City Council - Regular Meeting

I got real quiet in here. Everybody, welcome. I'm Jim Frell, the mayor. Let's call the uh uh meeting for April 7th of 2026 to order. Would you all please rise for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

All right. Well, welcome everyone. It's a beautiful day out there. We got uh some great business uh we're going to be conducting. and let's go ahead and jump right into it. Um, first, um, let's have the, uh, Black Wellness Proclamation of April 13th through the 17th. Council member Cessums,

I would. Yeah, that's what I thought. Oh, actually that really works out because I what I what I wanted to do is start off. Is Sharon still in the room? Um, can we please have Wait, you guys. Sharon is a beautiful, beautiful comfort dog, a uh an English cream and is accompanied by Kevin. Kevin, did you sign up to speak?

No, I did not. actually uh can you and Sharon and and your and your partners uh there come on up to the podium real quick and tell us about Sharon and tell us uh um about what your guys what you guys are up to and and who Sharon is and who you are. Okay. Uh well, good evening. My name is Kevin Butler and this is Sharon, our comfort dog. And this is Paula and Darla. We are from St. Luke's Lutheran Church and this is a program that we've been working on for about three years. Sharon came to us from a organization called Lutheran Church Charities back in the Chicago area. When she came to us, she had over 2,000 hours of training and her main role is to put smiles on people's faces.

Oh, well, she certainly has done that. Tonight, we actually got a uh uh and actually uh our our intrepid reporter from the Mirror. Did you get a picture earlier? I did a whole article about her, but I will get another picture. Well, demonstration. Maybe what we can do is get a group pick. The council, we don't take too much time, but the council kind of come together and you guys can be down there. Can we do a quick picture? Sure. Okay. We took a picture before the meeting, but let's let's make it official. Okay. Let's go up to the front.

And I'd say like like right up here. Come this come this way. This way. Yeah. Right up here. Oh, are we going to go down? Stay up here. Yeah, sure. Yeah, let's let's stay up here. Oh, it's not level. That's okay. If I fall, I'll just follow the mayor. Exactly. He'll catch me, right? Of course. Of course. Trust me. Okay, bring it in, everybody. Everybody say Sharon. Sharon.

All right. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. We should start every meeting with Sharon.

Okay.

People say better than dogs. You want to put the microphone on for that? Cra Walsh says, "I think Feder is going to the dogs." You know what to say, "A good comedian borrows a great comedian steals." So, okay. Uh, now, are we ready for the Black Wellness Week proclamation? I would very much appreciate it if Miss Cynthia Ricks Makatan would step to the podium. Uh we are going to uh proclaim uh this week, I'm sorry, uh the week of April 13th through 17th, Black Wellness Week. Um just a little personal history, uh I am a uh seven-year heart attack survivor. Uh two weeks ago, I ran a half marathon. Um but yet I'm the exception uh there are over almost 800,000 heart attack victims uh every year in the United States and not everyone is a survivor. So I consider myself uh both blessed and fortunate. Uh I am trying not to have a second heart attack. Uh those of you who've uh had that experience, you do not want to go through it. So all the more important reason to promote wellness. Uh next week is black wellness week. Uh we are going to uh proclaim that week uh as black wellness week. So I have a few words here. Whereas the tradition of Booker T. Washington's Negro Health Week, which began in 1915, has historically spotlighted health

disparities in the black community, fostering advocacy and education. And whereas black Americans continue to experience inequality, inequity, and disproportionate barriers to preventative supports in health care compared with white Americans. And whereas holistic well-being encompassing physical, mental, emotional, and so social health is a priority for all communities. And today, more than 100 years after the creation of National Health Improvement Week, the work to eliminate these disparities calls for a communitydriven approach to raise awareness and establish actionable steps to enhance health outcomes and build a sustainable model for future wellness. And whereas Black Wellness Week isn't just about addressing disparities, but about celebrating the rich traditions of health and healing in black communities, honoring ancestral wisdom, and creating spaces where black joy and well-being are centered. Now therefore, we the undersigned mayor and city council members of the city of Federal Way do hereby proclaim the week of April 13 through 17, 2026 to be Black Wellness Week and encourage the community to advocate for health as a human right for all. And I'd like to present this proclamation to both Miss Ricks Mcatan and in absentee uh Christina Blocker who is the founder of Momentum Professional Strategy Partners.

in the middle. Um Christina Blocker couldn't be here. So um two of us are on the elevate black wellness committee that is looking at doing something in every community in Washington state to talk about elevating black wellness. You want to introduce yourself? She's also a resident.

Yes, I am a Federal Way resident. Um, I've been here many times. I'm Janetta White. Uh, and I believe I've been living in Federal Way 25 years. And so, this is an honor to be here and have this proclamation. So, we are deeply honored to be here tonight, not only as residents and active community members in Federal Way, where we have raised our family, paid taxes, and did a lot of rahrh. I'm also with St. Francis Hospital where we are deeply addressing health equities, health disparities and access to health for everyone. And we are also on the committee as I said earlier for black um elevate black wellness which is a blackled movement dedicated to mobilizing communities through initiatives like black wellness week, an annual celebration of partnership, of community and power across the entire state. Our mission extends beyond just one week. We aim to transform all the systems that determine whether black communities in Washington thrive or merely strive or merely survive. This week brings together systems across health care foundations, elected officials such as yourself, and community organizations in a unified commitment to black wellness, demonstrating how sustained multis- sector partnerships can create lasting accountability and community power. I just want you all to turn and what does it say? Centered on opportunity. This is about opportunity for health and wellness for all, but especially in the black community and our indigenous and other black and brown communities where we see huge disparities. I just want to point out one or two. For example, black Washingtonians report lower rates of having usual sorts of health care and

disparities exist in screenings for diseases like colon and breast cancer. Infant mortality even in our own county, even in our own backyard, is uh significantly higher for black infants. And black Medicare beneficiaries face much higher hospital readmissions rate than many other communities right here in our own backyard. These ex disparities extend um to mental health as well with black individuals experiencing higher rates of serious psychological distress but being less likely to seek professional help due to systemic oppression, discrimination, unequal access to care. Tonight's proclamation from the city of Fer Federal Way is a very powerful statement of solidarity and a commitment to advancing health equity for all of its residents. Thank you for recognizing the importance of this work and being our partner in building a healthier, more equitable future for our black community. Thank you.

Thank you very much. And council member Sessions, thanks assessments, thank you so much for bringing up your own personal history. My god, that it is amazing. Um, and it's something that we all, you know, need to really think about about taking care of ourselves and and uh it's great to hear that you had such a successful uh rebound. Exactly. All right. Well, thank you and thank you u u it's great to see everybody. Um, all right. Now we are on to Emma's exceptional equipment exchange presentation. I had the opportunity uh to meet Andrea Graham uh who's the founder and uh also her husband at the uh uh state of the city address. We had gosh I don't know uh Pam. How many tables did we have at the state of the city?

I I forget over Yeah. Yeah. We had a lot of tables. one of them. I had the opportunity um to talk with you good folks and about the mission you do and I invited them to come speak to our council meeting. So, the floor is yours.

All right. Thank you. Um you guys have seen a lot of me, but for a different reason. This is just another one of my passions. Um my husband and I, we've brought our family here seven years ago. Um and we hadn't started our program or our nonprofit then, but we've been doing what we do for 10 years. Um, Emma's exceptional equipment exchange. We also call it quad E because that's a really long name. Um, our family founded this, like I said, 10 years ago. And, uh, then we named it Emma's Exceptional Equipment Exchange in honor of our daughter Emma, uh, who passed away 5 years ago in January. Quatti helps get medical equipment and supplies into the hands of those who need it at no cost. We do that through um a process of sharing. So a family who has a loved one who's passed away or has their child outgrow a wheelchair um or their child no long or adult no longer needs a piece of equipment. We've all had it where we've needed a crutch, a pair of crutches or a wheelchair for short terms. um they pass them on to us. We find the next home for those items. We started it because our insurance, although we thought it was good, we all envision good insurance, would not approve a medical bed for our daughter Emma. They kept saying it wasn't necessary and yet she had severe CP among other things. These things are $10,000. It wasn't pocket change. We found a family who was gifting their medical bed that their child unfortunately had passed away. So, they gave the bed to us. It was a blessing. But they also had other pieces of equipment we couldn't use for our daughter. And they said, "Well, we're going to throw it away." My eyes grew big. I

said, "Heck no, we'll find a home for these items." And unbeknownst to me, that became the snowball effect that people thought we were the people who took things and found them in the next home. um he was okay with it until it took over his garage space. Then I got in trouble. So we started doing events um or we started doing a single event where we said we're going to do kind of like a yard sale where there's no money exchanged. People could bring things that they no longer need, take things they do need. We started with 12 pieces of equipment and one sixoot table. Fast forward and it's much bigger now. Um so what we do first we have a Facebook group page. This allows families to join it. It is private because this is medical equipment. People see money signs. We don't want just anybody coming in. But we have a website as well where people can contact us. The face Facebook group allows families to share things within the group, ask questions, find connection. Who has a child or an adult with this disability? Can I get some input? all of those things. It's all there. Our families are amazing. Um, we host the two events a year now that it was much like the first program. Oh, he's got the Is that Is this the remote for the

Okay, he was supposed to be my IT guy. Oh, man.

There's our daughter, Emma. Uh, she actually we adopted her at 22 or two years of age and we were told she wouldn't live to five. Um, she lived to three weeks shy of her 10th birthday. Oh. Um, okay. So, we have the Facebook community. Then we do two events a year. Um, where we open up our whole yard. Our driveway and our front yard hold. Um, we went from 12 pieces of equipment in one table. Now we average about 150 or more pieces of medical equipment like this. wheelchairs from children all the way up to adult walkers, bathroom aids, um standards, etc. Uh and then our grassy area holds canopies with tables and shelves full of medical equipments or supplies such as wound care, incontinence, specialized formula, adaptive items, um airway and G tube care. families come to these events and the only currency we accept is handshakes, hugs, and uh the promise to pass it on and not sell it. Um so we've been doing those for many years and it has grown. It is crazy how big. Um and we see over a hundred families each day when we do it over a whole weekend. Next slide. Um we this was the end of one of our events but uh it captures our next thing that we started actually this last summer. We gave away 13 used or new to me uh adaptive bikes and trikes to children and adults through our community. Um a couple of them went to Oregon. Most of them were throughout the state of Washington. Um,

and then we collaborated over the summer with a local shoe company. I don't know if any of you have heard of Billy Footwear. This is Billy. Uh, we gave away 50 pairs of adaptive shoes. And then, oh, there's there's all of our volunteers. It was pretty amazing. And half of those are my children because we have a big family. Um, our children give away bears and Build-A-Bear stuffed animals to children who have lost a sibling in the past year every Christmas. And then the one that is my most favorite is we do a Christmas or a holiday party. We try to include um not just the Christmas holiday um where we give away switch adapted toys and other items to people with disabilities who may have a limitation in their hands or use of their arms such as these two beautiful people in our community. We reached families in Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho with this project. And over the last two years, we've given away over 300 Switch adapted toys. Um, let's see. Sorry, I lost my place. The reason we do what we do is because the disability community has such a high cost to it and it's a financial burden to families. some of them that one family or one parent can work while the other stays home. Um or the cost of um the medical needs is so high. We for uh for example in insurance we get one wheelchair every 5 years. The largest growth in a person's life is from birth till their teens late teens.

And when you offer a child, and we've had this experience with our daughter, she grew too fast for her wheelchair and insurance said, "Sorry, when you have a wheelchair that doesn't fit you appropriately, that causes other health problems and safety issues." Um, we have a young man who was in the bicycle um picture. He's currently waiting for a wheelchair. He outgrew his. They've been peacemealing a wheelchair for the last six months or so. Um, and two weeks ago we had a wheelchair that was exactly the size that he needed that came in. He was so excited. It wasn't new, but it didn't matter. It meant he could get around without hope worrying that a wheel was going to fall off. Um, and families are often told that they can have one item. So, if they get a wheelchair, they don't get another item such as a stander, a walker, a comfortable seat in their house. Um, yeah. So they they can choose one of these items, but they can't have all three, even though each one of them plays a different role. Um, our daughter Emma, we were told we could never have a bath chair like the one in the middle because it wasn't covered by insurance unless it was a detriment to her health to have a sponge bath daily. That is what families hear. It shouldn't be that way. Um, when we were told that, we went ahead and bought her that chair. But it's again a financial hardship for many families. um for the bike giveaway. We could go to Walmart and buy Ari a bike for $100. That is Zaryi. For those who had have seen her, um but she can't ride those bikes due to some physical limitations that she has. I could spend $100 and it wouldn't work for her. The bike that she does have has some trunk support for balance and the wheelchair and or and a seat belt and three wheels. And she

loves to ride her bike. That bike pictured costs over $3,000 and it took us six months to get. Wow.

We did our bike giveaway this last summer and today the bikes that we ordered custom for three children arrived. It took that long and each one cost roughly $3,000. Um, and they were custom made for children. That's why we do this because families can't get bikes covered, but a child should be able to enjoy a bike. We just can't go to the store and buy one. Um, adaptive shoes. Some people go, "What does that mean?" I brought you some because we love Billy footwear. He's a good friend of ours. Adaptive shoes allow a person with orthotics, prosthetics, or it struggles with their hands the ability to unzip their shoe to stick it in easier. Um, but these cost at least $50 and with tariffs and so on, these have gone up even more. Um, the average shoe costs around $100. We were able to give away 50 last year and he's agreed to help us do 75 this year. Um, we don't get them for free, but we do fundraising to allow us to give those away. Um, and then, as I said, my most favorite is our Christmas um, event where we adapt the shoes. We hold a party. Many children and adults with disabilities are not invited to parties. They just aren't. It is a natural, unfortunate thing. Um, and so we host a party. We have an amazing Santa Claus who comes. We have people who help us set up a space that is adaptive and welcoming to everybody of all abilities. It's accessible. Um, but when you have a loved one with a physical disability that maybe they can't blow bubbles, maybe they can't move their hands to hit a switch that's small on a toy or they can't shuffle cards. Your parents can't go to the store or the parents or family members don't go to the stores and find those things that are adapted on the

shelves. We have to go online. and we order them. And unfortunately, a toy that would cost $20 in the store once it's adapted, it costs $100. I learned how to adapt toys after the last Christmas we had with our daughter. I bought two adapted toys at $125 for two toys that cost originally off the shelf 30 bucks. I learned how to do it and realized it took $1 to $2 in supplies and five to 15 minutes of my time. So, we get donations of toys or we get donations of funds that help us purchase toys and other items. I say toys, but we do things all the way up to adults. Um, our most favorite was a uh remote control cars and we had from adults all the way down to little kids getting those this last year. Um, but families can't purchase a lot of those toys when you're on a budget. And so we learned how to do it so that we could give them away. Um, and so I can show you because it's always fun. This is an adapted toy. We put the cord in here and there's a button to turn it on and off. If you can't do that due to some limitations or maybe you can't blow bubbles due to oral limitations with of course

a child can blow bubbles and when you have an adapted toy it opens up to other kids wanting to come and pop those bubbles or chase that remote control car. So, we do these things because we want to carry on our daughter's memory and we are passionate about our disability community. Um, because they are some of the most unseen and unserved. Um, and just recently, I believe it's last month, Medicaid was voted to cut $200 million from somebody that we actually the disability community trusted and we're told they were an ally for our community. um they were supposed to be helping families and unfortunately those cuts are made which means our program which we would love to not do though I love our community and I would love I love what we do we shouldn't have to families shouldn't have to be working so hard to get pieces of equipment but we do because there's so many cuts and we are the unseen um but if we ever have to close our doors we will have a party and you'll will be invited. Um, but lastly, I want to say we are all one day away from a disability, whether temporary or long term,

and disability does not discriminate. Thank you. Thank you both so much. Let's give him a big round of applause. The flyer for our event that is actually happening in just over a week. Okay. Uh, this is the flyer she's talking about. I do have more that you could put at the front there at the front table. Well, there was one extra I did not go to our website or Emma's exceptional equipment exchange. Thank you so much for the work you do. Oh, please tell uh Ari we said hello and then did you have something? Yeah,

Andrea. Um u Mr. and Mrs. uh Graham u thank you uh thank you for the work you guys are doing. Thank you for the impact you're making. Thank you for being selfless individuals. Thank you for carrying on your daughter's uh legacy uh and impact. Thank you for showing love uh towards uh the disability community and and our community in general. Um, and you know, it it's uh I just was telling my colleague, it's uh it's sad that insurance typically is always the challenge and it's always the biggest hurdle and uh the people that are always the most impacted are vulnerable populations. Uh so thankfully uh we've got a incredible state representative in the audience uh who I know is a huge advocate and others are advocates as well um uh in terms of our state delegation. Um, but I just um I I mean, you said two key words, unseen and unheard, and we got to change that. And so, thank you for for being here. Thank you for to the mayor for inviting you. Uh, it's it's a great way to to start this meeting. Thank you.

Very good. Speaking of which, all the way from Federal Way, Washington, we have our very own state represent. We almost need a drum roll. Our state representative, Christina Reeves. Come on down. And we want to hear all about it. We want to hear about the all night session. PTSD. PTSD. And our own uh uh lobbyist, Lucer, is here as well.

Yeah. Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. For the record, my name is Christine Reeves. I have the honor and the privilege of serving as one of your three uh state legislators to Olympia. And joining me uh tonight to help make this presentation is your one of your uh two exceptional lobbying uh teammates who I rely on very heavily uh in Olympia during our sessions to make sure that I'm connecting uh in the very fast-paced day-to-day action um that's happening. So he may help me fill in a couple areas where I've left off. But my the purpose of me joining you this evening is just to provide you a very brief overview of the short 60-day session. Um kind of what the results were of your asks to your state delegation uh and the work that we have moving forward. So um I want to give a special shout out to Heather uh on your team who has been going back and forth with me to help make sure that we could get your presentation up today. You've got an exceptional staff here in the city of Federal Way and I'm just grateful that their uh collaboration helps us be able to bring this to you. So, I think I pointed this way, not that way. Oh, just kidding. We figured it out. Okay. So, we're going to start with how are we going to spend our time together tonight? Very briefly, I want to just um for the public's benefit, uh you all are very well verssed in this, but talk a little bit about what uh a locally targeted investment or a legislative request looks like. Uh talk a little bit about the 2026 landscape. Uh what the priorities were requested. I don't just represent the city of Federal Way, so do you want to put it into the context of the larger legislative district and then talk a little bit about what's coming next. So, we'll start with going in the right direction. Um, one, as I mentioned, I am one of three of your state elected officials here in the 30th. Senator Clara Wilson and Representative Jamila Taylor um are not able to join us this evening. I believe they're coming uh in two weeks uh to

provide a similar update to you all from their perspective. Um, but I'm going to cover this from my perspective tonight. So, we're going to talk a little bit about the three types of requests that the city makes of your state delegation. First is policy, and you guys did make a policy request this year. We then talk about provisos, which is just a fancy word for budget requests. And then we talk a little bit about partnership requests that you make. Sometimes you're asking us to work with state agencies or local nonprofits or other things. Um, and we'll talk a little bit about those requests this evening as well. So, let's start with first what makes a good request. first um when you are coming to make requests whether you're the city of federal way or a general public member being able to really synthesize what is the problem that you're trying to solve. So the city will come and say we want money for an emergency management center operations facility that's great but what problem does that actually solve on behalf of the community and behalf of the citizens of Federal Way. And so the city has done a a fairly effective job over the last couple years during our legislative breakfast of really honing in what is the problem that we're trying to solve. tell me so what why does solving this problem matter who does it matter to um it might matter just to the city of federal way but that ask putting into context may also create challenges for other communities other community groups so we want to make sure we understand both what's the local impact and who's the who are the members of the community supporting it and then third tell me the now what a lot of times when folks are coming to the legislature and asking for things they forget the hard ask me what you're actually asking for is it a policy ask is it a budget ask is it just you wanting to yell at me which is also an acceptable thing. Um so identify the key steps and the action items you actually want us to take. Um I'll share a little bit um statewide going into the 2026 legislative session. As many of you know this was a short session um by constitutional obligation. We have a long session which is 105 days and it's a budget year. This year was a supplemental year 60-day session. It's

meant to just be kind of the cleanup session if you will. Um but quite frankly some of the big challenges that we faced this year were that we were cramming some really big policy priorities into a very very short time frame. Um and then as many of you know just like the city of Federal Way the county um the state is also experiencing substantive budget challenges um that were brought into the session. But a couple successes one we ended on time. Not sure that that we had that vision at the close to the end but we got out on time and that's a big deal. Um, we did pass a budget. Um, we ultimately were able to maintain some core services, support for things like public safety. We were able to shake loose that $100 million um from CJTC. Uh, strengthening our food security system. Um, as many of you know, the federal government has made some choices about what it will and will not fund with your tax dollars anymore. So really looking to make sure that we were shoring up um and protecting core functions like SNAP, WIC, uh healthcare and other things um in the absence of the federal government returning your tax dollars. Um we also focused a lot on housing supply and affordability and I know um Luke's going to cover that in a little bit more in depth. Um and then um I I would be remiss if I didn't mention that one of the biggest conversations that we had this session was over alternative revenue proposals. um one uh explicitly being the millionaire's tax that was passed at the end of session. Um so for the 30th district, I'm going to skip this. We're going to talk about the city of federal way priorities that were presented by the council specifically. Your biggest um policy priority that you asked for in January was uh legislation regarding the restriction on sex offenders. As many in the community know, this was coming off a conversation around Kevin Co being released uh back into the Federal Way community. He has subsequently passed away. Um but he was on hospice care here

in Federal Way for a while. Um at the request of the city, I did introduce legislation that would have modified some of those uh notification procedures and release procedures at the state level. Um I was not the only legislator um in the state, but I was the only legislator in our delegation that advocated for this. Unfortunately, um we were not able to move it forward in this short session. Um but anticipate that if the city were to bring it back that we would continue working on this. Um where you did make some additional asks were in the budget space particularly in the general budget. So we have three budgets as you know we have an appropriations budget which is kind of our operating budget, a transportation budget and a capital budget. transbow obviously funds transf um and capital funds I like to say roads and commodeses property um infrastructure um in the affordable housing space you asked for some very specific items Luke's going to cover this in his presentation um because these weren't specific bills that I passed but they were bills that we did vote on and we were able to pass to support um some of the affordable housing requests that you've all made and then um you did ask for $150,000 in specific child care grants that you wanted to be able to appropriate We were not able to get direct appropriations to the city for childare, but we were able to preserve childcare grant funding at the state level that the city would be eligible for. Um, in the third bucket, uh, or in the second bucket, still on budget, transportation projects. Um, unfortunately, we were not able to get you new money in transportation. Again, we went into a pretty big billion dollar budget deficit, but I am proud to say that we were able to protect uh over, I think, $50 million, was it Luke? over $50 million in state appropriated funding that has been awarded to the city of Federal Way for these transportation projects. And you all may not feel like that's a win, but I feel like in a year when people were actually taking money back from projects, being able to protect that money on behalf of the city was a win. Um, in the capital budget, this is just a larger list of

all of the transportation projects that we were able to fund um in the 30th district. So things like King County Metro, we were able to get um you know, Federal Ways Triangle uh uh project funded. So you'll see some of this was just about keeping the funding that has already been appropriated, but some of these things we were able to get a little bit of funding allocated towards. I apologize for the small font for anybody who can't see that. Um happy to send that by email. In the capital budget, you did ask for emergency operations center funding and we were able to get you a little um over your ask at $86,000 uh dollars for that. You'll also see for things that benefit um our community, but we're not specifically asked for by the city. We were able to get funding um for the Healthpoint dental capacity to expand dental capacity at the Health Point facility. We did get them some um additional funding for infrastructure investment. Um you'll see that there's some Steel Lake affordable housing funding there. Um one of the most important things that myself and the rest of the delegation really advocated for was um flood response funding for the city of Pacific who was the most drastically impacted um municipality in our district to make sure that they would have some resources after their levy broke. Um and then you'll see uh Alona got some water system improvement funding and um Federal Way Pediatric Outpatient Surgical Clinic uh was also funded. So, while those weren't specific asks by the city of Federal Way, these are wins, I think, for our community, particularly in a tough budget year. Um, and then, uh, you did not have any formal asks in the partnership space. But um what I will reference is part of what's making that child care access funding that you all asked for available is that the state did partner with the Balmer Family Foundation to um receive over I think it's $170 million uh in annual support uh to go to ensure that we're keeping ECAP and Head Start slots open. So just know that again while the city maybe isn't asking for it, your delegation is working to try to impact

the larger Federal Way community, South King County community. So, what's next? 2026, we are now officially in what's called interim or summer break as some legislators like to call it. Um, this will run from April to December. This is the time that your legislators are going to be out in community. We're hosting town halls, tours. We're doing coffee hours for many of you. You know, for the last seven years that I've been your legislator, um, I host Tuesday morning coffee hours at Ebony and Ivory from 7:00 to 9:00. Public's welcome. It's free. Um, we'd love to see you there. You can also request one-on-one meetings. And then we're working on 2027 policy development. We'll go back into legislative session in 2027 um starting in January and it will be 105day session and it will be a budget year. We are anticipating uh nearly a billion dollar budget deficit um going into 2027. So you can anticipate that the conversation is going to be um not what new money we can get the city of federal way but again what can we preserve and protect uh going into that next budget cycle. So, with that, I'll uh as you'll see, I'll share contact information for all of your legislators, but mine is at the bottom, and I'm always happy to take questions, answer questions. I'm going to pause there. Um, and uh

before we to you, Mr. Mayor, on

before we turn it over to Luke here real quick, we are dying to know what was it like to be in 30 straight hours overnight. What was your life like during that overnight session? Um, so for the public's benefit, if you're not aware, um, for the first time in state history, uh, the legislature, um, participated in a 24.5 hour roundthe-clock debate on the millionaire's tax or the income tax. Um, I, uh, happened to take an opposing view from most of my caucus and my delegation. I actually voted against, uh, the income tax um, for a variety of reasons I'm happy to talk about offline. But the reason that my experience with that 24-hour debate was a little bit different than most of my colleagues is because I introduced um 15 amendments trying to uh ensure regressive tax relief for middle class families. Things like a child tax credit, a dependent care tax credit. But what that meant is that in that 24-hour debate, one of the things that happens um one of the tactics that gets used is what's called an oral roll call. So imagine if every time you guys voted, and maybe you guys do this, you have to say your vote out loud. Well, now we have 98 members in the House. So you have to sit at your desk and you basically every time they call the vote, you have to stand up and announce your vote. Well, the way that that was working is we would do 10 roll call votes at a time and then we would do 10 like push your button votes. The cool thing about push your button is like you only need like 20 people on the floor because everybody just goes around and pushes pushes the buttons for folks. So people could take a break in the middle of the night, which was great. I, on the other hand, could not take a break um because all of my amendments came up in those moments when we were doing the the button pushing. So I was awake for 30 hours straight um trying to defend uh working-class and middle class families um in a tax debate that um I thought was very important um to our community. One that I think I've heard,

you know, I'm all for progressive tax reform. I'm all for taxing millionaires. I just want to make sure if we're going to add another tax that we do it by taking taxes that you're already paying away. Um, and that just did not happen. So, unfortunately, I'm on the I'm on the minority side of that vote, but in a historic 24 and a half hour debate. Wow. I hope we don't ever do that again. But, yeah. Well, I can't imagine. Did you have a a ride home or that that must have been a tough ride home?

No, I we didn't leave like we started at 6:15. I think it was on Monday night. Um, we went I went for I think it was like 20 I was probably 15 hours into the debate, 16 hours into the debate. Um, at 30 hours I got to go downstairs to my office and sleep on my couch for like maybe two hours. And then we had other bills because it was last like few days of session. We had to get a budget passed. We had multiple other uh revenue bills that we were voting on. So then we did we left for a couple hours and we came back and did another 18 hour day the next day. So, thank you. Yeah. On behalf of everybody, not only here and in the audience, but everybody that lives in federal in the 30th district in Federal Way. So, thank you.

That's my honor. Thank you, mayor, very much. All right. Happy to answer any other questions, but I'm happy to also turn it over to Luke. Yeah. Why don't we why don't we hear from Luke uh Luke Esser, our intrepid uh uh lobbyist, and then what we'll do is we'll open up for questions once Luke's done. Is that okay, everybody? Okay. All right. Uh Luke, why don't you hit it? and then uh when you're done then we can uh the council can ask questions of uh either or both.

Thank you very much mayor and uh speaking on behalf of myself and Jim Hedrickk who it's his kids um spring break and he's taking his family vacation. Um I won't be repetitive of the items the representative already covered. This was the short session that adjourned on time. Uh 267 bills passed, seven partial vetos, zero complete vetos. So the the governor didn't use the reading too terribly often. I'm going to focus on some bills that were very prominent for uh for cities. Uh the first two are related to the the housing space. And uh the first of those is House Bill 2266 on STEP housing, which is an acronym for supportive housing, transitional housing, and emergency uh housing. And there was a bill that ultimately the Association of Washington Cities uh became neutral on because of some modifications that were made over the course of its legislative journey. Uh in its final form, that bill requires cities to allow transitional housing or permanent supportive housing in any zones in which residential housing dwelling units or hotels are allowed for indoor emergency shelters and emergency housing. Those are allowed in any zones in which hotels are allowed and in additional zones if needed to meet comp planed needs of the particular jurisdiction. Um, one of the big issues on this bill was the the certification of certain items before certificate of occupancy is is issued by the the city. Ultimately, it came to a place where there there are a list of items that are required to be certified, but it's the project sponsor that self-certifies them and not the city or county that ends up certifying them. And uh, finally, there are some additional certification requirements if projects are are proposed within 500 feet of a public or private school. In terms of affordable housing operational limitations, sometimes known as good neighbor agreements or codes of of conduct, uh the only operational requirements that cities may now enforce on affordable housing developments are limited to income qualifications,

coordinated entry, reporting, and monitoring. Additional uh enfor operational requirements are allowed in the issues of health and safety if the by contract if the city donates land or long-term leases of land or significant general fund dollars. And I put that in in parenthesis because uh excuse me, quotation marks because significant is is not defined. It's negotiated between the the parties uh in that transaction. And and finally, the implementation deadline staff is going to care about this a lot. uh must incorporate these requirements by June 11th, 2028 or the effective date of the next comp plant update, whichever is uh whichever is first. Uh the other big u housing related bill that affected cities that was dealt with in this legislative session had to do with uh turning what are currently commercial and multi-use properties into more uh residential uh developments. It applies to cities with a population over 30,000, which obviously applies to the city of Federal Way. Um, cities must allow residential development, including uh, exclusively residential development in areas zoned for commercial or mixed use development. Presently, there are a list of uh, of exceptions that are there on the slide, and I won't go into those. Uh, probably the biggest issue of debate on this bill was uh, the ground floor retail requirements that a lot of cities have in their current development regulations. Uh, and there was a lot of different numbers that were thrown around and it changed over the course of the session. By the end of the fin the session, the final version of the bill, uh 40% was the number that was chosen. A a city may may exempt 40% of its total acreage zone from for commercial or mixed use uh and and still require ground flooror retail, but the on the rest of it, the other 60% it may not require ground flooror retail or a CUP or SUP process for ground flooror retail. Uh in the in that other 60%. There are to to just to make the math even more complicated there there are exemptions from the 40% areas that

aren't included at all in either the 60 or the 40 for development at 85 plus feet high station areas which is a transportationoriented development term which comes into play near the light rail stations in federal way and also prominently no ground floor requirements are allowed for any publicly subsidized affordable housing which is currently exempt from property taxes. Um this particular uh bill uh requires cities to be in compliance by December 10th, 2027 or they may not enforce any ground floor requirements from that point uh forward and the updated growth assumptions not required until the the city's next comp plan update after 2030. And this comes into play because many cities uh set forth uh their their commercial and mixed use um designations in order to meet the housing excuse me the the the jobs requirements that they're required to meet under under uh uh under the uh the growth management act. So there's some additional time to uh to modify that uh after 2030. Another very prominent bill affecting cities and and counties, limitations on the use of automated license plate readers, AL uh PRs. And with this legislation, the general rule is it's unlawful to use ALPRs unless they're specifically allowed uh under the the the legislation. Though again, there's another uh slight of hand here that that that's perhaps not the right word. There's exemptions from the definition of ALPR. Certain items like automated traffic safety cameras are not considered to be ALPRs. So they they fall in into another separate bucket there. But in general, items have to be specifically authorized to be lawful ALPRs. Law enforcement agencies have the the broadest use allowed for ALPRs. They may use them to uh to uh collect data um related to um um there it is uh investigate stolen vehicles, missing and

endangered persons, felonies, or I'm sorry for so many acronyms, gross misdemeanors, GMs. That was one of the biggest sticking points in the bill. There was uh a lot of desire from many cities and counties to include gross misdemeanors. Uh the original versions of the bill included only felonies. At the end of the day, the final version of the bill did allow the use of ALPRs for for gross uh misdemeanor as well as for uh felonies. There are limitations on how long the data that's collected can be uh maintained and the general rule is is 21 days. Though with with parking enforcement, it must be deleted within 12 uh hours after final resolution of a case. Unfortunately, we had could had could turn off all our ALPRs uh at the city once this was passed because the uh technology wasn't sufficient to be able to parse out or stop recording when they go by a school, a church, or those listed. So, my understanding is multiple law enforcement agencies have just had to just turn off their AL automated license plate readers. We had four that were mobile and uh two I believe Chief Jones. Um is that accurate?

We've had to turn the ones off on the cars because we wouldn't be able to guarantee that you're not driving by a school or someplace where there's protected uh according to the RCWs, but we have kept the ones uh over at the stationary ones at 320th and 21st Southwest. All right. Y

and and and mayor I I move back to the previous slide to address the issue you just the data collection and use limitations uh unlawful to use to collect and use AL period data on premises or immediate surroundings. Another uh quotation there because that term is not defined in the statute and as you say many jurisdictions are out of an abundance of caution not not using that because the the term immediate surroundings is very hard to define and changes over the course of of hours. Is there a second page to that? There's a gross misdemeanor penalty punishment where is is there not?

Uh yes, there there are for uh for unlawful usage of uh ALPRs and also the the vendors can be subject to consumer protection act uh civil litigation if they misuse the uh the data.

Okay. Thank you. Next. And finally, and I'll go very quickly through this. There's there was a bill that allowed some new and expanded local revenue options. I'll focus on the the three in the the middle there. Uh the local REIT, which is an ex existing tax source. The the allowable uses, which are currently all for capital purposes, were expanded to to include abatement of nuisance properties. There's a new local option sales tax that was authorized to fund children and family services of up to.1% for uh specified uh services uh benefiting children and family services. And similarly to the local wreath, the local sales tax for housing, it expands the allowable use for uh that particular uh that particular local option tax to include the rehabilitation, operations, and maintenance of existing units of affordable housing as well as new units as is the the current limitation. and and it allows interlocal agreements as well. I'm not doing a good job of forwarding to the next slide. There we are. I went impatient. Went to there. There we go. Uh represented the restrictions upon sex offenders post supervision. So, I'll slip to uh indigent defense. There was there was hope going into the session that the legislature would provide some money for local jurisdictions which are seeing large increases in their indigent defense budgets because of some changes in case load requirements that were approved by the the state supreme court. That that did not happen in the current budget. though there is um uh a um an intent in the operating budget to uh provide up to $200 million from the general fund sometime in the next four years to start assisting local governments and condominium reform. I know that's been a issue of concern to the the council. Rep. Taylor was the prime sponsor of a bill that further uh

added some additional uh increased the size for which projects were eligible for legislation passed last year to uh allow them to be built with an express warranty of quality and not an implied warranty which makes the insurance much easier to be uh obtained for those particular projects and and hopefully reduce the cost of them. Uh represented the $86,000 that was obtained for the emergency operations center which was a priority for the uh the council and for the the maintenance of the $20 million for the u improvements in the southwest 336 340th quarter down by the other light rail station and the $30 million for the city center access project. And I'll just mention that our local delegation did a great job of obtaining those funds in 2021 and now we're just making sure that we ret retain and maintain them. And uh as rep b Reeves, I'll be happy to answer any any questions.

All right. And I think I may have said uh with Representative Christine Reeves. Um so uh all right. Uh Council Member Coachmire.

Uh thank you very much Luke and Rep. Reeves for your presentations. Um on the House Bill 2266, I think that's the one that we're going to have the most issues with when we go to revise our comp plan because that's the one we've done so much work on our zoning. Um keeping certain types of housing a certain distance from each other, including parking spaces and so on. And that's going to be a huge issue, I think, for this city. We've tried to keep this city looking um as a place we'd want to call our home. And so that's that's going to be a big issue. But what I'd like to ask though from repres is um child care. Do you know how many child care that that's a big issue for us of course is as it is across the state for us here. But do you know how many child care agent how many child care homebased child carees we have in the Fedway city?

I don't uh recall the number off the top of my head but I can definitely get that data for you. Um what I can tell you is there were some major pieces of childcare legislation passed this last session. One including creating a workforce standards board for child care operators. Um, and then as I mentioned, the $170 million impact that the Balmer Foundation uh is is providing in partnership to ensure that those child care slots are still available.

Yeah. And I think that that's a good thing. What I would really be interested in knowing how many child care um homebased child care uh we have in Federal Way. Uh I'd like to know um if there's any review of misuse of funds. In other words, are there actually children in the in the facility as being I don't know. It's just something that we should ask uh as being a stewards of the public trust.

And then I'd like to know I I think that it would be good for our people who are looking to have a homebased business. You know, if there was some information that was provided to them to know how to start a business in home childare and what um kinds of grants might be available from the state. there's nothing from the city per se. Uh and then um what kind of training uh would be um I know that there's some training from Highline, but what kind of training would be um required? Uh and I think that if there was some kind of information that you could even just give to us that we could make public, I think that would be

happy to pass that along. Uh, council member, I one I want to assure the public that um because I think what you're alluding to is the concerns out of Minnesota relative to fraud, waste, and abuse uh tied to uh the dominant culture individual who is using Somali daycarees. Um that's relative that may be

we um we are currently the state is currently in the process of conducting a statewide audit of all child care facilities that receive state funding. Um, so the department of children, youth and families is participating as is the state auditor's office I believe. So we can definitely when that report becomes available happy to provide it for you. Also happy to get you a number of specific um inhome providers here in Federal Way. Um, and then third, uh, Council Member Coachar, happy to assure you that there are a lot of folks paying attention to ensuring that the outcomesdriven data, whether that's through the Workforce Standards Board, whether that's through the training programs, that is all available and accessible publicly through the Department of Children, Youth, and Families website. So, I'm happy to pass those links along to

Yeah. I I think what I really am more I'm getting at is I'm I'm I appreciate that as as you do that review and I'm sure they're doing review of hospice as well. I would like to know that, but that's not really my um primary concern. My primary concern is that we do need a more child care um homebased businesses for our citizens who need to find especially pre prek uh so that they can go to work. And uh I I I don't care what who they are. I'm just thinking that they need to know how to apply. I I just think we need to provide that information to our citizens so that they know how to go about it.

Copy pastel. It's available in the department youth and what I'm really getting at. Happy to get that to you. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Sepha Dawson. Yeah. I just wanted to ask Council Member Cochar if this is only for homebased childcare providers is the audit or is it for any childare who does? Well, I would I would think the audit would be for any childare, but that but I'm really more concerned with homebased because I'm not so concerned about the audit as much as I am to provide more child care. uh available for our our citizens who want to go to work. It's difficult and expensive. Yeah. And uh especially but I think you brought up um fraud issues. So I just want to make sure that it covers Oh, thank you.

any childare centers that get federal funding or any kind of uh funding DSHS or

Yeah, the audit covers all child care in the state of Washington right now just because of the concern. And so for the public's benefit, we have homebased care. Um, which is typically like, you know, an auntie who will say, "I've got my kid and then I'm going to open my house to maybe five or six other kids." Um, that's typically inh home care. We have center-based care, which is for folks who are maybe accessing, you know, organizations like Kinder Care or Laetite. Um, and then we have, uh, you know, nanny care. We have OPAIR care. There's a lot of functions of child care. As somebody who's been working on childcare access for the last eight years, um I can tell you that it's it's a challenge both in providing the the workforce. Um the example I use, I have two kids that went to child care. It costs more every month to put my kids in childare than my mortgage and my car payment combined. And most of the childcare providers I talked to could walk across the street to Starbucks and get a job paying them more than they could at their child care facility. And at the time we did an audit about four years ago, we found that child care providers were making less than dog walkers in the state of Washington. We have done a lot of work in the legislative realm. What I would tell you though is what we're now hearing from child care providers is that we've kind of fell over the tipping point where now it's so cost prohibitive with um quality standards, workforce standards, uh infrastructure standards, safety standards that it's becoming cost prohibitive for them to open a child care center. And that's why when you have fully I'm getting into too many details, sorry, but like you have full private pay facilities, the challenge we're having is that the model that's been built in the state of Washington is a balance model between subsidizing child care with state and local dollars and then private pay. So you have kids who are coming in in ECAP, Head Start, uh working connections child care who are subsidized by the state, the county, and the city in mix with private pay parents. and the model is out of whack right now. And so a lot of the work that we're trying to do is what is the true

cost of care? And then to your point, council member, I think we all care that we're getting to that outcomes driven metric that we're trying to solve, which is how do we get more parents to be able to show up to work every day. This is an interesting stat that many of you may not know that in 65% of dual adult households, both parents have to work to afford to live in this community. And so we've we've got a lot of work to do. Council member, I appreciate that you're paying attention to it. happy to partner with you and get you the data you're looking for, but it's it's a fairly nuanced challenge. It's not as simple as just dropping childcarees everywhere we want them. Um, and Federal Way does experience a high propensity of childcare deserts. So, we'll keep talking. I look forward to partnering with you and getting you the data

and we know that's an issue that we've been talking about this for years. So, thank you for your dedication and work on this issue. Council, any other uh council member?

So, how's the funding the budget going to affect um child care um subsidy in the future? Well, I think it depends, council member. It's a great question. Um, if you listen to some advocates, you're going to hear them say that we just passed a millionaire's tax that um will bring$2 to4 billion in revenue and it's going to fund all the things. Um, I would argue that uh that is going to be a challenge one because the millionaire's tax is going to be challenged at the ballot and then it will be challenged in the court. Um, we already know that uh former AG Rob McKenna has filed a lawsuit against the state on behalf. So my sense is the millionaire's tax will not even if if it passes the ballot initiative and it passes a court case will not even go into effect until 2029. Um so the challenge that we have right now to your specific question is what does that actually do for child care today, tomorrow, next week. What I would tell you is we have managed to pass a budget that pencils on paper but when we come back in 2027 we are already facing an $875 million budget deficit. So, what what is that going to mean? That's going to mean either deeper cuts into things that you care about, and we've already cut K- through2 education, Medicaid and Medicare, uh you know, food subsidies because 25% of the state budget relies on federal dollars, your tax dollars coming back to this state. The federal government has cut hundreds of millions, close to a billion dollars in your tax money coming back to the state of Washington for a variety of reasons we won't get into. But what that means is we either as a state then have to backfill that federal money that we're missing or we have to cut those programs. And I think that's going to be the tension that you see in 2027. You saw some of it in 2026. I think it's going to be only more uh heightened tension in 2027, especially if the millionaire's tax has not gone into effect and won't go into effect. Where are we getting the rest of that revenue? Um and that's going to look like are we going to have property tax conversations? Are we going to have gas

tax conversations? Are we going to have sales and use tax conversations? all the conversations you guys are having right now at the city level, those will be the same conversations that are happening at the state level. And so I can't speak specifically to what programs will be cut. I don't know that it will be childare. What I can tell you, council member, is that we were able to defend uh the loss of $40 million to our childare programs. Um this the original budget as it came out from the governor's office cut working connections child care cut uh the weight list rate and the legislature actually felt so strongly about protecting childcare access that we put that money back into the budget and um lowered the weight list uh number. So I think you're going to see legislators continue to fight for that but at some point you know what's the breaking point. Thank you. Yeah.

All right. Okay. Council Hamilton and then Council President Hund. Thank you, Representative Reeves, for your report and for uh spending your evening with us. Also, I just want to say thank you for uh your coffee hours that you host and I enjoyed seeing you last week at the coffee with a cop and uh I' I've visited once before as well. Um I just looked at the the sex offender post supervision uh policy. It was HB2533. Just want to thank you for working on that. It didn't look like it got very far. I would just encourage maybe to bring it back. Bills don't really ever die. So, they don't have to if you don't want them to.

Yeah. Uh and then also, you know, I just want to thank you for the condominium reform last year. That that's helpful uh with our affordable housing um and especially home ownership opportunities uh that we have here in the city. And then um pleased to see that we got something for the emergency operations center. So, that will be helpful. Um I do have a question for you though and that is with the public defense and so um with the case load standards being drastically reduced we're expecting our cost as a state to triple for that

and um just wondering I I know I saw something kind of go by real quick about the millionaires tax but it looks like that wasn't um going to be helpful for public defense and um it might it might if it if it holds it Right. Um, but is the legislature talking about that at all to help cities cover that cost and what what are some of our options there?

Yeah, it's a great question. Let me start by saying thank you for joining us um at Coffee with Christine. Uh, makes for really great bipartisan conversation and and just appreciate your perspective and your insights. Um, secondly, I would say the condo liability reform for sure. Representative Taylor, want to give her her due credit, has really been leading on that um over the last several years. So, thank her for that. Um, as far as uh the public defense, so this is and Luke, this is more into the politics of what happened in Olympia. It was originally proposed as a standalone set aside fund within the millionaire's tax proposal. So essentially, um, when the original proposal came out, you would have seen a an allocation directed specifically to pay for public defense. Um, and I I want to say it was like $200 million. it actually changed from 5% 7%

it was all over the place. Um ultimately at the end in the final negotiations um certain uh statewide electeds did not want to see that tied to the millionaire's tax. So it was pulled out as a direct set aside and instead what was created and it again I want to be clear in the intent section of the legislation. So what that means is we'd like to do this if this thing actually comes to fruition is that they would create a city's county's account and that part of the income tax that's collected from the state would go into that city county's account and then ultimately instead of just being very prescriptive about what cities and counties would have to use it for in this case public defense cities and counties could potentially use that funding as time progresses for other things. But there is very much an awareness that public defense in general, litigation at the at the local level is a very expensive proposition um and one that I think we're all going to have to partner to figure out how best to to address long term.

Yeah. And and just so you're aware, we are currently debating um HB 2015 and the funding streams that's going to provide. So far, we have some strong support with that, including myself. And so I appreciate um that funding stream, but but I can see that funding stream using a a lot of that for public defense and and not other public safety. Um

well, as you know, council member, um I was a prime sponsor of House Bill 2015. Uh felt very strongly that we needed other public safety revenue mechanisms, including the $und00 million grant, but being able to afford local cities and counties the ability to generate their own revenue for public safety. We were very intentional about keeping that public safety definition fairly broad because what the city of Federal Way might need around public safety may not be what the city of Alona needs. And so we just want to make sure that you have as much flexibility in that. I know it's a hard vote to have to take um to ask the public to spend more money on it, but I think it's an important conversation and a tool in your toolkit to make sure that you have all the resources available to be able to provide the public safety your community is looking for.

Yes. And thank you for the broad discretion. We appreciate that. All right. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you. Thank you for being here, both of you. Um, looking forward to 2027, I've been working with the citizen Jan Barber, who's here in a green jacket. And, um, she found out that King County has no longer a program to dispose of sharps. And, you know, sharps are syringes. um as an exregistered nurse who was poked with a um syringe back in I think 1980 right when AIDS was coming out. It was terrifying for a little bit. I would um like to see something happen. And if the county can't, I'd like to see the state work on this. And the problem is is that because there's not a safe um area to dispose of sharps, it's a public health and an environmental um issue. And so I do have a s suggested suggested um solution which in involves insurance companies. So I've written to the insurance commissioner. Haven't heard back from their office yet. But I would love to sit down with you and uh and jam and talk about how we can move this forward so that not just in King County but throughout the state there's a safe area to dispose of sharps.

Yeah. Thank you, council member, and appreciate you flagging this for me and Jan would be happy to sit down and chat with you. As I mentioned to the council member, but for the public's benefit, um we have been exploring a lot of what we call extended producer responsibility legislation as of late, which basically says, "Hey, hey, look, company X, corporation Y, um you've produced this product, you've put it out into the universe, um but you haven't really created an effective way for us to dispose of that product." So, for example, um we talk about it in like the vaping space, right? The cartridges that pop out of vapes and then you see them on the street and what do you do with them and they're technically kind of toxic like what how do we hold folks accountable to getting those recycled in a meaningful way, etc. So, part of what I I would love to chat with you about council member and Jan is talking about whether or not we could extend extended producer responsibility aspects to the production of these and the recycling and um reclaiming of those products so we can get them out of our community.

I appreciate that. Thank you. I look forward to the conversation. Representative Christine Reeves, thank you so much. Thank you, Luke. Let's give him a big round of applause, everybody. Thank you.

Okay. Uh now we are on to Mayor's Emerging issues and report. I'll talk fast. We got a lot to get to. Um let's see here. Okay. Recent community events. Uh we had Oh, that's myself and uh Ann Sappington uh with the March of Diapers, and she came to pick up. She's doing a great job at the March of Diapers and we'll talk about the event uh the diaper drive that we had but that's at city hall. So, thank you generosity of folks uh here at city hall um and uh that dropped those off. So, next okay we had the uh diversity commission um I had a uh a book donation to Federal Public Schools. Uh we had um uh uh a number of diversity commission officers and as well as the uh uh um Melissa Spencer joined us with the school district learning chief academic officer. Uh 15 books to all 24 elementary schools by their diversity commission. So big thanks to them and it was that was over there at the Barnes & Noble. Okay. Then um I had the opportunity probably the greatest thing I get to do as your mayor is go to elementary schools and uh our son's uh our son's uh uh Ben's former elementary school, Sherwood Forest uh elementary school. It was really fun uh great book to read and it was really it was kind of a time machine um uh to go back there and I think actually we were in one of uh one of Ben's former classrooms. So that was really really great and a lot of great questions by the kids and and uh they were really into it. Okay, then we had the diaper drive on March 28th that actually happened to be an Sappiting's birthday. Uh that was at Fred Meyer. Big thanks to our friends at Fred Meyer who really rolled out the welcome mat. And uh we had Cheryl um uh who was back in town. Really appreciate her. And uh we collected the the diaper drive collected more than 10,000 diapers

with 3,000 wipes. Um big thanks to uh uh everybody who helped uh pull that together and um uh it was it was uh good to see Cheryl Hurst again um uh who came back into town and you could see actually we've got a essentially a quorum of the council there uh uh for the diaper drive which is big success. Okay, next. Okay. Well, Repair Cafe at uh you know, March 28th and it was great to uh get over there again. They do really a a nice job over there. We had the Chamber of Commerce lunchon on April 1st. Um you could see again we've got the council. Yeah, you you've got a you've got such a great council. Uh everybody, they go to so many community events and uh we actually uh got a a great presentation at the Chamber of Commerce lunchon. Okay, next. Um, okay. We've got the uh Oh, and I think at the chamber lunchon, we actually had the director of the King County Aquatic Center and about all the exciting things that are happening at our King County Aquatic Center. Um, okay. Upcoming events, we've got uh uh shredding event um at Red Canoe Credit Union. Uh and um let's see, we've got the community clothing swap um at April 11th. Uh we've got the drive-thru shedding event, like I said, at April 16th. Uh we've got parks appreciation day, Steel Lake Annex, Brook Lake uh park at Celebration Park and uh that'll uh get started in the morning and and uh uh if you'd like more details about that, let us know. We can get that information to you. Okay, upcoming meetings. We've got our promised uh town hall meeting April 30th. Um and that is over there at Olympic View Elementary. That's Thursday, April 30th, 6 p.m. We'll talk about all kinds of issues. Um, I'm Hooked family fishing event May 2nd. Really great event. That's over at Steel Lake Park. If you've never been to that, if you got a little one in the household, um, it's just really one of the some of the most treasured memories I have. Um, are uh bringing Ben over and

uh, uh, catching a fish. He's much better at it than I am. Um, but, uh, we also have the senior health and resource fair. Oh, by the way, um, Jason, what time we getting started with the fishing event? uh Hooked on Fishing goes 7 a.m. to 1 PM. Get there early. You do need to register in advance though and so go to City Federal Way website and you can register there. Okay. I suggest getting there early. Um okay. Senior Health and Resource Fair, uh May 12th. Um Council President H, you want to talk about that real quick?

Sure. Uh this is our our third uh senior health and resource fair. The senior commission puts it on and they've been working all year on this. If you're a senior or you plan to be a senior one day, this is a great event to attend. We have 80 vendors. So, the pack, it's at the performing arts and event center. Excuse me. It's a free event and uh you will learn a lot about what it takes to survive as a senior and how your life can be better. So, we would encourage you to come. As I said, it's a free event and uh you won't regret going.

A lot of folks there, a lot of tables. How many tables you have last time? Uh about 80, so it's packed. Uh it is wall- to-all tables. That's the maximum we can have. We've had to turn some vendors away.

Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Um all right. Now, um next we've got upcoming events on Saturday, May 16th. We've got Touch a Truck. And that's um we used to have Touch a Truck at various locations. It's over there over at Wild Waves. It's going to get started at 11:00 a.m. uh to 2:00 p.m. Really got the fire trucks, the SWAT vehicles, the garbage trucks, the Did I say we have garbage trucks already? Um uh Metro buses, the emergency medical folks, the fire departments there. Um it if kids love trucks and uh and so do adults actually too. Um and so and they've got food there and all kinds of things. And it's right there in the big parking lot at WildWave. So 11 and 11:00 a.m. to 2 p.m. Then we've got Kicking It Federal Way. That's uh looking toward the future June 19th through 21st. That's going to be at the Perform Performing Arts and Event Center. A lot more detail, but make sure you got that on your calendar. That's Friday through Sunday, uh when FIFA comes to town, uh the World Cup. All right. And then we've got Friendship Theater production of Frozen at the Community Center June 18th through 21st. Okay. That completes my report. And now we are on

talk. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, absolutely. Council president, would you like to raise an issue we talked about?

Yes. So, um, as we all know, we have Sound Transit who has recently opened the light rail here in Federal Way and Sound, uh, ST3, which we all voted on, allowed funding for Sound Transit to have light rail go all the way into Tacoma. Um, currently Sound Transit is experiencing up to a $34.5 billion deficit and they are discussing um what projects might not happen. And uh the projects that they're they're looking at that might be delayed or might might not happen are um cutting the Ballard extension, stopping the southern extension um of light rail to F instead of going to the Tacoma Dome and delaying projects in Everett South um Kirkland and Isiqua. The city of Tacoma council recently wrote a letter to Sound Transit talking about the need for light rail to expand into Tacoma as we have all paid taxes into this for years and years. And I would like to ask our council if uh it would be okay if we work on a letter to um to support the city of Tacoma and their desire to get light rail into Tacoma uh and maybe vote on it next in two weeks.

Yeah. Council lady, I guess any objection or or we're not looking for a vote right now. We're just kind of get trying to sense some consensus. Council member Moore. Uh, Council President, I appreciate you actually bringing this up to all of us at this DAS. I know that this uh it's hard to communicate outside of this. So, thank you for bringing it up to all of us. I think it's absolutely important. I know that Pierce County and Tacoma are working really hard to uh get in front of this and and advocate. So, I I full I support it. Fullheartedly. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Council Member Hamilton.

Uh, thank you for bringing that up. It's definitely a concern of mine. We've paid a lot of taxes for this and our community has paid a lot of taxes for this. Many people have paid a lot of taxes for this and um, yeah, they need to deliver. So, I would be in support of um, what you're proposing. Okay. And then, Council Member Cessums. Yeah. And thank you very much for bringing it up as well. I just want to let uh our citizens know that you can actually take a survey on the Sound Transit website. Uh just go there and let your uh voices be known, but I'm happy that we'll be addressing it as well. Thank you.

Okay. Council, thank you council president and especially for reminding me. Um council, I you know, I don't think that do you think this needs to go through committee or you we've got agenda setting after this. Are we okay with it just going right onto the next council's agenda? Okay. The sooner the better we get this in front of the Sound Transit Board.

Very good. Okay. So, uh EJ, Brian, Ryan, we'll let's let's talk about this tomorrow and uh we'll get working on a letter. Um we want to make sure that we're going to send drafts out to you, council, but we just want to make sure for the OPMA that we got to be careful about, uh drafts crossing, you know, uh via email uh for uh public meeting purposes. So, we'll send something out to you if you have any, you know, comments and we'll put this in the email as well. Just send them uh without reply. I'll just send directly to uh the sender um you know, one of us uh whoever sends it. Thank you.

Okay. Um we should be able to get something out by the end of the we'll generate something here in the next, but we also want to be very thoughtful and uh we'll uh and then Heather, let's make sure that we calendar this for the next meeting. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Now, at the last meeting, we had a public comment from Mike Bulich Ziggler. I don't know if Mike is in the audience uh uh this evening. Uh but we promised we were I met with uh him yesterday in my office along with EJ and uh and uh Bill and uh Bill Vadino and we were talking about the intersection at 19th Avenue Southwest and Southwest Campus Drive. And for everybody, that's over in the southwest uh area of town on 348th. Um where well at 19th and 34 Campus Drive. Uh but it's right by the post office. And uh so with that uh EJ, will you kind of we I promised we'd do a a followup. Um and would you let's uh but I think we are a little pressed for time. So maybe we can just kind of kind of get right to it.

Sure. Sure. Uh so good evening, mayor, council president, members of council. As the mayor said, uh this is just a brief recap from the last council meeting and the mayor and I did meet with the commenter yesterday um and and shared the same uh content that you're going to see tonight with him. So the intersection on a global scale is on the lefth hand side zoomed in you see it on the right. Um we did do a uh review of that intersection internal to public works. Um, and one of the things we found, well, several of the things we found was that there's no specific pattern when we looked at a seven-year history and specifically the last five years. Um, and what what that means is we look for time of day. So, are they all tied to school start, school ends, are they all on a Saturday? Are they all, you know, whatever the case may be, but is there commonality in the time or the day of the week? And the answer to that is no. Um, as it said, it does not correspond with school start or end. Um, the most recent accident that brought this up actually occurred on a Sunday afternoon. So, there was very obviously no school. Um, so then we also look at this compared to the surrounding intersections as well as citywide. So, um, comparatively, this is the 50th worst intersection in the city. So, there's 49 that rank rank higher as far as accident rates, um, for volume and then 107th for rate. Um so and the rate is a function of the number of vehicles entering the intersection. So between 2017 and current there have been six pedestrian involved accidents and the intersection is not out of character or showing an increased pattern compared with other locations. So the most recent accident, the one that you heard about in public comment um last time. In summary, it happened on March 22nd of 2026. A juvenile entered the intersection. They were on a scooter. Um they they scootered along the sidewalk and then turned and continued into the intersection. Um they went into the

intersection against a red light. Um and what that means is they did not have the rightway. The vehicles did. So the crossing traffic um did have the green. It was a legal movement. Um and unfortunately that juvenile was stuck. the um there's no positive no accident's a good accident and no no pedestrian vehicle collision is is ever a good thing. I I want to be very clear about that. As a city, we take that very seriously. Um causation aside, um we don't we don't want zero we don't want any we want zero accidents involving pedestrians or bicycles. Um the like I said not a positive but what um there is a little bit of comfort in is the juvenile was released to their parents at the scene. They were they were not in need of medical treatment andor transport. So their their injuries were relatively minor. Um like I said there's no good pedestrian accidents. I'm I'm not trying to downplay that but there was not a serious injury in this one. So um statistically we did compare it to the other intersections along campus. Um those are really small on the slide. Um but you can see that the uh on the vehicular collisions, this intersection is actually lower than pretty much all of the other ones um to the west and most of the ones to the east. Um and the head collisions are in line with the other intersections throughout this corridor. So next steps um and and where do we go from here? So as was discussed a little bit um very high level at the last council meeting we are working on uh safe streets for all local road safety plan. The public commenter from the last meeting is actually one of the participants. He was even prior to last meeting he was identified as a um pedestrian transit advocate um by by public works um and asked to sit on this

committee. He's been sitting on this committee for about a year as has several other members of the public. Um so we um are in the middle of a process that's called a road safety audit. Uh we had looked at a number of locations around the city. Um prior to this accident, the corridor that you see there, so the campus drive through the Twin Lakes area and a second corridor which is 21st Avenue Southwest, the park and ride, they were already slated to to have this analysis completed. And what that means is there's a multi-disiplinary team made up by the the group that you see there. So agency be that police, my staff, the school district, King County Metro and Transit are both participants. And then pedestrian safety advocates. We have, I believe, six uh members of the public that have been long uh pedestrian safety advocates towards the city um that we asked about a year and a half ago to sit on this and they agreed. Um so that the next step of that is actually conducting field walks of these streets. Those are actually ironically scheduled for two weeks from today. Once that audit is complete, there's a calibration period that's done by um our outside traffic consultant to make sure everything meets traffic standards as well as um kind of an independent disinterested party looking at the information, making sure we're not going down wrong rabbit holes. Um after that is done that will that feedback will come back to council probably mid to late summer. At that point would be an appropriate time to consider changing. Um be that that may be signal functions, it could be signage, it could be something else that the committee comes up with that we're not thinking of today. Um the big thing I want to point out is that number five. Um, as a city, um, and through my technical staff as well as our insurance company, we do not make reactionary changes to traffic systems. Um, if we did that, it we would be, you know, literally chasing the bouncing ball of

every time there was an accident, we'd be changing something. Um, there's a lot of reasons that that's not a good idea. Um, so we make changes based on warranted conditions, uh, coupled with a data-driven approach. So what that means is national traffic standard safety um design criteria. Um at this time there are no warrants meeting those thresholds to m to implement a change at this location. With that I am happy to answer any questions but we'll look at it long term. Correct. That's the that is the whole first three items with the audit. So so it's it's a very data driven analytical approach and that

hopefully it's not that long term to be fair. Um but yes it's not a it's not a tomorrow. Very good. Awesome. Okay. Um, council, any questions? Council member Moore, EJ, thank you for putting this together and mayor, thank you for your efforts on this as well. Um, how many how many and forgive me because I know we're kind of moving a little bit fast in the uh interest of time, but how many uh uh pedestrian challenges have we had on um 19th Avenue Southwest and Campus Drive? It depends on what time period you're looking at. uh let's just say the last five years.

So I think we've had six in the last five years if I remember the math correctly. Um which like I said is not atypical. So So what would warrant a like a temporary I know you said if it warrants so one of the things we look at is who's at fault. So, while there was an accident, um, and we've had a number of these recently, um, several of the recent, um, pedestrian accidents that have been, um, shared fairly publicly, um, this one and several others where the pedestrian was the one at fault, you know, and I think there's,

um, a little bit of a expectation, especially more so on the west coast than the east coast, that, um, pedestrians are always in the So whenever we hear about a pedestrian vehicle accident, we assume that the vehicle was the one at fault and the pedestrian had the right away because they're on foot. Um, you know, often that's not the case. So, you know, a pedestrian entering against the red, there's nothing we can do to change that action. Like they illegally entered the intersection. So, there's no there's no change that you can make that other than a behavioral change that would stop that. I mean, they they did not have the rightway. They did not have a white arrow.

Um, so there's there is no warrant aka something to change because un other than like blocking the road and pro prohibiting pedestrian crossings at that location, they did something that was not permissive. So we you can't just look at the total number of accidents. You have to look at the number of accidents where like a change would actually drive a different outcome. If that makes sense. It does. It does. Um I I look forward to connecting with you one-on-one more and and digging deeper into this because I think page five for for packets. I I think that there comes more questions in there.

Um because I think it is a valid point. I mean that when a person breaks the law and walks against the light, there's only so much we can do, but at the same time, gosh, I'd want to be as proactive as we can to make our streets safer. Um, so I 100% agree with you and that is the the tug that occurs with traffic engineering of you want to maximize pedestrian movements and all movements frankly, not just pedestrians. Um, but at the same time, you want everyone to be kept safe. Exactly. And that's that's a hard balance. Yeah. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, EJ. Okay. Now, we are on to item F, uh, Council Committee and Regional Committees report. Council member Walsh, Land Use, and Transportation Committee. Uh we met we met last evening. Uh four items from it will be on uh the uh consent agenda in two weeks and our next meeting is May 4th right here at 5:00. I'll steal one thing from uh uh from uh Council Member Cessins who chairs who'll be giving his report in just a minute, but I will reinforce what I'm sure he will say. make sure you're you're at the parks appreciation event on April 18th. I would be remiss if I haven't didn't say that. So, thank you.

Very good. Thank you, Council Member Cessums, Parks, Recreation, Human Services, and Public Safety Committee. Uh the next park, Recreation, Human Service, Public Safety Committee will be uh next week, April 5th, 14th, uh Tuesday, 5:00 PM. Everyone's invited. We have a full agenda. I hope to see everyone there. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Council Member Sepha Dawson on uh lodging tax advisory committee and the uh public issues committee at SEA.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Um our next um LTSC meeting is going to be on Tuesday the 14th at 2 o'clock. And um we're going to be talking about um the grants again, grants and um approving those so that we can bring them to finance um committee u for approval, council approval. Um with pick um last time we talked about the King County Transportation District and that King County was going to propose a one.1% sales tax increase on all the cities, but the revenue was not going to come to the cities. instead it was going to serve unincorporated K county. And so um SCA um we had a really long meeting and sent submitted a letter and actually testimonies from different cities that went to the um to the board and um so one of the requests was you know it was imminent that the county was going to go ahead and and propose and pass the tax request. So was um the request was to do a percentage give a percentage back to the cities and so at least that has been it looks like it's been accepted by King County Transportation District and so the amount is not they have not determined how much what percentage they're going to do and what kind of formula they're going to use but at least now u that request has been uh accepted and so we're in a good place. Seattle also um requested the same thing. I think they they've heard from us and um we are going to get it looks like we're going to get a share of that uh 1%. And then with the Highline Forum, uh there was a thing that came out the other day. Um actually all the cities that were there um airport highlight forum talked about what they're doing for the um um soccer tournament. And um every city has something great and big

happening within their uh jurisdictions that the comm where the communities can come together and um and have an event. And so ours was also presented. Thank you um um Bill for doing their presentation and doing the the um what we saw here was presented there and they really like what we're doing here in Fedway. And also um something else I read there is um that the center runway at the airport is going to be closed from April 1st through November 21st. So I don't know how it's going to impact flight patterns, but that's going to be closed for um a minute. And then PSRC, the economic development board, um they're going to have a housing mini academy for electeds in May, May 15th. So, I think I'll forward that to Amy and I think if anybody's interested in attending, it's a it's an all day thing. It's from 8:30 to 3 o'clock. But that's that might be something of interest to us.

With that, I um end my report. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Uh Council President uh Honda for both the regional committee report and the council president report.

Thank you. Um, I had the opportunity to attend a ribbon cutting at uh, Junior Achievement down in Auburn and I'd never been there before. It is so amazing. It teaches youth from grade school through high school how to handle money and uh, all schools can participate in it. There's a a fee to to do it, but it's it's not a a large fee. And when I was there, uh, the both school district had some juniors there. There are probably over a hundred of them. Uh, Federal Way School District participates, but uh, they um perhaps could be sending more students there if they had the funding. But I was just amazed at how uh what they taught um youth about handling money and from earning money to spending money to saving money, what a loan is, all sorts of stuff. It was it was absolutely amazing. Uh on AWC on April 14th is doing an online meeting on the legislative outcomes for 2026. It is from 12:00 to 1:15. you do need to pre-register. And on May 1st, AWC will be starting uh the legislative priorities committee to consider priorities for 2027. There is a survey online if you'd like to participate. Tomorrow, the senior advisory committee is having their monthly meeting and they have changed the starting time from 2:00 to 1:30. So, it'll be 1:30 to 3:30 and that's right here at the Hilabus room. And uh we had uh oh, I attended a uh council leaders exchange in Ellensburg. It was for council president, deputy mayors, and mayor proms because they're same job but

different names. And it was the first time that they had done that. It was amazing. I learned a lot from other cities and what other cities are doing. And um hopefully they'll they'll do this again. And uh we did hold a retreat, our second retreat here on Saturday from 9 to 3. I think it was very successful and I know that the council is ready and able uh going forward working together. So thank you very much. Thank you uh council coach for um finance, economic development, and regional affairs.

Well, thank you uh Mayor. Uh most of the items on the consent agenda this evening are from our last finance meeting, FedEct meeting, items C through N. There's 12 items. So that's the bulk of the consent agenda. We did talk about the farmers market uh 2026 budget and operations plan. And get ready because the market's going to be opening in May. Our next uh FedEx meeting will be April 28th at 5:00 PM in council chambers. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Yes. May 11th, right? Uh May 11th, the the farmers market, the day before the way the way to remember it is it's the Saturday before Mother's Day. So, it's a great place to get your uh get your flowers uh for Mother's Day. And um uh it's going to be great. And it's a new location. It's no longer behind the Commons. It's going to be in that uh that street in between Town Square Park and uh uh the Performing Arts and Event Center with the food trucks up above. And uh I think uh we've got uh how many uh how many vendors or how many uh tents we have, Jason?

Uh there's 44 spots on the street. Uh the tent up above and six food trucks up above and uh right now we currently have 80 vendors in addition in in excess of 80 vendors and we're working to curate the the market for each week. Very good. Okay. All right. And I did double check there are flowers. Uh so come on out on the Saturday before uh Mother's Day. Okay. Um, all right. Now, the most important part of the meeting to hear from you, the folks we work for, uh, either the folks that are here or on Zoom. Now, we do have, uh, four individuals from Americans for Equity, Equality, excuse me. Americans for Equality. Uh, would you like to come up all at once or do you want to just go one by one? We'll do one by one.

One by one. All right. Uh, next first is Erica Horde. Um, and then after that, Danielle. Well, we'll do them one by one. Erica, the floor is yours. Hey, mayor and uh council president and rest of the council. Thank you so much for the warm welcome. I feel like this is the most um welcoming committee that I've ever seen and this is one of the most fun um meetings I've been to. Um a little bit about me. My name is Erica Horde. Um I currently serve as senior program manager with Americans for Equality. Um we're a bipokled nonprofit. Um we have helped uh residents in the city of Better Way. Um, I also like to consider myself a honorary spiderway resident. I live about 9 minutes uh from here as well and I do a lot of my shopping at the 320th Safeway as well. Um, so a little bit about our organization. We help with um technical education. We also help individuals with um just basic things like resumeumés, um helping them with how to prepare for an interview and a lot of the things that we need in this job market that we're currently facing. Um, I want to start off by saying that I am also uh a product of our program. I started off as a student um with our program in the inaugural cohort of our warp 10 program. Um, and it came to me as a godsend actually because um, I heard about the program through an organization that was helping me while I was homeless with my kids sleeping in my car. Um, and I had went through a moment where I was having a child and I needed to change my career. Um, and I pretty much was just I had worked in uh retail uh worked for Starbucks for maybe as a manager for 13 years. Um, and I just had gotten to a point where my body was breaking down on me and I needed a career change. Um, so luckily um I came across Americans for Equality. I went through the program. Um, and then I was able to be accepted into the boot camp uh that I did for

Salesforce as well as um our internship program which we have based in Belleview currently. Um the class that I went to was based in Kent. Um and even in those two locations, we've been able to serve, I think, roughly 54 federal a U residents, which is amazing. Um and we hope to be able to serve more Federal Way residents as well. Um pretty much what Americans for Equality has done for me is just given me a new lease on life. Um it's given me an opportunity um where I probably never would have had. Um, when I started out thinking of tech, I think of like geniuses or people who, you know, have come from different lineages and just kind of ended up in those professions. Um, but going through Americans for Equality, I was shown that, um, it's for everyone, you know. Um, we do focus on underserved communities, but our program is open for all. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Okay, next we've got Daniel Chuya. Did I get that? Did I get that right, Daniel? Yes. What you said? Yes.

Uh, mayor, council president, uh, council members, thank you for having me. Uh, I am, uh, systems analyst for Americans uh, at Americans for Equality. Uh, I have the pleasure of being the non-traditional person that has been introduced uh, into this world. Um, I grew up as a chef as you guys can tell and um, I never had a background. I've always been fascinated by technology and especially within like music, arts, um, movies that we watch. Um, and it really sparked like a curiosity for me of how can I pursue this and where can I go? And that curiosity has been able for me to develop skills by myself and help my parents grow their business for example. Um and you know uh from a catering company to bring in online presence and uh develop those skills. I found out about Americans for equality that introduces these skills whether it's learning uh cyber security or you know analyzing data or running uh systems and really understanding um it's been a blessing that I've never imagined myself in in the shoes or the opportunity to be able to do so and you know going forward I see myself continuing to provide these services that we do for free for anyone who wants it from communities that are unrepresented in you know tech and non techch careers that really um need to be shown as light because as a community together we bring more ideas together and uh it just it harmonizes everything. So thank you.

Thanks Dan. Okay. And then Juan Arbe and Juan, while you're making your way over there, can we please get uh Omar Keshi uh via Zoom ready to go? Uh because he's also with Americans for Equality. Juan,

good afternoon, mayor and council city members. My name is Juan Reebe, proud resident and was actually born right across St. Francis, 26 years old. I've spent my entire life in Federal Way. Went from Olympic View to Sahali to Decar. Um, I do have the pleasure and honor to be a data AI analyst for Americans for Equality nonprofit organization. As you guys can tell, we're focused on t tech tech education, not just to anybody, but the underserved community and all people of color. We focus on AI, data analytics, cyber security and HR fundamentals all around. Not just for adults, but young community members coming out of college, coming out of high school, not just to level themselves up from their nineto-ive job, but to find that aspect, that spark in their life that a lot of people are missing when they come out of high school or where they're at that 9 to5 job where they're simply not happy. Myself, I came from Decar. I went had the honor to go to UDub Seattle, one of the top schools in the world. I would say had an unfalling um out there. I wouldn't say due to the school system, not to my issues. It's just life. But what we're here to do as a community, as people of color, as people of love, is to upskill one another and provide that service, support, and education and service that the traditional school district doesn't always necessarily apply. And I don't think it comes anywhere else better from people that have lived, served, and come through those experience. Myself, I was one of the 60 residents that was very impacted through this program. Coming from Federal Way, I want to go ahead and expand this to all my neighbors in Federal Way of all ages, of all colors. I'm a proud advocate for this program. It's changed my life in tremendous ways, and I just want to see it do the same thing to everybody in the city of Federal Way and all cities across King County. My name is Juan Rebe. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, council city members, for taking time to listen to myself and my colleagues. We are Americans for Equality. more than happy to speak with you guys, collab, and go ahead and create a greater impact for everybody around the city.

Thank you, one. Thank you. Okay, I know we got uh just so you know, we got a couple of Golden Gators up here, but uh we also have uh mother of some the Eagles as well. We'll talk about that. Okay. Okay. Very good. All right. Thank you. All right. Okay. Uh I I remember. Okay. Uh we uh Omir, are you uh online? It's Omir Keshi, can you hear me? Hello? Uh, mayor and uh, council members, are you able to hear me?

We can. Yes.

Hey, thank you. My name is Omar Kareshi. thanks for first of all allowing us uh being here and um I would have been there myself but I'm about to go into an eye surgery in about a week week and a half time and my ability to see things better at night would be a lot better at that point you'll see me a lot more often at that point I wanted to take few minutes of your time and you've seen some of the stories from whether it's Erica uh Daniel and Juan these are some of the students interns and staffers that have gone through the full life cycle of the program but I wanted to share what the program has been about the program came about uh with a simple thought that people who see blockers uh entering whether it's tech or non- tech how do we eliminate those blockers as people of color women of all ancestries uh but you know everybody's welcome in our program there are no barriers and there are three three key products or solutions we have created over last four years first one is the career navigator and digital navigator It is basically to allow you to learn how to write a resume, how do you prepare for a job interview? Uh how do you target the jobs and how do you overcome some of the skills that you might be missing. The second program we have uh it is around career skills accelerator and mayor and council uh members main purpose there is whether you're trying to learn how to be a marketer uh project manager program manager cyber security person will have skills for you. Now you might see that there are about 2.2 million cyber security jobs open even today. But why those jobs are not available to everybody? Some of that comes down to those skills and experiences. The lack of that experience has allowed us to creating internships and we have taken about,00 you know residents of King County and broader King County into various different programs. We have about 37 interns with 88% completion rate for

city of Federal Way. We have 54 former you know students and interns that have gone through. There's a weight list of 150 and all this was possible because we were recipient of uh Department of Labor grant through Senator Patty Murray of $2.2 2 million and purpose of today we're not asking for any money we're not asking for anything uh but essentially all we are saying is keep us on the radar as uh you know the opportunities come together if there are other nonprofits in federal way that we can partner with you know keep us on the radar as well and uh with that uh the last two things I want to mention all of our programs are available free of cost uh to everybody so there's no cost uh to getting this but what we do is as an organization ation. We absorb that cost through federal, state, and local funding. With that, um, a round of applause to Erica, Juan, and Daniel because these are the lives, uh, that have been changed, and there are many others that we are changing day in and day out. Thank you.

Thank you so much. All right. Um, thank you all. I appreciate your we appreciate your presentations. Okay. Uh, I'm going to list off, uh, the next folks. We've got uh Jeffrey Tangriti, um Adrien Davio, Nathan Orth, Paul McDaniel, uh Jan Barber, Trice Rogers, Anna Patrick. But first, we'll start off with uh Jeffrey Tenry. Good evening, Mayor, Council President, Council. Thanks for letting me speak. Uh Jeff Tenry speaking as a private citizen. history, a brief history of the Democrat party and the Republican Party. The Democrat Party was formed in 1829 and since its founding has fought against every major civil rights initiative. The Democrat party has a long history of discrimination. The Democrat party defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed reconstruction, founded the Kuclux Clan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, fought against the Civil Rights Acts of 1950s and the 1960s. In contrast, the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party. Its mission was to stop the spread of slavery into the new western territories with the aim of abolishing it entirely. But this but this effort was dealt a major blow by the Supreme Court in the probably the worst decision in the history of the court. The 1857 case DreadScott versus Sanford. The court ruled that Dreadscott was property not a person. The seven justices who voted in favor of

slavery were Democrats, including Chief Justice Roger Tanny. The two dissenting justices who voted against slavery were Republicans. The slavery question was ultimately resolved by a bloody civil war. The commander-in-chief during the Civil War was the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves. Six days after the Confederate army surrendered, John Wils Booth, a Democrat, assassinated President Lincoln. Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, assumed the presidency, but Johnson adamantly opposed Lincoln's plan to integrate the newly freed slaves into the South's economic and social order. Johnson and the Democrats were united in their opposition to the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th amendments. All three of these amendments passed only because of universal Republican support. My source for this information, which is just part one of there'll be four other parts. My source is Dr. Carol Swain, SW AIN, professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University and Prager University. And I will I will continue on from the beginning of reconstruction forward at the next meeting. Thanks for your time.

Thank you, Jeffrey. Adrien W, Mayor, Council, and Fedino. I proposed a motion to ascertain the position of the mayor and council members regarding viewpoint neutrality of the Federal Way City website. Currently, there is only LGBTQ plus representation on the city website, which is not viewpoint neutral and is activism, not equality. I asked for a motion to be voted on by the council to add heterosexual pride month representation to the city website. Viewpoint neutrality is a principle established by the Supreme Court that prohibits the government from discriminating against speech based on the viewpoint expressed, ensuring that all perspectives are treated equally under the First Amendment. The government must not favor or disfavor viewpoints when regulating speech. This principle is crucial for protecting free speech rights as it prevents the government from taking sides in public discourse and ensures that all opinions can be expressed without fear of censorship or retaliation. The Supreme Court has consistently held that viewpoint discrimination is a form of content discrimination that is particularly disfavored and often deemed unconstitutional. The second motion I presented is to ascertain the positions of Federal Way council members, mayor, and the police chief regarding Federal Way Police Department Keep Washington Working Act. The act on the website is the current state and Federal Way city sanctuary policy that perpetuates the revolving door of sanctuary crime in our communities and endangers law

enforcement officers. City officials should disclose whether they are for or against sanctuary policy. Ramirez was in this country illegally. He allegedly murdered Jessica Hon and Katie Dun Dunkey and attempted another murder in Federal Way. The Federal Way Police Department would not have turned him over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement because of this sanctuary policy. Thankfully, the FBI arrested him. One, did the mayor feral unilaterally deny the request for presentation of two motions for consideration by the city council members? And if so, what is his reasoning for the denials? Did the mayor consult the city council before making the decision to quash the motions? And three, did the mayor consult the city attorney? I received a call from you today verbally conveying Mayor Frell will not address motions, answer questions, and will not give a reason why. I look forward to a written response from a city council member or city attorney call as Mayor Frell has abdicated his first amendment responsibility to address my concerns. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Thank you. Okay, Nathan Worth. Hello everyone. Uh my name is Nathan North. I've been a resident of Federal Way for nine years now. Um I believe that we will see this retail tax pass tonight. Um I think most people will be fine and able to shoulder a little more burden, a little more pressure. I do worry about the unknown number of people for whom this may be the final straw, the final bit of fiscal pressure that pushes them from net contributors into those who may need a helping hand. Um, when we watched this ordinance get

introduced, one of the council joked about how they do not shop here anyway. Fair enough. I I do some shopping outside of the city as well. Um, everyone makes choices about where to shop by balancing what we need or want versus pricing and convenience. My worry is that the folks who will be most affected by a minor cost increase are also the least able to avoid it. If you take public transit to go shopping, your choices are already limited. I would urge the council to remember three things. You can say no to new spending. In my time watching these meetings, I have not seen the council say no to any proposed new spending. You have the cannabis sales tax revenue blocked still. Uh we know that those who are using inside the city of Federal Way take their discretionary spending to our neighbors whose stores are strategically placed along our borders. Uh, and there are other funding methodologies involving correctable behaviors such as speeding cameras outside of schools, red light cameras at problematic corners, which to be fair, it sounds like you're already looking into, um, and expired car tab tickets. Uh, these should be explored as well as additional funding options for that law enforcement um, budget shortfall because I believe all of them are limited to that same bucket. Final thought, we are being told that this is to address a funding shortfall for public defenders and other things. You are capable of writing these specifics into the ordinance instead of leaving it vague. The state limits this tax to law enforcement, but does not say that you can't be more specific within that area. So, I would ask that you make a promise and keep it. Write the specific programs to be funded into the

ordinance. Thank you.

Thank you, Nathan. Paul McDaniel, he's tall. Good evening. Uh, tonight I come with first Paul McDaniel, a resident since the 1990s. Uh, I come to talk about sales tax. Uh, I'm going to give you seven reasons why I don't think you should vote for it tonight and then I'll give you just one thought. Uh I'm going to start off with the first set of uh things. You don't have to vote on this till 2028. It was stated at a parks committee meeting by one of the council members. So that gives you plenty of time to do your homework to verify this is the right move for the city. We have never done anything like this before. The second one, sales tax um only increases revenues by up to $3 million. Yet, in the last city council meeting, the city attorney showed a chart indicating that the cost for safety was going to increase by roughly $20 million over the next four years. That was the chart that I was shown and the numbers that were used during that meeting. What about the $17 million delta between the $3 million this sales tax raise and the $20 million that were told will be need to be addressed in four years? $3 million to a $20 million budget shortfall is nothing and more time needs to be looked at for this item. Number three, you don't need the money yet. The chief has stated multiple times that he's okay with the number of sworn officers he has right now. That means we could freeze hiring and make up the differences through natural attrition and cuts to ARPA money projects. You have ARPA projects that could be cut. It's an option. You don't have to come to us for it. You are not provided with an alternate um option for excuse me, number four. You are not provided an alternate option by the executive branch of your local government. In fact, they say they did not have a plan that would provide you with a staff reduction plan uh in case these taxes did not go through. That was that's not good. That's not planning. It's not planning at all. Number five,

timing. It was not brought to uh FedRack, but instead was brought to the parks, which just happens to line up everything so that if you missed one vote, you would not pass it. Everything was designed to make sure this passed on time. Number six, the money on the table. That money is right here in my wallet. The money is also on the table is on your neighbor's kitchen tables and those dimes, those are the dimes the county to pay their electric bills is going up 30%. Not to mention other increases the cost of living due to choices here and also down in Olympia. Number seven, we need a symbolic relationship with our police department, not a parasitic relationship where taxpayers and other city departments are squeezed for one department. We need a working relationship for long terms. Police are going to be one of the major things going to cost a lot of cities to fall because of the cost increase. Again, I'll blame it on Olympia. Doesn't matter. You guys have to deal with it now. And then finally, just a thought. If you truly feel that sales tax is required for the city and I think everybody's hand should be dirty. And the mayor should also have a chance to vote on this. Therefore, I ask the council to tie their vote. Three nays, three yays, and one vote of presence, providing a tiebreaker for the mayor to choose. You all should have your hands on this if you want to do it. Thank you for your time. Good luck tonight. Thanks, Paul. Jan Barber.

My name is Jan Barber and I've lived in Federal Way more than 15 years. Right now, I am I'm wearing my Lion's Club uh jacket partly because one of the missions of Lion's Club is to protect the environment. And another one is to help uh children who have issues with diabetes. Related to this, sharps need to be disposed of in a way that doesn't burden our pocketbooks and is convenient enough that some of the things I've been learning about what's happening in our city, at least some can be circumvented. I've talked with Lake Haven at the recent chamber meeting and found out that people flush their they flush their needles into the water system and that causes a problem. I ran into this the first time because it was nighttime. I went to church choir and there were hypodermic needles on the pavement and it was dark. As you know, by 7 or 7:30 in our fair city, it can be dark in the winter. Uh, but we I have been talking with more people. I have heard some nos, some may. And the one I'd like to address, uh, I'll I'll get to in just a minute, but essentially, there's no sharps disposal available for the public at Virginia Mason Clinic, at the police department, although they did it at one time, at St. Francis Hospital at the transit center and at the the day center is currently collecting and recently bought a bin, but they weren't aware that the the

county had decided to discontinue the contract in both Federal Way and Auburn. Uh I haven't talked with the library yet. I have learned about public schools. the nurses are currently, you know, they'll they'll give a diabetic child or other, you know, an injection. Uh, Chat GPT says that 3% to 8% of a county uses injectable sharps. I've also noticed on television more pharmaceutical companies are saying soon to be released injectable sharps. Um the uh the positive out of this it's possible that Bill Fuller who is with the South King fire uh he is talking about the possibility of finding an option and he'd like to help craft that. I would like to ask that this that this group consider that perhaps by meeting with uh Ryan Call. Thank you.

Thank you, Jan. Trice Rogers. Good evening. My name is Chenise Rogers and I'm here to address to address serious concerns regarding leadership, accountability, process, and equity within the city of Federal Way. At the core of my comments is a simple expectation. Consistency, truth, accountability. What what are we what are we seeing when we uh see a trouble? What are we seeing? What we're seeing is a troubled pattern. Issues and efforts being escalated without basic factf finding or internal conversation. We saw this clearly during the February 10th meeting where actions were taken to resend the vote for council president. The mayor stated there was sufficient notice and no one likes to be surprised. Yet council members themselves stated they were blindsided, caught off guard and concerned about exclusive the exclusive process. And for the record, uh those concerns were raised in real time, yet action still move forward that raised serious concerns about process and decision-m as we're all here witnessing today. Um if this council can quickly coordinate external drafting letters and aligning on light rail issues then we know that capacity exists. So when the same uh when the same so when the same coordination uh does not happen um internally what are we supposed to assume in terms of accountability in New Orleans to move forward in a more um conducive way when I think of legality and ethics uh we also hear about the

process related to legal terms. We also heard that this process was legal, but I asked what is ethical? Because when three out of seven council members are not fully included and receive the same notice as the public, that raises concerns about transparency and collaboration. Um, is that the standard the leadership of the state of federal wants to uphold? We must also address public statements regarding a community threat. This statement has been publicly substanti has not been publicly steep publicly supported and is has not been uh formally clarified or corrected and has had real impact on how community members are perceived. When a meeting begins with a statement suggesting a threat, it sets a tone of fear and defensiveness. It frames community members as potential harm rather than partners and discourages civic participation and it risk mischaracterization in terms of residents in with due process. So lastly in closing I just want to just highlight the idea that um we as a city we need to do better in terms of transparency. If the city is serious about uplifting community voices it must ensure that its actions align with the goals. Leadership is not only about what is said, but what is clarified, corrected, and consistently applied. Will the city move forward with accountability and alignment or not? Thank you.

Thank you. All right, Anna Patrick. Evening, mayor, council president, and council. So, um I'd just like to share uh a couple things um regarding public safety and a couple other thoughts. Um I recently was um possibly going to be serving on a jury and it was a murder trial and one of the first things that was the most important to me was that we had a thorough investigation with all stones unturned. I guess before I make a decision about somebody's life and that to me is one of the most important things that we should consider when we're looking at public safety. Uh standup has provided some information to all of you. Hopefully you will look at it or have looked at it thoroughly. Uh I think it uh kind of paints a picture of what the city of Federal Way looks like when it comes to public safety and what the demands are. And uh I think uh this is all based on public records and thorough research and so it's not just you know rhetoric or you know guessing games. So um hopefully there's been some time taken looking looking at that. it. Uh I'd also like to speak to um House Bill 2266 I think is what it is. Um that basically wipes out all of the efforts I speak as a community member. All the efforts that our community has put into uh guard rails um when it comes to some of the higher need housing and the impacts on our city and um I'd like to speak to the tax exemption that results

from that. as um a city that has some of the cheapest property uh I would hope that there are some systems set up in place um where uh there's limits on the um amount of income brackets in the lower income brackets. I think we're all supposed to have certain amount of each income bracket across cities and so that needs to be looked at. I think the Department of Commerce is the one that funds a lot of these pro projects. So, tying that in with this limitless allowance now of um permanent supportive housing and and that that will impact our public safety and our need and how much money we have and it just kind of becomes this cycle that it's a feedback loop where we run out of money and then we need more money from the taxpayers in the city. And one more thing I'll just say. Um, I took light rail, Pat and I took light rail today for the first time and was really impressed with how clean the city of Federal Way is. No graffiti that I could see compared to other cities. I'm really great grateful that the city of Federal Way has a very clean city. So, thank you.

Thank you, Anna. And a big Oh, we've got Harold Booker. And while Harold makes his way up here, big thanks to public works uh CD for uh the uh graffiti removal, I you have probably already heard uh every Monday morning I get a picture of any graffiti that has appeared inside the city of Federal Way. And when I see those pictures, they've long since been covered up. So, thank you very much, Harold Booker.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. I'm Harold Booker. I've been a resident of Federal Way since 1963. Um, I attended the retreat last Saturday and I wanted to congratulate the council and the mayor for their efforts, the time you spent on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and the efforts you made. Um, last time I spoke I talked about you have a really tall mountain to climb and I believe that was step one or and two. First you have to acknowledge that you have a problem working together and then you have to have a step to actually start getting those concepts and those ideas out. But I would contend that you've only made it to the foothills. You've made it two steps in a 10-step process. If you're really going to build a detailed team, you guys got a lot of work still to do. And I encourage you, take take the positives. You did good work. You made progress, but you can't rest on your laurels now. We as citizens of this city, we expect a strongly functioning council. We expect people to all be informed. We are a representative democracy and we expect you guys to work together and be able to communicate. If you get to a place where part of the council has information and the rest of the council is in the dark, we have done a disservice to the

citizens of the city because those folks who are in the dark, they represent a third of the city. Those folks are not being fairly represented in that case. using the public meetings act is really important. We have to follow the law. We have to dot the eyes and cross the tees. But we also need to have all seven council members, all of the council with an even level of information so that we can have collaborative debates and improve and have represented government. and I appreciate your guys's efforts in moving in that direction. Thank you. Thank you, Harold. All right. And thank you everybody who uh came to testify and uh let us know your thoughts. That concludes uh public comment. I don't have any other pink sheets available. Uh and there's nobody else on line, right? Okay. All right. Now, we're on the consent agenda. These items have gone through u the uh committee process and uh uh can be passed all at once uh or I'll go I'll read uh through all each of them and ask if a council member wants a particular item pulled for separate consideration. All right. Item A, approve the minutes for the March 3, 2026 city council special meeting and regular meeting. Um item B, approve the minutes for the March 24th, 2026 city council special meetings. Item C, approve AP vouchers February 1- 28, 2026 and payroll vouchers uh 1st through the 28th, 2026. D. Approve the monthly financial report for February 2026. E. Approve the HVAC controls upgrade project acceptance. F. Approve the agreement uh Verta GIS software. Item G, approve the purchase of replacement

copers. Item H, approve the purchase of equipment for new patrol vehicles. Item um item I, approve the purchase of replacement computers and peripherals. Um, item J, approve the Cradle Point NetCloud subscription renewal. Item K, approve the SMARH SMAR uh archive professional contract. Um, item L, approve the resolution supporting the nomination of the Federal Opportunity Zone for opportunity zone 2. 2.0 designation. Item N, approve the inter agency agreement with Highline College Small Business Development Center. And item N, approve the grant acceptance for Port of Seattle 2026 to 2027 tourism marketing support program. Council, are there any of those items you'd want pulled for separate consideration?

All right. Um, council president, do you have a motion? I move approval of the consent agenda items A through N. Second. Second. It's been a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? I I opposed. Matters passed unanimously. All right. Item six, public hearing. Item A is the public hearing for the 2025 consolidated annual performance and evaluation report, otherwise known as the caper. Oh, yes. Could we take a 10 minute break? Yeah. We start this next point of personal privilege. Uh, is everybody okay if we just take maybe um what do you think? Seven minutes or do you need I'd say nine and be back in 10. Okay. Learn.

Yeah, exactly. We'll we'll we'll take a brief recess uh for points of per personal privilege. Uh let's say 9 minutes and we start at 10. And what time do we have right here? That's 8:49. Let's get started at uh uh 9:58. Excuse me. 8:58. I'll see you guys in an hour. Sorry. Um 8:58.

Yeah. You moved up because it's important even though we waited. Okay, I'll give you time to think about moving up. I'll call the meeting back to order. Keith, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, good evening, council president and council members. Keith Nan, community development director. Um tonight we have a public hearing um for the 2025 consolidated annual performance and evaluation report. So the policy question in front of the city council should the city council approve the 2025 program year consolidated annual performance and evaluation report also known as the caper. So what is a caper? Um well in this case a caper is uh the community development block grant consolidated annual action and evaluation report is an annual report required by the department by HUD um that details how the city used its community development block grant and other grant funds to meet housing and community development needs. It reports on progress achieved towards goals set in the approved annual action plan. So um how the 2025 funds were allocated. So the focus areas for the city are economic development, affordable housing, homelessness prevention, and suitable living environments. Um and what we did is we provided grants to Highline and ACD for affordable housing. We for 2025 we actually didn't have any programs that we funded. We can talk about that if you guys have questions. Uh homelessness, homelessness prevention. Um we allocated money to Fusion. Um and suitable living environments. Um we had contracts with Habitat for Humanity for both minor and major home repairs. So in total um we expanded $671,54. Um and there were 609 residents that were served through those programs.

So, the timeline, basically, this is the first of two required public hearings. So, there's no action for y'all to take tonight. This is really just a public hearing to see if there's any public comment. Um, we have also provided notice and to this date, as of tonight, we have not received any public comments on this um action plan. So recommendation uh that we're looking for is to move uh to forward the proposed 2025 um caper for the second and final public hearing scheduled uh in two weeks uh April 21st, 2026. Options considered uh move the item forward for the second and final public hearing or do not move the item forward and provide direction to staff. And the mayor's recommendation is for option one to move it forward. And that's the end of my presentation this evening.

All right. Council Council Kushmore, would would you just remind me where the caper funds are coming from again? Community development block grant cities. Oh, those are the block grant funds. So, you're making the presentation instead of instead of I gave my staff the night off. Oh, so you're you're getting the B team. But I hope I'm not disappointing. Wrong. That's why I'm confused. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. And if it wasn't made clear, I'm I'm opening this for a public hearing and incorporating this presentation into that uh uh public hearing. Um and uh any other questions, Council President, so you suggested we ask you about affordable housing.

So there were no um even though that was one of our pillars, one of our priorities that we want to use our CDBG money for, um we didn't have any applications uh that we could assign it to this last um year. Um doesn't mean we won't for next year. here. We just got our appropriation for 2026. Um, and so we'll start working on our uh action plan for 2026. But for 2025, there were no projects. Is is that unusual? Um, yeah, it was unusual. Um, you know, we like to try and make sure we've uh funded programs in all four pillars and so to not have an an allocation for um affordable housing was unusual.

Thank you. All right. Uh, any other uh any other questions? Do we have any public comment on this? Okay. Uh, and uh, Council Sessions, do you have a motion with regard to the public hearing? I do. I move to close the public hearing. Second. Been a motion, a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? I I opposed. All right. Uh, thank you. And next item, item B, public hearing amendment number four to the 2019 community development block grant CDBG annual action plan. Um, and I'll now open the public hearing and we're going to hear from Keith Nan again uh to present this item.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, so the policy question in front of the city council for this public hearing is should the city council approve the fourth amendment to the 2019 and I'm going to emphasize 2019. We're going to have another public hearing on a different on 2024, but this is 20 2019 community development block grant CDBG annual action plan. So what is the CDBG annual action plan? CDBG annual action plan is required yearly documents submitted by the city to HUD outlining how we will spend community development block grant funds. It details specific projects, activities, and resources to meet local affordable housing and community development needs for the upcoming year. So, the fourth amendment, what we're talking about this evening is basically right now there's $258,000 559 and 25 um from 2019 that have not been allocated yet. Um, and we've actually gotten um a letter from HUD saying you need to go ahead and spend it or otherwise we're going to take it back. Um, and so what we're planning to do and what this amendment is is to pay for the temporary for the barricades for 316th for the Festival Street. And why that qualifies for serving um low-income households is it moves the farmers market up to 316th. Um that particular census block has going to throw a number out, but I'm going to look at it first. Um has 25% of the population at or below poverty level. Um and so moving um fresh foods to an area where they can walk and and access them is serving lowincome

residents in our community. And so it does meet the criteria for CDBG monies. Um and this also um offloads a an a previously unanticipated cost that the city had um in terms of purchasing those uh movable barricades and the trailers for them. So, next step, um, similar to the caper, um, we need to have a second public hearing. So, public comment on this, um, ends on the 11th. Um, so it's still running. Um, but it will be done by the time we get to the se second public hearing and council action, assuming that makes it to April 21st. And similar to the caper, we have received no public comments yet on this um proposed fourth amendment to the 2019 um annual action plan. So with that, I'm done with this presentation.

Council President, uh Honda,

thank you. I I understand how this could qualify for uh to use this funding for and that uh you know, we're always looking for ways to uh to fund things that the city needs to purchase, but would it not be better to actually help people um with rental assistance or perhaps purchase food? So the problem we have with this is time sensitivity. Um because this is dating back to 2019 and part of this was COVID, part of this was staff turnover within my department. So there's a number of reasons why this $280,000 has kind of sat on the shelf for as long as it has. But the reason why the barricades work so well for this particular expenditure is we've already we've already bought them. So this is an opportunity for us basically just to reimburse the city for an expenditure that's already made and we can then um kind of clean out the books for 2019. There's probably a million other projects that we could have done if we had more time to actually put it together before these monies would have been forfeited back to HUD. and that's what we're trying to avoid.

So when did um as a director when did you realize that we had this funding available? Um so we've known we've had these funds available um as a director I've known for probably I'm going to say a year and a half maybe. But I've also had multiple staff turnover within community services. And so that's been a lot of the problem is getting enough longevity of staff tenure to actually get some things rolling. All right. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Uh Carter Walsh.

Yeah. I I was kind of along the same line. I mean, how you know how by vote, let's see, seven years from 2019. Uh you know, I mean, how did it happen that it extended so so long? And and but it I wasn't working here then. that helps. But no, you you you pretty much explained that. So So anyway, all right. Thank you. All right. Um do we see receive any public comment? It looks like someone it looks like someone might have um a virtual hand up on Zoom. Okay. You'll see if they're available.

Sure. Think I'll look to Thomas to share the timer if possible. Patty, if you're on Zoom, would you please unmute yourself to speak? Hi there. Can you hear us? You say is her name is Patty? Yes. Patty, can you hear us? Hello. Looks like Patty's mic is unmuted, but I'm not hearing any audio.

Patty, one more try. Can you hear us? Um, okay. So, uh, Patty, uh, uh, uh, well, we'll take your public comment whenever whenever you can get back on. Um, okay. Okay. And, and just as a reminder, public comment for this amendment is open until the 11th. So, if Patty can an email works as well, um, as does uh, a phone call into community services staff. Very good. Thank you very much. Okay. Uh, Council Member Cess, do you have a motion? I have a question. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, no worries.

So, um, that area is considered low moderate income. Therefore, we it qualifies, but we can use um the barricades and stuff anywhere in the city or does it only have to be used within um low and moderate income neighborhoods?

So, the barricades could be used elsewhere in the city. um you know at the city's discretion. So if ultimately um say we needed them at Celebration Park for an event um you know they could be used there. Primarily we're purchasing those barricades to uh relocate the farmers market to 316th. So that is the primary reason for purchasing the barricades is for that location. Um, but they could be, you know, part of the value is they are movable and they could be used elsewhere in the city um, if we needed them somewhere else. So, it's permissible to Yeah, that's that's we don't the city. Yeah, we've had that conversation with HUD staff and that that's not a problem. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Council Member Cessums. I move to close the public hearing. Second. It's been a motion, a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Patter matter passed unanimously. Thank you. Then we've got item C. Uh public hearing amendment number one to the 2024 community development block grant CDBG annual action plan. Um I'll now open the public hearing. Community development uh director Keith Divven will present this item.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um and good evening again, council members. So, similar to the last public hearing, uh we are asking to amend the in this case the 2024 annual action plan um to add a project that wasn't originally envisioned. So, the policy question from the city council, should the city council approve the first amendment to the 2024 community development block grant CDBG annual action plan? So again, uh, CDBG annual action plan is required yearly documents submitted by the city to HUD outlining how we will spend community development block grant funds. It details specific projects, activities, and resources to meet local affordable housing and community development needs for the upcoming year. Um in this case um what we're recommending is to add um a project and that's $196,7205 in currently unallocated 2024 CDBG funds um to help fund uh the temporary project on TC3. Um I don't know if you can see this very well. So, the graphic on the left, um the idea is to have a um a piece of um artificial turf lawn, a temporary building, have a place for food trucks um and other kind of vendor locations as a temporary activity space on TC3. And then ultimately um when we get development on TC3 those improvements would be relocated and could go to somewhere else within the city. Um and I know if there's some questions Jason has uh more details that he might be able to assist.

Okay. Um next steps uh similarly uh public comment period ends April 11th. Um the second public hearing um which is also required uh is currently uh hopefully scheduled for April 21st and as with the previous two items uh we have not received any public comments yet. Okay. Council, any questions? Okay. Are there any public comments? We have Patty.

Uh let's try again. Patty, if you couldn't unmute yourself at this time. Patty, can you hear us?

Hello, Patty. Just think we could talk to those astronauts who just run around the who just went around the moon on their way back to Earth. All right, Patty. Hey, we've got um just and for everybody else who's listening, what's the deadline again? Uh April 11th. Uh written comments, telephone. Um any way you can get us your comments would be um uh considered definitely before the second hearing. Very good. Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. Um Council Member Sessions Sessions, do you have a motion? Mayor, I move to close the public hearing. Second. Been a motion, a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? I I opposed. Matter passes unanimously. All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you all. Okay. Item seven, council business. Item A, approval of Microsoft Enterprise Agreement renewal. Thomas Pitchner, our IT director, will uh give a presentation.

Good evening, Mayor, Council President, council members. Thomas Fner, I'm before you to tonight to discuss the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement and renewing it. Um, the background before I begin here. Um just a couple couple items uh before we get into the actual contract itself. We have the city has maintained an u enterprise agreement with Microsoft since 2008. This allows us to purchase the Microsoft uh software and services. Um they operate in three-year terms and we buy this off of uh the Washington state um cooperative purchasing contract. that allows us to get better pricing than if we were a city of 400 FTE ourselves trying to negotiate Microsoft pricing. So, uh the state does that for us and we can get much better um uh discounts. Uh what this allows us to do is maintain also current versions of the software we purchase. Uh so as Microsoft releases new new versions uh this also allows us um as long as we continue uh and and cover the said products under this agreement uh to get the new newer version or the latest version of the software. Um some the products that we cover with this are the Windows operating system. So both on the client or the computers as well as the servers and the on the back end uh the Microsoft Office suite uh SQL server for our databases. uh exchange for our email and uh and you know project and viso and some other uh ancillary applications. Uh the 2026 cost increase over what we had in 2023 is about 3% on average. Um some products had no change which is surprising uh considering that 2023 basically was 10% across the board. Um however some some of the products are 9 to 10%. So on average 3% total increase. Um on the uh 2023 to 2026 we were averaging

about $118,000 a year. So as we transition into the Microsoft 365 world and their ecosystem um just like any other software company, they want subscriptions. They want us to pay an annual fee. no longer buying and owning licenses, but le rather leasing or renting them from them. We buy them or we we pay them, we use them, and if we don't pay them, they shut it off the service. Uh it's just the way that the entire technology industry is going. And it's, as I put it, what the shareholders want, not what the customers want. But it's the world that we live in and it's the technology that we need to use um to make the world work and and serve our our constituents as well. So the 365 subscription license um it's for the cloud-based applications and services. So this means like Office 365, Exchange Online, SharePoint, One Drive, Teams, Intune for device management, and even Copilot as I'm sure you've heard a lot of the AI buzz around. Um it is a per user license, but the one good thing is if I license myself, I can use multiple devices um under the same license. uh whereas the previous model was kind of a one for one, you know, one device or one user per per license. Um but there's a variety of licensing. It's very complex. There's a whole website um that tells it's got a whole huge matrix of uh different uh features that that are are um are available under each one of these different licensed levels. Um and so it it is very complex. So our project is currently underway. Uh we're working on a complete network rebuild to kind of modernize our our infrastructure here um as we sync it up to the cloud. Um and we're basing that with again modern architecture and modern security uh

because that is what's paramount for us in this day and age. Um part of that is also u um migrating the enduser devices from Windows 10 to Windows 11 for all of our staff. Um evaluating the licensing fit is also a part of that. So meaning which one of these user licenses for example the F1, the F3, the G3 or the G5 um or these additional little feature sets is right for the staff members. Uh so that there's a lot of there's there's an art and a science to this whole thing. Um and so it's it's really complex and we're we're working through that. Um however it the this 365 ecosystem does offer the opportunity to consolidate some services to maximize the value that we get from it. Meaning the Microsoft 365 depending on the license level could offer endpoint security which we have another product for right now. Um archiving on the email side which we have another product for right now. Multifactor authentication again we have another product for or mobile device management again we have another product for that. So there could be some opportunity to yes spend more money with Microsoft but also save a little bit of money um by consolidating some of these other services into one suite of programs. Um so again there takes some analysis and some evaluation for that. So um the particular Microsoft integ enterprise agreement that we're we're we're going to be entering into or we proposing to enter into uh includes our onremise licensing. So for our Windows and Office and SQL servers and everything that we host here um in addition to the 365 licenses uh we will add the licenses as necessary uh based on staff requirements as as I said previously it'll be for three years so a term of three years um and it'll be not to exceed total contract value uh

1.1 million so 1,115,000 which equates to about 371 21,000 a year, which is a lot more than the 118 that we were paying before. But again, um with that, there are additional services and stuff that we are getting an opportunity to consolidate and save um maybe upwards of $100,000 on what we're paying already to loop that in. So, there is opportunities, but again, this is a not to exceed amount. We are still very much in the infancy phase of this. Um, but I'm I'm I'm seeking council's um authorization to enter into this contract uh so that we we can continue this uh journey. And the funding is the 2026 council adopted IT operations fund. So we've we've long had um some funding uh that's earmarked for the 365 projects, but we haven't been able to get there uh due to staffing and workload. And so now that we're there, we're kind of utilizing a lot of that savings uh to be able to get uh to be able to afford this. So the mayor's recommendation is to approve the proposed renewal of the uh proposed Microsoft Enterprise Agreement with Insight Public Sector, which is the reseller. That's it. Any questions?

All right. Council, any questions? All right. Uh Council Coach Mor, do you have a motion? Yes, sir. Um, I move approval of the proposed Microsoft Enterprise agreement with Insight Public Sector Incorporated for a total not to exceed $1,115,000 and authorize the mayor to sign all necessary agreements. Second. It's been a motion, a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? I I opposed. All right. Great job, Thomas. And then we have uh now item B, the approval of the database disaster recovery as a service agreement. Um okay. Uh all right.

So we'll jump into this one. Um so this is uh the data prize um disaster backup and disaster recovery uh renewal. So a brief background on that in uh 2022 we hired a consultant to do a business continuity uh disaster recovery process. Um that involved a business impact analysis. So meaning if our systems were to completely go away um by this building getting leveled or a ransomware attack or something um what impact does that have to our business so different departments different software different service availabilities um they took that information they figured out okay what is a gap what's the gap between what are we doing right now at that time in 2022 um versus where we need to be based on this analysis of how how much would this impact if the finance department could not print you know or could not process payroll like what is the impact to that? Do they have checks? Do they have something else or do they need the system to do it? So um they were able to find find that and and did did that analysis did that work? Uh they created an RFP for us. So we went out for a service. Uh we selected global data vault as a business continuity disaster recovery as a service provider. Um global data vault in 2024 merged into with data prize. So they just kind of changed but they still honored the existing contract. Um and now we're renewing the data p data prize contract for a single year. Um the data backup is a vital component to um our process for business continuity and disaster recovery. Um and then in 2027 we do plan on doing a re-evaluation on of our on premise system because um we it's we have these a couple of servers that are at the pack which is uh backing up our our infrastructure that's here at city hall offsite and then that gets replicated up to the cloud for additional security. Um but those servers over there are a little old and so we need to put that into the budget

process. Um, and we need to uh there's some security features as well on the new equipment that uh that we'll be reevaluating. So that's why we're only doing a single year on this particular process because we're going to re-evaluate that next year. Um so this particular contract includes up to 100 servers that are protected um which is adequate for our our needs. Uh 50 terabytes of consumed cloud storage um annual disaster recovery testing which gets us through that exercise of should uh you know the the un unthinkable happen, what happens? um how do we get back from that? And then they manage the backup servers and also uh provide the software license. This term is one year cost is about $3,900 a month. So the total is not to exceed uh including inclusive of tax $53,000 for one year contract term. And of course this is a part of the uh 2026 council adopted IT operations fund. Mayor's recommendation is to approve. Any questions?

Council, any questions? Couns. Oh, nope. I'm ready for a vote. I'm ready for a vote. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. Okay. I move approval of the proposed renewal of the backup and disaster recovery service with Dataprise LLC for a total not to exceed $53,000 and authorize the mayor to sign all necessary agreements. Second. It's been a motion, a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? I opposed. Matter pass unanimously. Thank you. Thank you for all the work you do, Tom. Appreciate that. We'd be lost without you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. All right. Uh, keep that cape nearby, my friend. All right.

What day he's going to wear it for us? Exactly. Uh, all right. Proposed settlement in the matter of Edinger versus City of Federal Way. Ryan Coler, city attorney.

Uh, good evening, mayor, council president, members of council. Um, I'm here to present the policy question of should we should the city council approve the proposed settlement in the Edinger matter? This is a well, first off, I should say we don't see a lot of settlements in before council and in public meetings anymore because the vast majority of our tort litigation is settled and handled exclusively by our insurance carrier, uh, WCIA. So, this is one of the exceptions. It falls outside of our normal insurance policies. Um, it's a an ADA claim, Americans against Americans with Disabilities Act claim. So, uh, by way of background, um, Mr. Strenginger was a former employee of the city. Prior prior to his departure from the city, he made several complaints to HR. Concurrently, he sought accommodations under the American with Disabilities Act or the ADA. A third party investigator was retained to investigate the allegations of misconduct made by Mr. Edinger against other employees. And as part of the report created by this third party investigator, Mr. Edinger's self-reported medical conditions were summarized. Later, a reporter from the local newspaper filed a public records act request for the investigative report. The report was provided to the reporter without redacting some of the self-reported medical conditions that Mr. Edinger had disclosed to HR uh when he was seeking ADA accommodations. Though the reporter never wrote a story on the subject um and the information was never published in any way, this unredacted disclosure um is could have violated the ADA. So, uh, the American, I'll just call it the ADA. For some reason, I'm stumbling over that long title, but the ADA, if you, uh, successfully, uh, carry a claim in district court, you are entitled to, uh, attorney's fees. So in this matter, we have evaluated that we do have exposure on this matter and because of the expense of both our attorney's fees and the attorney's fees should plaintiff

prevail, um it's a good business decision to um settle this matter. Uh the proposed settlement is for $70,000. Um and that will come out of the city's risk fund. I know that just so that the audience understands, council's already had a thorough discussion about this in executive session and was able to ask any questions of me, but because of the nature of litigation and that this is not resolved yet, um we're probably not going to get into it too much in a public setting. So, that being said, council, do you have any questions of uh city attorney call? Council President Honda, I don't have a question. Okay. All right. Um All right. Council President Honda, do you have a motion? I move approval of the proposed settlement. Second.

Second. It's been a motion, a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? I I opposed.

Matter pass unanimously. All right. Thank you. All right. Uh we've got item eight, ordinances. This is a second reading uh an enactment for council bill 934 uh ordinance authorization to enact the 0.1% one/10enth one10enth of 1% local sales tax and use tax for public safety and criminal justice purposes. Um all right, Brian, normally on on uh second reading, we don't normally have um uh presentations. Uh, but I've asked that we've had some questions and some emails and and uh interactions with the public. So, I've asked uh uh Brian Davis, our city administrator, to provide uh an update uh with regard to uh some of this information. Uh Brian, thank you, mayor, members of council. Uh good to see you tonight. This is a followup to the last meeting. Uh the presentation is similar to last time, but there's a two new slides that I've added in response to questions from the council and the public as well. But the policy question is the same. It's it's you've already taken action at the first reading. So this would be second reading um on the policy question. Should the council enact an ordinance authorizing a onetenth of 1% local sales tax sales and use tax for public safety and criminal justice purposes? Um we talked about this last time how the sales tax uh income or revenue stream is a source of revenue that has uh that were in a in its cyclical nature. We're in sort of a a trough so to speak when it comes to sales tax and has not increased in at the same pace that our uh criminal uh justice expenses are in expected to uh increase over the next several years. This was referenced earlier in the evening as far as the gap that uh would be seen if we uh do nothing. This is obviously the ideal this trend that's

showing the I don't know if the mouse works for this. Oh, okay. Good. So, if this trend here is the ideal, this is what we should be spending. Uh, if you look in the past, it's not always been a clean line. It's it's dependent on certain factors and we have adjusted accordingly. If we do not uh take take action on this sales tax, it's likely we'd have to adjust this as well. reduce criminal justice services uh accordingly uh based on what we have. This again should we don't need to get into much this as we did last time but this indicates that the criminal justice portion of our budget uh public safety portion of our budget is about half of the uh of the general fund. Uh and we talked about how uh again the graph illustrates this slide. I won't get into it again, but it's it's basically indicating that the the pressure for our uh budget is going to increase unless we uh do something else either reducing expenses reducing expenses or finding other sources of revenue, which is what the proposal is. There was a question about okay, what if what if this doesn't pass? What are we going to do? Um and the chief answered at the meeting but just for the the public's uh benefit and to put this in visual form the we have looked at other departments and have found areas in which we could um reduce or not increase uh for the remainder of the year. Uh that has only gotten us so far and we will have to turn to the police department for the uh to uh reduce the shortfall for the rest of the year. And as Chief Wong mentioned at the last meeting, that equates to about 11 police officer positions that with current vacancies, they would remain unfilled and with future uh retirements and resignations, those would remain uh

unfilled as well through attrition. So that's in the answer to the question of well what if it doesn't pass what do we do? So that's what we're looking at. Uh I won't rehash this. This is the the sales tax history that we went sales tax history that we talked about last time. But that shows you that the city itself has not taken action on increasing local sales tax uh for quite some time. These are the cities in King County over 50,000 that have enacted a a.1% sales tax. And there was a request from the council to also indicate what all the cities in King County have enacted the tax. And this is that list here. Uh those and so if we obviously if we pass it, we would be added to that list. This is based on information from the state's department of revenue website which is updated quarterly. And so we were able to get data from April the the quarter one report for 2026 uh as of April 1. And so that is where we're at. It's pretty up to date as far as we know. Uh again, as I mentioned last time, how much will we have to pay? And if we go to 10.4%, then that means we'll pay uh a dime on every $100 we spend on taxable items and services. And the options are the same. Adopt the ordinance or do not adopt it. And the mayor's recommendation is to move on to second reading and adopt the ordinance.

Thank you. Uh council member uh Hamilton. Thank you, Brian, for that third report. We've been talking about this a lot and we need to because it's a big decision. Um I am I am still um urging a yes vote on this ordinance for the council to adopt this. I'm generally not one to support new taxes. Um but with that said, I'm deeply committed to supporting public safety and making sure that we can meet our paramount duty to provide public safety for our community and the people we serve. And um as we've learned, House Bill 2015 provided two funding streams for our city and and um one of the streams is to establish this uh sales tax. Washington state is dead last in the nation for officers per capita. That's what brought this forth. It was a promise by Governor uh Bob Ferguson. It was one of his campaign promises to invest in public safety. Um and so this is the result of that. And um just just for reference, Washington state is um 1.37 officers per 1000. The nationwide average is 2.3. So we are way below that. Federal Way is a little bit higher because Federal Way has prioritized public safety and I'm very thankful uh grateful for that. But if we have to lose 11 officers, we are not not going to be in a better position um than the rest of Washington state. Um I've taken to heart a lot of public comment. I've received inperson comments, comments from the podium, comments email. Um and I've really thought long and hard about each one of those uh comments. And so I just want to address some of those concerns and sort of my thought process in um processing

those. So one of the concerns that that I heard that also concerned me was uh people experiencing food insecurity. You know was this going to affect people experiencing food insecurity? And um just so that the public is aware groceries are sales tax exempt. So this is not going to affect uh food insecurity. Um now prepared foods, you know, they do face a sales tax as well as alcohol um soda, but your pantry staples that that's sales tax exempt. Um one of the other issues, um I heard one of the other comments was you know that we could delay this decision. I think the assumption there is that um that there won't be costs in in delaying, but there is going to be a cost in delaying this decision. The first year we delay it, it's a $3 million cost. The second year we delay it, it's a $6 million cost. And the third year we delay it, it's a 9 million cost. And so it's going to rack up. And um so to me, that's that's not a good option. Um Mr. or actually his his comments were interesting and so I kind of looked into that um with the traffic photo enforcement uh idea. I'm not opposed to, you know, traffic enforcement cameras uh the the the red light cameras um if we need those in intersections where we have a lot of accidents, but um I also know from working in public safety that a $145 ticket can really hurt a struggling family. And there's no evidence really that shows that people of of uh lower incomes commit less uh traffic infractions. And so so I had to

consider that. And and the same with um tabs. In fact, lower income people generally have expired tabs a lot of times because they can't afford to pay. And um when you get a ticket for expired tabs that's over two months expired, it's a $237 ticket. Um so I'm not sure I want to go that route. Um I think what's at the heart of the issue is just this 0.1% ordinance. It it is 10 cents for every $100 purchase. Our city does not have a BNO tax. We're pretty conservative fiscally with our dollars. Um I I don't see a lot of waste uh going on in our city and so I think we've been very careful and and we haven't raised taxes in a long time. Um this this option is is going to give our city the local control that we want. It's going to give us flexibility. It's going to give us reliability. And um it's it's a first step that I see just in in continuing to prioritize public safety. It might not be the whole picture. We're still going to look at our budget, make cuts where we need to u make sure there's no waste. Um but I think it's very important to pass this and um I will be um urging a yes vote and I hope that the council continues to um show strong supports at at this second reading as they did in the first reading. And with that, mayor, I conclude my remarks.

All right. Thank you, Council Member Sephaws. Yeah. Um a very quick simple question. Um we're talking about replacement vehicles in here as part of the um what the money is going to be spent on. Um are we considering EV um vehicles at all or they'll that will be part of the the the consideration. We we have purchased some EV vehicles and police before uh and we'll that'll continue to be part of the the equation as well. Chief Jones, on that issue,

yeah, the type of vehicles aren't specified as we move forward with this. Uh, but we do know that the EV cars aren't necessarily appropriate for patrol use. They're more uh they're better for admin, detectives, that kind of thing. Plus, we don't have actual charging stations here yet. We actually the the the two Tesla the two EVs we do have we plug into the uh the parking lot in the back here where we used to plug in the SWAT van and the bomb van because there were some existing receptacles out there. They're not really made for EV charging. So, it takes all day to do it which is why um they would be more appropriate for somebody who sits at a desk, not patrol.

Okay, that was going to be my follow-up question around the charging stations. So, um Okay, thank you. All right, Council President Hind. Thank you. Uh, so I have a few questions. So when we collect sales tax, the city only gets a percentage of the sales tax, correct? I mean, of the dollar onetenth of 1%. We get the onetenth of 1%. Well, that's what the increase is, but what is our normal share? Oh, um, where's Steve? Steve, what's the uh what's the normal share of sales tax revenue? It's around 3.6%. I file it every month for my business.

Uh that's the local tax that the department of revenue reports, which includes county and special districts. Uh the sales tax of the 10.2 that we currently that customers pay, our percent is 0.85. It's less than 1% that comes to the city. Okay? Um, and that's $20 million in our budget. Okay. Thank you. Uh, so when we talked about this last time, we also talked about a grant that we applied for that would allow us to hire police officers. Do we know anything more about that?

Yeah, the police department applied for the grant. Uh, they sent us some more action items to to work on before a final decision is made on that. That's from the state criminal justice training commission. So if we were to get the grant, which I'm certainly hoping we get the grant with the that grant and then with this, how many police officers would we anticipate hiring in addition to what we already have? We we plan for 11 as we move forward with this project, but it remains to be seen of how we do with the retirements, attrition, that kind of thing. over the course of how many years? There's not a time frame listed on that.

Well, 11 would get us to fully staffed at 154. And then this is what I was referencing before is, you know, I'm going to be putting together a budget, putting all of it together and that, you know, we'll see where the money where it all lines up on how many officers we'll be adding. So then, are we short 11 officers right now? No, that was planning to get us up to the uh the numbers that council authorized last year as part of the budget and also estimate for attrition. So, how many officers do we currently have then? We're at 151 I believe

currently hired because we're at 15. Uh we're talking about the you're not expecting eight vacancies in the next or or or are you in the in the next year? Probably not eight this year, but in the past eight has happened. So we're trying to at least keep it with in the in mind.

Okay. So, I was at the no vote last time and this is a a a struggle for me because I I've always supported our police department and um but I am concerned about how this impacts families in federal way with not only this but with the additional taxes that the um state legislature has passed and what King County is working on. So, um I know when uh former finance director Adriola, I can't never pronounce his last name, uh was here, we had a a meeting once where, uh we discussed different types of funding that um additional funding that the city could have. And I believe there were four or five things that were on the list and eventually it might be a good idea to have that discussion again because it increasing sales tax is just one one option. there were other things that we could potentially use. Um, and to um, Council Member Hamilton's um, discussion about Washington State and the lack of police officers here. U, my son is an officer in Iowa and if he moved here, he would make a lot more money than what he makes in Iowa as a police officer just just moving here. also his living expenses would be quite a lot more. And I don't I don't know that uh police officers don't want to work in Washington state because they're not compensated enough. I think it's the overall environment of the state of Washington and some of the the laws and things that are um that we have here in federal way. So I mean in

in Washington state, excuse me. Um so anyway, I that's all I have to say. Thank you very much.

All right, Counor Walsh. Yeah, the uh I'm on in my fifth year here on the council and this is the the most uh conflicted vote that I've faced in in that time and uh I'm very it's very difficult for me to to agree to to raise taxes at all. you know, when when we uh you know, five years ago, as that chart showed, the uh the tax would have been 10%. And now this with this, it'll be bring it up to 10.4 and with the county uh road tax, it' be 10.5. So, a half a percent. However, with that said, um I I I don't think that I have a choice but to vote yes on it. And so, my my vote will be yes. Um um I'm you know concerned that the the state has put us in a position with the public defenders and uh where where that's going to have an impact on the budget and um so anyway, it's kind of between a rock and a hard spot and and but my vote will be yes on this.

All right. Would the city clerk please read the ordinance title? Council Bill 934 ordinance authorization to enact 0.1% onetenth of 1% local sales tax and use tax for public safety and criminal justice purp criminal justice purposes. an ordinance of the city of Federal Washington relating to the imposition of an additional sales and use tax of onetenth of 1% 0.1% for criminal justice purposes as authorized by RCW8214345 and adding a new chapter 3.70 to the federal way revised code entitled additional 0.1% sales tax sorry sales or use tax for criminal justice purposes. All right, Council Sessions, do you have a motion?

I do. I move approval of the proposed ordinance. Second. There's been a motion and a second uh for discussion. I see Council Member Mark Moore.

Thank you so much. Uh Mayor, you know, um I I think we're all students of history. We all like little uh tidbits. And um uh uh Council Member Walsh, I appreciated your comments and what you said that this this is hard um and it can be um that it's hard. And so you just reminded me that uh President Barack Obama had uh a little thing on his desk that said little little plaque, little thing. Maybe the mayor knows more about this because I know he's into history quite a bit. Uh but uh it it said hard things are hard and there are things that we do in life that are just hard and they're difficult. Um and in this case, you know, when we're dealing with complex uh policies or budgets, um you know, I'm reminded of that and uh it's hard. Um and I think it's really um for me uh I think it's it's uh this is an important vote. Um you know I I think all of us in the DAS and and myself certainly I'll speak for myself of course uh we've all have have connected or have heard from people um or read it or even heard it like again I'm kind of repeating myself uh where um there's that perception um maybe a reputation that I don't care for of Fedoy which is uh that we're felony way or some sort of a negative thing And I know we're working our butts off to make Fedaway a safe place for families, for our businesses, for our shoppers, for our uh tourists, for everybody that comes through uh our community. And I I've heard I've we've all been around that um for a long time. And and for me, the the the fundamental reason why I'm voting yes is because I want to change that. I want to continue to do everything I can

to change that perception. and and reputation. And I think uh that's for me that that's one of my jobs. Um and it is our duty. It is my duty uh as I swore the oath um to keep our community safe. Um and and that that's what this vote represents. Um, look, I I think we have in so many incredible city employees that do a a damn of a good job for our city, but our police officers are the front line in our community often times and they're the ones that are willing to sacrifice their life. They're the ones that are willing to jump into a situation that some of us won't even do it. And the reason why again I'm voting yes for this is to send a message to our officers that I support you. We I support you. And the way to do that is to continue to ensure that they have a budget necessary that keeps the eye on the price which is keeping our community safe. And I get it that some people don't want to see that happen in our community. Well, guess what? It we we have to have a strong police department. We have to have a thriving community. And to do that, we have to make sure that everybody feels safe and comfortable. Um, and so this vote represents uh the um, you know, the fact that um, our officers when they're out there, they know that they have a city hall policy makers that have their backs that support them. Um, and you know, when when we decrease the amount of officers, it plays a negative impact uh in the morality of our department. Uh, and so that's what this yes vote means for me personally. Um, and I think um I I appreciate Council Member Hamilton's research, uh, due diligence, collaborations. I know the police

department's also been working on this. The mayor's been working on this. Um, but you said something that's very important, which is local control. Uh, my goodness, you know, we we all have our opinions in the state of Washington and and like Council President Honda said, um, you know, there are taxes that are coming everywhere and that's hard. I I get it. we I'm a middle class uh resident and and I understand the impact of when more of my money is going to be going somewhere else. But when it has to do with public service, man, when it has to do with our schools, I will do whatever it takes because I when you have a safe community, when you have good schools, we are on our way of becoming a thriving community. Uh and so um you know and anytime that that we can control how we spend those dollars that come back to the city uh is really really important. And I think the another reason why I'm voting yes on this is there's a part of this that we can uh work on and we're going to have to have a debate uh collaboration, whatever you want to call it, uh on how do we spend uh uh uh the other portion of the dollars. Um and that's where I'm looking forward to I hope that we can support our nonprofits. You know, I've often said and we've often heard that the answers are within the community. There are a lot of organizations that are doing a damn of a good job to interrupt and disrupt the statistical challenges that our youth may get into. Uh and that is just like, you know, I know some of my colleagues may want to look at public defenders and that is well uh needs to be added to the table to discuss it and I totally respect that and don't disagree with that. But we also need to be talking about uh how do we support our nonprofits that are part of the answers within this community and keeping our community safe and thriving

for not just everybody but for our kids for our kids. So those are some of um those are my yes reasons. That's that's why I'm I'm supporting and voting for uh this um item on the agenda. I think it's incredibly important and you know some things are hard but this one I stand by and I'm proud to be supporting this because I want to send the message to our officers that I've got their backs. Thank you. Thank you councelor Koshmark.

Oh thank you very much mayor. Um well where this state's primary mission is education the primary mission of the city is public safety and I don't to use a double negative I don't think we can not vote yes cannot not vote yes because all of our neighboring cities are voting yes and so uh I think in the list that we were sent there were 26 cities that I counted that had already voted in favor of implementing the 0.1% on one/10enth of a percent a dime on a on a $100. And the the thing is if we don't we're just going to get behind further and further and uh I we we need to stay competitive with our neighboring cities. That's Auburn, that's Kent, Renton, all of our neighboring cities, De Moines Moines. Um so we need to stay competitive. we need to pime um our parameter mission. We need to emphasize that is um public safety. But you know the the fairest way to do it really is through a sales tax because there are people who come in our city and through our city and out of our city that don't live here but they they're they are going to expect the services of our city when they need help. And so again, I think we need to vote yes.

Ryan, we've got uh a motion uh that's been moved and seconded, but we've got three minutes before uh can we u do a separate motion to address that while the motion's pending on the floor? Uh can you uh do you have a motion to extend time? Um I move to extend our meeting past 10:00. Second. Been a motion, a second. Is there any uh discussion regarding extending our meeting past 10 p.m.? All those in favor? I I opposed. All right, we're in business. Council President Honda, floor is yours.

Uh, thank you. So, um, I wanted to address, uh, something else. Uh, our police officers and our police staff are all really super important to how the city operates, but all of our employees here as a city work together. And uh when I think of public safety, I think of the public works people that are out there every day and the parks people. They have eyes on on the community. They see what's happening. They I I consider them part of public safety for one reason or another because they're out there every single day. Um finance keeps things moving. Without finance, we wouldn't have anything. Um, it runs a city because without it, we really are not able to function. And I'm sure I'm missing other uh departments, but we all work together as a um as a team here in the city. And while this is supporting the police department and public safety, I would I know that the budget is coming up and we will be working on supporting all departments because all of our employees deserve uh equal treatment and uh we do our best to to support all of our employees. So, I just wanted to to make sure that our employees know that we support them.

All right. Thank you. All right. There's been a motion. There's been a Oh, Council Member Hamilton.

Um I I just wanted to share I this is a very difficult vote for for I think probably all of us up here, but especially um you know, Jack Walsh has talked about it and and for me, too. It's difficult vote for me, too. Um but I I did make a promise to this community that I would not um let our police department be defunded, and I'm I'm keeping that promise. Um, I also want to just uh point out that our police department is is pretty unique. We are nationally and state accredited and there's only one uh well, we're one of three, I think, police departments in the whole state that has that status. And so we have a a top-notch uh police department here in Federal Way. the the the risk in in not being competitive is um you can be tempted to hire officers that aren't great because you're just desperate to get people in and we don't want that. We don't want that. That increases liability. Um we we we want to continue to be a top-notch public safety uh you know agency here in the state. So, um I thank my thank uh colleagues for their thoughtful um discussion tonight and I look forward to the vote.

Coun. Yeah, I think it's just breaking news that I appreciate what council coach Hamilton and Wallace have said. Uh I think uh it's uh it's a pretty special night when I can agree with them. uh because we have differences of opinion, you know, but this this issue I think is really critical and I absolutely agree with uh with what you guys have said and I appreciate uh your comments and I just want to say that because the Federal Mirror is right here right now and we appreciate our paper.

Okay. Thank you. All right, everyone. Uh we've had a motion, a second, a great discussion um and questions. Um uh as for the vote, all those in favor? I I opposed. The matter passes unanimously. All right. Thank you. We are on to council reports item nine. Um and council member Sadawasa. Yes. Thank you and thank you for a great meeting. I really thought this was going to be a short one. So um I just want to say thank you for the uh retreat we had on Saturday. I was very hesitant and reluctant to have it to be a part of it, but

it produced I feel like we were very successful. it was uh impactful, meaningful, and it it had results from that retreat. So, I just want to say thank you for engaging in it and being very intentional about how we um navigated. And so, I feel like I left you feeling very um good. And um so I'm glad we did it. Um like we heard earlier, I think this we shouldn't stop there. I think we should be intentional about having more of these um because I learned a lot a lot about each other because we don't have these opportunities where we could just sit and talk and still u be a productive conversation. It's not just about how are you doing but there was more to and there was depth and I don't think we've ever had something like this. So, thank you. And I would like I look forward to um um seeing this more in the future. Um because you can't have communication just one time. It has to be an ongoing thing. So, um I don't know how frequently, even if it's once a quarter, twice a year, I don't know. But I think we should really intentionally have these uh before we end up with surprises. Um, and I know I'm one of the people who has said um I was caught off guard in in some issues and I do understand the um um law where we cannot have a quorum but and I know there's no way around. I understand all that, but I think there's got to be where we could be very intentional about making sure that everybody's included in these conversations or important decisions because we all want to be prepared and we all want to um yeah come prepared or at least have a foresight of what's going on. So, I don't know how that could be accomplished, but it's still my desire

to to um have that happen. So, um, again, I was the one who brought it up, but I also do understand the challenges that we have. So, that Thank you. And I end my Oh, and I got to see my beautiful grandbaby. Oh, sorry. I still believe mine is more beautiful. So, anyway, thank you. Very good. All right, Council Moore.

Uh, thank you so much, Mayor. Uh, thank you, uh, Council Member Salvadawson. Um I'm sure I have no I I bet your grandson is um granddaughter is uh is wonderful. So and I know you have a beautiful family. So uh I um I do want to say um that the retreat that we just had um which stems from earlier in the year um is a step in the right direction and I don't think it needs to stop there. Uh I would uh formally request that we do another one maybe in three or four months. Um you know I think it's really important. I think we need to find the money uh to do it. Uh as somebody says in the movie, show me the

There we go. Show me the money.

There you go. Thank you. So I I think it's it's really uh important that that we do this because working working in this close of a body of seven people I think uh is extremely important. Uh, and I think that's one of the things I'm kind of walking away with my eight years on on this on the council and couple of months. Um, and I I think the more we can uh build relationships, the more we can uh know how to work with each other, we're that is part of building trust. Um, and I don't think that the work is finished from Saturday. Uh, I don't think we can say we've had a retreat. Good. We're good to go. Double thumbs up. I think it's a step in the right direction. Um and uh and so I I also want to um acknowledge that um I appreciate what everybody uh stated uh at the retreat. Uh Council Member Hamilton, I appreciate it uh what uh the concerns that you shared. Uh I do uh and I I value uh what you brought to the table. Um and uh I definitely feel that um you know uh what you felt on uh what you and others have felt on uh January 6th that I I can understand it. Uh, I may see it a little bit differently, but but I want you to know that I hear you. Uh, and uh, I I accept uh, what you're saying because I think it's really important that everybody feels validated like you indicated. Uh, that everybody knows that they're being respected and heard. Um, and I want you to know that. Um, and so, um, I think a lot of good things happened at the retreat. Um, and I I do think I really do think that uh we are on the way uh to continue to move

forward as as a one city council uh as a um as a unified council. Uh we all have differences of opinion. Uh and we all have different methods of getting there. Uh but I think um everything starts with level of respect, trust um and uh and and knowing that you're being heard. Uh, and that that's what I want to take a moment during my council report to acknowledge that. Um, and and to also let my colleagues know that again, as I've say stated, I'm not perfect. I'm not a perfect human being. I think my wife will tell you all my flaws. I think my mom can tell you all my flaws. Uh, but I strive to do what's right. Uh, and I think I felt it uh that was really important uh that I take the time to acknowledge uh again your comments uh and um and uh and so uh moving on um uh I'll had the chance to uh attend a build to lead uh nonprofit uh event um that happened. Boy, it's amazing when you're trying to log into your iPad, all of a sudden you can't remember the number, but I got it. Um, and for those that don't know what Build to Lead is, their vision is to uplift uh collective voices, increase social capital and economic mobility for the sustainability for our BIPO communities. Um, so build Deid works to empower, engage, and educate young people uh in partnership with their families and communities so they can interact with and advocate to change the systems that historically limit them. Uh, and so uh they had their event called Melon in um and Medicine uh which exposes youth uh young adults to the BIPO healthcare professional uh field. And I thought that was really really cool. Um, and what I saw was uh

pretty phenomenal. It was my first time attending that event. Uh, I look forward to uh volunteering and being a part of that event next year. Um, and it's really cool to see all the partners that have come together uh for that. Um, you know, I've always uh I'm going to continue saying this that the answers are within our community. Um, and we need to look at everything from all angles to do what we can to make our community safe. not just from the law enforcement side but from also and working in partnerships with uh our organizations, nonprofits here in Federal Way and businesses quite frankly. So, uh that's that uh you know I know that our retreat I'm going to go back to talking about the retreat. It was held one day before Easter uh and so I got to spend my Easter holiday with our colleagues. Uh, and I wanted to uh also thank uh my colleague to the left uh for uh putting Easter eggs all over uh my council office. So I went on a Easter egg hunt in my office. So thank you for being so thoughtful in doing that. I wanted to also acknowledge that because that's that was just fun. Um and so with that I I will end my report and give it back to you, mayor. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Council Hamilton.

Well, thank you, Mayor. I'm just going to speak from the heart tonight. Uh the retreat was great. It was exactly what we needed. I think one thing that we learned at that retreat was that trust was broken all around. I think everybody, you know, had had something to say and and um we were able to do do some much needed uh mending and and um trust building and and uh it was needed and um you know, one of my favorite American phrases is don't give up the ship. And I'm not willing to give up the ship. We need to work together, fight together for this city, for the residents that we serve. I know that people in our community might still have hurt feelings, but this council, I think, is ready to move on, and um we're we're going to move forward and and do the work that we were elected to do. So, um I'm glad you enjoyed the Easter egg hunt. I had fun doing that. and um and thank you for your words tonight. I I do appreciate that and um that brings healing to me.

Thank you.

Know knowing that you acknowledge that um couple of uh just reportable items, my activities from the last couple weeks. I attended the Korean quarterly meeting that we held here in the council chambers. uh former mayor uh Mike Park host that and um that was great to connect with our Korean community participated in the diaper drive um that Cheryl Cohurst uh puts on and uh works and I think the mayor already reported on that so I won't say much about that but it was it was a huge success uh participated in coffee with a cop I think it was one of the best ones yet it was a full house at Ebony and Ivory and uh got to reconnect with a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while and so that was fun. Uh the chamber lunchon uh mayor reported on that had a great time there and uh just our council retreat and um that is my activities for the last couple weeks. Thank you.

Great. Thank you councilor Walsh.

Yeah. Um, I I agree with my my other colleagues that the the retreat was very very beneficial and and helpful and uh and their their feelings about it. I I agree wholeheartedly and I I think that we're a a better council now because of it and we do need to move forward as as as Martin said and as uh uh Harold Booker said earlier. I mean, it's it's it's just some steps and and we need to keep keep on climbing and and I think that we will keep on climbing and uh continuing to to improve uh communication, increase trust and to to uh continually increase our our relationship. I I look forward to the the the next the next years together and I I appreciate all of you. um that the events that uh that um Council Member Hamilton mentioned, I mean that those events uh you know uh really show how the we we live in a wonderful community. We really do live in a wonderful community. There's a lot of good good people here from from the diaper drive, the the the the event that the Rotary did with uh uh that that several of us were at uh the you know the the the the coffee with a cop, the the all all those different things. I mean there's a lot of people in the community that are just great people and I appreciate being part of this community and being part of this this council here and and I appreciate each of you here on on the dis with me and uh um anyway so thank you. That's my report.

Great. Thank you counelor Cessums. Well, I've got to say uh thank you uh to my colleagues, everyone who spoken. I e echo your sent sentiments about uh what transpired on Saturday. I thought it was a great retreat and I uh agree it should be held again um maybe in a few months uh make make it a semianual thing. Um I believe that uh we did uh take steps big steps forward uh and I think uh it empowered each of us uh to continue to be leaders in our own respective ways. Uh again we we've got our own um agendas, but I think they're more in alignment now uh than uh initially um when I first came here. Um, so I'm I'm optimistic and I I'm hopeful that uh we will be moving forward uh uh with our agenda. So speaking of which, um I uh am going to give a shout out to our public works uh department. Uh the city is in fine shape when it comes to cleanliness and uh very little litter or graffiti. I didn't know that you had a report um delivered to you and uh what gets tracked or what gets measured gets results. I appreciate that. So uh and I've had people visiting from Seattle remarking how clean uh it is in federal way and and that makes me proud. I'm I'm really happy uh to see that. Uh I am going to call in future uh meetings for more public art. I believe public art is a beautiful thing. We were just in Washington DC and there was public art

everywhere. It's one of the most beautiful cities in the nation. Uh so with that said, uh let me give you a quick update on what I'll be doing for the next month. Uh tomorrow I'll be going to the SCA PIC or the PIC meeting. Uh it's going to be in person at Reton City Hall. Um on uh Saturday the 11th uh we've been uh I've been invited and other council members have been invited. I don't know who will be in in attendance but I am planning to go to the vaiki nagar curtain celebration at the Kulsa Germat Center. Uh right here in Federal Way we've got a sizable S community center. uh couple hundred people are expected to attend. I'll be one of them. Um and looking to um um get to know our SE community members. Uh council me city of can council member Sharon Shoker extended a personal invitation to me and I I think I'll be going to check that out. Uh, Saturday, April 18th, we have our very own parks appreciation day. I hope to see everyone out there. Um, I hope to see my colleagues out there as well. Uh, I'll be at Celebration Park and, uh, pitching in to make that park even more cooler. Um, reminder that uh, Wednesday, April 22nd is Earth Day. Please uh, spread the word to your neighbors and to your friends. We've got to take care of our environment, our earth, mothership earth. Um, Saturday, April 25th, Gafuna Heritage Day. Uh, I'm very interested in, uh, checking that out at Town Square Park.

Uh, and then, uh, I hadn't heard you mention this, mayor, but, uh, Saturday, April 25th, Federal Way Little League day. Uh, are you going to be throwing out the first pitch maybe? Uh, I I think they let me run out to the We'll all be out there and we'll uh trot out there, but uh I don't think they let me anywhere near the ball. All right. All right. Well, um, thank you uh to everyone for their um expressions of uh gratitude. Uh, I again enjoyed that retreat. I thought it was very uh apppropo for the council president to lead us into that. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Council Member Coach Mark.

Well, I also thought we did very well with the retreat and thank you, Council President, for facilitating that. We um as well as the staff members who were there. My goodness, Saturday before Easter. Um you know, um I have to say thank you to It takes a level of maturity to be able to disagree and move forward. And I think that our council has always worked very well together for the last number of years and quite a number of years actually. Um and I also want to thank my colleagues for picking up my broken body and taking me places. I feel very very fortunate that in our city we have one of the 100 best hospitals in the nation that I could drive to at 5:00 a.m. with one arm and feel that I knew where it was and feel comfortable going into the ER at that time of the morning and so and be when I still thought I just sprained my hand when it was hanging. But um so in this process of repairing my bones, uh I want to thank you all for picking me up and taking me places. So um thank you very much for that. And I I think we're very fortunate to live in this city. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Council President.

Thank you. So, um I attended the Rotary event last Thursday night on becoming involved in your community and um volunteering is something that my parents taught us how to do. we all volunteered as kids and uh when I quit working as a registered nurse for the schools because I wasn't able to uh to work anymore. Uh I became a full-time volunteer and I considered it my job and I would encourage people not only to volunteer but when you volunteer and you say you're going to show up, show up because someone is depending on you to show up. It it isn't just something you can say, "Yeah, I'm going to do" and not not show up. Our schools, you know, require volunteer hours. And as a key club advisor, which is uh part of the Kuanas club, our kids uh volunteer our our Kuanas uh key clubbers, that's that's a major part of being a club member is volunteering. And when they say they're going to be there, they're there on time and usually longer than they have agreed to be there. And and I would just uh hope that everyone who says they're going to volunteer volunteer. Um I would also like to uh the Rotary Club is has some things that they're going to be doing on a monthly basis to get volunteers out in the city. And I would encourage people if they're able to participate. It sounds uh like it'll be a really cool program. Every month will be something else. So, um anyway, it was a good event and thank you to them for um hosting that. Um as to the retreat, uh thank you so much. I think that uh planning the retreat uh took took a

while uh deciding what you know what we should talk about and and how it should go and um I'd like to thank you know the mayor and staff for their assistance and our um Andrew Ballard for his assistance as he was a facilitator. What I learned at the council leaders exchange in Ellensburg was not all councils in this state have retreats, which to me is stunning because we have always had retreats here as a council. And I don't know how you can work as a council without having a retreat, at least one retreat a year. So, uh, I know there's two local cities that are having their first retreats ever for the councils this year,

which is to me, uh, really, uh, quite interesting. And I, um, I would just I encourage their deputy mayors to make it an annual event and, uh, to to help plan their retreats. But for those that are asking about another retreat, could you send me your ideas, what you want to see, what you'd like to to accomplish at another retreat. And I would like to thank everyone up here for for opening up on Saturday. I I didn't know how this was going to go. I mean, I, you know, it was just it, we had not ever done a retreat quite like this before, and I didn't know what it was going to be like. And, um, I think it took a lot of courage for each and every one of us to talk about what happened, what um, you know, what's going on, how we can work together. And I appreciate the um I just appreciate the courage and the ability to share because that made the retreat that made the retreat work. And I I know that the work isn't done. But I do know that coming out of that retreat, I believe that this council is stronger and the work that we need to do that we were elected to do, we will definitely do and we'll do it as a team and continue working together. So, thank you very much.

All right, great job everyone. Thanks to the staff, thanks to the public, thanks to my colleagues up here. Uh, great work. We are adjourned.