. How many of you can plan something Spur the moment in 10 days and make it work. All the pieces fall in. It's not that easy. And when you have a life at stake, it should be that if you have a commitment that that time is afforded these animals. It's not fair. They don't deserve to die just because they're kennel stressed. A year. How would you feel if you lived in a kennel for a year? They don't deserve this. They deserve the 13, 14 days to take this spot. It's paid for. It's guaranteed. And like Jessica said, how much more proof does a rescue have to give you? It's a life. And life matters. And they don't have a voice. They can't stand up here and beg for their life. So we need to do that for them.

Thank you. We'll take one more comment on this issue. Ms. Mahoney, you want to speak to the animal shelter? That's all this is for, Ms. Mahoney. I saw you came in late. It's just speaking about the animal shelters, what this allotted time is for. Okay. Step right on up.

Yeah. Whoever wanted to speak first.

This is our last comment on this issue. We amended the agenda to allow for public comment.

You go. Okay. Sorry, Mary. I'll speak afterwards.

We already will be one over after that unless somebody else wants to amend the agenda again.

All right. Hi, my name is Kristen Engbrecht. I'm a Pasco resident. I'm not requesting anyone ignore legitimate safety concerns or the rules of the shelter, but I'm just asking for some flexibility since there are realistic opportunities for these dogs to be placed within a rescue and to get the help they need. Rescues that can take these dogs in and facilities that can help train these dogs usually don't have openings within the 10-day time frame. of a non-standard adoption. That's something that needs to be changed. A more reasonable timeframe should be allowed. I'm also concerned about the highly subjective apparent process of how dogs end up on the non-standard adoption list and how these dogs are able to avoid euthanasia. The language about how this process works deserves some clarification and much needed updating to reflect realistic timelines. Having an honest, transparent discussion about all of these concerns with matching follow-up actions will show us your priorities. This is another opportunity for the city to start to win back some public trust within the animal community after so many morally compromised individuals have broken it so many times. Thank you for your time and for the council members always advocating for these animals. I see you and I appreciate you. Thank you.

Ms. Mahoney, if you want to come up and make your comments and that'll be the last on this issue then.

I just heard this on the news tonight, so I did not prepare anything.

You're okay. Name and city for the record.

This is an amendment to what I stated April 20th, 2026 regarding animal control. I asked for a repayment of the $545,000 donated by our local veteran, Mr. Ashby, in his will to be used for homeless dogs and cats. Instead, Animal Control Julie Chambers siphoned off $300,000 of that donation and bought a house, provide a total repayment of that donation, provide a total repayment of the rainy day fund paid by our tax dollars stolen or missing with Animal Control rehire Angela Zeiler, Animal control TCAS has no spay neuter clinic. It would decrease the number of dogs and cats trafficked to WSU. See files. Provide the total tax dollars paid to animal control from WSU for our dogs and cats to be used for research at WSU. Then they're killed. Provide the total tax dollars made by Animal Control TCIS with the usage pay system or pet owner fines, which requires a ransom to be paid to redeem your pet. Provide results for the 48 counts of animal cruelty at Animal Control. Provide truthful, not false, euthanasia training certificates at Animal Control. See the Washington State Attorney General file on 9-29-23. And most important, provide Pasco City Attorney Lee Kerr's notice to or from the Washington State Bar regarding Mr. Kerr's authorization of no due process at animal control. Whatever these dogs are tonight, were they ever issued a notice to be talked about in court, you're entitled to a notice and a hearing. Current manager, Ben Ziegen, I have files on him and Angela Zeiler when I was able to obtain records. And none of the animals that were killed or sent to WSU were ever given a notice or a hearing. No due process. Look it up. It's never existed at animal control.

Thank you, Ms. Mahoney. Thank you, everyone, for participating. Number four is verbal reports from council members. Mr. Perales.

I'm just going to go ahead and I just want to address the comments real quick. That's fine. Go right ahead. I honestly just want to ask City Manager Harold Stewart, is there a way that we can be flexible with this? I think if you're standing room only, the community outcry, they have places to go. Russ and Stan do. We have volunteers saying they're willing to pay for the food. They've signed waivers for liability. Can we allow these dogs to be here for the next two weeks so that they can go get the help that they need?

It's a complicated issue, Mr. Mayor, members of council.

You guys, we have to have order. We have to have order. We allowed you guys to speak. He asks his turn also, please. No, please. We have to have order or we'll recess.

I would like the city attorney to address what the relationship is with the other cities with regards to this issue and what authorities the city council has as the city of Pasco.

Thank you, Mr. City Manager. So TCAST operates under an interlocal agreement between the city of Pasco, the city of Richland, and the city of Kennewick. Under that, you've created a management committee. That's your animal control board. Under that agreement, the Animal Control Board has been empowered and is obligated to establish policies which then have to be implemented by TCAS. Pasco, by being the operating jurisdiction, being the one city who is actually managing the shelter itself, has to implement those policies. It also has to enforce the rules and regulations and ordinances of each of the individual cities. That is what its duty is. No one city has the authority to overrule unilaterally the policies set forth by the management committee. But what they can do is through its participation on that board is advocate for change. It also can individually create, individually, set regulations and ordinances that have to then be enforced by the authority itself. So if you wanted to make a change, for example, to your dangerous dogs ordinance, that change, you are empowered to do that. I would also point out, particularly at a meeting like this, this is a special meeting under the Open Public, excuse me, Open Public Meetings Act. Because this particular item was not given the 24-hour notice, it is not eligible for any sort of final action here tonight. So even if you have the authority to be able to make a unilateral decision on a policy like the one that's being discussed here today, you wouldn't be able to take that action tonight.

I really appreciate that, the clarification, but I guess my issue with that is that even before I was on the council, many of these individuals in this room have came here countless times advocating for the change that you were talking about. and we've honestly seen not a lot of movement on it. We had a meeting about the structure and then that's when we found out it was the city managers that really oversaw the TCOS, but they have these designees. I'm not asking for this body to make a decision on behalf of TCOS. I'm looking at the city manager, one of them. Again, we're the lead agency to provide some grace here. I think he can, as a lead agency, we can direct Benzingen to not euthanize these dogs within the next couple of days. And I honestly think it's going to set the city back. I mean, I think I can see it's volunteers quitting because of this. I've seen the comments on social media. I just, I don't understand it. These dogs have a place to go, and I understand the policy and the implementation of it. I enforce policies every single day in my professional life, but there is discretion. It's one of the best tools in my toolkit. Every day I go out to a job, there's discretion. So where is the discretion? And so that's why I'm asking the city manager to direct Ben Z and them Some discretion here. These dogs get walked by volunteers every single day. Again, I get it. People have already said the evaluation seemed a little off kilter. One evaluator says these dogs can need help and they can get that and get better. Another one, nope, we have to euthanize them. Again, I just don't see why we cannot be flexible and start the change tonight. If we're, like Mr. Drew said, If we want to start advocating, then let's really advocate for change. This has been going on for way too long. Before I was even on council, I've been paying attention to this issue. Let's start making it better. We've talked about redoing the ILA. Let's do it. Let's talk about an oversight board. This entity is one of the very oldest. I think it's the only entity in Tri-Cities that doesn't have an oversight board. BFT does. There's all these other oversight boards, but why doesn't Tri-City Animal Shelter have one? It makes no sense. Again, I think if we decide to go through with that policy, it's going to set the city back and it's going to give us a black eye. But I guess I'll leave it up to you, Mr. Stewart. Again, we are the lead agency. We're the city leading this. I think if we go through with it, we're going to lose a lot of trust. I'll leave it at that because I don't want to derail the agenda tonight, but that's really all I have to say. It really pained me last week just seeing the emails and stuff. These dogs have somewhere to go. That's what I just don't understand.

Mr. Mayor, may I respond further?

Please.

So today we were contacted by another rescue agency that is willing to take Stan tomorrow and also send it to the same training. So in accordance with policy, Stan will have a place to go tomorrow. I guess the concern that I have with, and I've read the social media comments as well, I'm a dog owner, I love animals, I don't want to be misconstrued as though I don't care about animals. On our TCAS website is available to the public the files for both of these dogs.

These dogs bite people.

you guys you have to let him speak you guys we have within our ordinances a dangerous dog ordinance what is a dangerous dog a dangerous dog is an animal that attacks people and other animals at its most basic level one of these dogs has been six professionals who are trained to deal with animals every single day, once a month for six months.

Okay, well, hold on, you guys. It's not your turn.

So I understand and appreciate the passion of advocating for animals, but who's representing the staff and the people that are getting bitten? Not to count the near misses of dogs that have gone to attack that fortunately good volunteers have intervened and interceded and kept that from happening. There's also been several near misses. And these create damage to people. So that is why these policies are in place. And I think the animal that is the most dangerous is Rusty, based off of the facts and the materials that I've seen. You guys, please. So again, we're willing as staff to let Stan go to this rescue that will take him tomorrow. But I consider Rusty to be a danger to the public and to people that have custody of him.

Thank you. Anybody else on council have any comments? Mr. Milne.

I was just going to say that I do agree with Councilman Perales. He said it very eloquently, better than I could have said it. Again, I just ask for compassion. Again, hopefully when I get off council, I will be able to chance to walk some dogs. At the time, my time is scarce, but I do agree, being in the family that we are, where we have rescues ourself, that every little dog deserves a chance, and we've got dogs from the shelter, and they were just not the great dogs, and you bring them home, and they're phenomenal dogs. So that's where my heart is. Again, I don't know Rusty personally, but I would ask that we give him a chance. So that's what my prayer is and I hope for. Thank you.

Council Member Cotta. Yeah, I understand why these ordinances are in place and there needs to be a method of dealing with animals that are a danger to the public. Here it just seems like it's a unique case. It's so unique it may change our ordinances and the way that we structure things to be able to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. And so I wouldn't want this to be the example, tragically, of something that would lead to policy that would change later on, having to deal with the negative consequence of the issue. So yeah, I'm hoping there's something that can be done for both dogs.

Mr. Campos. Yeah, I think I have the same sentiment as everybody here tonight. We could talk about our opinions and everything else. Bottom line is what can we do? Is there anything? What other alternatives that we can do, what volunteers can do? Because obviously everyone believes that we're dealing with not just one life, we're dealing with two. And so our attorney already just said that even if our city manager wanted to do it, we're still dealing with a whole agency here we're just one city out of all of them and so um his hands are somewhat even tight as well and so what are some other alternatives i rather always talk about solutions um what are some general alternatives that we can do tonight whether it's us volunteers city um the whole committee what are some solutions that we can figure out tonight thank you mr figueroa

It's unfortunate that, I mean, I look around the chamber and I see a packed chamber and I would love to see every Monday to be looking like this and it's unfortunate that events like this have to arise for the public to come in and share the input. One thing that I learned that my mom taught me was that there's two sides to every coin and there's two, we've got to be able to look at it on both lenses. I think that some of the emails that we got sent, I hear the arguments and proposals and I think that Kind of going back with my colleague, Councilmember Cotta, there comes something that changes the policies, right? I mean, if you look at the U.S. history, there's always something, a big event that changed how policies were interpreted. However, I also believe that there's procedures and policies for a reason, right? Or else we would just run amok. Everybody would look different with no ideas. So everything should be done how the procedures are lined out. But there's also evidence that These dogs have also committed some danger to the volunteers and to me it's important to ensure that everybody is safe. Volunteers are giving their time. I've been a volunteer. They're giving whatever extra they have to ensure that these dogs have companions, they're able to walk, all this extra stuff. So I want to make sure that we don't just focus on one side. I do believe in the comments and everything, you know, that these dogs lives matter. Absolutely. But also the volunteers and the carriers for, you know, providing those opportunities for them. So we have to make sure that we hold those things in tension and in balance. Two things can be true at the same time. It doesn't have to be. either or it can be both and and so we have to look at it through that lens and ensure that sure let's look at what can we done within our codes our policies but also we are just one of those entities among the three that are kind of you know we partner with to carry this so we don't want to overstep on their toes either again we're just that one vote just like you know all of us have one vote here on the council know one person is better than the other, we have to respect that too, right? I mean, if we want greater change, then perhaps we gotta show up to those meetings, if they have meetings, and change those procedures there and then. This is just one lay, one part of that, but the public, thank you for coming out and expressing that, the emails, all that. I wanna make sure that you understand that your voice is being heard, but also our city staff, they do phenomenal work, and a lot of times they get the bad end, the bad rep. Our city manager does a lot of great things, looking out for the best of the city, And all of us are doing great things here at the end because we want to see the city succeed in all elements. So I'll just leave it at that. Thank you.

Council Member Hernandez. It is a complicated issue. However, maybe we can come to an agreement if there's, I don't know, if there's someone that can take the other dog. Is the rescue night able to take it now? Do they have to wait until the 13th? Maybe the rest you can take it prior and the city can arrange with somebody that's willing to take it. The one that actually doesn't have a home at the moment. I'm not sure if that's possible at all.

Mr. Mayor, the challenge here is that because these dogs have bite histories, they can't just be released to anybody. They have to be released to somebody that can take care of a dog with those type of behavioral issues, which is why we have this non... customary adoption process, and we give the notice. We've emailed all the rescues that we've worked with in the past and made contact with them on whether or not they're interested in taking these animals. You heard from one this evening, S'mores, and then we have the other one that responded today that's willing to take Stan. So it's not just a general public person that can come take these animals because it's not safe for them to take that animal. You've even heard some of the volunteers speak tonight. The safest place is probably either in the shelter or with a rescue that's trained to handle these things. Again, I note, again, these dogs have bitten people who are trained to handle animals like this several times. And so that is the concern here, right?

So, yeah, that's the challenge here. I understand. Again, I understand all that. It is difficult. The city is in a difficult position. We're not the only ones in this coalition. The staff, like I said, I read all those emails. But the staff is also doing a really great job in trying to solve the problem and hopefully we can come to some sort of agreement. if it's a possibility for the other dog. So, that's I guess.

Thank you. Mr. Hernandez, Mr. Kaga.

Yeah, it sounds like the safest place is to remain at the kennel for these dogs. And there sounds like even there are volunteers here that will be willing to tend to the dogs. And maybe we could come up with a situation where if nobody wants to, if somebody has a fear of being bitten, then they don't need to be able to perform that responsibility. Hey, guys, listen, I just want to say, like, Harold Stewart, he is an awesome city manager. And he is saying what he's saying because he is genuinely concerned that somebody could get hurt. And that's why he's saying what he's saying. We're just trying to work it out so we can, you know, manage this in a way that it works out for everybody. But it is really important to keep people safe. And so that's where his heart is, that's where his mind is, that's what he's doing here. So please don't consider him a villain in this situation. He's a great city manager. Okay, so my prior question, is that something that we can reasonably do?

I guess I'll defer to the city attorney that knowing the history of these animals, if there was a significant injury to anyone while they're within our custody, what our liability would be.

And I think that the best way to handle that, Mr. Mayor, is if somebody did came forward, if somebody did came and a rescue was willing to take on that risk, that we would work with them to answer that exact same question. Because there are liabilities involved. There are liabilities involved. Even when somebody agrees and says they have assumed the risk, there are always certain liabilities that are involved. I'd much prefer to be able to answer that question and when presented with that option. So if, for example, if Manager Stewart comes to me, Mr. Kenney, tomorrow and says, hey, we've got somebody who is interested, what can we do? We'll be able to answer that question more fully for them. Thank you, Mr. Prelz.

Yeah, and I'll just end with, again, one of the emails that I got, one of the options was to allow the dogs to stay, and so if Russ can stay in there for the next two weeks, and we have volunteers in the audience, other individuals who can come and tend to him, and it sounds like we have You know food paid for I I just said still I don't see the issue and and I mean I'm gonna be straight up I we're gonna start coming to these ACA meetings. We're gonna start demanding more change You need to get with the other city managers when you start seeing movement on this stuff I think this policy just needs to be looked at we got a very good email from from Miss Moreno alma audience in regards to changing our policy we need to start looking we need to think outside the box here or think with no box because I I love people coming to the council chambers, but we can't legislate crisis to crisis. And so again, one of the options on the email was allowing them to stay. I hope and pray, I'll hope and pray for the next couple days that we allow them to stay and nothing happens to them. Thank you.

Mr. Stewart.

Since coming here, it's obvious to me that the ACA Board hasn't been as functional. I've been working with my fellow city managers to actually attend the meetings, which they have for the last couple. We have been having conversations. I think we recognize, as well as Ms. Bichon, who is new in her roles, having responsibility over this, that there are definitely improvements to the policies and procedures. I'm willing to commit publicly that we will work towards those things. I understand the frustration. You've been talking about these for years. I haven't been here as a city manager for years. but I have been a part of cities that have managed animal shelters and I think there's a few things that we need to talk about here and that is what is the expectations of the cities involved as well as the public. There's a difference between a dog pound and a shelter. There's also a difference between animal control and the shelter or a dog pound and I think we need to make sure we're all on the same page of what those are and setting what the expectations are that we're doing. Are we expecting this to operate as a shelter? Or are we operating as a dog pound for strays and surrenders and trying to find and reconnect animals with their owners? Or are we dealing with dangerous animals that aren't safe for the public? Those types of things, because there's different expectations when we come to those. And I've been a part of those conversations. I'm happy to have those conversations again. and the other city managers are willing to have those conversations. We've been having those conversations for the last couple months. In fact, we've been working on preparing a presentation to go to all the councils with regards to this here within the next month or so. So these are things that we're working on, and there are things that can be improved. The policy can be improved to be more clear, to set out more specifics on how these decisions get made and when. But at the end of the day, we still have to have a way to handle animals that are biting people and other animals, right? So I am committed to that going forward, and I think we have a solution for Stan. You know, the organization that stepped forward to take Stan assessed both dogs, and apparently they must have had issues with the varsity because they weren't willing to take him.

Thank you, you guys. Thank you. So with that, you know, I guess my comments are similar to Council Member Collin's as far as I don't think anybody up here is not an animal lover at some point. I think we could all offer anecdotal stories. I have a hundred pound German Shepherd at home with canine lupus who bleeds all over our house who In part, we've had to even replace the carpet once because of it. We love that animal, care for him, and just even in my past, I think I've cried more over lost pets than I have even extended family members. No, seriously, but that's not what this conversation is about. I think we all have compassion and care and love for animals, but we do have to find that there is a balance somewhere that we do have to find. I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. I appreciate your advocacy. I appreciate your passion. Thank you for helping us keep the decorum here. And we're going to move on at this time.

Can I ask one more question?

We're going to move on.

Just a clarification on euthanasia time.

So does that mean that the 10 days is up tomorrow?

Do you have all through tomorrow before euthanasia on Wednesday if that's the decision?

I don't know the answer to that question. I totally understand. Stand by.

At this time, we do not have a euthanasia scheduled for either of these animals. As the process is outlined, we would refer to an external vet to review the case as well after the 10-day timeline is up.

Okay. Thank you. Let's move on. Number four, verbal reports from council members.

Okay.

I attended the... Council Member Hernandez.

Sorry.

Yeah. Why don't we take Council Member Campos' idea and we will take a two-minute recess. We will be back at 7.48. Thank you. I wish I felt better, holy smoke.

The kind of meetings I can be at my best.

Okay, let's talk fireworks.

Spot on.

Yeah, man. All right, we will resume with number four verbal reports from council members. Mr. Hernandez, back to you, sir.

I attended the Juneteenth celebration. I paraded in it, is that how you say it? Paraded in it. Along with Councilman Campos. And it was a lot of fun. It was... you know, well attended towards the end. It seemed like everybody gets there around noon. So it was great. It was bigger than last year, I think, also. So that was great that it's, there was a lot of people and it was bigger. And I heard your speech, Mayor. I was in the park, but I wasn't near where you were speaking, but I heard it. So it was great, it was a great time. It was fun, so that was all.

Awesome, thank you.

Council member Figueroa. Yeah, I had the opportunity to attend the second watch party that has been put on by the City of Pasco. It's an official fan zone that happened on Friday when the U.S. took over Australia. And it seemed like the timing and everything was just really good. A lot of families came out. Everybody was having a good time. There was chants going on. It was exactly what you expect it to be for a watch party. And so phenomenal to the staff who poured time and energy into making that happen. A lot of kids were kicking the ball around and just precisely what this sport is all about, bringing people together, community, and enjoying a good time. So that was a phenomenal thing to see on Friday.

Awesome. Thank you. Councilmember Campos. Yeah, Tuesday I had the privilege to go to the Basic Law Enforcement Academy graduation. 33 officers graduated that day, four from Pasco. Happo was packed. There were so many people there. The pride. It was just a great event to see so many, all the agencies from around, and to just kind of see Pasco as the center of it all. with the Academy and the training happening here. And so congratulations to our four officers that made it and we look forward to them to be on there. Also on Wednesday, went to the SWAC meeting. We're still working on that comp plan to come through and then also getting that waiver to also come as well. And then, yeah, I did the parade on Saturday. That was pretty cool. Passed out a whole bunch of candy. I didn't get to do that last time, our last parade, but I was able to do that in this parade, and so it was great. Great turnout towards the end. Lots of people there, a lot of smiles, and everybody having fun, so it was great. Awesome.

Thank you. Anybody else not seeing any, we will move on to number five, items for discussion with opportunity for public comment. The public may comment on each topic scheduled for discussion up to two minutes per person with a total of eight minutes per item. If opposing sides wish to speak, then both sides receive an equal amount of time to speak or up to four minutes each side. First we have letter A, citizen satisfaction survey results presentation. And this is Ms. McQuaid, good evening.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Laurel McQuaid, Communications Program Lead, and I'm here with Samantha McCants, Management Analyst. And then online, we also have Ryan Young and Ron Gailey from On Point Insights. As you may know, we recently closed our first annual Citizen Satisfaction Survey, and so today we're here to dive into the details. Please stop us at any time. We're going to pass it over to Ron and Ryan in a minute, and if you guys have any questions, it'll probably be easier to talk about your question on that slide, what he's going through as well. So with that, Samantha's going to share why we chose On Point Insights and how we created the survey.

Thank you, Laurel. On Point Insights is a decision-making research and strategy firm that helps cities better understand their residents and make confident choices about the future. Communities have turned to On Point to guide general plans, shape parks and recreation strategies, evaluate new proposals such as community centers and libraries, understand housing needs, and routinely measure resident satisfaction. Founded by Ron Gailey after years of leading research for the executives at major banks, Coca-cola on point is known for clear unbiased research design Expert data collection and intuitive dashboards that help city leaders quickly see what matters most and where to focus next So this survey was built for Pasco and shaped by Pasco It was created to better understand the needs priorities and opportunities that make our community unique. I While previous surveys provided valuable benchmark data, council and staff wanted more direct feedback on the issues that mattered most to residents. The result was a customized survey designed to gather meaningful input that can help guide future planning, investments, and priorities. To maximize participation, the survey was bilingual, mobile friendly, and easy to complete. This survey was truly a citywide effort. Staff from every department came together to help shape the survey, bringing perspectives from employees who serve and interact with residents every day. Their experience helped ensure the questions reflected the priorities, opportunities, and concerns they hear directly from the community. The committee worked to ensure the survey addressed the topics most important to residents, community priorities, public infrastructure, transportation concerns, park recreation and quality of life, and future growth and development. Before the survey was released, staff and city council addressed, sorry, before the survey was released, staff and city council members tested both the English and Spanish versions to ensure the experience was clear, accessible, and easy to complete while providing meaningful insight to help future decisions. When the survey was ready, we rolled out a targeted marketing plan. I'll pass it back to Laurel.

Thank you. I'm going to dive into the methods we use to advertise the survey so that you can understand who you're hearing from. We designed a targeted and timed campaign aimed at residents in Spanish and English. We used a variety of key messages that you can see up there. We're hungry for feedback, it's okay if it's spicy, or I think Pasco, and a range of graphic styles to appeal to a wide range of different demographics. The campaign launched with a press release that resulted in five earned media stories. And then we timed the rollout of the campaign in order to effectively measure our audience of each advertising vehicle using our free methods first. For example, if we had seen a huge jump in survey respondents while running a paid ad in the final weeks, we would know that our free methods and paid ads reached completely different audiences. When we exhausted our free methods, we hadn't quite reached our survey target, and we wanted to reach more of the Spanish-speaking residents. So we actually extended the survey for three additional weeks and then purchased a three-week digital advertising campaign through Stevens Media Group for $1,000 for display ads targeting residents 18 and up in Spanish and in English. And then we also purchased a two-week, one-third page ad in Spanish newspaper La Voz on May 14th, digital only, and May 21st, printed and digital, for $12.60. We also boosted social ads for about $111 for an eight-day run. So how well did each of these methods work? In order to track our success and modify our strategies, we used a unique URL and QR code for each method of advertising. So Facebook had a different URL and code than our email did. These real-time analytics allowed us to understand what platforms worked best and when we'd exhausted our free methods. One way we measure advertising impact is through something called reach, which is basically how many people saw an ad. This number is often very large, but it doesn't convert directly to people taking the surveys themselves. So our most successful outreach method was our direct email, and I'm going to use that to explain how REACH is broken down. We sent over 16,000 emails directly to verified residents in Pasco. And then out of that, about 11,000 people opened the email and saw our request. And then from there, 859 people clicked on the link to actually take the survey. And out of that, 570 people actually successfully finished the survey. So how well did the other methods work? Our campaign resulted in a final survey count of 895 surveys taken. And after removing duplicates, non-residents, and invalid responses, we had a total of 831 valid completed surveys. On this slide, we've listed the methods that we used, the reach for each method, which you can see is a very large number, meaning we reached a really large audience, and then broke down the cost per survey, if there was a cost associated with that method. So this level of detail is super important, not only to understand who you are hearing from in the survey, but it also really helps us when we're working on future communications plans, because this level of data isn't always available for every marketing outreach that we do, and so seeing this level of data is really awesome for us. So now I'm actually gonna pass it over to Ryan online, and I think we might need some assistance with giving him access to share. Oh, perfect.

Thank you, Laura and Samantha. Can you see my screen?

Yeah, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

to reach the Hispanic population. And even though the numbers were speaking in the Spanish language was not extremely high, we were able to reach 60%, or 60% of the people .

And I think that shows the level of effort that the city has to go to reach all of your residents. And our demographics were relatively balanced. representative of the city of Pasco. We asked general measures of overall satisfaction with the city. The first one being how likely you are to refer a friend to PASCO, to live in PASCO, out of 0 to 10. And we group these, the 9 to 10s as strongly positive, the 7 and 8s as somewhat positive, 5 and 6 as somewhat negative, and 0 through 4 as strongly negative. And we arrive at what we call a refer a friend score by subtracting the negatives from the positives. And so the maximum you can get is 100% if everyone is a seven or above and the minimum you can get is a negative 100 if everyone is a six or below. And so 30 is a trending positive score and shows that many residents are quite satisfied with living in Pasco. Looking at change over the past few years, many people feel that Pasco has either improved or stayed the same and a minority feel that things have gotten a bit worse. When we push the people that say they've stayed the same to pick one side or the other, many of them break towards right direction and a smaller percentage will break towards wrong direction. Compared to other cities, most people feel you're about the same, but slightly more people feel that it's better than that it's worse, which is great to see. We asked or gave residents the opportunity to share comments about things they appreciate about PASCO. Many were generic appreciation about that they love the city. A lot of appreciation for police service and public safety being a good friendly community, parks, rivers, trails, nature, and many other things that people appreciate about Pasco. We also gave them the opportunity to share concerns and suggestions. There were concerns and discussions of suggestions they had for planning and zoning or traffic congestion. Also, proposal requests for shopping at retail and concerns about growth and loss of green space. As you have access to the dashboard, you can read through the individual comments and also get an idea of who is leaving these comments. Although they're all anonymous, you can know what district they're from and how old they are and things like that. Looking at benchmarks with other cities around the country, you can see that on refer friends score compared to others, you are slightly lower than the average. However, looking at improved over time, you're up a bit higher. And while there's clearly some room for growth, I think it shows an optimistic outlook in that The refer a friend score is very difficult to change and it takes a longer period of time, but knowing that the efforts that you are making are being noticed by residents and that they have seen improvements. Now the core part of the survey focused on 50 different attributes broken up into five categories. Facilities, recreation, development, growth, safety, security, leadership, and benefits to living in the city. and each resident saw the list in its category and chose the two that were most important to them and in facilities and recreation the largest number of residents selected city parks and open spaces as being most important and expanding riverfront access if they selected something as being important they were also given the opportunity to rate it um So if they selected youth and adult support leagues as one of their most important items, they would have the opportunity to rate if PASCO is doing a very good, good, okay, poor, or very poor job of providing that service or facilitating that aspect. This allows you to easily prioritize and not only look at maybe areas where people feel like, not only areas where people are dissatisfied, but also knowing how important that is to how many residents. So we can see that city parks and open spaces and expanding riverfront access are very important. However, it might be more important to focus efforts on riverfront access because there's greater dissatisfaction in that area. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at the things that are less important, but just that it helps you set clear priorities based on the needs of the community. Looking at development and growth, we can see that street and roads are very important to people and there is some room to improve, but also that reliable water and wastewater infrastructure is very, very important. And generally, people think you're doing very well on those issues. And then looking down, you can also decide and discuss about priorities based on both satisfaction levels and importance levels. Things like retail and dining as a national brand or local retail and dining supporting those things, as well as affordable housing options are important to people. In terms of safety and security, crime prevention initiatives and traffic calming safety options were the two most important to residents of Pascoe. And people are generally satisfied or at least think that we're doing okay or very good on crime prevention initiatives. Traffic calming and safety options show slightly greater dissatisfaction. There's a large amount of dissatisfaction with firework safety and enforcement among those who selected as being important, although the importance is lower in relation to the other ones that I pointed out. Looking at topics of city leadership and governance, The most important thing for residents was avoiding unnecessary tax increases, and some people feel that that's not going well, and about a third feel that we're doing an okay job. Managing city growth is the next most important priority that residents have for Pasco City leadership, along with planning strategically for the future and ensuring fiscal responsibility. Being responsive to residents and economic resiliency and prioritizing important issues was of secondary importance. Looking at city benefits, having a good cost of living is very important to Pasco residents, as well as clean and high quality water and quality schools. Residents are very satisfied with water quality and also the quality of schools and is a good place to raise children. Areas where they feel like there could be improvements is roads and good repair and good cost of living. Now, perhaps the most important page when thinking about all of these issues is this one, because after they selected two from each category, they were presented with the total list of 10, two from each of the five categories. And looking at that 10, we asked them to select the four that were most important. And this allows residents to provide their feedback of, and for you to see the priorities across these different categories. Avoiding unnecessary tax increases, maintaining a good cost of living, and crime prevention initiatives were the top three most important things for residents, followed by streets and roads and quality schools. This only shows the top 20, so there's 30 attributes below this that don't make the list. So really anything in the top 20 is a legitimate priority that the city can consider putting effort towards and can also balance the importance rating by levels of satisfaction on that topic. Any questions up to this point? Not seeing any, sir. Please proceed. Thank you. So I think it's important and helpful that we had a question specifically about tax use satisfaction and support for potential tax increases, whereas avoiding unnecessary tax increases was highly important to people. I think an important word to remember here is unnecessary. What was shown by the survey is that as we explain the challenges that PASCO faces with the cost of maintaining current city service levels, many residents are supportive of limited tax increases in order to maintain current taxes. If you combine the large tax, moderate tax increase, and small tax increase under the assumption that if someone would support a large tax increase, they would also support small tax increase, Then there is 60, sorry, 57% of residents that would support a small tax increase, which would be an additional $2.50 per month per $100,000 of assessed property value as outlined in the survey. In terms of tax use satisfaction, It was relatively split down the middle here, but slightly greater satisfaction than dissatisfaction, as we see 28% satisfied and 40% neutral. So I guess it's wrong to say it's an even split. It's less than a third of dissatisfaction and about over a third neutral and slightly above a third. We can also look at tax increase support by demographics, how long they've been in the city, by the area they live in, by age, and even by invitation type where they came in from the city. Some demographic groups will be too small to create any large conclusion. Like it seems that there's a Larger support point from Instagram, but that has to be buffered by the fact that there were only 14 responses from Instagram The survey also explored service priorities if the city had to cut or reduce some city services we asked residents what is most important to protect and most residents feel that water sewer irrigation and public safety services are the most important to protect and Looking at project importance, Road 68 traffic mitigation was clearly the most important large-scale investment that they feel the city should focus on funding. We also invited residents to share their thoughts on requested restaurants and retail brands, restaurants like In-N-Out Burger Chili's, Steakhouses and Cheesecake Factory, among others, were mentioned. Looking at retail brands, the most commonly mentioned with 49% was Trader Joe's, followed by Target and Costco, and a long tail of many other retail brands. We asked about event importance, which can provide details about how many residents feel a certain event is highly important. The 4th of July fireworks and parade were important to many people, as well as Veterans Day ceremonies. that none of the city events were particularly important to that . Finally, we explored how residents engage with the city. Many get information through the city website, Facebook, and doing city council meetings. This is helpful data for Laurel and Samantha and the communications department as they seek to connect with residents. Along with this, we looked at how many people had contacted with city staff and with which departments. Three quarters of the city that responded has had direct contact with staff members in various departments. And we allow them to rate the departments that they had contact with, as well as leaving specific comments. And the comments can be explored by selecting a department and viewing comments that were left for that The ratings were generally positive. Nothing stands out as highly negative. And the ones that are slightly more negative are extremely challenging departments like code enforcement and animal control that are often engaged in experiences that can be negative at times for residents. Overall, we asked for final comments as well, and people shared thoughts on taxes, traffic, government transparency, and much more. And all those comments can be accessed on the detail page. Samantha shared these statistics before, and that's included in the dashboard. And we hope that the dashboard will help the city as it makes decisions and explores ways that it can prioritize...

Ryan, would you mention a filter for one like the top 20?

Yeah. Yeah, so along every page, there are demographic filters. And you can search based on any of the demographic questions that people responded about. So for example, if you wanted to explore the priorities of females with children, mothers, we could do that and see that good cost of living in quality schools goes up. And also Great Place to Raise Children bumps into the top five. And so this is a good way to explore different things. You might also want to see the people that say the city's going in the wrong direction. What are their priorities? The sample will adjust and show you how many people are in that demographic category. And they are less satisfied. with many things and focused on tax increases and crime prevention. You can also look at people that feel the city is going in the right direction and how that changes. Still have similar priorities and different levels of satisfaction. But we leave that with you to explore and to go through the data and hopefully it helps you as you make difficult decisions and balance competing priorities. Thank you.

Thank you. This survey, the dashboard, is actually now on our website live. You're welcome to look at it. You don't need to log in. Any resident or anyone following along online is also welcome to look through it. It's actually really fun. So definitely spend some time with that. But now I'm going to pass it over to City Manager Stewart for next steps.

Yes, thank you for the presentation. I guess a few things here going forward. I encourage the council to go through and look at these. You can also, one of the filters is you can separate it by district. Those districts are in accordance with your districts that you represent, so you can go look at what the feedback is from your district specifically if you would like. I would encourage you to do that. The other thing I would encourage you to do is to contemplate who you want PASCO to be attracted to for the next 10 to 20 years, right? Is that a family in their midlife with a couple of kids at home, or are you wanting to become more attractive as a retirement community, and those kinds of things that you can go in and filter and then see how the priorities change through those filters. But think about, who you want to be the majority of the community in the next 10 or 15 years and then go look at those demographics and what are they showing as the priority going forward. I would like to schedule kind of a kickoff to the budget process here within the next couple of months. And one of the exercises I want to go through with you guys is to get your feedback of the survey with a few questions that I've asked some of the staff to begin preparing answers to some of these same questions from their perspective as well. So as you look through the survey data, what is it that you see that kind of surprises you that you didn't necessarily expect, right? Maybe there's things that you thought we were doing really well that we're not, or maybe there's things that you thought we weren't doing well that we are doing better according to survey data, or maybe there's just something that you hadn't even thought of that surprised you that it came out as a high priority. or a low priority. So think about that. What I've asked staff to do is to look at these, answer those same questions that I asked you, and then what goals are they making for their department going forward, and how will that be built, that we're gonna try to build into the budget as we're preparing the budget for the next two years, right? I want to hear council's priorities as well as you go through this exercise so I can make sure that the council priorities and what you're seeing aligns with what we're directing staff to do and prepare through the budget going forward. So yeah, the dashboard is available. It's live, including all the filters, all the comments. It's all there and it's raw format. And so feel free to look at that. I hope this is a powerful tool for us going forward as we talk through priorities and those kinds of things. Just for example, we'll talk about fireworks here a little bit later, but I was going through and looking at some of the data here the last couple days. The older you are and the longer you've been in the city of Pasco, the more the fireworks is an issue, right? The younger you become or the shorter the time period you've here, fireworks as a dissatisfaction really kind of drops off the top of the list. So there's some interesting nuances that you can look at through here, and I encourage you to do that. It's only as valuable a tool as we use it, and really looking forward to help this, help the council, the staff, and the citizens really create some synergy in really moving in the same direction on a bunch of these issues. With that take some time to play with it and to look at it if you have questions Staff and I are happy to help help you navigate it until you get comfortable with it But also prepare for those future conversations that are going to be having in the near future Thank you. Mr. Perales.

Yeah, I was gonna ask how much was how much was this?

I think was about 30,000 that we paid for so it was the expertise of conducting the survey as well as Providing the dashboard format that's available to the public. I

Yeah, I was gonna say that that's $30,000 worth spent, in my opinion, that's probably one of the best surveys I've seen us conduct, and I have probably the last six that we've done here in the city. Now it's a community service, a little different, but the analytics, the stuff, you can break it down, you get more granular. That was pretty cool. I've never, I don't know other cities around here do that. I haven't seen it, but yeah, I wish I knew it was live. I would have looked at it before I came to council because, yeah, a lot of interesting nuggets in there, a lot of things that I assumed were confirmed, a lot of things that were, I assume, wrong. So, yeah, very interesting presentation and a lot of good things to think about. Thank you.

Mr. Stewart? One item that I forgot as well, built in with the dashboard is an internal AI that you can go in and put questions, and it will comb through all the data for you and give you general findings from it as well. So it's pretty simple, pretty easy to use, and that's done intentionally, and we hope people use it.

Perfect. Anybody have anything else? Not seeing any. Thank you, ladies. This is an item for a chance for public comment. Would anybody like to speak on this issue for or against? On the customer satisfaction survey going once, going twice, not seeing any, thank you. We're gonna move on to letter B, essential public facilities, secure community transition facilities, and less restrictive alternative housing code update. And not seeing Mr. Mattson, is this Mr. Raymond or Mr. Drew? Good evening again, sir.

Good evening, Council. Give me just a moment here. I'm glad to be here. So now you know that there is a body attached to the head that you see on these Mondays. But that means I've got to make sure I've got all the technology right. So I think I am ready to go. And this is going to be your second touch of this ordinance. If you recall, back on July 1st, you all had a public hearing where we were able to show for the first time and get your feedback and get and get the feedback from the public. This will also be an opportunity to get feedback from this body as well as to get more public comment. I want to start off by saying that to commend you all for all your thoughtful comments. We've been working very hard over the last two weeks to try to kind of deal with each one of the concerns or ideas you brought up. I can tell you that some of the things that I have now seen and kind of worked with around the state that this city is taking and is considering things that a lot of other places are not doing. And so I want to tell you that because a lot of these things that we're doing here are going to be mix and matches unless legal issues and more policy decisions. And so with that kind of going into it, I want to start off first by going through some of the comments that Council Member Perales had put into place, which if you may recall, was about the different buffer levels. So when you first saw this ordinance, we had proposed or staff had proposed a 700-foot buffer from all risk potential activities and risk potential facilities. Council Member Perales asked, well, what if we put it up to 1,000 feet? So what we did go back through is say, okay, what does this look like at 800 feet, 900 feet, and 1,000 feet? And in your packets, oh, I don't think this is, it came in late. Give us one moment.

There we go.

This is from last, I'm sorry, this is from last time. But while we figure that out, this, it was put in our. Yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for, yeah. Okay, perfect, okay. Making sure I know where we're at. So this was the map that we presented to you last June. So this, excuse me, two weeks ago. So this is the map with 700 foot buffers. This is the map with 800-foot buffers. This is the map with 900-foot buffers. And this is the map with 1,000-foot buffers. And I will be honest with you, when I first looked at these maps, I didn't see not necessarily a major difference between them. The way I've been looking at it is the two circles up here, the two facilities up here, if we go back down on the filters, you can see that when we first present this, that there are there is a gap between these two. And so you can see, as we go up to 1,000 feet, that there is, that they do connect. That means two things. One, from a legal perspective, from a legal perspective, what that tells me is that the city could go up to 1,000 feet and this would be in compliance with state law. The reason for that is for all of the areas which are not being touched by the blue where these facilities could be cited. Again, we have to allow these facilities somewhere in the city. This is not something that is up to the discretion of this council. It is mandated by state law. And so we have to figure out where these can go and balancing that with public safety. So that is what these look like at 1,000 feet. Another question was asked, and I believe it was Councilmember Campos was, well, why can't we do a West Richland Day? West Richland, you may recall, had actually limited secure community transition facilities and least restrictive alternatives to their industrial zones. We had a really good conversation with the folks over at West Richland, they showed us their their codes, they showed us the commerce feedback, they actually didn't get any feedback from commerce, and so all they've done is that they have said these facilities have to go in the light industrial zones. That's it, they haven't added these buffers, they haven't done any of that. What staff did then is said is okay, what if we were to put these in the industrial zones of the city and that alone? This is what it looks like. I recognize, and I think we all on the staff recognize this might be a little bit hard to see, so I'll kind of explain this. So all the gray areas are your industrial zones. So everything here, here, here, and here is currently zone industrial, whether that's light industrial, medium industrial, or heavy industrial. Right now, this is showing a 600-foot buffer from all of the risk potential activities and facilities. But I would also make a point that everything here in the lighter color is not areas where these facilities could be zoned if you were to restrict them into the industrial zone. So even though they're not being touched by the blue, they would also be essentially areas where you could not have these facilities sited. The next one is, well, what if we push it out to 1,000 feet? If you look it out on the 1,000 feet, basically what we have done is started to push the buffers into the industrial zones. I had a really good conversation this morning with Mr. Raymond because I admittedly don't know this area very well. And my primary concern as your attorney is, again, ensuring that, in theory, one of these facilities can be sited. And can they be sited in this industrial zone based off of this map? Based on my preliminary conclusion, and I Please understand that we're going to continuously look at it. I also feel like this would be compliant with state law. Based off of both what's occurred with West Richland, knowing that state law has these kind of, allows for development regulations, they have the floor, and what appears to be areas of the city are still open to these facilities. And so, So one of the policy questions that you all have to answer and what staff is looking for, especially on the buffers and the industrial zone, is whether or not that is where you want to go. And again, you don't necessarily have to choose a 1,000-foot buffer industrial. You can go 900, 800. It's a policy choice, recognizing that when you fiddle with those numbers, there will come a period of time where they may need to be for a future council where they may have to be adjusted because if we restrict it too much today, even though it works for this map today, it may not work for a map in 50 years. Just something to consider. The next piece, and I believe Council Member Figueroa, you had asked, was adding public transit stops. Under this, school stops are on here. What is not on here are the public transit stops. And that comes down to a policy question too. It is my opinion that if you wanted to add risk potential activities or facilities, you can do that. But again, and the way I've been thinking of it is it's like a math equation. You're thinking about denominators and denominators on a fraction. When you change a buffer, I've been thinking of it as the numerator. It's a number you get to play with to see how these things change and how much restriction you can create. But when you start doing restrictions and zoning, when you're starting to add facilities, you're changing the denominator. And so I, at this moment, cannot guarantee you that if we were adding public transit facilities based off of, for example, this map, that this map would still make it work. I also, under state law, will know that individuals who are being released to a least restrictive alternative one of the things that the court who has to decide, well, can this person be released, and where can that person be released to, is their proximity to the ability to get treatment, that includes transportation to get court-ordered treatment, as well as connection with, or, how close emergency services are. Are they in an area where 911 calls take 10 minutes versus two minutes? And so we can play with that if that's really what council wants to explore. But for now, and in terms of what we presented with you today, we don't have a map that shows specifically the public transit points. The next point I want to talk about is extra security measures. Council Member Cotta, we had a good conversation about this. I would note if you look under the current EPF ordinance that is in your packets, there is at the very end a component called additional security measures that essentially says the hearing examiner could order additional security measures to protect, as they determined, is necessary to protect the community. That was the exact same language that we presented to you two weeks ago. We made a decision to not include that or going beyond that for a couple of reasons. One, state law already has certain security and monitoring requirements for these facilities. For example, they have to have commercial-grade security systems that have backup generators or systems. They have to have monitoring. The staff has to meet certain levels of training, has to have certain certifications. And so then the question that becomes for these things is how much does the city want to be the enforcement of these mechanisms or of these issues versus having the state do it? And fundamentally that will again become down to a policy decision. If we want to write something in the code, for example, that we want to have a certain type of security system, a certain commercial grade security system, understand that there will be somebody on the staff, whether it be on the permitting side or on the code enforcement side, who's gonna have to go and check that. And so that's gonna be another kind of set of policy decisions that the council's gonna have to take. But part of the reason why we like, or why I recommend the language we have now is that it gives flexibility to the staff and to the hearings area to go, There is, because of the population or because of what we're dealing with, we need to have more than what is put out here. We need to have more security measures. Here are the things I'm gonna ask you to do. I'm gonna make sure that you have a fence that is 100 feet tall, whatever that may be. And then finally, we did add, and I believe Deputy Mayor Milne, we had this conversation, added a provision about requiring a community safety plan that would be proposed by the applicant would be part of the conversation would include both the fire chief and the chief of police. We would want to make sure our subject matter experts on community safety were in the room and that the hearing examiner would have to approve whatever plan. And when I say community safety, we're talking about having a safety plan for emergencies that happen at at the facility. What happens if someone leaves the facility who's not authorized? Everything that we think about as the nightmare scenarios whenever we have a facility here and that the applicant is gonna have to propose a plan. So that is where we're at now with this ordinance. We currently have this scheduled, I believe, for July 6th. I think for formal adoption right now, that's not, obviously, if council wants to continue this conversation, we can push that date out. The one other thing to consider when doing that is that we're still operating under the moratorium that you passed earlier this year. We have a tight window of getting a set of development regulations in before that moratorium expires. We can extend the moratorium, That's just an extra step to the process. So if council is determined on getting this in, getting this done before the moratorium has expired, it's going to be important to then try to continue to kind of push this information or this work as fast as we can. And with that, I'll stop talking and I look forward to your questions. Thank you, Mr. Palm.

Any questions for our... City Attorney, Mr. Perales.

I'll go ahead and start off. Yeah, no, I appreciate your comments and the presentation. I would be in favor of doing that industrial 1,000-foot buffer and just siting them in that zone. You talked to the extra security measures. I think what you talked about is appropriate. Leave that up to Heron's examiner. I think other than that, I think, for me, we have a clear path to an ordinance that has some teeth on it, so I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Council Member Kempos. Yeah, no, I think what we got right now is pretty good. My only question is, do we have anything about some outreach, making some modifications before they make that final adoption hearing? Yeah. maybe some things like that, but like a GIS impact analysis and provide this map and really just get the outreach going. Is that part of the process? Are we going to make that part of the process?

I'm looking towards the city manager. I believe we also have to have the planning commission also review this as well, but I defer to Mr. Stewart.

Mr. Mayor, members of council, we can include any of those aspects that you would like in there. Although that being said, it would be held for input sessions with very little participation. But if the council would like, staff is more than happy to do that. We can definitely push this out on our social media and our website and those kinds of things. But we can move forward with whatever process the council deems necessary.

No, I appreciate that, and I do like the fact that, you know, the hearing examiner can add some of the safety stuff. I would kind of be interested in giving the hearing examiner some of our ideas of maybe some of the stuff that we would like to see. That way he has a kind of a toolbox of some things that he could pull in or she could pull in from adding to that. But other than that, yeah, I agree with Parowza that the industrial 1,000-foot buffer is good for me.

Thank you, Mr. Cotter. Yeah, sounds like the industrial 1,000-foot buffer, that's kind of slam dunk. It sounds like that's going to be pretty workable, less so being near transit stations. I understand the logic there. Added security measures, looks like we can do that, but it's going to be the city that enforces that. And the last thing... You were talking about working with law enforcement, and is that regard to making a plan on what the consequences are if somebody breaks these laws or ordinances?

That is correct. So it would be a condition of being able to even build this thing, that they have a plan in place, and there should be consequences involved if the plan is not followed.

Okay, and so we would want to make those some pretty steep consequences.

Right, and I think that can be handled on a plan-by-plan basis, because essentially they would be agreements between the permit applicant and the city, and that would be the enforcement mechanism against anybody who wasn't following what the plan is.

Now what about if somebody's following all of these ordinances and procedures that we create and then something tragic does happen? Is the owner of the home responsible for it? Is there any liability on the person establishing the LRA housing?

I can better answer the question of how much liability the city falls with that. I only say that and I apologize for the pun. It depends, which is such a lawyer response, and I do apologize for that. I believe there would be some liability involved. I would also point out that from if something was to happen and all the regulations are fighting all the code code was provide the city has some fairly strong defenses against any sort of liability. that somebody would try to say, oh, well, city, this wouldn't have happened if this wasn't here, that there's some pretty strong defenses to protect the city from that situation.

I think we'd want to be vocal about those consequences. Anything that we could do to hold someone bringing in those houses liable, we'd want to let them know we absolutely plan on holding you liable if something goes wrong.

Okay.

Before going to you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, Mr. Stewart, did you have something to add?

I wanted to follow up on the question with regards to penalties, and I guess this is something we need to talk about with the city attorney, but I don't really want to be in the position of negotiating penalties. I think it would need to be tied to measurable elements that the council would have to probably approve a fee schedule or something for. If one of these individuals was to get out, and it took us three hours to find the individual and locate them back, and we used so many officers and patrol cars, there would be fees established per hour, per officer, per vehicle, versus coming and negotiating with one. You know, they get out, we're going to charge you $1,000. The next one negotiates $500. I don't know that that's real enforceable, but I think if we tie it to a fee schedule and resources used, that would be more defensible, but again, something we would need to talk about with the attorney's office.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor Pro Tem.

Oh, yeah. Again, I appreciate the presentation. I'm also for the industrial with the 1,000-foot buffer, just so for clarification where I stand as well. And, yeah, I'm all for pushing it forward. I know you said we had a tight window to get this done. So I know I'll be running the meeting, I think, on July 6th? Yeah, we actually will probably be back by then. Oh, okay. I'm saying I'm willing to put this on the agenda or whatever, but I think we can move forward on this.

Thank you. I'll just add a comment or two here real quick. It's really important for the public to know, and Mr. Palum kind of brought this out in the beginning, that This is the city trying to oppose at every possible level the state legislature with the signature of the governor putting sexual violent predators into our community by the Growth Management Act and the Department of Corrections. We do not want them here whatsoever. We don't want them in our neighborhoods. We don't want them near our schools. Again, you think about that phrase, SVP. It's not senior vice president. This is sexually violent predators. Think about each one of those three words. Sexual. Obviously, they've committed some kind of sex crime. And it's violence. They've done it with violence. And these are predators. They are preying. They're predatory creatures preying on vulnerable people. We do not want them there, here, but the state legislature with the signature of the governor is forcing them on our community and this is our effort to make it as painstakingly as possible for them to be cited here. But as our city attorney said, we can't completely stop it because there's a state constitution, we have a charter, and really everything we do is on loan, so to speak, from the state government. And we have to abide by the parameters that they set for us. And this is one of those very frustrating situations. So I want the public to know we are doing everything we can to not only keep them out of Pasco, but to make it as difficult as possible for them to come for the safety of our community and especially the most vulnerable. Thank you. With that, Mr. Palm, I think you're off the hook. We are going to open it up to the chamber, though. Community, this is your chance to speak on this issue. A couple comments for and a couple comments against, or we could do four in favor. Step right on up, please. Great to have one of our Kennewick City Council members come on over. Oh, press the button down there.

Bring the red light on. There you are, sir. Thank you for the record. My name is Brad Klippert. I reside in the city of Kennewick. My provisional statement is that I come here tonight before you speaking for myself. Myself only. I represent no one else, and I've not been asked to represent anyone else. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for your comments. You and I are so close, and I'll tell you where we missed just a little bit. So in my 14 years in the legislature, one thing I learned is there's three levels. Those who are most likely to re-offend, those who are less likely to re-offend, and those who are least likely to re-offend. There is not a category for those who are never likely to re-offend. And I keep hearing in briefings, well, we can't do this. We can't do that. I remind everyone here tonight that both the Washington state constitution and the US constitution say that the US constitution is the supreme law of the land. So, if the governor and the majority party in the state legislature says you must do something, but it is unconstitutional, I think it is not only our right, but our duty to stand up against anything that is unconstitutional. Say, for instance, a football coach was told you cannot pray after a football game in the middle of the football field. Well, he was willing to challenge that all the way to the Supreme Court, and guess what? He can pray after a football game in the middle of a football field because he was willing to challenge it by the Constitution. I for one am willing to challenge it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for the interest of number one priority of keeping our citizens safe in the Tri-Cities. The citizens of Kennewick, the Kennewick City Council have taken a strong stand on this issue. I hope we can partner together to protect the citizens of the Tri-Cities and to not be afraid to challenge unconstitutional garbage that comes this direction from Olympia. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Klippert. Anybody else want to speak on this issue? Thank you. Just your name and city or county of residence, please, for the record.

Jeanette Romero, I'm from Kennewick. I'm president of Save Our Children Tri-Cities. So there's so much to cover on this topic and so much misinformation that's going around. So one of the things that I want to touch on is it is very important for the city to distinguish between an SCTF and an LRA. So SCTFs are operated facilities with significantly more security and oversight than LRA homes. They are in a sense mini gels and are very unlikely to ever coming to our community because of the cost to the state. They also already have citing and notification requirements imposed by the state. It is the community-based LRAs that need to be focused on as they are not secure, they have no justification, and no formal citing requirements. So the state actually tried for about five years to implement a third SCTF in Snohomish and they had a $6 million budget solely for planning with zero success. They just put that project on hold this month. So they are very different models and they should not be viewed the same way. To answer your question on liability, the owners do not hold liability, DOC does not hold liability, and neither does DSHS. We asked that question at town hall and we could not get a clear answer. After researching, we saw that the AG, they do an NDA and they pay for the damages. So our children are taking on the risk. Our families are taking on the risk. Through public records, we have reviewed thousands of pages of documents related to these placements. We just learned that we were going to get three of the highest level SE pleas placed in our Kennewick neighborhood. We were this close like overnight for them to get approved and we didn't get any notice. We still thought we had time till August to continue fighting this. It's very important, again, to distinguish the two differences. LRAs need to be focused on, and those have no requirements. DOC comes out, does a citing requirement, and then tells the judge, depending on the person that they're citing there, what they require. Other than that, there are no security measures, no security cameras, none of that is required. So I just want you guys to know that there are zero requirements. The only requirements is what the DOC correction officer puts in his report for the judge to know. So it's really up to the DOC guy who comes out. Thank you. Thank you.

Sorry. No, really appreciate your comments and all your important work on this issue. Thank you. I have to be fair.

Yeah, Gabby has my contact information. Perfect.

Thank you so much. No, really appreciate your advocacy on this. We still have opportunity for two people to comment that would be for these, I guess. I can't imagine so, but I have to open it up if anybody would want to speak in favor of these coming to the community or speak to them in some kind of positive sense. Not seeing any, we will take two more comments if anybody wants to speak out against them before moving on. Does anybody want to speak out against? Thank you.

Good evening, my name's Rick Weiss. I'm a Pasco resident and I'd just like to express my concern that I do not want these facilities here. But if they must, the industrial area is about the best.

Thank you, Mr. Ruiz. Appreciate that. Anybody else? Room for one more comment on this? Going once, going twice, not seeing any more. So, Mr. Stewart, do you have enough direction from us for any follow-up questions or

believe so I think council is supportive of the 1,000 foot buffer and the industrial zone combination going forward and then also requiring the community plan that was recommended what did I miss anything from that anybody have anything else down I just have yeah of course mr. free girl

to be intentional in the geography of if and when they have to be put in place. I do want to advocate, I wouldn't want to see them anywhere in the region of East Pasco. I know there's like a light industrial zone there, but also just talking about being a person who was raised in that section of town, a lot of the folks don't even show up here because they've been forgotten for so long that they feel like they don't have a voice. And for us to kind of be okay with, oh yeah, that's an industrial zone that should go there, I don't think that's fine. And so I want to make sure that I put it on the record that I want to advocate for the residents of that side of the city that they're also seeing and they're important. Those kids are also important. And so if we are going to be okay with the industrial part, it'd be more geographical. Geography region, it'd be in the northern part of the highway with that 395 industrial part because we have to make sure that we're looking out for all of our residents.

Thank you. Is that something, Mr. Palm, we're able to distinguish in the code?

I need to talk to staff on that one, Mr. Mayor, and I will provide an answer back to council.

Yeah, and I appreciate Mr. Figueroa's comments because I think that's the intention of council is not so much East Pasco, but to put them where there are no other homes in the industrial area. So I think he has done a good job of really capturing what our hope would be. Mr. Cotta.

And are there added security members we can place on this agenda item? Or at least the flexibility to add those?

Yes. And maybe this will also kind of go to Councilmember Campbell's points. If this council is interested in saying we want the hearing examiner to consider these things, the security measures, it needs to be codified. Because the hearing examiner can only consider what the code says. And so if you want us to add more detail, and add certain security measures, it would be on us to then put that into the draft itself.

What would be the best method of determining what some really good security measures would be that we could do?

Well, and again, part of your issue is some of this is going to be site-specific. A 100-foot fence on one site makes more sense than... will make more sense than no offense, but in another completely cited, it might be the exact opposite. I can go off of what the state has on the SCTF side, and to that point, one of the things that we desperately try to do with this ordinance is acknowledging that SCTFs are much more regulated than community-based LRAs, is to force the community-based LRAs to have SCTF level in terms of security monitoring and escorting because we Recognizing that they're treated differently. We want to treat them the same and say you will have to adhere to all of these things You know, we can use what the state has as the guiding post post as a starting point But you know and this is part of the reason why you know We have recommended the additional measures could be more vague is permitting the hearing examiner in the moment and the staff in the moment to go on this subject, on this application, these specific security measures are gonna make sense because of ABC. So you're not necessarily having to treat everything the same, you have some level of flexibility. But there's certain things that we wanna make sure that regardless of this happens, that this is added and that means the 100 foot fence, we can certainly include that into the next draft.

Okay. And then is there anything we have to do to prepare an ordinance for those that would violate the criterion? In terms of? We're talking about working with law enforcement to make concrete laws that, you know, penalties.

And again, I'll work with Mr. Stewart on this. It could be a fee schedule, so it could be a resolution. It could be codified, so it could be put in an ordinance. I think I think we can go back with staff and figure out what's going to make the most sense based off of the structure, you know, your enforcement mechanism you already have on the books.

Great. I just want to make sure there are proposals for these components. It's not just your 1,000-foot industrial area.

Thank you. Thank you. Before we go to you, Mr. Hernandez, I just want to clarify one more comment from Mr. Figueroa. You said the 395. Did you mean north of the 182 is really what? Yeah, Mr. Baum, if you'd make a note of that. Yeah, what we're really meaning is north of the 182. And ideally, that would be east of the 395. East of the 395, north of the 182 is, yeah, just to clarify his comments there. Yep. No, you're totally good. Thank you. Mr. Hernandez.

So we're... We're going on this industrial 1,000 feet. However, like the former speakers, the lady that spoke, the state is not going to have the money to be building these things as industrial homes. So if there's no homes in the industrial area, and if it's state mandated, won't they say you need to put them somewhere else?

Well, first they have to have a, either they or a provider has to have an application and have a desire to build one of these things. And so the state cannot come in and say, see this parcel over here? You're going to put a home that will one day be used as an LRA or an SCTF. They have to go through their own set of permitting processes. They have notice requirements and whatnot for when they do an SCTF, whether they run it themselves or they contract it out. And then A community-based LRA is going to be treated like every other permit applicant. Sure, you can, you know, the zone will allow this specific use, but you're going to have to follow, you know, you have to give us the right permit application. This, if you may recall, this process is not done as an administrative process. permit use, it's a conditional use. So that means you're going to have to go through a public hearing. That involves public notice. That involves allowing the community to comment. That also includes, because that's included in your code, informing everybody within, I think it's like 500 feet, hey, this project is going up. We're having a public hearing on this. You have a voice in this process. So in order for these things, you know, All the city is doing here is saying, all right, if you want to do these things, here are all the requirements you have to do, that you have to follow to permit this facility. And then here are the rules about maintaining this facility. That's your community safety plan. That's your enforcement mechanism, your code enforcement. But there's no mechanism for the state or for somebody to just simply say, well, you have to mandate that this goes here. We're going to make you put it here. Does that answer your question, council member?

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Kata. Just thank you. Thanks for answering our questions and working hard on this. Perfect.

Okay. You good, Mr. Stewart? Cool. Not seeing anything else, we will move on. Letter C, process water reuse facility customer rates annual review. And Director Serra? Good evening, ma'am.

Good evening, mayor and council members. While the presentation is being pulled up, thank you. As you remember, we have discussed the status of our PWRF rate in April, late April of this year, and this is a follow-up to that discussion. Many of the first slides in this slide deck will be familiar, so I will move quickly because it's late at night. Okay, so as you know, rate setting for the expanded facility took place in late 2024 and became effective in early 2025. The $27 million of needed revenue estimated was a significant increase from prior operation cost. And you're seeing the range of cost that different customers pay. We are currently operating at a deficit in this facility. And as you know, this is a utility like all of our other water and sewer utilities where they're governed under an enterprise fund, which means that they're self-sustaining. And we evaluate rates and set rates on a regular basis. In the case of PWRF, per code, we're required to look at the rate annually. So to that purpose, at the beginning of this year, we created a stakeholder work group with our customers, which are industrial processors that discharge their wastewater to our system. And in those meetings, we've discussed potential rate setting scenarios, the financial projections for the utility, operational improvements, and maybe some cost drivers that could help us curb the spending in that facility. And of course, the major tension identified was the difference between being sustainable for the utility and sustainable for those paying those rates. So the stated position of our stakeholders, specifically our customer rate payers, was that rates should not increase. Actually, there was an expectation that rates could be decreased, that any dollars available from the federal tax credit that was received by the city by the implementation of RNG generation technologies would be applied to alleviate pressure on those rates, that there would be changes to the contractual arrangements that exist between the city and the third party that provides treatment. And so we have continued working, trying to identify a path forward for both rate setting and potential improvement to either the contract or the cost drivers, as I mentioned, expenditure, try to find efficiencies to where the cost decreases. But these are two tracks, right? We're doing both things, talking about rates and also talking about operational improvements. So as I mentioned, and out of these tables, really, it does not look like it printed in this format adequately. It's okay. The key point in this slide is really to identify 2025 ended at a deficit and 2026 is projected to have a deficit that is a little bit higher than the prior year. So this is the most important part of our discussion today. The options for rate setting for this utility can be bracketed. We're trying to find the bookends to what can be done. The first alternative is to adjust rate to cover all shortfalls. That is an option It's common in most utilities. It's very burdensome in this one, given that it's a small number of customers. And that means there is no subsidy. That is option A. Option B is on the other extreme, which is we freeze rates. do not provide any increase to those rates to our customers and the deficit in revenue coming from those customers to support the operation of that utility is subsidized via the utilization of all the tax credit and all the interest. And I will run you through some of those scenarios, what that looks like year after year. Now, in between those two bookends, I'm calling them, there are plenty of different options. And so we have prepared two for your consideration, but we're happy to prepare others. We've looked at so many alternatives. So alternative C could be to apply the interest that that tax credit is generating as a means to alleviate pressure on those rates that still require a rate increase but it's lower because that those 66 million dollars continue to generate interest and that interest can be applied against the overall revenue needs of that utility and that preserves that tax credit as a risk pool which was originally envisioned now alternative d is a proposed adjustment to rates that is gradual. And that means somewhere in the order of 5% to 7% increase annually. And that carries a small increase to rates annually for the ratepayers, does not present a sudden increase at the end of a certain period of time. And it also allows for a longer support provided by those dollars that exist today in that risk pool from the tax credit. So as I mentioned before, the discussion on rate setting is not the alternative to working on operational improvements. There are two paths, and they're both happening. But the rate discussion must occur so that staff has direction from the council on which path we want to move with. And if there is a desire to implement a rate adjustment, that there is time to do so before the end of 2026. So those adjusted rates can be in place in 2027. And that is with the understanding that we are at deficit today, or we ended 2025 at a deficit, and the deficit continues throughout this year. and is expected to continue. So a summary, I have both as you can see, a summary for each of the alternatives and then a graph. So I'll walk you through those and these are the exact same A, B, C and D alternatives that we talked about. So alternative A is no subsidy and so that requires a catch up with the shortfalls that the utility has already experienced. So the proposal is to have an increase in 2027 of 25%, 2028, 20%, 2029, 2%. And I'll highlight that in this scenario where there is no subsidy, all the tax credit proceeds remain as risk pool. The interest that is being generated is accumulated in that risk pool. 2034 total federal tax balance would be the 66 plus the interest that has accumulated compounding interest, right? And then the total collected rates in those 90 years is 338 million. There are some assumptions on how we did this calculation. It's just the assumptions are consistent across all the scenarios. So what that looks like is green is what is being paid by rates in the dark bars, and then blue is what the shortfall is and how the orange line that is your revenue is how it's trying to catch up to backfill what is deficient, you know, towards the past and on to the future until those, the orange line and the green bars start aligning. Alternative B is the other extreme, is the freeze of rates. And that means that no increase in rates is proposed until the year 2034 when the tax credit and its interest runs out. And so this scenario assumes that all $66 million are used as part of subsidies. to maintain those rates with zero increase as inflation and other costs increase. The total interest use is the $12.6 million, which is considerate of starting with $66 million, and that proceeds decrease as time goes by, as you're spending that money and no longer can have interest accrued in it. At the end of this period, $0 left in the tax balance, and the total rates collected is $246 million. So you can see between this scenario and the previous one, $338 to $246. That is how much is being subsidized. Okay. So these two were the two ends, and what you're seeing here is, again, green bars are flat at the same level until you run out of money, in which case you're going to coming up to the reality that costs have been increasing, and you have to adjust at that 44%, which is a big cliff for processors to absorb in a one-year change in rates. What you're seeing in red is the tax credit being used. Those are the red bars, and then the pink bars, small bars, pieces is the interest, and you can see the interest diminishing as you have less principal available to collect interest on. Okay. Alternative C, now we're in those ones that fall within, kind of like in between the other two, is the one where only the interest generated by the tax credit is used as subsidy. So that allows for approximately $2.4 million to be injected against the cost of the facility via the interest generated. And this requires adjustment of rates. Again, 2026 this year is not being accounted for changes. So 2027 would be the first year with adjustments. The proposal is 15%, 2028, 15%, and then 2029, 8%. In this case, you're not using your proceeds from the tax credit, but you are utilizing all the interest that has been generated. Since you're keeping your principal fixed at 66, you can see you're generating a little bit more interest than in other scenarios that we saw before. The federal tax balance is those 66 million that, as we said, we're not spending on. to a subsidy and in those nine years that are shown, your rates collected are $315 million. So you're seeing how all the pieces kind of play together and they're all within those two bookends we have presented. And so that looks like this, where there is a shortfall for several years and you can see the rates increase to try to catch up and absorb some of that blue color that is the shortfall. So you have a revenue need in orange that is not met in the first several years and then you're kind of catching up as years go by. That means that the utility will have a negative balance for a while and that's being floated. Effectively, the series is holding that negative balance with the reserve until the money is brought back in. And again, you are utilizing interest to offset increases. Okay. So that's alternative C. So now we move on to D, which is the gradual increase. And really this scenario comes in a lot of ways in response to negative reaction to freezing rates and having a jump, right? At year nine, you're having a jump of 44%. So this is a way to not have that jump. So in this case, the proposal is to have a moderate increase gradual of 5% in most years. It's a couple of years, so 6%. And this could be all further refined once we have a clearer direction on which of the array of options you would like to pursue. So we will get down into the details and nail down those percentages. But the concept is a gradual increase in slow numbers, inflationary numbers, so to speak, And in this case you would use all your interest that you're able to generate and then backfill with whatever federal tax proceeds are needed in order to keep your increases at that steady rate. This is kind of like the opposite of what we did in all the other scenarios where we said how much are we subsidizing and then we calculate how much the rate changes. In this scenario we calculated for a steady increase of rates that is standardized over those nine years, how much do you need to withdraw from your both interest and tax credit? So in this case, you end up with a total use of tax credit of $23 million in this period of time. The interest use is $16 million, which is all you're generating as you are diminishing your interest, your principal, sorry, you end up with a federal tax credit balance of $43 million, that's 66 minus the 23, and your total rates collected, so that's what's paid by the customers, is 290 million.

So that looks like this, where

You have a bigger shortfall now because you're sitting at a shortfall today in rates. So you're backfilling with all the interest you're generating in that tax credit plus some of the principal. And then as you can see, of course, your pink lines are a little bit smaller in the future as you have used some of that interest generating proceeds. And eventually rates and... and revenue requirement kind of match up towards the end of this period. Okay, these are not all the options that exist, but these are four relatively different options to just gauge your interest in either of these paths for next steps.

Thank you, Director Serra. I'd like to do this one maybe a little bit different. Do we have any of our customers online? I see some of them here. Are any of them online or just here in the chamber?

Let us check. There was somebody enrolled to participate online. Okay, no, there's nobody online.

How many do we have in the audience that are representatives of the rate payers out there? I see at least a couple of them. Two, was that three? Perfect, if you guys want, why don't you guys come up, because I think, I've been a part of the work group who has met online with you guys, but I think really just bringing you guys up more as presenters on this issue than is even just kind of public comment time. If you guys want to come up one at a time, we'll just maybe give you guys three minutes each to really just, I think Director Serra did a pretty good job of generalizing some of your main kind of points of interest here. But I'm sure you have some more details you'd love to bring out. So if you guys want to come up and talk, this would be the appropriate time to do it.

I don't have anything planned to say.

Okay, anybody?

I'm just taking notes for our director.

Okay, perfect. So with that, okay, no problem at all. Just want to make sure you guys had an opportunity. Questions, comments from council for Director Serra?

Mr. Campos. No, I appreciate the presentation, I think, and I really appreciate the annual review. I mean, really the heart of the intent is to make sure that revenue is sufficient for the operations. I know that we don't really want to discuss so much into it. We're in the situation. It is what it is. And I think just looking at the different options that we have, I think the alternative D is probably the most balanced approach. and practical out of all the four. And so I would be in favor of that. I think when they say balance, I think it just balances our financial stability and also our rate stability. And so I think that's probably the one that is probably the best in my opinion.

Thank you, Council Member Cutler.

Yeah, I'd also be in favor of option D. It would be good to have more feedback from the rate payers, but that seems to be a plan that does benefit the city and makes things at least slowly increasing to compensate for the gap that we're trying to assess. So I also like option D.

Thank you. Appreciate that. And I guess I'll just make some comments just from my time on the, give me just a second, pardon me just a second, Mr. Figueroa. My time on the work group and some of the comments I heard is, you know, some of these increases are pretty significant. And I know, you know, just as the city is seeing increases and, you know, whether cost of goods or wages, you know, they are also seeing lots of pressures out on the farm with fertilizer and so many other costs going up and so this is one more cost that is you know just really significant really hurtful to to many of them from what they've said and You know, it causes them to really, you know, just kind of reassess where they are at as a business. Some of these businesses, they are our neighbors. I mean, these are outsiders. They are part of our community. They have invested in our community. One of the families of one of these companies just lives a few doors down from me. I know them. I see the family go by and everything. So they are not just, you know, customers. They are... community members they you know they go to our schools they invest and so this is um these are really big decisions and um so some of these increases are very significant to their bottom line and i think i'd be remiss by not um speaking out on their behalf in that way mr figueroa yeah i think it goes back to i think what we have information is that

none of the rate scenarios have been deemed acceptable by the processors in a sense of they're an increase and we look at percentages, but I'm assuming those are a lot in quantity, right? Talking about millions of dollars here of increase per percentage point. But when we look at the information here, I don't see any of them that are feasible except that last one. Alternative D, I mean, I look at Alternative A, 25% increase, 2027. I mean, when you look at that, we're holding it all the way to 2034 and have an increase of 44%. Like, those numbers, you know, that wouldn't make sense to just an individual resident. You know, why are we putting this on our... uh, processor partners here that we have. Um, I think that that's more palatable, you know, the 5%, but even then, I mean, we're talking about a lot of money here. So, um, I think the other part is also kind of acknowledging some of the things on behalf of the city. Yeah, we, we made a decision. I mean, and I say we, I wasn't part of that, right? Uh, But it's something new that the city is trying, and sure, we have to be okay with some of those reactions that come. And we learn and we grow, but acknowledging that part to the conversation as we help the city entity. So as long as we continue working with our stakeholders here and ensuring that both everybody, we're trying to find a holistic answer, right, or a solution that works for everybody here. And the way that I see it, Alternative D is kind of that way in there. So that would be my thoughts.

Thank you, appreciate that. And also, I know that... Oh, what was I going to say now? Lost my train of thought. Definitely off my balance today, but yeah, this is really impactful, but yet at the same time, we have a legal obligation to balance the utilities budget. I mean, we just can't run it in the red, so this is one of these very, very difficult... decisions that we have to make about this. And Chris, the president of Burnham, he actually did outline because a lot of this comes down to if we were to go back a few graphs that the city's cost actually goes down year by year on just their efficiency and their process changes but you know Burnham's hasn't and so I know there's been some pressure on them and I know Chris is really you know he's committed he really wants to make this work and everything at the same time but it's Yeah, where we're at right now, I mean, the renewable natural gas, what we call the RNG credits, have not come back as we originally had planned. And, you know, in a sense, the way it's set up, they're kind of incentivized to send us less. And that has not helped, too, because the less they send us, the less renewable natural gas we can create. And so those credits go down. And so, yeah, this has really been tough. And to your comment there, Mr. Figueroa, this is kind of a first of the kind or one of the very first credits prototypes of something like this. I know there's some frustration amongst the processors because they really don't want to be entangled in all that. They just want to kind of get rid of their waste water and everything like that. And I understand that and hear that. But at the same time, this is our facility and I know we deal with the Department of Ecology and if it's not just here, anywhere else in the state there's going to be some of those same standards. And then even federally in other states, I know the Environmental Protection Act and other things will come into play too. So definitely a difficult decision. We have to balance the budget, the utility. And so yes, for that reason, I would also be for D just for a path forward. Any other questions or comments from council?

Would it be appropriate if we did say something? I'm just talking to Brandon.

You know, yes, you can. As a matter of fact, because we're going to open it up for public comments here. So, yeah, I just want to give you guys a little extra opportunity as presenters. But, yes, we will open it up for public comment now. You lost a minute, though. Now it's two minutes apiece. Oh, back on there. You turned it off. Oh. Thank you. Here we go.

All right. Yeah, thank you. Brandon Moss at Oregon Potato Company, Pasco, Washington. I just want to make a comment that the rate proposal is one thing, but part of our concerns are unresolved questions we have that refer back to 2024 when all the The WTAs were being negotiated, the ordinance was being drafted, industry had concerns on the process model to design the system, a lack of performance guarantees when the system was commissioned and started up, and then questions just on the rate model and proving that the system was adequate or necessary for our industry. Totally understand, well, staff has been great to work with and understand the need for industry to cover our level of service. But that being said, we get a little sensitive when comments like it's a new facility and it is what it is, we have to figure it out, we have to cover the cost. That just doesn't really feel fair for industry to accept a rate model in advance of like validating some of our concerns that were presented in 2024. So I just wanted to make that comment. And again, appreciate Maria and Michael and all the city staff that have been helping and your participation and City Administrator Harold recently in our work group. So thank you.

No, thank you, Mr. Motz. I appreciate it.

Yeah, I kind of want to echo what Brandon said. Appreciate the recent efforts.

Just name and maybe even the...

Sorry, Rob Wiskirchen, Senior Director of Operations, Research Fine Foods. Thank you. I've been, just a little history, I've been with research here in Bosco for 20 years, so I've seen a lot of change. And I appreciate that we had a worn out facility that we basically ran it into the ground and needed to be upgraded, so... Now we've got a state-of-the-art, I won't say one-of-a-kind, but nearly one-of-a-kind facility that isn't meeting expectations. I think part of what Director Serra's presentation shows kind of recent couple years, right, and what we're going to do into the future. What we're missing is what we were paying. So I'll use an example. In rough dollars for our facility, A couple of years ago, we were in that $700,000 a year annually. Now we're 2.2 and going up. So some of the processors took a more serious increase than we did. They're four or five times higher. So while those percentages, 5% looks reasonable, we've already took the chunk, right, the huge chunk that were already there. So when processors talk about can they sustain their operations, they're serious about it. So what we can't do is lose a processor. If we do that, then the share of the pie becomes even more burdensome to the rest of the processors. And at some point it could be, if somebody said, okay, you have to pay the $27 million annually because you're the last processor. Guess what? You're going to move. So I think we're not there yet, but we've got to be very cautious about where we're headed to in the future. And I think Burnham is, I think they're working hard at it. I don't distrust that they're not going to try to improve. But the rate increases, for those of you who have been in our sessions have heard it, It's hard to tolerate.

Thank you. Appreciate those. Anybody else? That's two. We have room for two more. according to our council rules. Okay, Council Member Perales.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, no, I kind of wanted a way to see if any processors were going to speak, and then kind of hear the council's comments. I think it's obvious, I'm pardoning me that way, on some of this stuff. I just still can't grasp having the processors pay to backfill this issue, I think one thing from the presentation that I didn't hear was how are we gonna bring in new revenue? You know, we're talking about raising in the rates and talking about burn-in efficiency, but I mean, what are we doing about bringing in additional waste streams? And that's what I wanna see, like, we're thinking outside the box, there are other ways to bring in that so we can generate that revenue. I think that's what we should be doing. I like the idea of using the federal tax reserves. I would be in favor of just using the interest and the $66 million and not putting it on the processors. One question I did have was, what was the rate increase prior to 2026? What was that yearly increase looking like?

Yes, so there were no annual rate increases for PWRF prior. It was a true-up cost. The utility typically ran on the $6 million range annually for all processors combined, and as of the beginning of 2025, that total cost of the facility was estimated to go from that $6, $6.5 million to $27 million. So there was a very considerable increase as it was stated both in the agenda and the presentation.

Yeah, okay. And that's why I couldn't remember that part. I didn't take good notes. And also, I mean, I like the idea of separating the RNG from the wastewater operations. A lot of the processors have run that up. But again, this is kind of our baby. You know, the city decided to make an investment. It's not living up to it. We're not getting the revenue. That's why I just have a hard time asking them to, because it's here. We have to pay for it. I just... You know, I remember when I was a kid playing baseball outside and I hit a ball and hit the neighbor's window. And my dad told me, well, I'm not going to pay for it. And so I had to go and mow the lawn guys lawn all summer long to pay for that window. This is our baby. We need to take on some responsibility. And I think either we need to get with Burnham. I think one thing we need to do is we need to renegotiate that ILA with them. maybe restructuring some debt obligations. We did figure some stuff out with Burnham and us prior to asking the processors for any rate increase, either it's a percent, 2%, 5%. That last slide, you know, was it D? It looks great. I mean, it's flat. But again, I mean, they just wanted us to process their wastewater. They didn't want to get into the RNG. They didn't want to get into that stuff. Just process our wastewater and we're happy. And I think that's where the relationship should, that's where it should stand. But I do understand the inclination up here to pay for this entity that we've created. But I think we need to really talk internally with Burnham and figure that stuff out before we look to the processors. So I mean, as of right now, I would be for none of these alternatives. And hopefully we have a little bit more time to talk about this and to address some of my comments, but yeah, I think we need to look in-house first. Thank you.

Thank you, and just to your point, one of the extra ideas that's been discussed was to commence a limited trial to accept trucked-in waste, and I could let staff speak to that a little bit, but there's potentials for contamination at that point, bringing in outside, and maybe Director Serra can speak to that a little bit? Maybe Mr. Michael?

Yes, I will let Michael Henao, our environmental coordinator manager, environmental compliance manager, sorry, talk to this issue. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely. So right now we are definitely exploring different options to increase revenues for the utility. So one of them is to start receiving trucking waste into the facility to be able to increase our POT loading and have a higher revenue by creating more R&G. Through that process, we first have to be able to identify the local areas that are gonna be able to bring that waste to our facility, make sure that the fees are gonna be competitive against other systems, so they're gonna choose to use our facility. And then after that, we have to work with the Department of Ecology to be able to write the right permits and to be able to reduce the risk to add contamination to our land treatment system. So that's work that we are currently looking into.

Perfect, thank you so much. Anything further from council? Oh, yes, I guess we will. Yes, is this a public comment on this then?

If we're still in a public comment.

Yeah, do you represent one of the processors?

I'm the general manager for the Possible Resource Recovery Center, so we're from Burnham. Oh, I see, okay. This would be an appropriate time, thank you. Thank you much. I did write a few comments, but maybe for perspective. On the margins, my marginal cost is about $3.50 per MMBTU to inject that into Cascade Natural Gas' distribution network. The revenue generated from that is roughly $18 per MMBTU. Processors at the moment do pay a fee to send us the BOD required to generate renewable natural gas. The gas production facility costs roughly $24 million to build. Over 50% of that back is a portion of the $66 million in the ITC credit. So, dare I say, a marginal cost for a long-term 30-plus year investment. I know a lot of today's discussions have focused on costs, and deservedly so, I think, but I do think that there is something to note about the opportunities ahead of us. Year one is certainly not... our 30-plus year facilities final story. So since the start, our team has continued to work relentlessly to improve performance, reduce costs, and ensure environmental compliance. We were $200,000 below budget in the first quarter of 2026. We expect to accumulate an additional $200,000 below budget in the second quarter with further cost reduction initiatives while underway. I would also just share the point that roughly 80% of the the bill that unfortunately the processors are paying is to build the facility that already exists. And so I think that's the most critical point. The biggest investment has already been made and it is about the excess capacity and trying to identify different opportunity to generate and capture additional revenues. So I appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Anything else from council? Anything else from staff? You guys good? All right, let's move on. Letter D, resolution interagency agreement with Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission. Our interim police chief, Brent Cook, good evening.

Mayor, council, tonight discussion on a resolution interlocal agreements with Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission. There are, the agreements that are before you are, one is an umbrella that covers the main piece of our agreement, and then we have an agreement for the employees that we have down there. As you know, I think with the graduating class this time, we have 200 students who have gone into our local communities as police officers. These agreements are important to maintaining the training academy in Pasco and maintaining its staff at a level that is efficient. The umbrella agreement will be July to June of 2028. It keeps the Pasco Regional Campus open. It requires us to maintain the facility and to support it with staffing. It also prioritizes our students here at Pasco have seats if we need to put people through that academy. The other two agreements pay for our TAC officer for that academy full time and assistant commander also full time. It also addresses the part-time instructors who come in who are policemen on the streets who teach our recruits the same things that they're out doing freshly brought in and maintain that in integrity of our facility and our instruction and as I think Mr. Campos explained this last graduating class had I think there were just about 600 people in attendance and one of the senators commented to me that he had never seen that many people come out to support a graduating class. So staff recommends that we adopt this resolution and authorize the agreements with Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission. If you have any questions.

Thank you, Chief. Any questions, comments? Not seeing any, let's move to the chambers. Any comments for the interagency agreement with the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission? Going once. Going twice, for or against? Not seeing anybody come forward. Let's move on to letter E, fireworks community engagement efforts. This is Ms. McQuaid. She is still here.

Good evening, again, Mayor and Council. Thank you for allowing me to present our regional effort on fireworks community engagement. Directly following this presentation, there will be another presentation on the noise PMC, and that will include information on the enforcement issues as well. Tonight's presentation right now is just about our engagement efforts for 2026. We'll share what we heard from residents in the community survey. From there, I'll explain our regional approach and our campaign strategies. Finally, I'll share some metrics on how things are going so far, and then we will share how we'll measure the campaign's effectiveness in order to create an even better one next year. Regionally, residents are pretty confused on local laws, how they differ between city lines, where to buy legal fireworks, what safer options might be out there for celebrations. And while some people have asked for an outright ban on fireworks, many others simply want clearer information. So in our recent community survey that you guys heard about already, fireworks were mentioned frequently by respondents over 50 years of age. It ranked as the fifth most important topic with an 89% poor or very poor rating in that age group. This group of survey respondents wants to see fireworks completely banned. However, when we look deeper at the data, We actually see a clear division among age groups and where fireworks completely drop off the top 20 list for people with children and or under the age of 50. Additionally, the grand old fourth fireworks show ranked as the number one most important event to the community. And finally, in a meeting in February, you heard a report on fireworks calls and how they've dropped about 57% since 2019. So armed with that information and also having spearheaded many of fireworks campaigns in previous years, we knew that we needed a new approach. Working directly with our neighboring cities and other government agencies, we created a regional program aimed at amplifying our individual messages in simple, clear language. We found that all agencies have the same enforcement issues and the same public divide on fireworks. We also know that working together means that our messages are going to reach larger audiences, allowing for viewers to learn directly what each community allows. Working together, we identified our target audiences and created our key messages, strategies, channels, and deliverables. Our key messages focus on education, collaboration, and asking neighbors to share with neighbors. We created simple and clear graphics in Spanish and English that work on many platforms, including social media, stories, and feeds. And these joint messages really do act as a supplement to the individual marketing efforts that each city is also taking on. Our strategies focus on four things, consistent regional messaging, increased education before or at the point of purchase, respecting our neighbors and knowing how to have safe celebrations, and then finally promoting existing community events as the premier way to celebrate. For Pasco, we're promoting the Grand Old Force celebration with a radio campaign, a live broadcast, and a social campaign. We're also working with Fairchild Cinemas to hopefully provide some sponsors movies the weekend of the 4th, giving residents an alternative way to celebrate if they're pretty noise averse. As you may have noticed, the central theme here of this campaign is really community collaboration, and in keeping with that theme, our main outreach vehicle is social media. As of June 15th, our first post on June 12th saw 55 shares, 40 comments, and was viewed by over 20,000 people. This initial post also resulted in earned media stories. Additionally, the City of Kennewick and Richland have designed flyers, which you can see actually on the screen right there, for each city to hand out at the fireworks vendors, allowing an additional touch point right at the point of sale. The regional team really broke out the design and creation of our campaign deliverables with each city taking a role. Together we will create five different graphic carousel posts for socials, one short video, which I believe Chief Crowley filmed this morning, one flyer for the fireworks vendors, which you just saw, and then as a bonus, we're also gonna work together to create kind of like a special, fun, real little bit behind the scenes of how the communications teams work together to create this campaign. Each city also has a dedicated fireworks webpage that contains their specific information, which helps with search engine optimization, and then also with AI search features that pop up in browsers now. And in Pasco, we also designed and are actively distributing. These are really awesome signs that I hope everybody will take and display at their homes in English and in Spanish. We have 250 of those to display that really allow residents to show their pride for our nation, but also explain to their residents what Pasco's rules and regulations are as well. And these lawn signs can be picked up at City Hall or some of the fire stations as well. And they can be displayed annually also, because they don't have a date on them, our rules and regulations stay the same, generally speaking. In addition to the campaign deliverables, the PASCO inspection team is also working directly with the fireworks vendors for inspections, and we'll be handing out this Know Before You Glow signs to be displayed at their point of sale. Seven fields have been mowed, a water truck, and a pre and post inspections have been scheduled for the GESA fireworks display as well. And then, as with all of our campaigns, we'll be actively monitoring our performance metrics, including website visits, social media reach and engagement, earned media stories, and video views. And then also at the close of the campaign, we will work with the fire department and the police department to look over our calls for service, and we'll also look at the Ask Pasco app as well. And the unique thing about this campaign is that each city is actually gonna report our metrics together, so we'll get a really holistic look at how well this campaign performed. Um, and this will allow us obviously to fine tune the campaign for next year, hopefully making it even better. Um, and then the two graphs that you can see up here actually are just the backend of our analytics. Um, you can see the first graph is our social, our first social media posts, and then the lower one is our website analytics. And you can kind of see how those two work together. Um, and the spike when people visited our webpage after they saw the social post. So with that, pretty quick, but thank you for allowing me to present our regional campaign. We're really excited about it and the interest that the community has shown already. Are there any questions?

Thank you so much, Ms. McQuaid. Any questions, comments from council regarding Mr. Perales?

Any questions? I was just going to say thank you to you and staff. This is something that it's been a topic of discussion for about two years now since I've been on the council, and many individuals talked about a regional effort, so I applaud the efforts of all four cities for doing this and I've seen the media coverage on it and stuff on social media, so just really appreciate the efforts.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Perfect. Just wanted to make sure. You would be somebody that maybe would want to add to this discussion, but just want to make sure we're good there. McQuaid I think you're off the hook thank you so much everybody grab a sign on the way out without would anybody in the council chamber like to speak on the community engagement effort we're gonna get to enforcement next don't worry but just on the community engagement effort between the cities to communicate going once going twice Three times, okay. Letter F, last letter of the night. Presentation structure of city noise enforcement and fireworks regulations. Ms. Sigdell left, so Mr. Stewart? She's available online. Oh, thank you. Ms. Sigdell, good evening, ma'am.

Thank you, Mayor. Our city attorney, Daniel Kenney, will be leading this conversation with staff from various departments stepping in as needed.

Thank you. Wonderful. Can everybody hear me okay? Yes, sir. And I wasn't sure, does staff have the presentation? Oh, sorry. There we go. It's right there. Perfect. Okay. Well, I'll get going. I know you've all had a long night, but this is an important topic as requested by council. And if we go to the next slide, the question that was presented just generally speaking is to, was a request to look into the mechanisms that the city could consider to address and facilitate looking into the noise issues largely surrounding fireworks and make enforcement of that a little bit more accessible and easy. The short answer after looking at both the municipal code and state law as well as a whole host of example other jurisdictions is that actually your code includes some of the mechanisms that we would have wanted to see and I'll explain those here in a second. But enforcement does remain difficult despite having those mechanisms in place due to a range of hurdles, and we'll, again, get into that here in a second. And so, if we could go to the next slide. And so, just to start, just to kind of refresh, and I know we just had a presentation on fireworks, but there are certain fireworks that are allowed in the city, and those are outlined in the code, and they do allow for noise-making features. And so they're not the aerial fireworks that are allowed, but they're the retail fireworks that you can get noise producing, whistling sounds, ground devices and things like that. And so when we think about fireworks, noise issues and complaints and enforcement, the mere fact that the firework makes a noise or somebody hears a noise that is a firework is in and of itself something that would be actionable, right, because we do, in fact, allow fireworks that make noise. And, in fact, the code calls them out as noise-making fireworks. And so, we have to look beyond just simply the fact of that there was an explosion or something like that. And Council, of course, and I know you're aware of this, can ban fireworks entirely to eliminate all fireworks that are allowed. If you choose, that does take one year to go into effect. And so, you know, if we're looking on a spectrum of things to do, that's probably, you know, far on one side, certainly. But that would make it so that any fireworks, whether they're noise making or not in the city, would not be allowed. And so, even if you did that, though, we would still run into many, many of the same issues that we're talking about here tonight, because enforcement is so challenging, whether they are allowed or not, for, again, some of the reasons we'll get into here in a second. And so, Let's go ahead and go to the next slide. And so building on what we saw on the last slide, fireworks allowed noisemaking, then we look to the noise regulations that we have in place. The noise regulations that exist in code right now come on two pathways shown on the left side of the screen. Number one is an unreasonable disturbance that requires complaints from two or more individuals from different properties. And so that does not require observation by an officer that is complaint based from two or more people. And then there's also a second option, which is specific noise categories that comes from essentially a model code from the statutes that talk about noise producing items. And so you have these two kind of categories, specific things that make loud noises and then you have the disturbance and people complaining about a disturbance. What's important to note, and this was one of the first of two things that I looked for in your code, is whether or not you needed to have a noise measurement in order to determine whether it was a disturbance or determine whether or not the noise was too loud. And the answer in code is that you do not. And so that is a good first step because When I've worked with jurisdictions, having a noise meter out there for that instant when something happens is very, very challenging. You can sometimes do that for repeat issues, whether there's an area where cars like to drag race or whether there's people working in a warehouse late at night when they shouldn't be and it's creating noise, you can, you know, go there and get it. But, you know, it's not required. And so, that hurdle is out of the way. That is not a requirement that should stop how we get there. So, the next section is to look and see what kind of violation are we talking about here. And the code describes these as civil infractions and the statutes describe the legal process for a civil infraction. And then option one is that an officer witnesses it and the violation directly and then issues that civil infraction as a result of that observation. That is also one of the hurdles that we were looking for is whether or not that's going to be an impediment because we can't be all around the city. We have code enforcement. We have police officers. But seeing the thing happen is very, very hard to do, right? But the civil infractions do allow under state law that a court can issue the civil infraction based on a written statement of reasonable cause. And so the officer does not need to personally witness that. And so for me, again, when I was looking at what I anticipated to be the two hurdles, it's number one, do we need to have a noise measurement to say it was really loud, that this really loud thing happened? And then number two, does an officer need to be there to witness it and to issue that infraction? And both of those hurdles were able to clear. And so When we think about where we're at, we then go to the next slide, and we still have a whole range of practical enforcement challenges, right? Even if you have that complaint from two or more people without a noise measurement, and even if you're able to not witness it as the officer, you still have to identify at night where that mortar may have come from. And so identifying the people or even the location can be really challenging, not knowing really where that came from, classifying whether it was an illegal firework or not. That doesn't necessarily mean that a legal firework might not qualify under the noise ordinance, but it would be very challenging if it is allowed and it's during those hours to have an illegal firework cause that issue. Um, I think, uh, one observation from code enforcement and from police is that, um, when you circle back to them to have a prosecutor, um, look into it and to pursue a civil infraction that oftentimes witnesses are reluctant to, to, to further anything like that. Typically these are neighbors and they, they don't pursue these things. Um, there's limited, limited evidence, um, in terms of who lit it, um, where it came from, like we talked about before. And then, of course, there's resource costs. This is a little bit of a wild goose chase because, again, it's at night. We don't know where it's coming from. And so sending out resources to ride in cars to see if you can identify groups that are lighting fireworks, it's certainly possible. And I know that the police department has tried to do that and has put efforts forward to try to curb this behavior. But then also, you've got prosecutor time, court time, police time, and potentially public defender time to deal with what is maximum $250 fine. And so, when I looked at this issue at the request of counsel, again, I was pleased to see that we have two of the hurdles that I thought we would see be attainable. We can get over those hurdles, but then we still run into these issues here. And so, we'll go to the next slide. So, the existing code kind of has those mechanisms in place that we were kind of thinking that we could try to approach, but there are these persistent barriers that we just talked about. And so, the path forward that we kind of talked about on the staff side is largely what you just heard about in the last presentation, which is great community collaboration for public education, hopefully that will lead to voluntary compliance. I also know, and perhaps the chief can speak to it, but targeted enforcement, which is potentially going out, sending some cars out to try to, if you can catch people, then certainly it's possible, but it's probably more of an educational opportunity to interact with groups that might be shooting off fireworks and remain connected on the topic to educate. And so there's probably a multi-pronged approach. And again, it's probably largely like you just heard about in the last presentation, But that was kind of the summation. I know that my memo was in the materials, and so I'll stop. And if the chief has anything to add, would certainly invite that. I know code enforcement is involved on this topic. And so open to questions and any further interest in the topic from council for further inquiries.

Thank you, Mr. Kenney. Chief Crowley, Chief Cook, anything to add?

Uh, nothing more to add. Okay, with that. Well, as far as, um, as we're talking about, I've done that in the past as far as going out and patrolling and trying to go through neighborhoods and see if we can watch people light up fireworks, and it's nearly impossible to do so, um, As you're driving around, you see them in the air. That's what we're looking for is the aerial fireworks. And they can be a block away, two blocks away, as far as you see it go off. But where it's launched, it usually doesn't go straight up. It goes kind of to the side or something. And so trying to chase that down doesn't seem very beneficial for our staff. And so we spend more time just with staff out there with rigs to put out fires and to get to them quickly. Thank you.

Questions, comments from council? Mr. Perales.

Yeah, I'll go ahead and start it off. Is the 250, is that the max fine that we can issue? Or can we increase that?

No, that's the max fine.

And that's the state? Is that per our code or the state?

I believe it's both. I might have it open here. I'll have to look. I know it's in the code. I'll try to find it here as we're asking questions, but I think, yeah, it's definitely in the code and I can answer that question offline if I'm not able to pull it up here in the statute.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up those little nuggets about not having the decibel meters, because that's something that I had, during my research, I had found that other cities didn't require decibel readings. You know, it just was a public nuisance kind of noise ordinance violation. I still think we need to enforce what we have, and I think if we set a tone where people are lighting the mortars and stuff, obviously the fourth... People can light fireworks, things like that, but just because, again, then it gets to the point, why do we have these on the books if we're not gonna enforce it? I understand the practicality of it, that maybe neighbors won't want to come forward, but I think there's ways we can do that, especially, you know, we've heard things, well, the officer needs to witness it. Well, an officer can make an observation, they can come talk to people who made the complaints, maybe neighbors can provide video evidence, photographic evidence, I mean, there's ways to do this, sworn witness testimony, I think we need to find these individuals who are lighting the legal fireworks to really kind of educate them that, you know, this isn't right, and I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of comments on social media.

He must hate the 4th.

I don't. I love it. My daughter was born on the 4th of July. I will be lighting fireworks as well, but I'm going to be responsible, and I think I like the press release by the mayor about talking about being, you know, light legal ones, but we've got to be respectful to our neighbors and our dogs and our animals and stuff. I think that's the main thing, but it gets to a certain point with many people in the community, especially all the individuals I talk to, like Mrs. Carroll and Mr. Turley and Mrs. Thompson. We want to see individuals essentially be sighted when they're not following our codes, because if not, then what's really the point of even having them? And I appreciate the whole thing about resources, but I mean, again, If we have laws in the books, we need to implement them. Education sometimes doesn't work. Believe it or not, I got three tickets in one day here in the City of Pasco, like 18 years ago, and that made me drive really careful in the City of Pasco for a while. One of them was a dumb one, more than 12 inches away from a curb. It's like, parking ticket, really? But hey, I really thought about my driving. It changed my behavior. So if we're not enforcing our laws, then we're not gonna change in behavior. I like where we're going, but I do want to look into more of the code enforcement noise ordinance and seeing what we can do with that, because I think there's some stuff we can kind of clean up and maybe we can talk about that on a later date. But I do appreciate you looking into some of these things. It's made it more clear for me, and so I'm just looking forward to kind of seeing some results. Thank you.

Thank you. Other questions, comments? Go ahead, Mr. Kenney, sorry.

Councilmember Perales, I just wanted to follow up on your question. I did confirm a class one civil infraction is a maximum 250 and actually goes down for class two, three, four. And so we are at the maximum amount to confirm it. Thank you.

Anybody else? Questions, comments? And I guess I would just want to add, along with what Mr. Perales said, looking at the noise ordinance in the future, loud mufflers on vehicles. Boy, do I hear a lot of feedback about those, whether they just be loud or popping or... Um, as a matter of fact, that Mr. Kenny, the examples you had there of horn instrument, um, I know she didn't say boom box. We're not back in the eighties, but, um, you know, I, I guess I was in, and perhaps maybe that's in another part of the municipal code because it relates to vehicles, but definitely something, at least I would want to see included into that. Mr. Mayor Pro Tem.

Oh yeah. I was going to say that, uh, usually almost every year I've gone out with the Pasco PD and, uh, drive around and see what actually goes on and I would recommend the council if they so chose to maybe pick this year and actually see it's a lot more difficult to find anybody. I know we've had challenges and we were wanting to write tickets but just can't get them but doesn't not to obviously we want to do our best and again I think there was other issues that I was surprised last year that had disturbing violence, and there was like six cop cars there to try to solve those issues. So I'm not saying that we don't want to, but it is a little more difficult when you actually go ride with Pasco PD and see all the different things that they are going through on that same night. But hopefully this year, the officers that I'm with, hopefully we'll get to ride some tickets, and I look forward to it. But I would recommend the council at least to go out and and experience it to see actually what goes on. It's quite eye-opening, put it that way.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem. With that, let's open this up to the chamber. Anybody want to speak on fireworks enforcement regulations? Going once, going twice, three times, not seeing anybody. Let's move on to number six, miscellaneous council discussion. Mr. Stewart?

Yes, Mr. Mayor, members of council, I'll keep it fairly brief tonight. I appreciate all the work and the discussion that's happened and the public participation. We do have a water use efficiency public forum next Tuesday, June 30th, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. here in the council chambers. This is part of the regulatory water system plan update, and at the forum, staff will review the proposed efficiency goals, and the public may provide comments on the topic online also through the website. Several things with regards to parks and recreation happening. The Memorial Pool opened today. We have another FIFA Fan Zone coming up July 1st. I'm going to turn some time over to Director Pashon to talk a little bit more about FIFA update. Also, finally, after years of work and anticipation, the Pasco Aquatic Center will have its grand opening this Saturday, June 27th. And then as we've discussed here, the 4th of July festivities, there's still the free family bike ride at Riverview Park from 8 to 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 27th. Invite all the families to come out and participate in that. With that, I'd like to turn just a few minutes over to Ms. Bichon to give you an update on FIFA.

Absolutely. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'll also be brief. Obviously, you have been attending our fan zones. I can say operationally we're looking at the July 1st date. I know that the U.S. is going to be playing on that day, so we are looking and evaluating operationally if we can also have a fan zone for that event as well. But things are going well. We estimate about 600 to 700 attendees at our last one, and so we just appreciate everyone coming out. We know it's been extremely hot, but continue to see the fun and the joy for all that is going on.

Mr. Mayor, I remember one other thing I failed to mention. We have no need for executive session, and I know it's on the agenda, but we don't need it tonight.

Thank you so much. Anything from council? I know we had talked about a letter, but gave staff some more time to put together something to prepare so we could properly respond to it at our next meeting. Just communicate, anybody have anything else? Okay, well, before we adjourn, I want to remind everyone that this is our last meeting before we celebrate America's 250th anniversary, the semi-quincentennial of our Declaration of Independence. Wanted to leave you guys with a quote from Thomas Jefferson, who said, God gave us life. God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God. True liberty is a gift from God, not a guarantee of government. As we celebrate our freedom this July, I encourage every citizen to do so safely and responsibly, honoring those who sacrificed so we could enjoy these blessings. Let's celebrate with gratitude, reverence, and respect for our neighbors. With that, this meeting is adjourned.