City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, August 25th, 2026 regular business meeting of the Olympia City Council. For the record, we have a quorum with Mayor, excuse me, Council Member Madrone excused and Council Member Gilman should be joining us momentarily. So with that, I need a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

Move to approve. Second. Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the agenda as published, signify by saying aye. Aye. We have an agenda. So our first item tonight is special recognition, a proclamation recognizing Women's Equality Day. And we will begin with a shared reading of the proclamation. And council members, just a note to remind you to please use the alternative version of your proclamation reading. And we'll begin with Council Member Vanderpool.

Thank you, Mayor. Whereas in 1972, Congress designated August 26th as Women's Equality Day to commemorate the certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees that the right to vote shall not be denied on the basis of sex, and whereas the 19th Amendment was certified due to the sacrifices and the tireless work of women from every state, race, cultural, and religious backgrounds. And whereas now, over a century after the certification of the 19th Amendment, many Women still face barriers to voting, particularly women who are of color, transgender, immigrant, LGBTQ+, disabled, and otherwise marginalized, and...

Whereas, despite working to pass the 19th Amendment, women of color were effectively denied the right to vote through state laws, violence, and discrimination for another 45 years until the passage of the Voting Rights Act and in 1965, and whereas black women continue to lead the way in communities that are most impacted and continue to protect voting rights and build communities and policies that are equitable and safe for all, and.

Whereas, while the fight for women's equality has always been grounded in the right to vote, a century after it was first introduced, the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment still continues. And whereas the state of Washington leads the country in accessible and equitable voting rights, thanks to legislation centering accessible voter registration, mail-in ballots, and restoring voting rights for individuals convicted of a felony who have served their time. And whereas Washington State has created an address confidentiality program allowing people fleeing gender-based violence to register to vote without fear of allowing their abusers to see their address, people in this program are provided with this substitute mailing address that can be used to register to vote. And whereas women and non-binary folks responding to a 2024 YWCA USA national survey regarding why women vote, women across generations, racial and ethnic groups, economic status, and region identified the economy, healthcare, and mass shootings and gun violence as the most important issues impacting them personally. And

Whereas survey respondents also stated policy situations in the areas of racial justice and civil rights, economic security, childcare, women's health and community well-being are extremely important to women across the nation, especially policies which support women's autonomy, protect their social and economic freedoms, and respond to the issues of greatest importance to women. And whereas throughout history, women have increasingly stepped into leadership roles in public service, often overcoming longstanding barriers to representation, And in 2026, the city of Olympia marked an important milestone in this progress by adopting, appointing two women to serve as fire chief and police chief, reflecting the city's commitment to expanding opportunities for women in positions of authority and community safety.

And now, therefore, be it resolved that the Olympia City Council does hereby proclaim August 26, 2026 as Women's Equality Day in the city of Olympia. and celebrates the continued effort for equality for all women and the removal of barriers to the resources, support, and opportunities women need to live thriving and healthy lives. Signed in the City of Olympia this 25th day of August, 2026, Olympia City Council, Dante Payne, Mayor. And now at this time, I would like to invite up Ali Yuen, who is the chief executive officer from the YWCA of Olympia, for a few words and to accept the proclamation.

Thank you, Mayor Payne and the Olympia City Council for having me back for the fourth year in a row receiving this proclamation. And as you recall, as I stood here last year, I wasn't sure if we were still gonna be open to have this day marked, be a part of this day being marked again. And I'm really honored and humbled to still be here standing thanks to tireless work of community, our volunteers, and folks like yourselves who have been supporting our work tirelessly over the last year. So thank you. I'm standing here with my daughter, again, who's not going to tie my shoes together this time like happened last year. It's very exciting. But I want to highlight that at YWCA Olympian at YWCA is across the country. We are working every day to eliminate racism and empower those impacted by gender based violence and center those most impacted by systems that were not designed to serve them, which is why voting and civic engagement is more important than ever. We know firsthand what folks in our communities need to thrive, and the survey results highlighted in the proclamation illustrate what we hear daily, that folks are united in calling for policies that address economic opportunity, gender-based violence, gun violence, health, and racial justice. These findings give us a clear blueprint to ensure that everyone can live safely and thrive. And our mission demands that we center the voices of women and girls of color who are too often overlooked in decision-making. Our votes determine the direction of our community for years to come from the care that we can access locally to how our governments invest in childcare, victim services, and so much more. That's why we're committed to ensuring that as many people as possible, especially women of color, young women, and historically marginalized communities can continue to exercise their hard earned right to vote. I want to close with gratitude again for those who have fought to expand voting access and representation. And while we've made progress, barriers still remain. and in many places are increasing at terrifying rates. Our community's well-being is tied to the well-being of those most impacted by oppression here and everywhere. We at YWCA Olympia are committed to continuing to shine a light on these power imbalances and work towards a future where all people are valued, live free from oppression and are able to thrive in a just society. And if you are in this room, if you are on screen, if you are a member of this community, anything that you're doing to engage in civic engagement, that is making more space for people to be at the table. Your support is needed more than ever. And I am honored to receive this proclamation again from you all and I would be remiss to not point out the numbers of folks in the audience here tonight as well who have been neighbors down at the Franklin Street Harm Reduction Center and folks as well involved in one program in particular that has really been vital in our continuing to serve the community, which is the Inspire Olympia program. support from their program staff have made it possible for us to continue to center our mission and we're really grateful for the support of the city council and continuing that program so thank you all

Thank you so much alley, we'll see if there's any comments from Council and then I'll come and present you the proclamation. Any comments from the days. Councilmember green.

Thank you for being here alley, I just want to say it's nice to see you again and I'm very. excited that that the ywca is still part of our community and the vital work that you're doing.

still here so thank you for that and thank you to your your shy and brave podium partner for being up there because I know that it's not easy councilmember Vanderpool hi again hi Ally thank you for coming out I remember last year when I went over to talk with you and it was a very stressful day and we had long conversation about where things are and and and grants from the federal government and the struggle that nonprofits were having in the community. But I'm glad to see the organization is growing and coming back because having it happen on near an anniversary, it was just nerve wracking. And I talked to so many people in the community who had used their services there or used the facilities there for countless events in the community. And so it's an asset and a value to the community. So I encourage folks who've never been over there to swing by and say hi. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional comments? All right. I will just say thank you, Ali, once again for coming back and accepting the proclamation. It's always good to see you. I, you know, I have to say that it's so important for all the reasons that you spoke to about of, you know, having women be recognized for their tenacity, their grit. all that they've done to get to this moment of the right to vote and participate civically in our society. And I have to say that in addition to that work, it's so important to see representation at all levels. And I think you see that how decision making changes as a result of that, which is why there was a shout out to our police chief and our fire chief, who are the first two women ever to represent our departments. And we're so proud and honored to have them. And I thought it was important that they be recognized and mentioned in the proclamation specifically because beyond them and their roles, it's important for us to see women in so many other spaces where traditionally you don't typically see them. And I think that does so much to change the trajectory of where we're going as a country, as a nation, as a state, as a city. And so I just thank you for being one more voice in the work that you do in the efforts to help bring that about. I know that many of the conversations at the YWCA have to do with just that. And so I thank you for that. And I want to close by recognizing all the women who serve here on city council, who serve on our staff, and all the women throughout the entire city of Olympia. We appreciate you. We see you. And we thank you for all you do for us. And happy Women's Equality Day. So with that, I'm going to present the proclamation to you, and you can come forward and take a photo. And whoever else wishes to join us in the room, please come forward and join us for a photo as well.

Thank you, Mayor Behn. Can I say one more thing? I would be remiss to say.

Absolutely.

We are, on the first Friday of every month, we host free community dinners and events for anybody, first Friday of the month from 5 to 7. The next three months are all going to be focused around voting and civic engagement. So from registering to vote to understanding what you're voting for and how to stay engaged after election. So the next three months will all be around what we're talking about.

All right. Thanks, Ali. all right thank you so much again we're going to move on to our next special recognition item on our agenda which is item 2b a proclamation recognizing overdose awareness day and we will begin with a shared reading of that proclamation with council member vanderpool whereas no community in washington state is immune to accidental or intentional overdose and drug overdose deaths remain high across the state

impacting urban, suburban, and rural communities, and disproportionately affect marginalized populations, and whereas overdose deaths are preventable and can be caused by alcohol and over-the-counter medicine, stimulants, and opioids, and whereas, like many places across Washington State, we need to continue to treat drug-related harm as a public health issue,

and invest in best practices that save lives and build communities. And whereas observed on August 31st every year, International Overdose Awareness Day seeks to create a better understanding of overdose, reduce the stigma of drug-related deaths, and create a change that reduces the harms associated with drug use.

Whereas International Overdose Awareness Day is an opportunity for all Olympians to stand beside those who have lost loved ones to an overdose and those who have a substance use disorder and are diligently working toward recovery.

Whereas anyone can visit the statewide resource at www.stopoverdose.org to obtain naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medication. medication and recovery help line at one eight hundred seven eight nine one five one one or the twenty four hour information and help and now therefore be it resolved the olympia city council does hereby proclaim august thirty first two thousand twenty six is overdose awareness day in the city of olympia

AND CALLS UPON THE COMMUNITY TO JOIN IN RAISING AWARENESS OF DRUG OVERDOSE MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY BY REDUCING STIGMA THROUGH EDUCATION, PREVENTION, TREATMENT AND RECOVERY SUPPORT OR SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER. SIGNED IN THE CITY OF OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON, THIS 25TH DAY OF AUGUST, 2026, OLYMPIA CITY COUNCIL, DONTE PAIN, MAYOR. And now I would like to invite up Christina McVey, who is the co-director of the Franklin Street Harm Reduction Facility, to the podium for some remarks and to accept the proclamation tonight.

Hello. Thank you very much. It's really good to be back. Thank you, Mayor Payne and council. Excuse me. I'm Christina McVeigh she her pronouns and I'm the executive director of Franklin street harm reduction and I really appreciate being here today and I am honored to accept this year's overdose proclamation on behalf of the city of Olympia Washington. Uh, we in Thurston County and Olympia, Washington want to raise awareness of overdose. We want to reduce stigma of drug use and of drug related deaths. We want to acknowledge the grief of friends and families who are supporting the people that they love, who are navigating recovery. And we want to honor those who have died as a result of drug overdose. And we also want to respect those who are still using drugs. Substance use and addiction impacts communities across every race, religion, age, and socioeconomic group. We are committed to public health equity and treating people with compassion. We affirm that every overdose is preventable and every individual in addiction deserves dignity and respect. and we want every person in recovery to have access to appropriate addiction treatment and behavioral health services. We want every individual to have autonomy in their recovery because they deserve the right to choose their own path. By recognizing and observing International Overdose Awareness Day, we honor the memory of those that we have lost to overdose, and we reduce that stigma that threatens people's recovery. We commit ourselves to a future in which overdose is possible and in which recovery is possible for all, which I apologize. I'm going to start that last sentence again. We commit ourselves to a future in which overdose is preventable and recovery is possible for all. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Christina. And this is your first time accepting this proclamation. It is.

It is. Thank you. It's a huge honor.

Yeah. Well, thank you for your words. Are there any comments from the dais? Yes, Council Member Vanderpool.

I just want to say I appreciate everything you folks do over there. You guys are really a hub for a lot of services. It's one of the proudest organizations I think of in the community because, you know, Being on the regional housing council and working around homelessness and houselessness and dealing with folks that they're helping folks in the community You being there helps so much for us and helps us meet our goals Because if you didn't exist it would be really hard for us to meet those goals. And so I just want to Just say my appreciation for everything you folks do over there Likewise, thank you.

Thank you Thank You councilmember green

Christina, thanks for being here for this recognition. And I just wanted to kind of share. In addition to just appreciating the work that all of you do to support folks, especially folks in recovery and family of folks navigating this. One of the reasons I'm glad we're doing this tonight is because. I'm a communicator by trade, and I know this, but you forget it, is that somebody has to hear a message so many times before it sinks in. And even myself, I've sat through discussions up here. Our youth council presented to us last year a really great PSA. I sat here, I watched it, and then I saw it again recently, and it just suddenly clicked for me. I live in a state where it's very easy and I work at a space where it's very easy to get access to Naloxone and why aren't I carrying it? And so I went to work the next day and started carrying it in my bag and in my car and it's I feel like it's like CPR and first-aid training I hope I never have to use it but but it's there and so I just appreciate that these Messages are shared and that this continues to be part of the conversation in our community. So thank you.

Thank you so much Thank you additional comments Yeah, I just want to express similar sentiments. I thank the Franklin Street harm reduction site, not only those of you that are here, but all of your staff and your team that responds to those community members that need your services. And I think about those words, you know, harm reduction and and how that is a place where they can go to receive just that right because there are so many other places where they're getting anything but right and that's because it's so stigmatized and so that's why we need proclamations like this one today to once again say this is a public health problem I have experiences with this in my family and being being able to witness those who suffer from these challenges of substance use disorder. I have had experiences with illness, with death in my family and to see it up close and so personal and to understand that it is much more complicated than somebody just simply making a choice. And so that's why proclamations like what we're doing tonight are so important to raise that awareness. And even though it sounds like it's, you know, sort of a no-brainer for some of us, it isn't for so many people, and they need to know. And thanks to your work and the work of others in this community who care for our most vulnerable, were able to pass that message along. So thank you for being here tonight. And I have signed copies of the proclamation, and we can also take photos if you would like. So please come on up once again if you wish to join us.

Sure.

Thank you, Christina.

Really appreciate it. Thank you.

All right, here we go. Make sure the lens caps off. All right, here we go. Count of three. One, two, three.

All right. Thank you all once again who came out for special recognition. We're going to keep our evening rolling with the rest of our agenda. And now is the moment for our public comment segment of our agenda. And I am going to pass it over to the mayor pro tem.

Thank you, Mayor. All right, just some brief housekeeping. Public comment is two minutes. Once your name is called, please step up towards the podium there and speak into the mic. While it's green, your two minutes is still running, and then you'll see a yellow color come up, and so it's trying to tell you that you have 30 seconds left to wrap up your comments, and then Once the light before you is red that means your time has elapsed and then there's also a two-minute timer here, too Please do at the conclusion of two minutes do try to wrap up your comments. Well, just complete the sentence and then oh It's also a great reminder for folks please do not speak for or against anything that would be on an upcoming election and And, uh, if I do mispronounce your name, I apologize in advance, please correct it for the record. All right. We just have a few public commenters in person and none signed up online. So we'll start with CC coats followed by Victoria Harmon.

Hello. City Council, and fellow citizens of Olympia. I'm C.C. Coates, she, her. I was a former union carpenter and a large-scale gardener before I became disabled. And because of our broken economy, I decided that the best thing for myself was to trick out a van, much like the van lifers do, and live in it. Things were going well over there at Gloria Dei Lutheran for six years until I got a stalker. And I had discovered that the city of Olympia had foreboding my lifestyle pretty much whole scale. I wanted to come in here to thank you all for addressing my grievances in a positive fashion. We have all inherited a mess. Our economy is broken. Elders and disabled people are being turned out on the street and record numbers and meeting this moment with compassion and allowing people to stay in their RVs, or their vans on church property and or private property is a step in the right direction. You've brought the will of God into this. Most people who are religious consider it their right and obligation to help those who are needy. So thank you for helping facilitate that. And thank you for all of your stalwart, proclamations in attempting to make this country safe for everyone. So I know you're not supposed to clap, but let's have a little applause during my speaking time. Thank you all and your staff for your efforts. I don't get to thank you guys very often, but thank you.

Thank you. With that, we have Victoria Harmon, and then after Victoria will be Terry Ballard.

Good evening. I'm Victoria Harmon, regional manager for the Timberland Regional Library, serving the Olympia Library and West Olympia Library. I wanted to provide a brief library update. I forgot to drop that down. Timberland has completed a restructuring of its administrative leadership team, including reducing some administrative salary costs. We've also completed recruitment for our finance administrator position. Mariah Holmes will be joining the organization on September 1st The Board of Trustees is also moving forward with independent workplace and financial assessments The goal is to identify improvements to processes accountability and organizational practices that will help strengthen the library system moving forward We've completed a full round of staff feedback sessions across the district and our continuing conversations with staff, community partners, and elected officials. Those discussions have provided valuable insight, and we're planning to continue this engagement on an ongoing basis. And finally, TRL is continuing community education and outreach related to the levy LIDLIF measure that will appear on the November ballot. Our role is to provide factual information, answer questions, and help residents understand the measure. Additional information is available on trl.org backslash levy. Thank you.

All right, next we have Terry Ballard, followed by Patricia Miller.

Good evening, City Council. My name is Terry Ballard. As a property owner in the city of Olympia since 2017, I believe in accountability when government tramples property rights. For over 25 years, Olympia has dumped stormwater onto this property without consent or compensation, hiding behind debunked wetland claims while charging private citizens fees they exempt themselves from. The city violates their own codes, state regulations, state and federal environmental laws which is their oath to protect. These actions constitute violations under color of law using legal authority to deprive citizens of constitutional rights forcing property owners into expensive litigation they cannot afford while continuing violations. The City of Olympia themselves reduce rates while charging the residents a higher rate for the same services. By December 2017, the City of Olympia owed 143 million dollars in back pay to their own stormwater utility while residents paid higher rates. I have brought this environmental injustice to the Council for nine years now. Environmental justice is core democratic value, protecting vulnerable communities from pollution and ensuring equal protection. Yet here, We see government creating environmental harm while denying citizens recourse. Government cannot take private land, private property without justification. It's not a belief, it's the law. We demand transparency. Cities cannot hide violations behind bureaucracy. I have exhausted every channel, formal complaints and filings. with the Department of Ecology and the City of Olympia. If resolution cannot be accomplished, escalation to the EPA Inspector General under whistleblower protections is my next recourse. Going to the EPA for these ongoing violations is something the City of Olympia cannot afford. We must hold our officials to the highest standards of constitutional government. Thank you.

Thank you. Patricia Miller, followed by, in our final, I will be Annette Ruzicka.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Patricia Miller, and I must say I love Olympia, and that's why I'm here. I moved here about five years ago, and I fall in love with it day by day, but it concerns me a lot about the crime. Being such a small city, less than, you know, 60,000, that the crime rate is continue to increase. We just had, as you know, a shooting in Harrison. And I was hoping that maybe someone, you know, the city council, mayor, would address the situation and perhaps calm our nerves and tell us what are you doing to decrease the crime rate that is going on here. I have never felt in where I used to live, never felt as scared as I am here going anywhere because of the crime that I see. And so my question is, what are you doing to address the situation and make it better for the community to feel safe? It would have been wonderful for the mayor to come and say, we understand this is going on, but this is what we're doing to address it. We didn't hear anything. And it was all over the internet. How come he's not addressing? How come nobody from the city council And the last thing is trash, trash all over. I live on the west side, and because of, you know, there are people that are asking for money, they leave trash everywhere, and I have to call almost every time to address that issue. It's, you know, it's such a beautiful city, and I think it deserves better than what we're doing right now as people who live here and as government. So thank you.

Thank you. For folks that are hoping for a response from council, we roll through all of the public comment, and then there is an opportunity at the end. All right, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Annette Razica. I live in Olympia. I came here tonight because of the jungle encampment closure update, as well as the discussion of the pilot program to create a permitting process for individuals living in their vehicles at private residences or faith-based properties. Thank you for exploring this program and listening to CeCe Coates, myself, and others earlier this year when we asked you to make a pathway for people living in their vehicles. I hope the city moves forward with this and other programs that make it easier for people who are already facing great challenges. Second, I want to comment on the closure of the jungle. I read Mayor Payne's community update from July and appreciate the thought and care that he's giving this matter. So thank you for that. I've heard a lot about a by names list of the residents in the jungle, and I have some confusion about the by names lists and would love to hear some clarification if it's considered a closed and complete list or not, because the population of the jungle changes and will continue to change. So any system we are using or developing to address the closure of the jungle needs to account for and allow for those changes. Um, I also heard about developing a timeline for the closure. One suggestion I heard was 18 to 24 months. And I want to suggest that there is a natural timeline for the closure of the encampments and that is when it is no longer needed. And the last person there has found a sustainable solution to their housing needs. In the meantime, I encourage all of us to focus on how we can serve those who live at the jungle to make their lives easier and to help meet their needs. One thing I have heard is that there aren't enough bathrooms to meet the needs of the residents and that those there need to be serviced more regularly. And also hand washing stations are a great need to help people meet their needs for health and hygiene. I'm grateful the city is showing that it understands that the policy of sweeps and repeated relocations do not resolve the underlying issues that result in large encampments or people living outside in general, and that when we push people around and try to make them invisible, we create added stress and increase risk to people's lives and health.

All right, that concludes public comment. I'll turn it back over to you, Mayor.

All right. Thank you very much, Mayor Pro Tem. Are there any comments from Council? Council Member Vanderpool.

Just a couple of them. Because some of these items are going to be coming back at the end here. I figured I'd just respond real quick. You know, appreciate you folks coming out. I appreciate hearing your concerns about the by names list and and the hygiene needs in the jungle. These are things that we think about quite often. The plan that we're working on around the jungle is very detailed, and there's a lot of folks that are involved in it. That said, I do appreciate continued feedback and ideas around it because it's not an easy process. We're trying to house over 200 people in a humane way while managing one of the largest jungles in the state, one of the largest encampments in the state. And so it's going to require a lot of effort. And I hope you stick around to hear a little bit more about those details. And always send emails if you have follow-up questions about details of that plan because it is quite intense.

Yeah, thank you so much. Additional comments? Mayor Pro Tem Nguyen.

Yeah, just wanted to appreciate folks generally for coming out today. It's always, uh, we usually get people to come, um, to shed light on some concerns that they have and, uh, which is welcomed. And it's always nice when people also note progress that is happening. So thank you for that. And, um, and also say, Hey, I saw some progress and here's some things that I still need, think need to be done. So, uh, just really appreciate the thoughtful comments. Um, I'm not going to talk about the jungle because we are, uh, that's our first item tonight. And I think you'll stay around for that. I hope you will. Actually, you might be interested in both of them tonight, both about housing. Just want to say thank you to Victoria, the library manager, for... I was a little on the line there. I wasn't supposed to talk about ballot measures. But I really appreciate... Just sharing generally what's going on with the library. We get quite a few comments from folks about that. Positive ones, too, when there is no kerfuffle, so to speak, just about how much they appreciate library services. And you've come and shared updates unprompted a number of times. I just always appreciate learning more about it and what's going on with our local libraries. And then I am hoping there may be more comments, but I'm hoping that at some point we could ask staff to address the how are we handling public safety and trash specifically as our managing teams that are frontline staff that I see Mr. Ballard is no longer with us. So I will just hold my comments on that. Thanks.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Any additional comments? All right, seeing none. I will just speak briefly to the public safety concerns that were brought up. I will say that I understand your concern. I also share those concerns. Just earlier today, I had a conversation with staff about the very things that you brought up. And we know that this is something that needs to be carefully thought through just in terms of what is it that we're experiencing. It seems like we've had these kinds of violent incidents more recently in recent weeks. But we pay very much intentionally to data and crime trends. And so that is something that we don't want to make assumptions about. We want to follow the information that we have on hand. I understand that that can bring up certain emotions and even install fear in some of our community members and understandably so. So I hear your concerns and share them as well. We are in discussions about what this means, what this looks like, if it is something that's a changing trend, uh in the city of olympia we do tend to experience more property crime than other types of violent crime is usually more typical but our is what we're feeling in line with uh with the data and is there a shift um i do know uh sometimes it seems like in in summer months sometimes that activity shifts a little bit through then through other times throughout the year where we see different kinds of activity And and honestly even more of a presence of people who are not from our community We tend to see a little bit more of that in the warmer months as well So I just want to share that with you that thank you for coming out tonight and your concerns are valid I also know that Trash is an issue and I've been speaking about that as well And I recently called our city's clean team myself I also live on the west side and ask them to come and pick something up. And so I do know that that is something that is a concern as well and trust and believe that we are working on that as much as we can. In terms of the incident that you're just speaking to the most recent shooting Obviously, we want to condemn that kind of violence by anyone in our community Whether they live here or they are visiting here or coming from anywhere else That is something we cannot tolerate And I also just want to express sincere Just my heartfelt sorrow for it because it's something that these two young individuals were very much involved in and should not ever happen to people who are, you know, in their late teens, early 20s, let alone anyone else. But I thank you tonight for being a representative voice right now for what I suspect is a lot of people who are feeling this shift and are concerned. And so at this time I would like to call on our police chief who might be able to speak to some of what you're concerned about in a way that is doesn't get too much into speculation, but provide some information as to perhaps what we know at the moment. Chief Parker, please.

Good evening, Mayor Payne, city council members, and our community members as well. This weekend, we lost two young people, and I appreciate you condemning those acts of violence. We are aware that there is an uptick of gun violence in our community, and we have deployed a number of resources to try to get to the bottom of what is going on and to try to reduce the number of guns that are in the community and certainly the changes that can be made to some of those platforms. We have a special investigations response team that has done a tremendous amount of work in this area and I am very proud to say that they are working to actively reduce these instances and we have a tremendous amount of work to do but we're we're ahead of the crisis. I can appreciate it doesn't appear that way by the increase in violence, but I believe that had we not been doing the proactive work that we've been engaged in over the last 18 months, that these numbers might be higher than they are right now. We need to continue to engage with our youth and make sure that they understand that violence is never the answer when they have challenges with their peers.

Thank you, Chief. And if there is, where can people sort of go to learn more about what the police department is doing in response to these types of incidents? Is there somewhere where our community members can go?

You can absolutely email us at the City of Olympia Police Department. We'd be happy to be responsive to any questions. We have our social media where we do put information. We have a weekly report that we post on our social media platform every week that does have crime updates and trends. There's a crime map that is linked on that publication that you can continue to follow. The Next Door app is an excellent social media app where you can stay up to date with your neighbors about what's going on in the community. And I would always encourage you to feel comfortable reaching out to me and I can make sure that we have the answers.

Thank you very much. All right. Additional comments. All right. Thank you. And at this time, I also would like to call up Mark Russell, our public works director, just to speak to the concern about trash. Maybe you could give a few comments on how our community members can connect with the city if they have concerns about it.

Thank you, Mayor, Council. For the record, I'm Mark Russell, Public Works Director. Yes, we do have several Public Works staff that are out in the community picking up trash and trying to Make things look better and keep them clean It's our clean team that you referred to is primarily responsible for doing that although the rest of our Public Works crews do Assist with that if things get left on the side of the road for example our streets team will help load that up if needed our course our waste resources team which is part of the clean team or clean team is part of them will assist with that too if if things need to be hauled away or what have you. You know those resources are limited and we do get around as much as we can they have regular routes especially in the downtown the library for example. Is on the route and there's various other places where we know there's problem, but certainly if the community See something occurring in a specific instance. They're probably the best way to reach out is our public works dispatch So they could email public works at the city's email the CI Olympia wa us and or call our dispatch line, which is 360-753-8333 to report that, and then we'll get a team taking care of it.

All right. Thank you very much, Mark. All right. So with that, that concludes the public comment section and response on our agenda for tonight. Thank you all to our community members who came out to express their concerns And so with that we are going to move on to the rest of our agenda with the adoption of the consent calendar I need a motion and a second to approve I Move we adopt the consent calendar second All right, we have a motion and a second. I am tracking that we have two pools on our consent calendar tonight. They are items 4C and 4D. The first beginning with 4C, which is the approval of a bid award for the City Hall Second Floor Improvements Project. And this was a poll that was requested by Councilmember Vanderpool and our Public Works Director, Mark Russell, is gonna make his way back to the podium to speak to that.

Thank you again mayor again for the record on Mark Russell public works director. I understand there's a question on the bid award for improvements on the 2nd floor and just a reminder especially for the public these are improvements that are necessary to transition our prosecution team from the old justice center to city Hall. We're basically creating the same environment that they had at the justice center with that city Hall but in a much smaller It's because of state laws and security reasons, it's not just putting cubicles onto the floor, reorganizing cubicles. We actually have to build walls and create offices and different work areas that are all secure and located separately from each other. When you start to do that in an existing building, other things tend to crop up. So I'm trying to explain why the cost is what it is. If you put walls up, you have to reconfigure the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system. You have to move plugs around. You have to move light switches around. So it starts to create other things that need to be done, various security badging in and out of different areas for the security requirements. We're also making sure bathroom is compliant with current ADA standards, lights, and then also because we're working in an existing building that's occupied by staff, it's not like it's a vacant building, so contractor has to take extra care in noise abatement during work hours, dust, you know, put up barriers, all those kinds of things have to occur. That's just part of the reason of why that's an expensive undertaking, but it's certainly necessary for what that work group needs. We did not go beyond what their requirements were, a lot of which are mandated by state law. I am pleased to say that the bids did come in below the engineer's estimate, which is good. So the cost is not a surprise to staff. And the bids were actually, if you look in your packet, are relatively tight. It isn't like the low bid is way below everybody else. They're relatively tight with each other. So we're feeling confident in the bid and the background we've done with the contractor. And then, of course, in order to, time is of the essence, we worked really hard to move this project along as quickly as possible in order to relocate that staff by the end of the year when we're contractually obligated to vacate the Justice Center. So that's, any other questions I'd be glad to answer about that project?

Council Member Vanderpool. Thank you. I pulled it because to the exact point, I was a little like, okay, you know, $952,000 is something that I was like, oh, well, that's quite a bit for the second floor of the city hall. But it sounds like you're having to build a building within the building almost, right? You have to build the walls and the separate entrances and all of the utility around that. um but that's really what my question that's why i pulled it um because it to to me or to anyone in the public who happens to read the document they're probably like oh wow look at that you know so i appreciate you uh giving us a little bit more detail on that of course thank you all right any additional comments seeing none thank you mark um and you're gonna stay put

So now we're going to move on to the requested pool for item 4D on the agenda, which is the approval of a bid award for the 2026 sidewalk repair project, a pool that was also requested by Councilmember Vanderpool.

Right really appreciate the question to clarify for for both you and our community, the difference between what we're doing with our sidewalk internal operations team as versus a contract that's before you tonight for sidewalk repair so. Both those tools are being utilized in our capital facilities plan every year we were. Asked by both our community on this council to make sure we're doing a sidewalk repair project every year. And, um. Since that was asked, so we continue to do that. This is the 2nd of a series of sidewalk repairs done by contract. Um, also concurrently with that as, you know, council, um. Authorize the creation of a sidewalk repair crew in our operations team So that's also going on concurrently and the difference between the two is the contracts are really taking on more complex and larger sidewalk repair projects they they're typically a city block as opposed to just individual panel replacements and And they have more complexities such as street tree replacement stormwater upgrades a ramps. Private utility conflicts you know signs and so there were creating a package of projects that are just more complex and easier for a larger scale contractor to do that and having our sidewalk crew concentrate on more individual panel replacements that are. A little more straightforward. None of them are super straightforward. We've done all the easy stuff. The hard stuff remains, but they're able to do more if they don't have those other complications to work. So we're trying to balance both contractual complex projects with the day-to-day sidewalk repair projects, which we're just getting underway with that new crew as well this year. So I'm excited to bring that contract before the council as well.

Thank you very much, Mark. Questions for Mark?

Council Member Vanderpool. Thank you again for the explanation. Are you expecting us to continue to be doing both of these at the same time into the future as we go through our capital facilities? Each year we're going to continue to have both our internal crew and contract into the future.

That is our plan at this point with the funds we have available you'll see next year's capital facilities plan we are proposing another contracted. Sidewalk repair project in the half a million dollar range we plan on doing that into the future year after year and either unless. The funds aren't there to do that, or council, you know, asks us to do something different with that money. But that is in the proposal for upcoming years at this point in time. Okay. That's just the clarity I wanted to ask you about.

Thank you. Of course.

Thank you. Additional comments? All right. Seeing none. Thank you, Mark. All right, so that's it for our polls on the consent calendar. We have a motion and a second on the floor. All those in favor of adopting the consent calendar as published signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Consent calendar is adopted. Before we move on to our business items, it doesn't look like Councilmember Gilman is going to join us. So please just let the minutes reflect that Councilmember Gilman is excused tonight. Thank you. All right. So we'll move on to item 6A on our agenda, which is the jungle encampment transition update. And we have Stacey Ray, who's our assistant city manager, presenting tonight, along with our police chief, Shelby Parker. Hi, Stacey.

Hi. Good evening, Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, members of council. Thank you. For the record, my name is Stacey Ray, assistant city manager. And with me is police chief Shelby Parker. So she'll be joining momentarily. So first off, I just want to acknowledge, I'm going to speak tonight about the jungle encampment transition process. This is both for your benefit, but also especially for the benefit of our community. There's a tremendous amount of work that's been underway. I want to take this opportunity to update all of you and our community members on what's been happening around the jungle encampment. I just want to acknowledge this work was initially started by now retired assistant city manager Debbie Sullivan, and I want to just acknowledge her leadership in having gotten this project off the ground. And I want to acknowledge our Homeless Response Team, because they're the ones that are doing the exceptional work out in the field with the individuals who are living at the encampment. So Kim Condrat as our Homeless Response Coordinator, William Kreitz-Crum as our Program Specialist, Oscar Ayala and Aspen Donahue as our Program Assistants. So a lot of what I'm talking about tonight is happening through their hard work and their commitment to the folks at the jungle. And then I want to acknowledge our new housing director, Ashley Chambers, who's on board now and who I'm folding into this work and who's also bringing her expertise and leadership along the way. And then lastly, so much of what I'm talking about is a cross-departmental effort by you know, countless staff within the city because managing an encampment of this size requires our police department, our fire department, code enforcement, our waste resources, Soloway's clean team, as we've talked about, our legal department, and so many others.

Stacey, would you prefer questions during the presentation or would you like us to wait until you get to the end?

I'm happy to take them during. We're going to cover a lot of information, but please stop me if there's something you'd like me to elaborate on.

Okay, great.

So in terms of our jungle encampment transition, what is the purpose of that body of work is that we're using a regional phase approach to reduce the population at the homeless encampment known as the jungle. with the goal of safely and compassionately closing the encampment. Tonight, I'm gonna talk a bit about an overview of the encampment and our kind of concurrent conditions. I'll talk about what I mean when we say we're taking a regional approach. I wanna highlight much of what's been done to date and what milestones have been reached I'll talk about site management and also have an opportunity for Chief Parker to talk about site management and relationships to public safety. And then I will wrap up with talking a bit about where we go from here. So one of the questions we get quite a bit is, why are we addressing the jungle now? Why at this point? And I want to just note that prior to the jungle, as a city, we have successfully closed 14 homeless encampments by transitioning individuals into shelter and housing. Now, that's not to say we don't still have individuals who are homeless in our community, and we certainly have work to do. But the jungle is our last remaining established encampment. And as Council Member Vanderpool mentioned, it's one of, if not the largest encampment in the state. The population is currently at about 275. we started when we did our by name list, which I'll speak to a little bit later, at 290. So we're starting to make some progress there. But I want to say those numbers do change. You know, the site is dynamic, but we're continuing to track how many folks we have on our by name list and continue to update that list. The other thing I'll just mention is that As we know, this is a challenging site. We have difficult and unsafe conditions. The size has a tremendous impact on our surrounding community. And really critically is that we have regional partners and our other jurisdictions that are working with us to prioritize this encampment now for closure. And then lastly, our one community plan, which really guides all of our work around homeless and housing response, set the path for transitioning people out of homelessness and into housing. and not allowing new encampments to establish. And that includes not letting new encampments grow. So a little bit about the site. It's approximately 20 acres. There's multiple underlying property owners. It is adjacent to a significant category one wetland. It's not a secure site. It's not fenced. There's not a wall around it. It's not clear where the property boundaries are, so it's a very what I'm just calling an unsecured site with many different access points. As I mentioned, we have a population or a number on our by name list, which I'll get to in a minute, of 275. That's based on that count and a mapping of structures. About 16 acres of the site is privately owned. There's also varying degrees of structures on the site, some very temporary or some very like just ranging from a tent to some things that are more what you might consider constructed. It's a long established site with pathways that wind throughout and conditions changing depending on the season and the weather. I mentioned the multiple access points. There's one vehicle access gate off Martin Way that we as a city manage. We do have a dumpster on site, and we do have garbage collection on a regular basis. We have two regularly serviced portable restrooms on site, which we heard some comments around about kind of maybe that's not meeting the need right now, and we can certainly look at that. And our homeless response team members are on site for a good portion of the week working with individuals. We also have probably a dozen or more service providers who are independently doing work on the site. And then we have other community groups that maybe want to help in some way, shape, or form and might drop off things, whether that's clothes or food. And so, you know, it's largely unknown to us exactly how many people are visiting the site. and always in terms of what their mission is. So I'll talk a little bit about the regional approach and why it's been so critical for us to launch this process. First, we're using a regional encampment planning team. So we have different jurisdiction representation on the team. We have perspectives and experience, including lived experience in the housing housing arena, folks who've worked directly with unhoused individuals, work with coordinated entry, mental health, and addiction services. We also have representation from business and property owner community, nearby business community through inner city transit. So this is really a group that has really leaned into this process. They're thinking strategically. They're thinking creatively. They're collaborating together and really looking at how to problem solve as we move through this process. A little bit about roles. I'm serving as the project manager. I also liaison to the Department of Commerce with regards to the ERP program, and I'll talk about that in a minute. I serve to lead communications and engagement with the community. Our team is developing the transition plans. And that includes all elements of that plan. It's how to assist the people who we want to stabilize before they transition to housing and how to address the folks that show up to the site who might not be on the by name list. That also includes just what are the interim site management and support strategies and what partnerships and services are we bringing to the site. And then we're actively working with and engaged with our city managers and county executives who can help approve Resources being used towards the process and then also address any barriers therein So I want to take a minute to acknowledge that we're in a very a good place in terms of having a regional approach and I talked Specifically about the regional team, but I also want to note that you know essentially we're working regionally with service providers as well a lot of our service providers don't recognize our city and county boundaries and And I think the reason that there's a lot of reasons why I just want to highlight that we're in a good place in terms of a regional approach right now and that's because we We do have a shared dedication to the goal of this work. We do have that positive collaboration working There's a lot of commitment on the part of our city and the other jurisdictions right now We're sharing information in a transparent way and really talking about some of these complex issues, which I'll dive into in a minute And I can't say enough about the depth of expertise and compassion that's at the table right now as part of this conversation. So I want to talk a little bit about what's been accomplished. We had a lot of attention when we launched this process on the creation of the by name list. And that was a really critical decision point in order to move forward with that. But so much has been able to happen since that point. So just to take a step back, before we even got to that point, we launched this regional encampment transition team, which is really the first of its kind in our area. We sought and received approval by the Washington State Department of Commerce to designate the jungle as an encampment resolution program site. Intentionally sought that, and I'll talk about why in a minute. We completed a by name list that meant looking at current structures and the residents who are tied to each of those structures. We've transitioned 18 individuals to date into temporary or permanent housing. So we're already starting to move our first group of individuals into ERP-funded beds or housing units. We are partnering with service providers, quite a few of them, to complete coordinated entry intake forms And that includes vulnerability scores for our residents out there so that we understand what their needs are to better be able to position them and locate the housing that they need. It's called a heat score, so we're calling it our heat wave. And then right now we're developing a process for residents to help them maintain their active status on our by name list. And then we're partnering with Providence Medical Center. We're extremely grateful for their partnership to bring a mobile health unit onto the site. So one of the things we're hearing from service providers is how can you bring resources to people on the site? And we're continuing to look for ways to do that. And then I want to acknowledge another service provider, Olimap, for being a partner in helping us address the garbage buildup and garbage disposal on the site, as well as helping to continue in their mission of dispersing survival supplies.

Stacy, could you speak to, I believe it was Annette, our public commenter, who mentioned earlier about how is the by name list a closed list and paying attention to how the population at the jungle fluctuates. Could you speak to that?

Yeah, certainly. So I think it might help if I moved to my next slide because I'm going to talk about the encampment resolution program, which really leads into why that by name list is a static list. So just to speak a little bit to what the encampment resolution program is through the Department of Commerce. The mission of the ERP program is encampment closure. So that means that's what the funds are directed towards. So they provide housing resources in order to move people from the jungle who live in the jungle as their primary permanent residents. And so what that means is that the first step to utilizing the ERP program is establishing a by name list. So understanding who is an established resident of the jungle and with the closure of that encampment will be displaced. So that's how we establish the list. At that point, if we have other folks that are moving to the site, we acknowledge that they may not be on the by name list. However, they still need support resources. And that's part of what our planning team is doing is identifying how to get those folks connected to resources outside of the by name list. And one of those very important key resources is our county's coordinated entry program. So Which is a way to get individuals onto the list Understand their needs and make sure they're in the queue and are assessed for their housing needs through that housing pathway So the by name list is closed we don't add any additional individuals to the by name and list at this point We have a question from councilmember green I

Thank you, Mayor. Stacey, I just want to ask a clarifying question on that. So the by name list is closed. Folks are not being allowed to come in and start camping there if they haven't camped there. But folks who are coming in are still eligible for services through that coordinated entry, just not through the services that would be paid for by the ERP program?

So the, yeah, so I'm going to get into my. I have some notes so I can speak to the differentiation between the coordinated entry program and the ERP program. But you can think of the short answer is yes, we are going to work to connect those people to resources, but the jungle is no longer a place in which any new people can camp. So once a section of the jungle is closed and it will be closed in sections, that section is no longer an area to establish an encampment or grow the current encampment. So... And people are, you know, we're sharing that information. We're very upfront with folks when they come into the space that we've established a by name list at this point and what our process is around that. Now, that being said, there's two pathways to housing, two major pathways, I would say, two primary pathways. One is through the ERP program, which the Department of Commerce funds only fund a certain amount of units in our housing system And those are held and set aside for existing encampments. Once all existing encampments that are designated as ERP site encampments are gone, those existing units can be opened up to the broader coordinated entry system. So if you're not on a by name list, you can still, through multitude of service providers and our homeless response team, go through an assessment process to understand your vulnerability score and be added to the coordinated entry system to then be transitioned into housing when something becomes available through that pathway. Does that help answer your question?

It does. And then just one follow-up on the, are you, as far as you're aware, were there any folks who have been kind of permanent residents of the jungle, but were not there during the time the by name list was established. Like maybe they have a structure there, but for whatever reason they were not there.

Yeah. So we took that into account. You know, we worked with some of the service providers that are regularly on site. Our homeless response team has really has actually been working and engaging on the jungle for years. And so we, you know, we were able to identify most people and, and could, assess individuals on a case-by-case basis. Let's say, for instance, somebody was serving a short-term jail sentence, and they were gone and then came back because they had done their required incarceration. Then, you know, at that point, we looked at it on a case-by-case basis in consultation with the Department of Commerce and, you know, could put them on the list. But the key there was that this is an encampment closure program, and so we needed to see confirmation that folks had been long-term permanent residents of the site. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Vanderpool. Really quick, you know, I'll kind of speak to this a little, but one of the criticisms I've heard from folks is the closing of the list, right? And I think that one of the things that has to be made clear is that that's a commerce policy for the way the program works. It's not a City of Olympia policy. Um, because a lot of folks will feel that, uh, I've spoken to service providers and different folks in the community have felt, uh, we wish the S we wish the list system was set up differently, but it, it, it turns out a lot of that is commerce ruling because it's commerce dollars. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct. And that has to, that just is tied back to what is the ultimate intention and mission of the program and the program funding. The other thing I'll say is the, I'm sorry, Council Member Vandepoel, were you finished?

That's it. I just wanted to clarify that because that is a very important distinction. I appreciate the answer. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I just want to say that the regional team struggled with this. I mean, we took some time to think about this decision because when you designate a site as an encamber resolution program site, you open up the ability to use those funded units and which I had some information on what units, how many those are. And you're committed to every individual on that by name list needs to receive an offer of reasonable housing. If somebody were to turn down that offer of housing, they're removed from the by name list. Or if somebody were not to continue the check-in process or be present at the jungle in a continuing time frame, they're removed from that by nameless. So there were some considerations to make and think about, well, is this the process we want to go down? But in terms of looking at the availability of units, it was hard to not want to take advantage of these commerce-funded units, especially in which case we had approximately 20 of them sitting vacant that could only go towards use, towards a designated ERP encampment site. Otherwise, they may sit vacant while folks may be found in right-of-way and then put into those units. But we really weighed the decision and went with the fact that this would allow us to use potentially, not that they're all vacant, but potentially up to around 196 of ERP-funded beds.

Stacey, can you provide some clarity or maybe shed some light on what the conversations with the regional team is like when it comes to, so we have our by name list and that's the list and it's closed. What is the response to those who just show up to the encampment? You mentioned the alternative coordinated entry process earlier. But beyond that, what happens in the moment as we're trying to shrink the size of the encampment?

Yeah. So our homeless response team and certainly our other service providers are going to respond with the same level of compassion that they always have. This is a struggle for our outreach workers as well, that we have these two separate pathways and that one through the Department of Commerce has this guidance that we need and the funding availability and the guidance that we need to abide by. So they're certainly going to want to connect with the folks that are on site, make sure they understand the situation, what the limitations are, and help connect them to the existing resources that we have that you know, can hopefully get them, again, onto that coordinated entry list. We can get the assessment done with them and redirect them to some, whatever other housing resources might be available at the time.

Okay. Thank you. Additional questions?

All right. Council Member Vanderpool. I'm not sure if it's ahead in this presentation, but I guess in addition to that, do you want to briefly talk about the navigator potential to use a, the, the housing navigator to help move along that pipeline? That's something that, uh, the regional housing council has approved, but, uh, and that'll come to this council.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'll, I'll speak to it now and may touch on it later. Um, so certainly, um, again, we, uh, this regional team, um, had the opportunity to consider what might we propose if we had some additional ERP one-time dollars through our county's allocation from the Department of Commerce. And one of the gaps that was identified in our system is the idea of a housing navigator who can work with individuals who are in our tiny home units right now, maybe in our ERP-funded units who may be reaching the point where they're successfully stabilized enough to move up into the next level of housing, which might be subsidized housing or maybe it's permanent supportive housing or low-income housing. So what we're trying to do is create an opportunity for someone who's in low-barrier housing to move up into higher level of housing so that we then open up those first-level housing units for people we might move directly from outdoors to indoors. So what we do is we create more movement in what we kind of anecdotally call a pipeline of housing types that serve people at different points kind of in their housing stability journey. So again, one of the proposals that we had for the Regional Housing Council, and we appreciate their support of the concept, was the idea of a housing navigator who can help kind of free up some space in the pipeline so that folks who are ready to move on, then we can then open up units for people from the jungle can then move into. Those units would primarily be opened up at Beeple Court in Lacey and our Franz Anderson tiny home village in Olympia. A couple other things I'll just offer that was also part of that recommendation to the regional housing council was some additional funds, again, one-time funds, but would help work towards stabilization of individuals on the site. So one, they're ready to transition to housing, but I think more importantly, they're ready to accept an offer of housing. One of the things we don't want to do City Council Chambers, is offer housing that somebody can't accept, which then makes it so that they're removed from the binding list so we're doing our hardest to try to find. City Council Chambers, to understand people's individual needs and make sure that when we're ready to give an offer of housing that it's something that they can accept and be successful through that transition. So we also asked for some funds to help around stabilization for folks while they're waiting for that transition. And then also we're continuing to work on reunification, which if we can connect someone to family, friends, or another support system where they can stabilize, we will also continue to try to do that as well. So I want to come back to some accomplishments and milestones because One of the kind of significant concerns around this process was well How are we letting people know what's happening and answering the questions and I think tonight is just one step in that process But our as I mentioned before our homeless response team has been engaging with jungle residents for years and they're continuing to do that work and they built trusting relationships and those are proving to be really critical right now through this transition and Staff, you know, myself and others continue to meet with interested stakeholders. That includes business property owners and certainly service providers. I've been attending, when I can, regional regularly held meetings with providers to answer questions, be available, provide updates. as well as other organizations and agencies, including the Regional Housing Council. And then also staff met with and a member of our regional team met with the Regional Housing Council Lived Experience Housing Steering Committee, something that's important to our regional team and also the Regional Housing Council and also from conversations with you has been that we are working with folks with lived experience. We are working with residents. We are understanding what their needs are, what their recommendations are, and incorporating them into our planning process. And then our website, we're keeping our website current with a lot of information. You can take certainly a very deep dive. And then our mayor is out there sharing information with community members as well. So next I'll move into what we're doing, some of our strategies around current site management. And I want to talk a little bit about what makes this so complex. As we know, we get a lot of comments about why can't you just remove the encampment? Why can't you just house people? But there are a lot of layers of complexity to this work, which makes it so critical that it's regional. One is I mentioned at the outset, we don't own all of the underlying property. So we have an option to purchase agreement in place with the majority private property owner that allows us to access and do some light site management for purposes of homeless outreach support and safety. This is a multi-year process that's going to require sustained regional commitment. What we know about Department of Commerce funding is that we have seen declines. We've seen a reduction in funding for Plum Street Village. We saw a reduction in funding for Quinn Street, which we lost approximately 55, 56 units through both of those reductions. We've also seen a reduction in Department of Commerce funding towards congregate shelter so That's a funding source. We're relying on right now that we continue to need to advocate for There's just an overall severe regional shortage of housing types that we need as we talked about the pipeline. We've done as Best we can at certain levels within that pipeline, but we still have shortages at nearly every level within that pipeline and I won't belabor it, but we talked about the need to try to move people through so that we create new openings for those that are coming directly from outdoors. We talked about the differences between the ERP and the coordinated entry program. That in and of itself is like a PhD program to understand, but it's working. And they work together and in alignment as opposed to against each other. We're making sure that that's the case with this process. Every individual on that site has a different lived experience and background and different challenges and barriers and needs that our team are working hard to learn so that we can match them up with housing. And we have many, many residents who have pets, and pets can create a challenge to finding a housing type or a reasonable offer of housing for folks.

Stacey, we have a question from Council Member Barrett.

Lisa.

Thank you, Stacey. I was just looking at the bullet up here that said there isn't necessary movement in the housing pipeline to transition individuals from outdoors to low barrier. Are you just saying that there aren't enough openings? Is that what you're saying? I mean, I just want to make sure what that says.

Yes. So what we're finding is that once we're able to move folks into housing, they stay. And in a lot of cases, when we are able to move individuals into permanent supportive housing where they have the wraparound services and case management, in a lot of cases, those individuals will need that support in perpetuity. So when I say we don't have movement, it's because people need to be in the place that they're in. And it can take time for our case managers and our outreach workers to help folks stabilize or get to a point where they can move to a next level of housing.

And so that essentially just results in difficulty in slowly having options for moving people out of the camps and into this housing because they're full and people are successfully living there.

That's correct. So, you know, it becomes a situation where you have units open when you have people who exit and you don't necessarily want people exiting those units. You want them to be successful in the place in which they're housed. So we want to create the opportunity for them to be successful in that place. The other challenge and what's different about this site and which will make it multi-year is that in previous encampments, we have opened large blocks of units, whether we opened up a tiny home village or we had Maple Court open, which enabled us to move 50, 75 people in their community into that new housing development. At this point, we're working in groups of one, two, five at a time, and that's going to take time. A few of the other just layers of complexity. I talked about every resident kind of has their own challenges that they need to be addressed through service providers or case management. We also are working with individuals who, for a multitude of reasons, have developed levels of mistrust towards government or others, and it can take time to build those relationships. This was brought up earlier this evening. We don't sweep encampments because that doesn't solve the individual being homeless. It moves them elsewhere. And when you're talking about 275 individuals, that becomes a whole different challenge to try to manage. I talked about success. And then I'm going to pause for a minute to address the solid waste issues because I Garbage cleanup on the site is critical both for the safety and well-being of the residents, but also because we have folks burning garbage for both food and heat or to get rid of it. And that's creating air quality issues, significant air quality for our surrounding property owners.

Stacey, I just want to mention also on your point about sweeping encampments. So that would make us an eligible participant in the encampment resolution program if we just swept the jungle, correct?

That's correct. Yes, through the ERP program, an encampment cannot be removed without every individual being provided a reasonable offer of housing if you're utilizing ERP resources. And we chose to do so. Chief Parker's going to get at these points, but I think just the recognition that the size and long-term existence of an encampment can attract the negative behavior and residents themselves become significantly at risk of victimization. So that being said, our objectives for site management, so this is the interim site management strategies that the regional team are working on, are to transition people into viable housing Maintain that safe and healthy environment for folks that are waiting both for the community and residents on the site. Provide those support and services so that people are ready to transition and can be successful. Provide the support and services to people who come to the site who are not on the by name list and set down the encampment. So in terms of current site management, again, our homeless response team is out there on the regular. We have service providers also providing regular services. Some of those are listed here. We've talked about them. We are looking at some additional options for site security, particularly around the dumpster and porta potty areas. And then I mentioned the Providence mobile medical team. Resident engagement is happening on a regular basis. We're going to be conducting regular check-ins. We're doing the assessments to understand what people's needs are, and we're communicating with residents about the process. This was an important piece we heard from service providers was ensuring that people knew what was happening, why it was happening, and that they had agency in that process. I will say, as of today, in terms of doing the heat assessments or the vulnerability assessments, we have 129 of our folks out there have active heat assessments for them. And service providers really stepped up here with Family Support Center having jumped in to do 55 of those alone. So we're grateful for that support. So we're closing sections as folks are transitioned to demonstrate progress in terms of closure. Those areas are cleared and permanently closed, and we're going to continue to monitor. We as a city have committed to quarterly site-wide cleans. We'll clean after sections are closed and we're doing regular garbage pickup. Next I'm going to turn it over to Chief Parker who will talk more specifically about public safety.

Good evening Mayor Payne and City Council again this evening. Nice to see you again. Before I begin I want to frame the discussion. As we discuss public safety at the jungle, I will intentionally keep some aspects of our work at a high level. There are details we will not discuss in a public setting when doing so could compromise officer safety, the effectiveness of our public safety efforts, and the safety of residents at the jungle. Tonight, I want to outline the police department's approach to public safety at the encampment, including the purpose behind our intended increased presence there. We are moving from being primarily reactive at the jungle to having a more regular relationship-based presence. This change is not due to a single incident or sudden change in conditions. It is another layer of support that's being added as the city's work at the encampment moves into this next phase. As that work progresses, a significant number of people will continue to live at the site for some time. These individuals need to feel safe while they are there and their concerns about crime and victimization should be heard and addressed. The transition process itself can create stress and uncertainty for residents. As people begin moving into housing, camp dynamics can change and tensions can rise. This makes it even more important that concerns are identified early and that residents know where they can turn when they need help. That is why our approach is very timely and intentional. The primary teams involved will be our neighborhood police officers, called NPOs, and members of our crisis response unit, or crew. These teams' work is already grounded in relationship building, problem solving, de-escalation, and connecting people with services. The goal is for our NPO and crew members to build familiarity and trust before a crisis occurs, rather than first appearing when something has gone wrong. Residents who have been victimized should know they can approach NPO or crew members for help. Residents with safety concerns should feel comfortable bringing those concerns forward. And when needs are identified that are better addressed through services rather than the criminal justice system, our teams can help make those connections. We will continue to look for additional partnerships. One example is the county's lead referral program, which may provide a constructive option when our teams encounter low-level offenses where connection to services is more appropriate and productive than relying solely on enforcement. I want to be clear about what this proactive approach is not. This is not a sweep. It is not an effort to accelerate closure of the camp through enforcement. And it is not about criminalizing homelessness. These relationship building visits will not be used as an opportunity to seek out misdemeanor warrants or offenses and address unrelated low-level enforcement issues. Residents should be able to talk with an officer or crew member about victimization or a safety concern without worrying that asking for assistance will create another problem for them. At the same time, being relationship-based does not mean ignoring serious criminal activity. If officers become aware of serious criminal conduct or significant threats to safety, we will respond appropriately. There needs to be a clear distinction between responding to serious safety concerns and contacts whose primary purpose is engagement and connection to services. How we introduce this increased public safety presence is important. There is a legitimate concern that introducing a police response too abruptly could unintentionally cause some residents to leave before important heat assessment work is completed. Those assessments are expected to continue into October, so OPD will begin its proactive visits while that work is still being conducted. The key will be coordination and sensitivity. OPD will coordinate its schedule with the homeless response team so that proactive visits occur on different days or at different times from heat assessment work. The MPO and crew presence will also be phased in gradually, starting with a couple of days a week and increasing over time as appropriate. The community will see police vehicles on site. We will be deliberate about where and how those vehicles are parked so that a routine visit does not appear to be a major police response. Over time, the goal is for an OPD vehicle to become an ordinary site rather than an alarming site. Not a sign that or excuse me a sign that resources available and not that something is necessarily gone wrong on the site. We'll also be very intentional about protecting the relationships that outreach workers and service providers has spent years developing our presence is intended to complement not replace or interfere with their work. We also intend to engage businesses and property owners around the jungle. so they understand why we are there and what we are trying to accomplish. Finally, I see this as an opportunity to continue learning and refining OPD's proactive engagement in encampment environments. We will evaluate whether this proactive relationship-based approach is making a difference, not simply by counting contacts. We will look at relationships established, people connected with services, victims assisted, safety concerns identified and resolved, and serious problems addressed before they escalate. We will also listen closely to feedback from residents, providers, and the surrounding community. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Chief Parker. Your first question will come from Councilmember Green.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for that, Chief. You alluded to this, but I'm going to ask a kind of specific question that I get a lot from community members, which is if OPD is in the jungle and sees something, sees someone using narcotics, sees stolen property, sees other, you know, I think you referred to them as low-level offenses, but criminal activity, why do they not just act on that?

When they're low-level offenses, I believe there's better ways for us to respond rather than enforcement in those instances, whether that be a referral to a prosecutor's office, whether that be a referral to the LEAD program or working with other resources available to us. Now, when we encounter felonious incidences that have a very high impact on the safety of the residents in the jungle and the surrounding community, those are the times where we absolutely need to take action and SWIFT.

Thank you. Um, additional questions. Um, chief, I was wondering if you could speak to, um, so. Some of this is a unique approach for the jungle, um, and this particular, uh, transition planning. Um, but our officers have also been involved in other encampment closures. So can you speak to that a little bit about how that has looked, um, and what we've already done?

Thank you, mayor. Our neighborhood policing officers have regularly been involved in our camp closures in the past. They've established relationships and really use this relationship based model positively. And it's worked incredibly well throughout all of our camp closures. MPOs have been in collaboration and they haven't had to arrest individuals at the closure of the campus. It's a very positive point that I like to share with our community. So this isn't new work to your point. What is new? is just specific at this location. The police department has been primarily reactive to this site. So this proactive presence is new. And the point is really to increase public safety for those living in the jungle and make sure that they have adequate resources.

Thank you, Chief. And I know that some of that is sort of, you know, I can kind of hear the comments now in my head, right? Well, why did you wait until now to have a proactive approach here? And I know that some of the, there are challenges specifically with the jungle. And I was wondering if maybe you could shed some light on that without obviously tipping too much towards the scale of providing intel.

Certainly. The why now piece what it what really has changed is that the city is in a new regional approach in addressing this camp and we have been primarily reactive to the location to allow our service providers to do their work with really without creating barriers for them now that we're entering into a regional in a phased approach that's where our presence becomes critically important. The police department is doing a great deal of work in this area much of it I can't speak to because I don't want to compromise officer safety nor the effectiveness of those investigations, but we are present and a lot of excellent work is being done to improve public safety in the area. But what I'm speaking to tonight is really the specific combination of our crisis response unit and our neighborhood police officers and going in really building relationships making sure that folks know our names and that they know that they can reach out and speak to us. We talked about when a camp closes, there can be some instability and we want to make sure that we're reducing that instability as much as possible.

Thank you, Chief. And I was wondering if you know, if the department, as they spend more time there, some of the things that you all will come to know at the operational level, can you speak a little bit to how maybe some of those things could or might make its way back to us on council? If you become aware of any new particular challenges that you might face and how you might need to come to us for any given reason. Who knows what that might be. But could you speak to you know maybe how you would handle such a process.

Certainly communication open lines of communication with all of our stakeholders is going to be critically important in this process. We need to make sure that our providers are able to do their critical heat assessment work and that we're not interfering in that work. We also need to make sure that we're making some positive gains in public safety and relationships. So if we reach some barriers in this work, we do have some alternatives. We've had excellent conversations with a number of our community partners regionally, and we can pursue different pathways if this isn't effective. I believe that we have great communication pathways with you, Mayor, as well as the council members, and we can make sure that the conversations continue.

Sure. Well, thank you, Chief. I know that this is something that... In light of recent events, we can see that community members are very concerned about the kinds of activity that's happening at the jungle as we on council share those concerns as well. We appreciate this quick pivot to another approach because the status quo is not acceptable in terms of what's been happening there in terms of violent crime and and other sorts of illicit and illegal activity in the encampment. And we know that, unfortunately, so many of the people that are there are sort of painted with this very wide brush, and they are also harmed in this process of whatever particular incident is occurring there. And so what I appreciate about this approach is that our officers are going to get to know people even more than they already do on site. and build those relationships so that we can make sure that we recognize people for who they are individually and that we're not just treating everyone who's there as a monolith as we go through this process. And while we hold those accountable who need to be held accountable and giving that compassion that we talk about so often where it is warranted. So I appreciate that in your leadership. So thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Mayor.

I, too, just want to acknowledge Chief Parker. You know, I want to say that through the development of the strategies, the chief has been really open to working with, collaborating with our homeless response team to just understand, you know, their work and what they're experiencing out there, and then also getting input and feedback from our regional team as well. So I'll just wrap up tonight with a bit about the process going forward. So where do we go from here? So we're going to continue to transition that first group of individuals. I never want to be held to an exact number because, again, it's a dynamic situation. But we expect at the end of this first group, we'll have approximately moved about 22 folks into housing, which I think is just something to be really, really thrilled about. We'll continue to acquire those heat scores and intakes for coordinated entry. One other thing I didn't mention earlier I think it's important to know is that a heat score, again, is a vulnerability score. It's essentially looking at what are the odds of someone passing away living outdoors. It's what are the things about your experience or your past or your physical or mental abilities that make you very vulnerable to living outdoors. And I will say that there are quite a few folks on our by name list who will also score very high invulnerability, which would put them higher on our coordinated entry list. So again, these two systems work together, and there's a lot of coordination between the two. We'll establish that required check-in process per Department of Commerce, and then we'll continue those regular site cleans The team will continue to develop the strategy. So this is an ongoing planning process. So it doesn't begin and end with the ERP program. As we've talked about, we can continue to identify other options for housing for folks. We can look to identify other funding sources or be creative. The proposal to the Regional Housing Council is an example of that. And we can also look at how are we supporting connecting individuals who are not on the by name list. As Chief Parker talked about, we will launch the public safety strategies. I am going to continue my meetings with interested service providers and businesses. I mean, at this point, I'm connecting with anyone who would like to know more. I'm continuing to offer to BEAT and being at regular service provider meetings. I think it's really important to note that we've had service providers really step into this work. because we have shared goals in terms of reducing the trash burning, providing those on-site services. And so anyone who wants to work with us or collaborate with us around the site, you know, we invite that. And then we're going to continue to be communicating about the work and what we're doing and the milestones that we're reaching in this. So with that, I'll just open it up to any other questions tonight.

Are there any additional questions from Council? Council Member Barrett.

Thank you, Stacey. That was a great presentation, and thank you for the work you're doing. I think it's a difficult and sophisticated program and process, and it takes a lot of education to the public, and thank you for stepping up to that. You know, I see this in a kind of big picture way. We have the jungle, which is our big, big, big problem, which you're addressing. and doing so moving forward and you're doing a great job and it's difficult. I also see that we have the rest of the city and whatnot. I don't know if this is in your purview but could you talk about Just for a minute, we closed down these six other sites, and is everything under control in the rest of the city? Could you just touch upon that? And I know you came here to talk about the jungle, but I was just curious about that.

No, thank you for the question. You know, as it happens, I checked in with our homeless response team today, and so we As is reported to them, our active encampments currently, we have four active encampments with anywhere from one to five individuals. So altogether, that's about 10 or less individuals right now that we're monitoring and working with in terms of encampments. So that's today, and that's what's reported to us. So that's a dramatic difference in where we've been in the past. And when we get to a point where we you know, are able to engage with two or three people as opposed to 275, that gives us the opportunity to really work our resources and really focus and tailor our attention on, you know, moving them into getting them into coordinated entry or finding, you know, the support resources that they need. So that's according to our homeless response team today.

Thank you. That's great news. Thank you. Um, Just so I'm sure I understood what you said, and this is my understanding. So in our approach to the jungle, we're closing it down section by section as opposed to across the board, picking people to move into housing. That is correct. That is correct. We're focusing on a subsection now. piece section by section or are we doing a more generalized approach?

We're using a phased approach. So we have identified we've identified some loose sections within the site. It's such a large site. Again, it's 20 acres. But we're also using a hybrid model that looks at those heat assessments so that when we're working within sections or even maybe several sections, We're looking to identify the individuals that have the highest vulnerability level. Now, I say that the reason we want to work in phases is because per the Department of Commerce guidance, and this being an encampment closure funded program, we need to demonstrate encampment closure. And the way in which to do that is just cordon off those sections that are closed and then continue to monitor them so that we don't prevent growth or reestablishment in those areas. or so that we can prevent, excuse me.

Great, thank you. I just wanted to understand that approach. And finally, I had just one third thing, and that was kind of an unrelated report that J.U. had sent out earlier this week from the Regional Housing Authority. And it was a report on homeless response system data for the second quarter. And there was some good news in that. And I just kind of wanted to talk about that to report to the public. And that was that more households are successfully moving into housing and fewer households are returning to homelessness. So this is countywide. This is not just the city of Olympia. So I do want to make that point. It's countywide. More households are moving into housing. HOUSING AND FEWER ARE MOVING INTO HOMELESSNESS. SO WHAT THIS SAYS TO ME IS THE WORK YOU'RE DOING, WE'RE ON THE OFFENSE. WE'RE SHRINKING THE JUNGLE. COUNTYWIDE, WE'RE ON THE OFFENSE. PEOPLE ARE MOVING INTO HOUSING AND FEWER PEOPLE ARE MOVING INTO HOMELESSNESS. There are more. Are there more homelessness homeless? I don't know. There may be more homeless. But nonetheless, I feel like this is real tangible progress on these multiple fronts, which I think is good news. And it's a it's a tough, tough one. And I know the public is anxious about this, but I just wanted to share those observations. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Barron. Stacey, I wanted to know if you could expand on. So you mentioned the other smaller encampments that have been identified. But what is the city's process? Because this question gets asked a lot. Well, what happens when you close the encampment? You may not provide housing to every single person there. where do they end up going, and what is the process if you start to see another encampment? I think there's a lot of fear and concern that we could have another situation like this on our hands. And given the amount of time that it's going to take to eventually close this encampment, I think there's an understandable fear that we might see more of the same in the meantime. So could you speak to that?

Yeah. So I think one of the things I'll say is that through the development of the One Community Plan, I mean, that's our guidance for how we address housing and homelessness. And one of the commitments made through that plan was to not allow new encampments to establish. And so the way in which we do that is by encouraging folks to reach out to our homeless response team if they feel or see that an encampment may be establishing so that we can address those individuals really early on. and let them know that we can connect them to services and we can let them know what's available to them in the region, but they can't continue to establish an encampment in that location. So we're gonna continue that work. That's a collaboration between our homeless response team, our park rangers, our code enforcement officers, and certainly OPD. So we'll continue to keep that up. That's a commitment we made to the community.

All right. Yes, Council Member Vanderbilt. Thank you.

I guess just one last thing. I just want to thank staff for working on this. I mean, this is not an easy process. I mean, we're dealing with a systemic issue that is all over the West Coast and in parts of the East Coast, part of the Midwest. It's just more visible in certain places, right? There are encampments that exist in the county, the greater county, that are just... that are just not seen, right? And taking on the responsibility of managing this is not easy. I think that The fact that we're able to do so much with dwindling resources from the federal government and concerns around the state budget, it really shows that we will continue to work on this as much as we can, as long as we have the resources to do it. And I just want to thank staff for that work, for continuing to push through that. It is not easy. Usually when people think of traditional cities, they think of roads and parks and things like that. It is very important for us to stop and think about how much work we're working on to meet those goals. You know, and I also think about how we're trying to mitigate an issue that is kind of like the downward pressure of the social safety net getting cut and the inflation, the cost of living, you know, people falling into homelessness for a variety of reasons. And I just I just want to stop and thank staff for what they're doing. Because, you know, we don't have the same amount of resources as the state or the federal government, but we're doing a pretty good job all considered. And so I just want to stop and, and thank staff. And I want to thank you, Stacy, for answering a bunch of questions and a very detailed amount of work and taking this on. So thank you so much.

Well, if I may just briefly acknowledge, you know, our field staff do a tremendous amount of work. So thank you, Council Member Vanipal, for that recognition. I'll also say the ability to come at this from a regional approach is a culmination of years of working with the other jurisdictions. And so just a lot of acknowledgement to the Regional Housing Council, the other jurisdictions for partnering with us on this. It's It's something we've been working on as a county and that we feel very proud of. And the other thing is our community members have said this is important to them. And we have resources like our home fund that can contribute to us doing more than I think other communities of our size. So thank you.

Thank you very much, Stacey. And thank you to you and our staff and the entire regional team that is working on this effort. We appreciate it. And we look forward to more regular updates as we make progress to eventually close the encampment. So thank you so much. All right so that concludes our update on the jungle encampment for this evening we're going to move on to our final agenda item on. For tonight, which is item 6 B and that is the pilot program for temporary use of vehicles for habitation discussion which will be led by our community development director Tim Smith.

Hello good evening mayor city council for the record, Tim Smith community development director at the city of Olympia and. Here tonight to talk about a new pilot program for temporary use of vehicles for for habitation. And so this is really the result of Council expressing some interest in providing additional opportunities for recreational vehicles be used for temporary shelter during our housing crisis. Couple years ago back in 2024 the City Council adopted ordinance that allows vehicle camping. within city streets rights away. Subject to regulations intended to minimize impacts on surrounding properties and neighborhoods. Those regulations include requirements that vehicles must move every 24 hours and have separation between camping vehicles. This pilot program provides an alternative to that, to allow for parking on the street, off the street, on private property with a city permit. The pilot program seeks to balance the community needs with the needs of people relying on vehicles for temporary shelter. To accomplish this, the city is looking to establish reasonable safeguards or standards to allow the temporary habitation without creating health safety, land use, or neighborhood concerns or issues. And so with that, I'd like to describe the program briefly. I would like to first give a kudo to my staff in community development. They provide a lot of code guidance to me on this. And help shape this program. I also appreciate the clear guidance of from city manager Jay Bernie Who was very clear on roles and expectations of the City Council on this program? And so under this program and it's outlined in a memo that's included in your packet There's a few items that I want to touch on first is that in order to locate on private property permission of the property owner is required and they would be the one making application for an emergency housing permit and For a lot with a residential use, a low density residential use such as a single family dwelling or a duplex, one vehicle could be permitted in the driveway. For faith-based properties such as a church, up to two vehicles could be permitted when located on a paved parking surface within the parking lot. A property governed by an active homeowners association prohibiting such use would not be able to obtain a permit from the city. The city would issue an emergency housing permit and impose conditions in most cases permit fees would be waived would not be requiring a fee for this this permit type. In terms of sighting standards, the vehicle would have to be used in a way that minimizes impacts on neighboring properties. So occupants would have to have access to a restroom other than what is within their vehicle that would be provided on site, such as the restroom of a home or possibly a porta potty or a restroom of a church. RVs would not be permitted to connect to a septic system. They could connect to the clean-out of a sewer for a residential property. No visible outdoor storage, rubbish, or garbage associated with use would be allowed. Permits would be issued for six months, but could be renewed upon finding that the permit conditions are satisfied. The city generally does not allow the use of our visa cars for habitation we have some exceptions, but but primarily the code does not allow permanent use and so this emergency declaration that was authorized under ordinance 7, 4, 4, 3, a couple years ago the declaring the the house this emergency gives us the city authority to waive requirements to allow the signing of these cars on private property. This is a pilot program, so periodically it will be evaluated to determine whether it should continue and or be permanently codified within our code. We'll really see what the response is and how the permit process is carried out. Before I close for questions, I do want to add that since we sent the memo out in this packet, there are a couple other requirements we would like to suggest adding to this memo. One is that there needs to be clear evidence that the RV is needed as the primary home of an occupant. The purpose here is not to provide a de facto ADU for a visiting relative. It's really for someone who needs a home and a place to stay. The other is that we would require the property owner that offers their site cannot charge rent for the space it needs to be something that's offered for free to benefit of of the occupant of the vehicle. And so with that close for any questions or in tennis to implement this program effective immediately. With we would appreciate some feedback from City Council on it. Any questions or clarifications or any other ideas that we could cover here? But we look forward to working on this permit process and moving it forward for our community. So with that, I'll open it up for questions.

Thank you very much, Tim. Mayor Pro Tem Nguyen.

I don't have any questions. I think that was pretty clear. I just have a comment, which is I really appreciate your and staff's collective teamwork on this and the willingness to do some creative problem solving and try new things. So I'm looking forward to an update on how the pilot goes, and I hope it goes well. So really responsive to the public comment that we've heard over quite some time now, and also just the desire of council to think about, okay, what can we do instead of what can we not do? So thanks.

Yes, well said.

Council Member Vanderpool. I'm also, thank you for the quick response to this, because sometimes these types of policies usually don't even take much longer to respond to, honestly. And I appreciate the quick turnaround. And I'm glad that we have our housing, our homelessness emergency to kind of help back this policy change. But my one question, and it just came to my mind, is a lot of folks that are experiencing this may not be aware of this policy. Is there, for example, the thought that comes to my mind is when code enforcement goes out to talk to them, could this memo or, like I say, less... An easy to understand version of the memo be given to folks that are experiencing this in the community so that they're aware that there is a program if they meet the standards. I'm just curious about our outreach around it. Yeah.

Yes, we can certainly do that. We could both have code enforcement or homeless response team have the memo. Often homeless response is the first to engage with someone that needs a shelter. And so we can do that. We've also contacted the folks that have testified here that have given contact information. So they're aware of it, but we'll look at other avenues as well to get the word out.

Appreciate that.

Councilmember Green.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for this, Tim. I have just two kind of clarifying questions. You just mentioned that one of the things you're suggesting adding is some type of ability to prove that it's a primary residence and not, you know, visiting relatives. What would be an example of like how your team could establish that?

I think it's just going to be a conversation at the counter, really looking at the intent. Oftentimes, while we would hope that the property owner would have someone in mind who wants to have the service or the site for their vehicle, but it's really that. And it's not an absolute. We can guarantee that. But I think we're just trying to discourage it for what it's not intended for, which is to use an RV as an ADU or for some other purpose. And so that's really it. really nothing formal we'd asked for in terms of them signing some document. It'd be just a conversation to see that their intentions are what we're looking for. Okay.

And then, uh, would there be, for somebody who has this permit, would there be a way for me as a neighbor to know that it's a permitted use versus there's just suddenly an RV parked there and now code enforcement is going to get calls and now code enforcement knows that it's permitted. But like, yeah, just, is there any going to be, is there going to be any sort of visual indicator of, this is here under this permit don't call code enforcement.

You write that's right well, yes and under the the formal process for emergency housing village, we have a very elaborate public engagement process and so this would be much more narrow and streamlined boat. I'm thinking staff could reach out to the Jason property owners either through letter or just so or stopping by just to tell them of what the what the use is going to be and why it's there. So we want to keep it a fairly simple process, but I certainly think the outreach is a good idea. Thanks.

Additional comments. City Manager Burney.

Yeah, thank you. One other thing I'll offer to Council Member Green's question is, Our homeless response team has a really good handle on who is in our community that is in an RV or habitating in a vehicle. They're pretty regular in building connections. And so one of the other things that they'll continue to do wherever they are, whether they're in a private residence or somewhere else, is to connect with them because long-term we are trying to get them connected to services. And so if for some reason a concern were to come in about someone who may be using it as an ADU, A pretty good check is our homeless response team doing a check-in with the individual and kind of getting information and then reporting that back to Tim's team and code enforcement. They're all working together on this. So I think there's another way we can kind of do some checks on that to make sure that system isn't abused in that way.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that, City Manager. I think my thought process in this goes both ways, though, of if there's a way to avoid some code enforcement calls because it's permitted and the city already knows or whatever, it feels like that would be easier than the code enforcement calls or emails coming in and then somebody's got to follow up on all those. So anyway, so that was the angle of my question.

Yeah, thank you. And I think Tim's on to something. I think when we Issue permits we tend to notify people kind of in the area around permits and so I think that's something they have some experience with that might be a good. Way for us to kind of get some additional communication out and we'll give some more thought to that.

The other thing we can do is that when we issue the permit we can put a note in the file in our smart of system so that if we get a call. The frontline staff can refer to that and know it is without referring it to code enforcement or or the staff in the back.

Thank you. Council Member Vanderpool.

I guess to add on to that, is it possible to have a, we've discussed this before, but a visible permit, like a, you know, visible permit that could be printed out and be in the window of the vehicle so that there, it's just to avoid the interaction entirely as much as possible that an unneeded permit

Interaction That's really a possibility we could do similar to what we do for building permits and that type of thing where we could yeah We can look into that.

Thank you Councilmember Barrett, thank you Tim. I just want to make sure I understood what you said These are six-month permits is that did I understand that correctly I

Right, six months with the possibility of extension.

So you could do six months and get another six months. If it doesn't work out, you know, I can't even foresee what that would look like.

Right. Well, yeah, so six months allows us to visit the site, see that they're meeting conditions. In most cases, hopefully we would be extending if that's the request. If there's a need, if there's violations and we would work to correct those, so we would work with the property owner and the inhabitants on those issues.

Thank you. Council Member Green.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Barron. That sparked a question for me, which was, so if I, as a property owner, I get this permit, I give somebody permission, and then two months in, like, it's not going well. Does the city have any obligation to step into that, or is that an issue between me and the person I gave permission to be on my property?

Yeah, I mean, the city would revoke the permit. But, you know, and if the RV did not leave the site or the car, then the property would have to go through an eviction process.

And my understanding is that property owners will be notified of all of those various processes, perhaps even the fact that they might have to do legal consultation and all of that. Okay. My question for you is we're calling this a pilot program. And so the permits are good for six months with the ability to renew or extend. So my question is how long do we intend to see this as a pilot program before we consider it just policy and practice for the city?

Well, I think we could we could revisit in 6 months to a year to see how it's being used and successes and failures and and and then go go from there. I connect with Jay and he'd work with the city council on next steps so we could continue it into the future beyond that or we could if it's really successful could look to codify it.

All right, great. Well, thank you very much, Tim. I think Mayor Pro Tem spoke at the top about the responsiveness to public comment is much appreciated. And we know that this is one more way to provide a stable living for people who need it. And this gives our city manager that ability to be able to do that. have that flexibility and some very strenuous times specifically around housing and homelessness and I'm glad that we're able to have your department really lead the way and sort of implement this and also enforce the pilot program and we appreciate that so look forward to maybe you coming back in a year or so and giving council an update on how it's going and we can consider where we go from there. All right. That's good. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Tim. Okay, so that concludes all of our business items for tonight. We're going to move on to council reports and I'll begin with a very brief mayor's report. I'll start with just to mention that last week I had an amazing visit to the Olympia Armory and we were joined on our tour by Congresswoman Marilyn Strickland. to see some of the progress on the armory that they have made. If you haven't had an opportunity to go and check it out, I recommend that you do so. The roof has been replaced and it looks amazing. As you walk through the space you can see some changes there. And as you walk through, you can start to imagine what it would be like to see all of our anchor partners doing what they do best as you walk your way through. And so it was a delight to get to share that. um, progress with our Congresswoman and also to, um, hear from Valerie, um, about how the project is coming along. And so I want to just express my gratitude to Valerie Roberts, who's the building manager and also our tour host. Um, and then also, um, to, uh, all the folks who joined us on the tour and came out, um, to celebrate the progress that we've made thus far, um, and to Amoresco, of course, um, for their, um, partnership in, uh, construction. I also attended the promotion ceremony for Chief Flowers. Can we give her a round of applause one more time again? Congratulations again, and that was a well-attended event, and including getting to see our former chief as well. So it was a delight to share that afternoon with you, and I hope you have fun afterwards celebrating. And then lastly, I just want to mention our three cities meeting last week. In three cities, that's Lacey, Olympia, and Tumwater in Thurston County, and the Port of Olympia's chair also participates in those meetings. And in those meetings, we had a discussion and a briefing on the RHC, or the Regional Housing Council, and the FUNDING STREAMS AND A DISCUSSION AROUND THAT IN A LOCAL AGREEMENT WITH RHC AND SO WE WERE ABLE TO BE BRIEFED ON It's a very complicated process and so we were able to get updated on that and as a result we were really able to have a substantive conversation with county staff and then also now be looped into those conversations more and receive the annual report as a result of that discussion as well so that we can see the progress that has been made thus far. WITH THE RHC AND COUNCILMEMBER VANDERPOEL WE APPRECIATE YOUR LEADERSHIP IN REPRESENTING OLYMPIA AND CHAIRING THE COUNCIL THERE. And then lastly, we also had a discussion on a new facility for the joint animal services and how we are, you know, needing to really come up with an approach for how we intend to move forward with a new facility for the community. It is a dire need. For them and it has been for some time. And so we were having some deliberation about What that could look like going forward and nothing concrete to share just yet But I just wanted to share that those are some of the discussions we were having it as it relates to whether or not It's something that is a priority for us, which we agreed that obviously it is And where we go from here and those were important discussions to have and so There'll be more to come so And I will start to my left with Council Member Barron.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll just click through a few things. I attended the Festival of the Stay Choss, which was a celebration of the restoration of the estuary. I'm not sure if this event had taken place before, but it was great. There were a couple dozen booths and a great presentation celebrating the festival. the estuary and the progress being made there. I attended the Children's Hands-On Museum Gala with several members of the council also. I only mention that because they really are excited about the big expansion there, which the city has been, of course, a big supporter of. And so that is viewed as a big success in our city, and the partnership with the city deeply appreciated by folks there. I too attended Chief Lauer's swearing in, really a great celebration. And then I also toured the Walnut Road development that is being proposed in West Olympia. I toured it with a group of folks and will be sharing comments with Tim about that. some of the issues raised and some of the thoughts about the project and the community. Thank you.

Thank you. Questions or comments for Council Member Barron? All right. Seeing none, Council Member Green.

Thank you, Mayor. Since Council Member Gilman isn't with us tonight, I'll just give a very brief report. We had a Finance Committee meeting, I think, since our before last, anyway, since our last reports. And Council Member Vanderpool can correct me, but we just we had a briefing on the capital facilities plan, which I know will come forward to this body. And then we also got a little I'm not going to call it a sneak peek into the budget, but some early conversation around general assumptions that the city is using to build the budget and kind of what how they're approaching that process and likely outcomes. Council Member Vanderpool, did I leave anything out there?

Perfect.

Thank you, and I will end on perfect.

Thank you All right questions or comments for councilmember green seeing none mayor proton win Just a quick one the lodging tax advisory committee which I share Met the last couple of Fridays. We had a compressed timeline to get the application up to date and how we'd like it, have any improvements made, enhancements, and then the plan is to have it be live all of September so that folks would have a good amount of time to apply, I think five weeks. And then I just wanted to thank Council Member Green for being such an active alternate in that space and sharing some really smart suggestions. And I think it's going to be a good one. Once the application is finalized, I'll email it out to all of you and just so you can see some of the updates that we made. Thanks.

Thank you. Questions or comments for the Mayor Pro Tem? All right. Council Member Vanderpool.

So one item, yesterday we had the Thurston Climate Mitigation Collaborative. We, I guess the one item that I think is the most, probably the most important was the vehicle miles traveled gap analysis.

That's the total amount a person drives in a day that's to work, to the grocery store, and so on and so forth.

And, you know, I guess the short story is that we're not reaching our reduction goals. You know, it's but what's interesting about this is the second part that's going to come after this is going to be the specific recommendations for our region. They have a I have right here a strategic effectiveness list, and some of it is we're already doing in Olympia land use density, mixed use development, changing your kind of your zoning. But there's some other things in here that are interesting because I'm not sure if any cities do any of these some or some probably do road usage charge congestion pricing tolling we are Increasing parking costs reducing parking availability. We're doing that in the city of Olympia And then on so on so forth, you know infrastructure investments costs and it's I I guess the main focus here is to make sure we focus on our regional policy. And so one of the questions we were asked is, like, what do we think regionally when they come back with specific policies are things that we're very interested in? And, um, a couple of them are, you know, those, those big streets like Martin way that run between our, our cities and how do we fund those projects? How do we ensure how we make them safer for the community and more accessible? And, uh, uh, bus lanes was a conversation, um, out of county was a conversation because of all the trips that happen, the county, uh, 16% of them are to other counties. And that makes up 52% of total distance traveled. So how do we reduce that? And that's a big question is, you know, we do have a bus service that goes up to Lakewood Station and then to the Sounder Station there. But then you have to take another leg to get to Seattle. How do we connect that better to the light rail and to Seattle itself and to downtown Tacoma? These are all questions that we've had long conversations about. One of the conversations we had of specific detail is our transportation benefit districts. Olympia has one. The council has pretty much maximized it councilmanically. You could increase it by a vote of the public. Other conversations came up that Thurston County created one in 2014 but doesn't use it. We had a conversation about if we were to convince the county to to take on that task and have that conversation could it be used to expand bus service to places like Grand Mound and so that there's less need for things like parking in downtown Olympia because other parts of the county are more accessible by bus and by other services and so this will come back to us with more specific details but it was very informative conversation.

Thank you. Questions or comments for Council Member Vanderbilt? Seeing none. Before I go to our city manager, I just thought of something that I want to give a shout out for, and that is to Good Day Seattle. So I was very pleased to participate in an interview for a series of episodes of Zip Trips where they featured the city of Olympia for an entire episode, and it was great to see them out. get to engage with them, get to see the turnout from our community, which was great. And it was a wonderful day. I was on cloud nine for the rest of the day after participating in that. And so I just really want to express my gratitude to everybody who came out in the community and also to Good Day Seattle for featuring the city of Olympia in such a way that shows what we're really about. And they were able to visit many places throughout the city to really get a well-rounded representation of who we are here. So thanks. And also thank you to Experience Olympia and beyond for helping make that happen and bringing them here to Olympia. So with that, I'll turn it over to the city manager.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just one update. Budget season is here. So although we work on the budget all throughout the year, the more formal budget process as we work on the next year's budget, in this case, the 2027 budget, really is underway. Departments have been working since June with the finance team to get their budgets input into our financial system. And then we start to kind of whittle down to kind of figure out where we are and kind of what our gap is and what the work ahead looks like. Our first formal conversation with the council around where we are and what that gap looks like will be on September 15th. So the finance director and I will be here. We'll talk about where we are. We'll talk about what the work ahead looks like and then start kind of working through the calendar with the council with an end goal of having a budget that we can adopt that it's balanced right before Thanksgiving. So our calendar is going to start to fill up with budget items on top of the regular work items. So just here we go.

Deja vu all over again. All right. Any questions or comments for the city manager? All right. Seeing none. All right. Well, that concludes the reports. So with no further business before the Olympia City Council tonight, we're adjourned.