City Council - Regular Meeting

In the TIP, Snively Road and SR 240 Snively Road intersection, those have been added because of the Veterans Cemetery development. That's a road and an intersection they'll be required to construct as part of that development. They need to be in the TIP because they'll likely receive some level of funding from a federal or state grant. So we're putting it in the TIP. Just for transparency reasons, Central Richland Active Transportation improvements may break up in discrete projects in the future someday. If it does happen in 2027, we'll likely have an amendment that we need to bring forward to council to amend the TIP with some new projects. And the two things that are not shown in the tip are the citywide transportation system plan. I said adoption plan in 27. Adoption is planned in 26. But the new projects that would come out of that plan wouldn't be included until the next tip comes before you. So that would be the 2028 to 2033 tip, which we would bring before you in 2027. And the annual pavement preservation program, this is an annual maintenance program. We don't know what projects we are doing at this point in time. for next year's pavement preservation program. So we don't put it into the TIP, one, because it's a maintenance program, but the other, because we don't actually have projects to show or know what the funding is. And all the funding that comes into that pavement preservation program is local only, so. and then the remove projects that are there mostly because construction happens we get them off the tip because we're delivering those projects or at least starting to deliver those projects in 2026 so they won't show up in the 2027 tip there's a big project list and the tip map and which you've had in your packet. So the path forward, we've posted this on our website for the public to view. We had the planning commission workshop and today's the meeting to solicit the recommendation to council. Then council will have a public hearing and their meeting to hopefully to approve the resolution adopting the TIP. All this to happen so we can submit our tip before June 30th so that our MPO, BFCOG, can do their regional public process so that they can submit the regional tip to the Washington State DOT to put into the state tip. Also, we can get funding in 2027. Yeah. So I have a recommended motion before you. If you have any questions, this is the time to ask.

Thank you, Carlo. Any questions from commissioners?

Just one more on the calendar. So basically, maybe the next three years, just because you're talking about funding for 2027, So what do the dates mean? I mean, like, so I understand, like, there's a pool and that's limitations by the state. But which ones are real? I mean, like, is it, I mean, of your list, of your priority list, like, what ones, you know, are these really going to happen in 2026, 2027, 2028? But then when you get past that, they're placeholders? Is that more what it is?

Essentially, yeah. The ones that are real, I would say, are the ones that have secured funding associated with them. We can't really deliver a project that doesn't have secured funding anyways.

I didn't understand all the notations on the tip and stuff, so I couldn't tell which ones were actually funded or not. I mean, I saw the cost, but I couldn't tell.

So there's a notation where there's an S. S means the funding is secured.

I needed a key. Yes.

And the other notation is a P, which means planned. Okay. And so if it's planned, it means we don't have funding yet. There are certain funding sources that are identified that say planned. like one will say HSIP, which is a city safety program funding source, but we may not have that funding source secured or awarded to us. But when we say planned, that means we do

Good evening. Thank you for being here on June 2nd, 2026 to the regular city council meeting. We appreciate you all taking time out of your summer evening to join us here. And first off, we'd like to have a roll call. City Clerk Rogers, could you assist?

Okay, we'll begin with Mayor Richardson. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke. He's on Zoom. There he is. Council Member Holton? Here. Council Member Jones? Here. Council Member Meyer?

Present.

Council Member Samuel?

Here.

Council Member Whitten?

Here.

Thank you.

No need to excuse me. Council Member Whitten did a really good job. Everybody's here. So I've asked Council Member Holton to lead us in 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.

Thank you. May I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda? So moved.

Second.

Thank you. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Not hearing, motion passes. First item on the agenda is presentation from Tri-City Development Council, Tridec, featuring Carl Dye, President, CEO. Nice to see you tonight, Carl. Thank you for being here. We need a little segue music, I think, or walk-up music. Is that what you call it at events? Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Richardson, and thank you, city council members, and congratulations, Council Member Samuel. It's good to see you up there. As the mayor said, I'm Carl Dye from Trideck. I've been here six years, and in that six years, it's been my pleasure and our pleasure for much longer than that to have this relationship with the city of Richland. I just put together a couple slides to talk about our history, our history together, some of the projects we're working on together, just as an annual update. We have a contract with the city, which we appreciate, and I'll talk about some of the highlights in this contract year and some of the stuff that we're working on going forward. So I'll start with this first slide. The history of Tridec or Tri-City Development Council started in 1963. We were formed then as the Tri-City Nuclear Industrial Council. And so when we've been before the council in the past, we've talked about our nuclear legacy and obviously the relationship that we enjoy as part of that. In 1963, about 80% of the economy of the Tri-Cities in general, especially Richland, probably even a higher amount, was driven by the federal government. and the plutonium production mission at Hanford at the time. And yearly appropriations by Congress would have a huge effect on the Tri-Cities. And so three small business owners here in the Tri-Cities got together, the two guys that owned the Tri-City Herald and a guy that owned a bar here in Richland in the uptown named Sam Volpentas got together and they said, you know, we know our congressional delegation really well. We need to leverage that relationship with them to try to at least even out funding because it has such a whipsaw in our whole community. We need to start working on this. And so for that 63 years, we have always advocated for congressional spending to come to the Tri-Cities. Obviously now it's really about Pacific Northwest National Lab and about Hanford funding, but we also get into other areas and we'll talk about some of those as we go along. Our current status is we represent all of the incorporated cities here in the core of Benton and Franklin counties, both Benton and Franklin counties, as well as our three port districts on both sides of the river. So our board is made up of leaders. Mayor Richardson currently sits on the board. John Amason, a city manager, sits on the board with all of his peers from the cities. as well as leaders of all of the Hanford contractors, the director at the lab, CEOs of local companies. And so we really feel that it's a board of leaders. And while we're focused on economic development and that's our mission, our board is a place where we look at these community development issues and general community issues in general and try to come up with some consensus that we can each take back to our jurisdictions. in general. We've always been about diversifying the economy even back then when we wanted to lobby Congress to make sure that we had ongoing funding. It's always been about adding to the diversity and so that 80% in 1963 currently as of 2019, which are the latest numbers we can get, is down As far as employment, direct employment by the federal agencies and their contractors is around 12%, but the dollars from that workforce of 12% are over 20%. So you can see kind of, you know, those federal jobs and those contractor jobs pay more than the average wages that we have. So it still has a huge effect, but we're much more diverse. And that's not... just our efforts and when I say our we're talking about the whole community working together but obviously we've grown so much in agriculture and different types of agriculture related to our location logistics and all these other industries so we're much more diverse now but we still have a long ways to go eventually Hanford will get cleaned up probably not in any of our lifetimes but eventually it will and we need to replace those good paying jobs with any chance that we get to bring in new industries and that's what we're really focused on and especially our partnership with the city um When we talk about economic development, and it's a term that many of our peer business organizations use, we really focus on the business recruitment, the business retention and expansion, and really with an industrial focus. The industries, the key industries, federal government being one in the employers that we talked about, but also things like advanced manufacturing, food processing. Anything that can be an export of a good or service outside that brings outside dollars in is really the base industries. Our economy basically looks like a big inverted pyramid. So that base, the broader we can build the base, the more that we can stack up the secondary industries, the retail, the food service, the amenities, the quality of life things we do, professional services. Those are all built on our base, so we really focus on that core. We talked about federal advocacy and then community development, because ultimately for all of us and all of our partner organizations that the city supports, many of us, if we don't have a great place to live, we won't be able to recruit companies, we won't be able to retain high professional employees or any employees that we've got. If this isn't the right place that everybody wants to choose to live, then none of us will be successful. And so that's part of our mission as well that we try to focus on. As far as our projects, we talked about agriculture. So a great example here in Richland that's about, I want to say the eight to 10 year timeframe is the new, and it's still one of the newer land Weston plants here in Richland, which is state of the art technology. And so we worked, we contract with the state department of commerce. We can put in for strategic reserve fund grants. They're called that the governor can allocate to new projects. So a Strategic Reserve Fund grant was matched by our Tridec Incentive Fund where we put dollars out of a Hanford program of surplus equipment and property over the years into incentivizing Lamb-Weston to build that plant. And so those are ongoing. They send us reports and we have a close working relationship with the Lamb-Weston folks. Energy and advanced manufacturing, I think a great example of Atlas Agro. And so Atlas Agro was called Project Green Fertilizer by the state. It was a request for a proposal that comes to us. We push it out to all of our partners. And I got to look at Clint and I always give Clint props on this one because Clint as the energy services manager for the city said, oh my gosh, they need 300 megawatts. He kind of squinted his eyes a little bit and tilted his head and said, you know, there might be a scenario that we could possibly do that. And just that attitude that I would say, you know, all the staff members of the city that we work with have that same can-do attitude. Being that one-stop shop got us in the door with Alice Agro that led to the city was the lead on it until we realized that they needed rail property. for their transportation needs. And so the Port of Benton had property that abutted that, but the city's always been the lead on the energy delivery services. And that one project has led to, in the last four years that we've been working on it, so many other electrical-related projects. It's like, as Clint has told Council and everybody else many, many times, Where the city buys power from Bonneville Power Administration, under the Pacific Northwest Power Act of 1980, any of the customers like the city are limited to new load growth of 10 megawatts max. And so we just don't really see many projects that are below 10 megawatts. And so it gets more and more complicated, but for us, other projects came down the line in advanced manufacturing in other industries including you know other companies that we've worked on together with the city that city has option agreements on if we didn't understand that power better or have opportunities that the power line that will feed the Triton substation in the future we wouldn't have had these opportunities So I think that's a good example of how we work together, how we partner, how we really complement each other as we work on that. And I'll just say on AI data centers, I know that the city has an option with and the ownership there on a potential site for AI data center. From our perspective, as we engage with industry partners and we field some of these calls, the parameters that we put out, I think, are really aligned with what we hear in the political rhetoric around concerns for electricity, especially electrical rates. water usage and two things one we talked about the Northwest Power Act the city can't serve any load that's greater than 10 megawatts and so any city rate isn't going to include the load factor because you can't buy that power from BPA BPA can't serve those loads and so it's something that if there were an AI data center developer they would need to bring in their own power or bring their power with them some way so the its ability to affect the city ratepayers from our perspective, isn't on the table. And then on the cooling for data centers, you know, and this is kind of new for us, because on the first wave, let's call it, of data centers, we weren't really a player because they went where the power was cheapest. And so they went to all the mid-Columbia public utility districts that owned their own generation that could set their own rates. And so that's why we see the data centers existing in Quincy and down southwest in Umatilla and those other places. Today with AI, they're just looking for the power in the land. But from a cooling perspective, our understanding is, learning from industry experts, is that there are technology options where you don't need cold river water on a continual basis or pumped water that you can use closed-loop cooling systems, even put redundant heat systems to use for chilling technologies. And so from our perspective, when we talk to people, we like to lead with that and say, these are the kind of data centers based on these criteria that that might be a good fit with Richland or other partners. So I just wanted to clarify that. That's where we're coming from. Again, I'm looking at Councilperson Samuel from the lab, and I know others of you work in these industries. But we all use these services. And so to come up with something that fits the city citizens' goals and fits industry needs is an opportunity for all of us. And so I'll just leave it at that, just as a general overview. I wanted to talk about how we approach these leads as they come into us. This goes back to 2016, so 10 years ago now. TRIDIC is the community reuse organization, so we can accept real or personal property from the federal government. And so in 2016, as Doc Hastings was leaving Congress, he passed a bill that said Congress will give to our community 1,641 acres. And so this is a picture back then of the former city manager, everybody's former mayor, Bob Thompson, or Bobby T to his friends, as well as our partners from Port Abenton at the time. And this is kind of a map of that area. So we call it the purple dinosaur in this case. It's a very odd shape, and it's a very odd shape because of... the many overlays of map layers, I'll say it, on the Hanford properties. We asked for this many acres and they said, well, we can do something that looks like this. And so that's kind of where we're at. The next area that we have worked collectively, again, with the city on is that red area. We call it the corridor, 5,000 acres. Three, four years ago, the Department of Energy came out with a new program called Clean Up to Clean Energy. And it was actually, the phrase was coined by our own Sandra Haynes from WSU Tri-Cities. She talked about from a workforce perspective, you know, the cleanup workforce can transition into the clean energy workforce. And DOE kind of picked up on it. They're like, hey, let's do this thing at all the DOE sites. So what they're really looking for was solar, battery, or wind storage projects. And that was an open RFP. And a lease was actually let on up to 10,000 acres with a company called Hecate. Hecate now has been bought out by a company called Savion. And they are working on a lease mainly for solar and battery for, at this point, up to 10,000 acres. When they were going through that process, though, we, working with the city, said, once we fill up the purple dinosaur, where are we going to go next? our future aspirations on future transfers or leases or whatever we may do, we want to go all the way out to Energy Northwest because that's the city's future. That's where we can grow. That's where we can build this industrial co-location opportunities that we have. And so we worked really hard with the congressional delegation to make sure that that was not included in the cleanup to clean energy. And so now that's our chance. That's our next phase that we want to start working on. And so we're excited about that opportunity to build off this legacy of the actual transfer that happened 10 years ago. We still do federal advocacy. And so I want to take this opportunity just to talk about kind of how the process works. And I'm new to it. We have really, I think, a really excellent person, our vice president of federal programs, David Replog, who also is the executive director for Hanford Communities, which the city of Richland housed here for many, many years. When Pam Brown Larson retired, we now have a contract to administer and to run it for the cities together and the municipalities. So the way that I'll just say the appropriations process works federally is that the president comes out with his budget levels that has different individual line items with some breakdown for Department of Energy, environmental management that manages Hanford cleanup, also for P&L that's office, you know, the Office of Science and some of the other funding sources through DOE that the P&L gets their funding from. Then the two houses of Congress start to work on their budgets. And what we do after the president's budget comes out and sets that floor, we work with Department of Energy, PNNL, Hanford contractors, you know, subject matter experts on this area. And we look at these existing, you know, line items in the president's budget on what we could actually use and what would be a better spending amount that would support our community. So we put together this congressional letter that we then share with all of our congressional delegation. They go to work through the committees. And as the committees work through the process, over this time period, what usually comes out is the president's budget comes out. House budget, Senate budget, they work it out. And really in the past, it's been closer to the level that all of our stakeholders know is a better budget amount that's consistently higher than the president's budget. So I think some of the headlines in the papers have caused concern. Both Hanford in general and the lab have a lot of new folks that haven't been through this cycle before. So the headline might say, so many workers' jobs are on the line. But from our perspective, going through it 63 years now, this is the process that we go through. The president's budget comes out, the budget that's enacted consistently has been much higher, and that's what we're focused on along with our partners on the federal level. So just wanted to give that breakdown, have that chance for what it's worth to pass that along. You know, everything's okay. We're all working hard to make sure we get the right budget. Shoreline Reconveyance is a great project that we really appreciate. Joe's been the lead on this with us. And again, in this six-year time period from going back to COVID on previous efforts, and again, going back to Doc Hastings at the end of his term, He got legislation passed in the Water Resources Development Act, which is kind of this general water bill that both houses pass every two years, saying give all the land in the Tri-States back to the local jurisdictions. Well, that happened, but the language didn't really give the Corps of Engineers, I'll say, enough direction to do it expeditiously or to prioritize it or do anything at all. As an example, City of Kennewick has been working for about 10 years now to get 72 specific acres in Columbia Park that they wanted transferred out, and they've spent about a million dollars, and they still think they're probably three to five years out to get that. And so what we've been working on for the last six years is to try to say, let's get another bill passed in Congress that's much more specific, that gives them direction. And some of the things that we want to have included is to transfer the land at no cost to the jurisdictions, and also to waive NEPA, which is one of the things that City of Kennewick's been going back and forth with going through that process. In that time period, especially during COVID, we started outreach to the Umatilla tribes, so the consolidated tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the Yakima Nation. And so now, today, and the city had an MOU before. There's a couple other documents attached to the MOU that the city's working on approving, as all of your peer cities and both counties and the Port of Pasco, that the tribes are joining us. You know, so right now the agreement that's on the table is that the Umatilla tribe would get Columbia Point, I'm probably going to get my north and south, but I think it's Columbia Point south, outside of what the city already owns, so kind of closer to the Yakima Delta, some land that was actually outlined for them in the 1855 treaty, and the transfer never went through, and so they're excited for that opportunity. The Yakima's worked really closely with the city and many other stakeholders to have the causeway taken out. And so Bateman Island itself, under this agreement and under this proposed legislation, would go to the Yakima's. We were back, all of us together, in DC two months ago now. And all of the offices that we met with, all the congressional staffers that we met with, said this is the first time where we had local jurisdictions and these two tribes partner together to ask for something together. And so I think that agreement that the city's been a real champion on has been the key to why we hope that we can get the land transferred without NEPA, because in the MOU, it establishes a process for the city to go through The city would basically maintain as parks the land that the city's asking for. If there was a need for change in ownership, there would be a pretty extensive process where engagement would happen right off the bat with the tribes and then work on it collaboratively. And I think from the tribal perspective, what they've shared with us is they would be interested in partnering in different opportunities if there would be a future change in land use. if that's a big if that's down the road but that's really what we're focused on and so this is a chance for us again to leverage some of those congressional relationships and really being the convener from a regional perspective where we all can join hands work together and then reach out and establish this tribal relationship that we're all really excited to be able to kind of expound on so this is this is a great project i don't want to jinx it by saying that you know it's going to go because it's been a long road but it we feel very very confident that we're making the right steps forward Shrub steppe habitat is one that all of the jurisdictions deal with. And it's under the SEPA approval process. So under certain conditions where a landowner comes to the city to go through the SEPA process, Fish and Wildlife has to sign off on the proposed development. And one of the things that they look at is critical habitat. Shrub steppe habitat for our region is one of the things that they work on. And what we have run into consistently is that fish and wildlife doesn't look at the quality of shrub steppe. And I'm not a wildlife biologist, but listening to people who are, there's a wide range on how good the habitat is. The habitat basically being the flora and fauna that has an indicator of how successful can species survive in this area. And where we run into it, what we've been working on is within the urban growth boundaries. So we're all managed in the state of Washington by the Urban Growth So I'm kind of mixing up my examples here. But it basically says the city has to plan to grow within this boundary that can, in certain cases, exceed city limits. And it's the process you have to go through to even expand into new city limit areas. So in that urban boundary, which from our perspective, collectively representing the community, we're saying, is this the best place that we want habitat? You know, for these endangered and threatened species, do we want them inside four lanes of asphalt in an island that's got some rabbit brush on them? You know, the quality and the location, and it's kind of nexus with more open spaces that would be out towards the county or out towards Hanford. It's a big issue that they weren't really addressing. And so Representative Connors from District 8 led the charge for us. She convened a couple meetings in our office last year. We've had meetings with all the city planners and all the county planners working together. And Benton County and Franklin County now are working on kind of a quality program that could really help us. And from our perspective on development, we just want... all the jurisdictions to be on the same playing field and have a consistency so no matter which city or county you come to, that you've got an idea of can I develop this property or not? And am I gonna have to mitigate it? So that's the thing is they want you to buy shrub step that you could protect with removing the development rights from it so it'll always stay in shrub step in some cases. Some cases it's like a two to one ratio based on, again, the quality. It's kind of an in-depth process, but from us, Our goal is that as we work with these companies, as we work with existing companies to be able to grow, that we've got a good runway for them, that everybody has transparency in the process to work for. And so, again, I think our role is really kind of the convener, working regionally, bringing everybody together, and being able to get some traction on those processes. That's all my slides. I probably took up too much time already, but if there are any questions, I'd always be happy to, not just tonight, but anytime. And I just, again, I really appreciate the relationship that we have with council, with staff. Richland's got the great team. We love selling Richland. One-stop shop is something that we all tout. The city does a really good job of, but on these projects that I'm talking about, city of Richland staff and the team has put that one-stop shop mantra They've proven it time and time again, and it really stands out when we talk to companies that are interested in coming to the Tri-Cities, and Richland does a great job at that.

Thank you for your presentation. It's always so interesting and full of a lot of work you're doing. So, Council, do you have any questions or comments? This is unusual. I don't see the light turned on. That shrub step issue is really important, and I'm glad that you're being a convener to try to get us all on the same page. So thank you for your work very broadly in all kinds of sectors, and appreciate you being here tonight and your presentation.

Thanks for the opportunity to come and share some of that, and we just look forward to our next steps. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, next we have Columbia Basin Badger Club introduction with Don Baer, president of the Badger Club. And while he's getting set up, I was excited to find out we have two council members that are involved with this club. Council member Samuel has been since the very beginning, and council member Meyer, very involved and encouraged this presentation tonight. So welcome, being here.

All right, thank you, Mayor Richardson, and to the council members for this invitation. I'd also like to note that our program vice president, Sally Bredewig, is here with me as well, so can answer different types of questions if needed. So the vision of the Columbia Basin Badger Club was founded in 2008 as a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization supporting civil discourse by looking at public forums on important topics of the day. And given what we just heard from Tidek, some of the things that he has mentioned are important topics of the day that some of the members of the Badger Club are very interested in. And so this follows on quite nicely. So I'm here in part because civil discourse is important and challenging. And as you know, many people get their news from social media, which can be highly polarized, one-sided, and include faulty or misleading data. The Badger Club forums are an effort to address this real need by creating an environment where facts and opinions on important issues can be civilly discussed. and also to gather subject matter experts that we can learn from so that this enables informed discussion about some of these challenging topics. Quality forums are our product. Strong forums require teamwork, good ideas, and identification of available expert speakers. So in addition to inviting your participation in the Badger Forum, we would welcome your input, your expertise, what you would like to hear from, and your efforts in helping to develop fantastic forums. I want to unpack a little bit of this. And so nonpartisan, the club does not have an opinion. Our speakers do, often. And our members hold a variety of opinions. And we work hard to have a balanced expert presentations in our forums so that the forums are not biased, but we hear multiple sides. And sometimes it's not two sides. It's really multiple sides. We support civil discourse, as we've said, by forums. Where appropriate, we have opposing sides presented. And those are forums that a lot of the members would like to see more of. But it's also important to have informative forums that provide the foundational information so that we can have different perspectives and facilitate informed civil discourse on its challenging topics. Because if you don't know the basics and the fundamentals, it's hard to have really truly informed civil discourse. And I want to give you two examples. The first one was on vaccines, and as you undoubtedly know, vaccines have been highly controversial. They've been in the newspaper nationally and locally. We had four speakers at this forum, two favoring vaccines because of their benefits, and two skeptics concerned about the risks. You also notice that there's a reschedule on there, because if you're having both sides and somebody has a family crisis, You can't present both sides equally, so we had to schedule from December into January. The second example is our future runs here, Eastern Washington Water Resource Management. It included the snowpack and where we get our water, how it's distributed through the Yakima Basin with the reservoirs and the rivers and the people with different water rights, and the Kennewick Irrigation District, which has to struggle to get all of their demands with the water that they get, how they conserve it and use it wisely. So these were very interesting, productive forums. To give you a sense of the forums that we've held over the last year, we had one on crime. One on tribal sovereignty, which relates to what we've just heard through Tridec. Fiscal policy, how confusing that is to many people. Transportation planning, immigration, the Center for Recovery, homeless, and transgender athletes. So those were the topics we had last year. I want to move on with some sort of background facts on the Badger Club. You already know that it was founded in 2008. It was modeled after some clubs in Florida called the Tiger Bay Clubs. Initially, it was to be called the Coyote Club. But in native cultures, coyote has both positive and negative characteristics. It's a trickster and a wise creator. We decided the trickster was not a good idea for a club on civil discourse. So they changed it to the Badger Club. And at one of the first meetings that was in person recently, a member came up and said, why badgers? They don't look very civil. They look fierce. And the Badger was chosen because it has local identification, Badger Mountain, for example. And Badgers dig into things. And we thought that was a good model for a club. The first forum was in 2008, candidates for state school superintendent. There's been three generations of Badger forums, from 2008 until COVID. They were lunch meetings, which were great get-togethers with lots of conversation. Limited, some people couldn't get away from work. Then during COVID, we went to Zoom only online. The attendance went up for a while, and then as people could get back to work, they had trouble getting the time, and people missed the live meetings. So in February, we started a hybrid. It's a combination of in-person and online. The Zoom meetings enabled access from speakers around the world, for example, Kyiv, Tokyo, London, Christchurch, Toronto, a place in France and Argentina. Our two largest forums were a virtual forum with Jim Mattis with over 1,000 attendees and a first in-person forum after COVID with 450. You'll see here a cartoon, 11-foot poles for things you wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. I don't know if you grew up with that cartoon, but it was a comment of my family. We wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole. This was taken off of one of my college advisor's doors. Programming controversial topics can be a challenge. can be very important but challenging. And this is partially the consequences of polarization of social media. Some speakers are unwilling to come to online meetings because of the way social media is dealing with that. And they're only willing to be in person. One of our forums was subject to a coordinated attack by one side. We had to institute a policy, if you have an anonymous question, we won't deal with it. And if you're rude online, we can shut you out. In person, people tend to be more civilized. This is a little bit about the Badger Club again. The dues of the Badger Club are $50 a year. They provide early information about forums, the Badger Club newsletter, and voting for officers and board members. And until 2006, members had free access to forums, but non-members had to pay. This year we made the decision to make all forums free since civil discourse is so important. But we have to maintain our membership or grow it to be able to afford to do that. So that's one reason I want to encourage you to become members and also to participate in forums. Membership supports the efforts to enable civil discourse. There is a QR code and also the web address. Now, this will date some people. People over a certain age say, what's a QR code? I've never used one before. I was given a talk at a Rotary meeting and somebody said, I'm old, I use a QR code. But the website you get to has information about coming forums, registration for the forums and membership, and a free video gallery of about 75 forums starting in July 2020. And so this is sort of the closeout. Civil discourse on important topics is more important and more challenging now than when the club was formed in 2008. And the Badger Club is one of the efforts to address this. As I said earlier, quality forums are our product and important topic. recent forums on challenges arts organizations face, the energy growth that we've heard about from the Tridec talk, water resources, and the most recent one was on wildfire. These are all critically important topics to our community, and we've gotten attendance that shows that. We would like your help in identifying topics that you would like us to address. Coming programs include addiction causes prevention and treatment, Laitlik, Ladder Snake Mountain, Sacred Mountain, and Bureaucratic Hell, and why some states are looking to make college and trade schools free. And again, Badger Club membership and foreign participation support civil discourse, which I think is critical these days. And with that, I will end and ask for any questions that you have, if I'm in the time limit.

Thank you for your presentation. or comments? It's quiet up here today. Excuse me, Kurt Meyer.

The only comment I have is one of appreciation for you coming out here and making the presentation. I know several of us on the council have discussed that it would be a good idea for some time and I'm glad we were able to finally get everything together.

So, thank you. I would be delighted to meet with any of you one-on-one just to brainstorm topics that you think are important to the city, to the whole community, that would make a good forum. And your help in getting where there's more than one side. and uh i guess i'll just make the comment sometimes it's hard for the city to participate in that and if you can help us figure out ways that we can get either your staff or some of you as council members to participate that would be fantastic i would only imagine that after that amount of time it's harder to find fresh topics Well, there seemed to be a lot of interest. For example, the one on Rattlesnake Mountain. I gave a talk at a rotary club, and somebody said, are you going to do one on Rattlesnake Mountain? We just happened to have one that we were being worked on. So the community has lots. The data centers are, for example, a new topic. So there's lots of things, and some things that need revisited because they're old topics, but the circumstances have changed. So this is why we need to know what you want to know now.

Thank you very much. Thank you. And thank you, Sally, for being here as well. We appreciate your presentation. Next, we have a presentation on the Impact Academy graduation class of 2026. I believe that's a video presentation.

Three years ago, we launched the Impact Academy with a simple but powerful goal, to invest in our people, strengthen leadership across the organization, and build stronger connections between departments. Developed as a two-year program, each class is tasked with developing a class project leaving a lasting mark on our organization. The first graduating class developed our internal culture statement, helping define who we are and how we work together. Building on that foundation, the class of 2026 created the new On the Spot Awards program, a peer recognition initiative designed to celebrate employees in real time for demonstrating our culture values through teamwork, accountability, service, and support for one another. Tonight, we celebrate the Impact Academy Class of 2026 and the impact they will leave on our city for years to come.

Very nice video. I think Richland does a good job developing leadership around us. So very good. Thank you.

Next, we have New Hires and Retirements, also a video presented by HR Director Lacey Paulson.

We would like to recognize our new employees that were hired and those that retired during May. On May 4th, we had two new hires. Jewel Cleveringo was hired as a payroll specialist with the finance division and Chad Goodhue was hired as the IT director with the information technology division. On May 11th, we had two new hires. Gage Miller was hired as a police officer with the Richland Police Department, and Sage Brewstad was hired as a police officer with the Richland Police Department. On May 18th, Lindsay Wilkerson was hired as a customer service associate with the Solid Waste Disposal Division. On May 26th, we had three new hires. Melanie Winteroth was hired as an Emergency Communications Dispatcher with CCOM, and Emily Tagnoli was hired as an Emergency Communications Dispatcher with CCOM, and Isaac Anderson was hired as an Engineering Technician II with the Public Works Administration and Engineering Division. Welcome new hires to the City of Richland. We have two service retirements to recognize this evening. On May 14th, Police Public Records Specialist Debbie Brennan-Cruz retired after 22 years of service with the City. On May 27th, Firefighter Chris Bird retired after 25 years of service with the City. Congratulations to both of you on your retirements and thank you for your many years of public service.

Welcome to all the new hires. And I'm always amazed at the length of service when we come to recognizing these retirees. So thank you for your many years. Next, we have public hearing. And City Clerk Rogers, would you please read the public hearing script and for public comments?

The purpose of a public hearing is to give the audience an opportunity to address council members concerning the subject for which the hearing is convened. This process is an official on-the-record communication geared toward giving City Council information and opinions to consider in its decision-making process. If an item is marked as closed record, no new comments will be allowed. While Council welcomes hearing from you, please note that the public hearing process is not designed for interactive dialogue with Council members or for posing questions expecting an immediate response. Many questions require an opportunity for research and deliberation. For this reason, Council will not provide immediate responses to comments, questions, or concerns raised during the hearing. To provide an orderly process, audience members who wish to speak should raise your hand and wait to be acknowledged by the mayor, approach the lectern when invited to do so, begin by clearly stating your full name and address for the official record, and after speaking, write your name and address on the record sheet. To ensure every participant has an opportunity to be heard, public hearing comments will be limited to three minutes per speaker. The public comment period, where the audience is allowed to comment on agenda items or other topics, follows the same guidelines with the slight difference that speakers are to announce their full name and the city of residence before speaking. For this section, each speaker will be limited to two minutes to present their comments. The time prompter placed on a lectern will alert each speaker with an amber light when 15 seconds remain. To signal the end of a speaker's time to speak, a red light will flash and a buzzer will sound. In the interest of time, if your point has already been made by another speaker, simply indicate your agreement with previous statements instead of repeating the comment. When appropriate, the Mayor may refer certain topics raised during the public comment period to Deputy City Manager for additional review and action. And please note that if a speaker intends to provide counsel with any documents as part of a presentation, the documents must be handed directly to the city clerk for distribution. And the purpose of tonight's first public hearing is to consider the proposed amendments to the 2026 budget to provide for additional appropriations in various city funds. Ordinance number 2026-14. Thank you.

Thank you. This specific item up for public hearing, again, is proposed amendment to the 2026 budget to provide for additional appropriations in various city funds, ordinance number 2026-14. And this public hearing opens at 644. Is there anyone who would like to provide testimony on this topic? Seeing none, This item is closed and the time is 644. The next item is the proposed adoption of the 2027-2032 Transportation Improvement Program Resolution Number 2026-78. This public hearing opens at 644. Is there anyone that would like to speak to this topic? Not seeing anyone out there, this item is closed. Public hearing is closed at 644. And we'll continue next with the public comments. Again, if you would like to provide public comment, please raise your hand. I'll call on your name and then approach the lectern here. And you have a two-minute time frame. So I see you right here in the front row. Please come forward.

Mayor, city council, city staff. Thank you. I'm Tom Bozar. I'm a real estate broker and developer and resident here in the city of Richland. I represent both Robert and Lisa Moult and in their request for potable city water to the two parcels of land along Dallas Road. And both Robert and Lisa Moult are sitting in the back, just in the back row in the red shirt and one of the white blouses in the back. So back in 2004, the Moultz purchased a 8-inch water valve to the east side of their property, and so they purchased that. And so today, there's 23 homes being served by that 8-inch water valve, yet the city has denied access to my clients, to Robert and Lisa Moll, to have access for potable water to their two parcels. So that's a major concern that I've had. And this issue has been raised to three members of city staff since September of 2025. And it's horrifying actually to know that city staff is making decisions that are not in their purview. and they even even as of yesterday have told me they're not going to raise the issue to city council and the decision of course from what i'm being told by city staff is the decision is yours and not theirs to make so since September of 2025, you know, we've gotten literally no action. Admittedly, city staff has not done anything to help provide potable water from that 8-inch valve that literally the molts have purchased in 2004. And still to this day, we're not getting any resolution from city staff, including a public's work director, city manager. city planner, it's devastating to understand and to see that this is a problem that's not being properly addressed. So I ask the mayor and I ask city council to provide that water to the mulch using the valve, the 8-inch water valve for potable city water for the two parcels.

Thank you, Mr. Brozar.

Thank you, mayor.

Is there anyone else that would like to make a comment tonight? Yes, second row there. Mr. Munoz.

Good evening. My name is Edward Munoz, and I live here in Richland. And I think you all know why I'm here again, the Poland House. I see that you're going to vote on a resolution tonight that will raise the contract amount for cleanup crew LLC from $100,000 to $200,000. That's our taxpayer money that you're going to use just to keep the sidewalk clear, basically. I went and I looked at Zillow and Trulia and Homes.com, and they're all setting the value of that place at $50,000. So putting $100,000 into that puts us $50,000 into the red, and adding another $100,000 puts us $150,000 in the red. And it's our money. It's our taxpayer money that... That's getting wasted on this thing. Sorry, I'm kind of passionate about this, if you haven't noticed. One of the things, valuing it at $50,000, you all know that's the default price for just the dirt, right? All our homes in Richland, the standard lots are worth 50 grand on your assessment. And then the structures are more than that. They add on to that. So basically these sites are valuing that place at $0. The house may be worth zero. It may be a lost cause once everything's cleared out of there, and then we lose all that money. I know there's a lien on the place, but you can only lien $50,000 out of it if it has no value. So I know you guys are kind of backed into a corner on this because it's in legal limbo right now, but something needs to happen. So we don't keep pouring money into this thing. It's becoming just a nightmare. So thank you for your time.

Thank you, Mr. Munoz. Yes, right here in the front row.

Hi, I'm I'm Randy Slovic and I live here in Richland and I noticed that on the agenda tonight we have an ordinance about failure to supervise a child and I just wanted to point out that every day adults speed through our neighborhoods in their cars. They speed through school zones, red lights, stop signs. They doctor their mufflers so their cars make more noise. They park on sidewalks, tint their windows darker than the law allows, ignore the requirement that a license plate be on the back and front of a car. Adults fly around town on scooters, electric bikes, and electric skateboards. They fly down bike paths without using their feet to pedal. They don't pedal anymore. So the police can't possibly cover all these infractions, plus the many, many other areas of police responsibility, you know, murder, shootings, burglary, assault, etc. Yet, here we are, adding to our misdemeanor list, failure to supervise a child, a matter that is very subjective and falls under social services and is covered in the Revised Code of Washington 2544. Police Chief Pilcher has his name attached to this, but I'm sure he's trying to make you happy, so he won't go the way of the last three police chiefs. So Kennewick and Pascoe have an ordinance, but it's like this. Mommy, Kennewick and Pascoe have an ordinance, and I want an ordinance too. If Kennewick and Pascoe jumped off a bridge, would you? I hope not. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lovick. Is there anyone else who would like to make a comment? Yes, white sweater there.

Hi, I'm Terry Stewart. I wanted to talk tonight about the intersection of the Columbia River data centers and the new housing that we're planning for the next 20 years. The Columbia River power and water has been a draw to the data centers between Quincy and Boardman. It's clearly valuable, but it's oversubscribed, and we're going to be importing power from Montana and Wyoming for the 2030 goals. So I think we need to look at every megawatt out there. And that brings us to the Atlas Agro. Atlas Agro's green fertilizer plant plus their data center is 700 megawatts. That is enough power to run 14 vitrification plants. But the vitrification plant has 3,000 employees. the Atlas agro will have about 300. That's a lot of power for just that. And the data center has no other mission at this point other than to share infrastructure costs and help the agro go together. We don't know what that mission is going to be. We don't know if we even like or approve of the services for that. But we do know one thing about data centers. They're going to have a huge heat load. There's going to be a lot of coolers and chillers and closed loop systems. And there's going to be a lot of backup power through generators. That's a lot of noise that needs to be mitigated, and we need to be aware of that as we're helping through that design process because there are neighbors within two and a half miles, and those neighbors are along the 240 Highway, and that brings me to both the new housing that's coming along will be affected as well as Horn Rapids. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Stewart. Is there anyone else who would like to make a comment? Yes, I see you hidden back there. Come on out.

Hello. Hi, my name is Jesse Romero. I'm from Sunnyside, and I'm coming to speak also against the development of the data centers. I believe that if we're going to build something, it should be for the people and not machines. I think that we should conserve our resources for the people also. I want to also read some names of some people who were also against the development but could not be here today. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Romano. Anyone else?

I don't see anyone raising their hand further, so we will move on. City Clerk Rogers, would you please read the consent calendar?

Items on the consent calendar have been distributed to the City Council in advance for reading and study, are considered to be routine, and will be enacted by one motion of the Council with no discussion. Council members may transfer individual items to items of business for deliberation before voting. Starting with the minutes, we have the approval of the May 19, 2026 City Council Regular Meeting Minutes and the May 26, 2026 City Council Workshop Meeting Minutes. I know ordinance is for first reading. We have ordinance number 202615, amending chapter 9.12 of the Richland Municipal Code related to miscellaneous crimes to add RMC 9.12.140, failure to supervise a child unlawful. Under Ordinances for Second Reading and Passage, we have Ordinance No. 202611, amending Richland Municipal Code Section 5.20.040 related to occupation tax on manufactured and natural gas systems. Ordinance No. 202612, amending the 2026 budget to include the 2025 budget carryovers. Resolutions for adoption. We have Resolution Number 202673, Authorizing WeatherWise Contractor Agreements with Vance Heating and Air Conditioning Inc. and ACES HVAC LLC for WeatherWise Program Participation. Resolution Number 202674, Authorizing a Grant Application to the Washington State Military Department's State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. Resolution No. 202675 Authorizing Award of Bid to Big D's Construction of Tri-Cities Inc. for the Columbia Playfield North Parking Lot Reconstruction. Resolution No. 202676 Authorizing Change Order No. 2 to Contract No. 39525 with Cleanup Crew LLC for On-Call Junk Removal and Hauling. Resolution number 202677, authorizing awarded bid to C&E Trenching LLC for the wastewater treatment plant anaerobic digester knife gate valve replacement project. And then lastly, under items for approval, we have travel authorization for Mayor Pro Tem Shane Van Dyke and Council Member Pat Holton. Thank you.

Thank you. Council members, would you like to pull any item for further discussion?

Yes, please.

Yes, Council Member Meyer.

I'd like to pull item number 8, ordinance number 2026-15.

Okay. Anyone else? May I have a motion and a second to approve as amended?

Move to approve the consent calendar as amended. Second.

Second. And a roll call vote is required.

Mayor Richardson. Aye. Councilmember Holton. Aye. Councilmember Jones. Yes. Councilmember Meyer.

Aye.

Councilmember Samuel.

Aye.

Councilmember Witten.

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke.

Aye.

Thank you. Thank you. The next item of business is the state the ordinance of Ordinance number 2026-13, and I have a script to read. This evening's closed record review hearing concerns a request to rezone approximately 8.38 unplatted acres identified as parcel number 1-3498-201-0595-008 from agricultural to medium density residential small lots and limited business. Since this review is to be conducted on the record produced by the hearing examiner, it is important to note the materials and information that comprise the record. The record for this matter consists of all documents and testimony, that were presented to the hearing examiner prior to or at the public hearing held in person at Richland City Hall on April 13, 2026, specifically the application materials, staff report, and attachments to the staff report, all correspondence, the exhibits, and testimony accepted by the hearing examiner at the public hearing and the May 4, 2026, Recommendation of the hearing examiner compromise the record for this proceeding. The City's adopted ordinances and comprehensive plans applicable to this project are included as part of the official record. These documents have been made available through posting on the city's website. Now please give your attention to the city attorney who has additional statements to share and instructions for tonight's closed record review process.

Thank you, Mayor. This closed record review is a quasi-judicial matter in which the counsel will render a final decision on the material that has been presented to them for consideration. A quasi-judicial action is defined as an action in which the counsel determines the legal rights, duties, or privileges of specific parties in a hearing. This hearing must be fair in three respects, form, substance, and appearance. In other words, the review must not only be fair, but it must appear to be fair. In light of the information that has been provided to counsel for review, all council members should consider whether they have any potential conflicts as follows. A demonstrated bias or prejudice for or against any parties to the proceeding. Any direct or indirect financial interest in the outcome of the proceeding which would affect council members personally. whether there has been any prejudgment of the issues prior to hearing the facts on the record, or whether there has been any ex parte contact with any individual excluding city staff with regard to this issue prior to this closed record review. If any council member does have any of these concerns or issues, now would be the appropriate time to make your disclosure. And I'm seeing none. Based on the information shared, does anyone present object to any council members' participation in this closed record review? I'm seeing none. And are there any objections on jurisdictional grounds from anybody? I see none. Thank you.

Thank you. Under state law, there is only one open record public hearing allowed in this proceeding. That hearing occurred in front of the hearing examiner on April 13, 2026. The City Council will base its decisions on the record developed at the hearing before the hearing examiner. Therefore, no new evidence is allowed at this time. Only those persons who participated in the open record hearing before the hearing examiner may address counsel on this topic. Comments from speakers must be in the nature of summary argument only, based on and limited to the facts in the written and oral record developed before the hearing examiner. In other words, anyone who testified in writing or in person before the hearing examiner is eligible to make the same comments to the City Council. No new evidence is allowed. If any speaker presents comments that are not based on facts in the record, anyone may make an objection. If an objection is made, the person speaking will stop until the issue of the objection is resolved. Council will hear comments in the following order. Staff's report on the application, applicant's comments on the application, public testimony on the application by eligible participants. Anyone intending to speak shall first be recognized by the Mayor and then shall come to the lectern when invited, speak into the microphone and give their name and address, and indicate his or her participation in the hearing examiner hearing, and after speaking write his or her name on the record sheet. Public testimony on this matter is limited to three minutes per speaker. Representatives of groups may be granted up to five minutes at the Mayor's discretion. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll open the public hearing at 7.03. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak to this matter? Seeing none, this public hearing is closed at 7.03. And Staff Member Mike Stevens, would you like to comment?

Thank you, Mayor, Council. Good evening. It's good to see you all again. The item before you tonight is file number PLN-T3A-2026-00004, which is a rezone request to rezone approximately 8.3 acres of property from agricultural to medium density residential small lot R2S and limited business use CLB. I'm not sure where my Thank you. So the site is located up off of Bermuda Road up in the swale between Badger and Little Badger across from Peachtree Estates. This is an aerial photograph of the site that was included in the packet that you have. The site is outlined in this light blue color and again is approximately 8.38 acres in size. This site was subject to a comprehensive plan change here a couple of years ago and in which the property was split designated between commercial which is the red and the orange color which is medium density residential. The commercial Comprehensive plan designation would allow for any of the different commercial zones, which CLB is one of those. It would also have allowed C2 or C3. The medium density, the orange portion, allows for either the R2 or the R2S zoning categories. So the request is to essentially mirror what you have as far as the comprehensive plan goes for overall land use, the majority of the site being utilized for commercial and then a small portion on the northwest to be utilized for residential. The property again, as shown here, is currently designated as agricultural, which is the green. This is a side shot of the property, which shows the limits of the CLB designation and the R2S limits as well. And then that is what they're proposing is for that Northern section, which is on the left-hand portion of your screen to be the R2S and the remainder to be CLB. It matches the comprehensive plan There was a duly advertised public hearing. There were a couple of folks in attendance at that hearing. However, they were more interested in what the actual plans, future plans for the property would be. At the time of the hearing, the developers did not have any particular plans to provide them other than it's likely that the area that is designated as R2S would be like townhomes, and then the CLB would be probably residential duplexes, or, excuse me, condominium-type residential units. The commercial limited business is... really the only commercial designation that allows for that type of residential use in the city's municipal code. So that's partially really why they wanted to do that was to be able to put apartments or condominium type units on the remainder of the property that's zoned CLB and that's really been their plan I think for several years since when they had requested this comprehensive plan the comprehensive plan change back in 2023-24 and that came before council here a couple years ago but didn't have the associated zoning updates with it now they're requesting the zoning to effectuate the comprehensive plan designations and with that I will conclude unless you have questions when you're ready

Thank you, Mr. Stevens. I'm just curious if they are intending rental properties or ownership opportunities.

I don't know if that's been determined yet.

Okay. Council, are there questions or comments? Council Member Meyer.

I don't have a question but a comment. That shouldn't be the only zoning code that permits that density of housing and I recommend the council consider broadening which zones we allow condo or apartment style building in. That's all.

Yeah, we do allow it in the multifamily, but multifamily doesn't fall under the commercial, obviously. So as far as the commercial codes go, this is the only zoning district other than C2, which would allow second floor and above residential units, but not the same type of condominiums and units that I think they're wanting to do there.

Councilmember Jones. Yeah, thank you for the presentation. So first I want to thank you and the city of Richland because I really truly believe that we have a great department that serves our community overall when it comes to planning and zoning and permitting. I've been dealing with another city myself. It has been very difficult. And every time I hear you guys present, I'm very impressed by your ability to really help people get those new households built in our community. So thank you. In regards to the zoning, you're right. Certain zoning only allows for mixed use. But that limits what sometimes people can do in a very irregular lot like this. Well, this may not be so irregular, but I agree with Councilmember Myers that we definitely need to address that so we can allow for more type of housing. And I know the state of Washington is moving away from the mixed use to allow to just have residential only. That's as of this year. So I definitely would like to see us change our city planning and so on to address more, to allow for more home ownership in the middle housing area. But again, thank you very much, and I'm very impressed by the City of Richland stuff and the way you guys do help our building owners and developers. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Jones. I will say that you will see a lot of changes when the Comprehensive Plan and associated development regulations come forth to you later this fall.

Thank you. Councilmember Whitten?

Yeah, I just wanted a little bit of clarification on the CMB limits or CLB limits and what Why condominiums in that zoning and not like the multifamily? Because did you say the multifamily allowed for condominiums?

DR. DAVID WESSELINER, M.D. : Multifamily does, but in order for it to be zoned multifamily, the comprehensive plan designation has to be multifamily. and or high density residential. Okay. And this is actually designated as commercial. Gotcha. And the CLB is what fits their needs the best. Understood. Thank you for the clarification. You're welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other comment or question? May I have a motion?

Move to approve ordinance number 2026-13 rezoning approximately 8.38 unplatted acres identified as parcel number 1-34982010595008 from agriculture to medium density residential small lots and limited business. Second.

For the first reading.

For the first reading? Yes. You didn't let me finish.

Thank you. And you seconded. A roll call vote is required. So clerk?

Mayor Richardson? Aye. Council Member Holton? Aye. Council Member Jones? Yes. Council Member Meyer?

Aye.

Council Member Samuel?

Aye.

Council Member Whitten?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke?

Aye.

Thank you. Thank you. And now we move to ordinance number 2026-14, amending the 2026 budget to provide for additional appropriations in the various city funds, presented by Finance Director Allen.

Now I have to share it again. All right, that would have taken me about four or five times longer. So that was, I appreciate Chad's up there. Good evening council and mayor. Today I have a presentation on the budget adjustment for several city funds. I've got two or three slides here. I've got three slides here just to kind of go over real quickly what's in this, and then if you have any questions. What you have here is just an overall overview of the budget adjustment in total. This budget adjustment is just roughly over $17.7 million. The bulk of it is in the general fund and the equipment replacement fund, and I'll walk through those. I've got slides for those to kind of break those down, so I'll end with those and start maybe in the middle. here with the CDBG home and the streets capital construction. These three are interrelated in that we received some additional funding in these grants and so this is to appropriate the, to be able to spend those grants and then also some adjustment to some transfers out to the streets capital construction. So those are rather small and those are tied to new grant revenue. The park reserve and the park project construction lines are related. The park reserve is approving some additional funds for the Columbia Playfield parking lot renovation and the West Village playground we're putting in there. This is to take some park reserve funds that transfers to the park project construction fund to do that work. There's also a transfer we'll talk about a little bit later between the general fund and project construction fund on an ecology grant. And then the electric and stormwater adjustments are tied to some equipment that I'll talk to you about a little bit when we get to the equipment replacement fund. Let's see. going all the way to the end. So in the general fund, there's roughly 12.3 million in adjustments. Most of this is coming from two items. Starting at the top here, the ecology grant, what that is, that's a transfer of money used, it's for a track D&E study that was originally budgeted in the parks construction fund. After looking at it closer, we decided it was probably more appropriate to be in the general fund for grant management and maintenance, and so we're just moving the grant revenue and the expense just from there to the general fund. That's all just a transfer for that one. The security trailer program, this is coming from Fund Balance. This is the trailers you see. We have one up, I believe, at... the uptown and a couple of parks. They have the tall pole and the blue lights and the cameras, and we've seen a lot of success with those cameras in helping us with some trouble areas in the city and in some of the parks. And so we're going to continue that program into next year and expand it a little bit. And so these funds are for that program. The police was able to get three grants, an ICAC, a JAG, and a CJTC grant. These funds will allow us, budget adjustment will allow us to spend those grant funds down is all. And so those are coming in this year. The next two are, very positive stories. I think you're probably aware of these. We received a commerce grant for some HVAC equipment replacement out at the shops for $600,000. So again, this is just approving the funds so we can spend those grant monies. And then the ecology grant for the Twin Bridges tire pile for $3.2 million to clean up that tire pile. So again, just need to appropriate those funds. The last line on here for $8 million is relation to the potential purchase of 1,200 for a police station. This project, this is still in negotiations. It's not been finalized or anything. We're doing a budget adjustment just to have it there in case that does go through. If it doesn't go through, then we'll just let that budget adjustment expire, but this gets us in the right order so that we're not signing an agreement and then having to go back and ask for the money later. The $8 million is not just the purchase price. There's some potential demolitions of some stuff around the building, some improvements, and some of the design work we have to get done this year. And so this $8 million would cover all of that work, plus the purchase, whatever the purchase price ends up being, if we were able to come to an agreement with the owner. And then in the equipment maintenance fund, we've got several vehicles. For the most part, we're moving existing vehicles forward about a year. The fire pumper truck, we are continuing to see very long lead times on these vehicles, 30 to 40 months out to get these vehicles. We're moving the budget forward one year so we can do the purchase orders. These things will still be purchased and the cash will still go out probably in a couple years when it arrives but in order to get in line we need to get a purchase order in place and we can't do that without the budget authority. The three garbage trucks, they're below that. This is tied similar to that, but also there's some emissions regulations that are coming up in the future that are going to make these vehicles much more expensive. And so we'd like to get these next three purchased before we have that big price increase. And so this will allow us to save some money on those vehicles. The top one there is a vehicle that we had that was totaled a while back, and we just need to replace that. The street sweeper. is just a replacement for one we already have. Again, we just need to get that ordered quicker. You'll notice there's some new revenue source. That's the transfer from the streets, the show motor fund, and then to help fund that, and then the rest of the money is sitting in the equipment maintenance fund. And then lastly, we are needing to get a couple of underground pullers for electric fund. One of these is an old vehicle that's up for replacement. The other one is having, it's close, I think it's about a year away from replacement, but it's keen to have some significant issues that could cause safety problems for our employees. And so we wanted to get that replaced now. We'll move the money forward one year. For all these, except for the two that are getting new revenue sources, this is cash that we have already contributed to our equipment replacement fund. And so it's not new cash. It's there for this purpose. And we're just kind of moving the timing around a little bit on it. And lastly, one other item that's not on here. Just today or yesterday, we got some additional quotes and some more information on an issue we're having with what's called the 300 building out of the shops. It's the fleet building. We've found that we have in their heating system, all the piping is corroded and starting to leak. And every time we fix a leak, we find another leak. And so we need to replace that piping with copper piping. We just received a quote, it's around $240,000. We'd like to get that in this budget adjustment so we don't have to come right back to you again. And so we will be, the plan is to put that into the second reading. If there's any questions, up in the next meeting to answer any questions on that. But you won't see it in this one, but it will come in the second reading. We will be budgeting that in our equipment maintenance department, and then that will be allocated to the departments that use those services. That copper pipe will probably outlive the building. The rest of the system is operational. You know, other than normal maintenance and, you know, replacement of parts as they go out, but we don't foresee a full system replacement anytime soon. So this makes sense to get that fixed and not try to replace the whole system that could cost two or three million dollars. So just wanted to get you a heads up on that. But I'd be happy to answer any questions if there are any on the budget adjustment.

Thank you, Mr. Allen. Council questions, comments? Council Member Jones.

Thank you for the presentation. The tire abatement fund, is that going to be enough for us to cure that environmental concern that we have going on there?

I believe so. I think that we've gotten quotes on that, but Joe probably has better information on that than I do.

The Department of Ecology operates a tire program, and the tire program manager received that quote from their vendor. And so this is a vendor's number.

So what happens, and let's say things change within the next couple months, and the vendors say, well, I have to increase the prices because gasoline prices have gone up, whatever that may be. There's always an excuse. Do we have to come up with that money, or they will be the one matching the difference? Just curious.

My assumption is if costs increase, we would have to find the money. We would be able to get more grant money. Now, there may be other programs out there we could search for, but we'd have to find it from another source.

I'm just curious because we may end up having to do that. That may be the worst case scenario, so it's better to prepare than be sorry. I think that's all I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. I have a question about the copper pipe. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? What causes that kind of corrosion and why copper?

So the copper stands up much better than I believe it's galvanized that we have in there. My understanding is that... And we might be stepping outside of my expertise, but I'll do what I can. Chris will just go like this if I'm saying something bad. My understanding is there's a water-glycol mixture that's in there, and if that's not maintained well, it can corrode the pipes. My understanding is that mixture, over time, has not been where it should have been. Or over time, as that gets heavier, it just kind of corrodes over time. Once we install this new system, we're going to have an annual review and check of this to make sure we're keeping it where it needs to be. This is a fairly old system. My understanding is that when we originally put this in, It seemed like a great idea, I guess, at the time is that we were going to burn used motor fuel or vehicle fuel would be what the power was for that heater, which is great because we got all kinds of used oil in our shop. But because of how dirty the oil is, it just corroded everything. And so years and years ago, they converted this current system we're in. And so... Yeah, the crux of it is that glycol mixture was out of whack for a while, and it takes a long time. It didn't happen overnight, but it just over time corrodes that pipe. The copper pipe is much more resilient, and we're also going to make sure that we're watching that closer going forward so we don't have the same problem.

Thank you for that explanation. Helpful. Appreciate your presentation. Council, may I have a motion to accept?

Move to approve ordinance number 2026-14, amending the 2026 budget to provide for additional appropriations in various city funds.

Second. Thank you. And a roll call vote is required.

Mayor Richardson? Aye. Councilmember Jones? Yes. Councilmember Holton? Aye. Councilmember Meyer?

Aye.

Councilmember Samuel?

Yes.

Councilmember Witten?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke?

Aye.

Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Resolution Number 2026-78, Adopting 2027-2032 Six-Year Transportation Improvement Program, presented by Mr. D'Alessandro.

We've licensed some intro music.

Yes. We could make it some fun if we did that, yeah. Some ACV series. Our music from Cars.

Right. Yeah.

I was told before the council meeting that if I would have turned this into a PDF, this would have gone a lot easier. But because it's in presentation slides, it made things much more difficult. So I'm sorry for that.

Good thing Chad's here.

Yes. That's one of the benefits of having an IT director. So thank you, Mayor and Council. I will very quickly go through this because it's all information that you've heard before in our workshop, and there's not a lot of need to go over and rehash a bunch of this, but I will quickly give a review of what this is. So the Transportation Improvement Program is required by state law. And from the state's perspective, it is a document that they use to plan for grant obligations to locals, like cities. So we're required to do it by law. It's a six-year plan. We do it every year. It is just part of our process. The other benefit to it is that we provide a transparent way of communicating to the public about our transportation improvements that we have on the horizon, our priorities for getting funding, and when we do plan to schedule those improvements, and how they actually eventually get funded. So it is a very high value document that we use to communicate to the public. And we've done quite a lot in that public process. We've posted that draft transportation improvement program on our website. We have gone in front of the Parks and Rec Commission and the Planning Commission and their public meetings and solicited their response to the TIP. Specifically, the Parks and Rec Commission reviews for active transportation elements in code. They're required to look at bike infrastructure in the city and make recommendations to council on it. There are elements of bike improvements and sidewalk improvements in the transportation improvement program. So they deliberated on that. Planning Commission reviews it for comprehensive plan compliance. And we then come to council for adoption of the plan and actually having our public hearing and giving the opportunity to the public to make comment. Tonight, nobody provided any public comment, which is fine. And both Parks and Rec Commission and the Planning Commission did favorably recommend this new TIP to council to adopt. So here's a bunch of projects. We've done very well getting projects funded. Now we just need to get projects out the door. And I won't rehash over these, but if you do have any questions related to any of these projects, just let me know. There are several pages of it. I just wanted to briefly touch on these three projects. These projects are the duper tail corridor improvements projects. That's, uh, essentially they're put into one big project that we're delivering. I did plan on originally removing these projects from the tip because we did plan on doing a 2026 construction delivery of it, but that looks looking more like we'll be delivering construction in 2027. So staying on the tip. So unfunded priorities, there's Gage Boulevard improvements, and then there's Central Richland Active Transportation improvements. What's different about Central Richland Active Transportation improvements, when we do have discrete projects to bring forward, we will likely amend the TIP in 2027 with those discrete projects. This is sort of a placeholder for planning work that we did to come up with those projects. So there's really only a few changes to the actual tip from the previous year. Some new projects, Snively Road and SR 240, Snively Road intersection projects. Those are for enabling access to the veteran cemetery project out in the northwest corner of the city limits. And there are also projects that we don't show on the TIP, like the annual pavement preservation program, which is a maintenance program, and our citywide transportation system plan, which we do plan to adopt in 2026, but it'll have a bunch of new projects that in 2028, the 2028 TIP, we will have a lot more projects to add to the TIP. So a lot more coming, just not this year. And because we are delivering a bunch of projects, there are a bunch of projects that we've removed from the TIP for the 2027 TIP because we are entering into construction in 2026, and they're listed right here. So there's the big list and a map of all those projects. There's quite a few. Where we're at, we are at the June 2nd City Council meeting. We did have a public hearing, and you do have a staff recommendation recommending to adopt the 2027 to 2032 Transportation Improvement Program.

Thank you for your presentation, Council. Are there comments or questions? If not, may I have a motion and a second to approve?

Move to approve resolution number 2026-78 adopting the 2027 to 2032 six-year transportation improvement program. Second.

Thank you and a roll call vote is required.

Mayor Richardson? Aye. Council Member Holton? Aye. Council Member Jones? Yes. Council Member Meyer?

Aye.

Council Member Samuel?

Aye.

Council Member Whitten?

Aye.

Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke? Aye.

Thank you.

Motion passes unanimously. And Chief Pilcher, nice to see you, but I don't have you on the agenda. Is this?

That's the 2026-15, the one that we pulled from the consent calendar.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, number eight. Thank you.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, City Council. Though it has the city attorney's name under it, I'll be speaking on the ordinance because I am the one unbidden by anyone else who requested this be forward for your consideration this evening. The Richland Police Department has identified increasing concerns involving juvenile misconduct and related quality of life issues within the community, including repeat juvenile offenses, unlawful operation of minibikes, and other traffic-related violations, and negatively impacting neighborhood safety, including that of juveniles involved and the public at large. In response, the Richmond Police Department reviewed ordinances utilized in neighboring jurisdictions and consulted with law enforcement and prosecutorial personnel regarding the effectiveness and enforceability of similar provisions. The ordinance is intended for use in situations involving repeat juvenile offenders, egregious incidents, or circumstances where additional accountability measures are warranted. Officers will commonly issue advisement or warning notices to parents for initial incidents in order to communicate notice prior to subsequent enforcement action. This is intended to provide both notification and encourage compliance without further enforcement action. RPD also consulted with prosecutors familiar with enforcement of similar ordinances. Prosecutors advised that enforcement is generally more effective when parents or guardians have prior notice of the juvenile's unlawful conduct. The objective is not to criminalize reasonable parenting efforts, but to provide a tool for situations where a juvenile's misconduct is directly linked to a parent's lack of supervision. The ordinance substantially mirrors language used in neighboring jurisdictions and is intended to provide law enforcement with an additional enforcement and accountability tool in circumstances involving ongoing or serious juvenile misconduct, particularly that involving the safety of the juvenile and or the public, while also preserving officer discretion to issue warnings or advisements where appropriate.

Thank you for that. Council, further comment or question? Council Member Jones.

Yeah, thank you for the presentation. I really appreciate you for doing this. This is a big problem. Maybe people are not very familiar with what's happening. I do hear it on a daily basis from my husband who has to arrest his kids on the streets They are not driving on the sidewalk. They're driving on the streets using these e-bikes and motorcycles that the parents buy for them for Christmas. One of them just got hit and got killed in West Pasco. This is a normal daily occurrence. Day, night, it doesn't matter. Why are we doing this? I don't know why would any even question why we're doing this. I think we're looking out for the safety of our community, which involves all, you know, regardless of age, but who is responsible for those kids are the parents. And if the parents are not going to be responsible for what their kids are doing while on the streets, Penalties have to be handed out some way, somehow. Taxpayer money is being used every time you have to send out an officer to hand out a ticket to this individual. If this individual gets hit by a car, now you have to use the EMT to take them to the hospital. Again, more tax dollars that is being used. If we really want to use that philosophy, okay, why we're doing this to save money to the taxpayer. But in reality, we're saving lives. These individuals, these kids do not know what they're doing in these bikes. Parents are buying them and people are questioning why the city of Richland dare to even put such municipal code on our city code and I think we should be thankful to you for looking out to what happened in other communities like in Pasco where a kid already got killed because he got hit by a vehicle because they were not paying attention. So thank you very much for doing this and I think we definitely need to communicate maybe to the city why they need to really support this code instead of trying to push back and make us sounds like we're really going after good parents when in reality we're just going after the parents that are not paying attention to their kids buying these vehicles and send them out to the street and say good luck to you make it to school now on your own. So thank you very much for doing this.

Our goal in this is safety both for those juveniles and those they may impact.

Thank you. Council Member Meyer.

Yeah, I've seen those motored little pit bikes and the e-motos running around. Speaking as someone who himself rides an e-bike, my wife rides an e-bike, we make our kids turn the pedals. They have no motors on their bikes. But a lot of these pit bikes and e-motos I've been seeing flying around are already illegal. They exceed the limitations for Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes, which are already laid down. And if this gives RPD a way to hold parents accountable for giving their kids illegal e-motos, then I'm fine with that. That's not, that clause in this ordinance is not why I pulled this off the consent calendar. Why I pulled this off the consent calendar is the word unreasonable. In number two there, it says, fail to exercise proper parental control of a child 12 years of age or younger by leaving the child without adult supervision for unreasonable periods of time. I do not believe that there is a definition for the word unreasonable. I think if you asked everyone in this room what an unreasonable period of time is, you'd get about 15 different answers. And I don't think that that's an adherable standard. I don't think that's attainable. And I don't want to put RPD in a situation where they're not sure if they can do anything because what does unreasonable mean? And so while I'm fine with the other clauses here, I can't support this legislation with the phrasing that was presented to us today. What is an unreasonable period of time? If my 10-year-old rides his bike two blocks to Leslie Groves Park and hangs out with his friends for a soccer game, is that an unreasonable period of time? Some people are going to say yes, other people are going to say no. without knowing what the definition is, not only can parents not make a decision as to whether or not their kid wants to go be unreasonable in a park, but also RPD doesn't necessarily have clear guidance on when to step in. And not to put too fine a point on it, but I moved to Richland because it was a place my kids could be unsupervised for an unreasonable period of time. They got to have the experience I had back in Gen X where I rode my bike with my friends all day and came home when the streetlights were on. Lots of people today would consider that unreasonable. I think it depends on the kid. And the kid depends on the parents. And so once again, we're in a position where we've got all these different people living in the city. Nobody's going to agree on what unreasonable means. And so I would like to see this ordinance come back to council without the unreasonable periods of time. Either strike it completely and let parents decide what their kids are ready for, or set an actual finite definable target for periods of time. That doesn't depend on everybody's random interpretation of a word. Thank you.

Comment. No? Okay. Council Member Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke.

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. First, I apologize for not being on video. I recently finished a 12-hour drive. I'd like to offer a counterpoint there. Unreasonable, to me, allows some flexibility, and I don't think the intent is to focus on the time frame. The intent is behaviors that are inappropriate that that minor may be doing. If unreasonable to me gives the flexibility for an officer to make a judgment call. And I trust and support and I've seen personally the great judgment that our police staff have. I believe if we get overly prescriptive, putting in ranges, it's just going to cause contention. And honestly, I think headaches for our enforcement officers. I would propose leaving it as is and trusting the judgment of our officers to interpret what is poor behavior and what's not, and then move that along. I think Chief Pilcher has made a pretty substantial case that this isn't a, I just saw a kid that wasn't, you know, couldn't see the parent of a swing set. This is someone that's causing significant and repeated harm or potential safety problems with the community. I support it as is.

Thank you. Council Member Holton.

Yeah, I can't comment about the language, but this has been a big problem down where I live. And these are gas scooters, too, that are commonly on the bike path and on the street. And there was a confrontation with a citizen between this whoever it was commonly driving this illegal scooter, was just met with expletive deletes. And so there's definitely an attitude problem and a flagrant violation of what they're doing. And so I think we need to do something.

Thank you. Council Member Whitten.

I'm fully in support of this. I just witnessed, like two days ago, a young individual riding an electric motorcycle, dirt bike, down the sidewalk. Thankfully he had a helmet on and everything, but I think that's a bit extreme and these things need to be held. We need some enforcement effort or something that we can allow enforcement on this. However, I do also understand and support Council Member Meyer's position on subsection 8 number two, with the, say, broad definitions that are in that language. I also understand Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke's position that I do trust Richland Police Department and their police officers and their their judgment on these things but the language as it's written is essentially trust me bro to the citizens of rich london i don't think that we're doing them a service by passing legislation or an ordinance that is that overly broad i would like to see that one stricken completely because I really don't think that we need to have that in place in order to to accomplish the mission that we're trying to achieve here with this. Do you agree with that or is there something that the other parts of this ordinance don't cover that is covered by that that line that would be useful?

First of all, officers use, per the Supreme Court, reasonableness factors when it comes to the use of force. So they are very comfortable doing that. Also, day to day, they use their discretion. An example, a person brought up a concern about whether their child was left unattended. You can say child unattended and you can't really make a decision based on that. You need more context. If that child is unattended perhaps at one of the parks for a few minutes, that is not an issue. If a child is unattended at the corner of Dupertail and Queensgate, that's a completely different circumstance due to the traffic flow at that location. So those are the types of things, the types of context that have to be applied truly to most every law we enforce. There are some that are must arrest but reasonableness and discretion are things that officers are expected and trained to apply to incidents.

Thank you. I think that this addresses poor behavior, and it's time that we need to accept this and approve this ordinance. But I don't want to become over-prescriptive. That's not our role, but we need to allow and consider safety for these children and allow some consequences for their actions to be able to bring them to a safer place. So I accept it the way it is. Councilmember Meyer, do you have another comment?

Yes, I do. We've heard arguments so far on this topic from a lot of different angles. We've heard arguments that we need to regulate the illegal motorbikes, whether they're electronic or not, and I agree with that. We've heard arguments that we need officers to be able to intervene when a child is in a dangerous situation, and I agree with that. We've heard no arguments Not one person has brought up an example where the amount of time the child is unsupervised is relevant to the enforcement of this action. And Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke said the intent of this is about bad behavior and dangerous behavior. And I agree with that, which is why I think it's important to remove the parts of the ordinance that don't align with that intent. Nothing else in this section of law talks about how long the child has been unsupervised. In fact, I'm even in favor of leaving in the second half of that statement or leaving the child unattended under circumstances which create a risk of bodily harm to the child, which I think accurately targets what our intent is, where an unreasonable amount of time has nothing to do with all of the safety and other issues that this thing targets. And yes, I do understand that we trust our law enforcement officers to interpret these things and make the right decision, but that's a two-way street. when you trust somebody to make decisions you are also placing a responsibility upon them to make those decisions and if our law enforcement officers and in the next phase our local prosecutors and defense attorneys weren't already well underwater with work then it would be fine to task them with this additional burden but I don't see any justification I have not heard any good reason to insert a period of time clause into this otherwise sound, safety-oriented legislature. And doing so merely increases the workload on our already overworked officers, whether that be responding to calls or making these decisions in the field. And so I very strongly feel that that specific clause should be removed from this for that reason. And I will repeat, All of the arguments and discussion we've had so far has been focused on that safety aspect. I want to keep that because I agree with it. But period of time has nothing to do with whether or not the kids behavior is safe. And nobody 20 years from now in the city of Richland is going to come back and watch this video to ascertain what we meant when we passed the law. So we need to pass what we mean. rather than hoping that people pick up on the vibe later. Thanks.

Council Member Van Dyke, I see you out there, but Council Member Jones came in before you, so I'm going to go her direction first.

So I understand everyone's position. Yes, you know, it could be vague, and there's, you know, I think putting a number there kind of limits the flexibility of how that officer may apply that code. But I think we need to really hear what the attorney has to say, because there may be a reason why the language was written in such a way. And I'm not a lawyer. And I would like to maybe hear her point of view in regards to these, and obviously,

It's not my practice to give the council legal advice in open session. I'd be happy to have an executive session conversation about this ordinance if that would please council. But I will offer that I would not bring an ordinance to council for consideration that I believed was invalid from its inception. And so the way it is crafted, I do not believe has any legal infirmity. I understand arguments being made, and if it's the majority of Council's desire that we modify as is suggested right now, that could be perfectly acceptable too. But as it sits, it is not concerning from my perspective.

Thank you. Councilmember Van Dyke.

Yeah, thanks. I believe we just heard from Chief Pilcher that The reason that he brought this up is because reasonable timeframe makes it enforceable for them and made it a valid point, I believe, that we trust our officers daily to make reasonable decisions. I applaud Chief for bringing this up. I want to be careful of a slippery slope that we would be interpreting legal issues specifically for our law enforcement and making specific demands of those things from our experienced professionals on that. I support it as is and would move that we approve the first reading of this ordinance 2615. Or 202615, excuse me.

So we have a motion on the floor. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. This requires a roll call vote.

Mayor Richardson? Aye. Councilmember Holton? Aye. Councilmember Jones? Yes. Councilmember Meyer?

No.

Councilmember Samuel?

Yes.

Councilmember Witten?

No.

And Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke?

Okay, motion passes. Thank you for your time and presentation, Chief. So, at this time, we go into Deputy City Manager Shishol, if you have a comment for us.

No comments tonight, thank you.

Okay, thank you. I'm going to start over here with Council Member Samuel.

Madam Mayor, City Council, I just wanted to review a couple activities that I attended here recently. I was honored to attend the Memorial Day service at the Sunset Memorial Gardens. That service was really well attended by City of Richland leadership, Benton County, and the public. Every large flag that was displayed at Sunset Gardens, which there were over 1,200 large flags displayed there, is from a person who gave the ultimate act of service to their country and whose bodies rest in Richland. It was a sobering reminder that freedom is not free. I really appreciate having the opportunity to attend that. Secondly, I attended the planning commission meeting where they continued review twice a month right now and comment on the city's update to the comprehensive plan in preparation for presentation of the full plan to city council this summer. The current comprehensive plan was drafted back in 2017 when the population of Richland was 53,410. Today, in 2025, the population is now 65,258, which is an 18% growth. If we maintain our current growth rate, we'll be at 77,004 by 2035, which is a remarkable number. I also thought it was really interesting as we review the comprehensive plan that as part of that plan, back in 2017, there was a vision statement that was written about what we thought we wanted Richland to look like in the future. And it said, Richland is a progressive, safe, and family-friendly community that welcomes diversity. It's noted for excellence in technology, medicine, education, recreation, tourism, and citizen participation. This is a dynamic city situated on two rivers actively supporting opportunities for economic development that are in harmony with the area's unique natural resources. It'll be very interesting to see how we decide to change our vision statement in the updated comprehensive plan. I was also honored with Mayor Richardson to attend the community AED launch at Badger Mountain Community Park. This will be the seventh publicly available automated external defibrillator that the city has made available to the public. Defibrillators are at Howard Amon, Columbia Point Marina, the Columbia Playfield, Horn Rapids, Badger Mountain Trailhead, the top of Badger Mountain, And AEDs on average increase a person's chance of having and surviving a, let me say this the right way, AEDs on average increase a person's chances of surviving a cardiac arrest by over 15%. So I think it really speaks to our community's emphasis on safety and community health by making AEDs available. Finally, I attended the Tri-City Chamber of Commerce's Regional Advocacy Roundtable, which focused on the role of the Benton Franklin Council of Governments on our local city and county. The significant amount of growth that's being projected in the next 25 years is really amazing. And this, more than ever, requires us to plan for the future and to collaborate and pool our limited resources. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Holton.

I too attended Memorial Day and Richland was well represented, very patriotic. It was my first Memorial Day service as my dad was essential services and running the railroad during World War II. And I found it very patriotic and appreciated my ancestors who were so grateful to live in this country. I also have now completed the tour of the wastewater, the landfill, and the water treatment plant, and the Hanford site. well-informed about issues in that regards. Parks meeting if someone found out if someone comes to you as a council member with a request the quickest thing for them to do is to go to the city website and there's a button that says I want to and and then push submit a service request. And that will get you the quickest person to deal with that situation, which I find numerous people come to me. It's fun. I enjoy that about the job. They're also planning for a retreat coming up July 18th, and doing planning and visiting the many, many parks around town. Let's see, visitor and convention meeting. Eric Greger was in attendance, which I found personally interesting, as he was the one that was attacked by the alligator. And so it was good to see him. Also, LIGO gave a presentation. We are the only LIGO with a visitor center in the country, probably in the world. And we talked about doing a presentation to the city. And also, if council is interested in getting a tour, I've never seen it. I think pretty easily available getting a tour of LIGO, but I have never seen it and would like to do that. So that's possibilities. Also, because of various factors, including government shutdowns and cost of fuels, Revenue from hotels and motels are down everywhere across the board, except for Richland, which is up by 4%. So we're doing a good job over here, even in a tough economy. Oh, and apologize to fire and police. Last time I commented that people don't... They moved to Richland for our beautiful parks, but not for our fire police. But I was humbled by that we were designated the best medium-sized town, the safest medium-sized town in the state of Washington. And so I wanted to acknowledge that about our police and fire keeping us safe and how important they are to us.

Thank you. Council Member Jones. Nope. Nope. Thank you. Council Member Whitten.

I'll also say that I was also in attendance at the Sunset Garden Memorial Service. It was great to see everybody there, and it was an amazingly patriotic event. It was really cool to see that place filled with American flags, unfortunately of the fallen, who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our country. But it was an excellent ceremony to give. some respect to them and I'd also like to give a shout out to the days page squadron for their flyover the PT-23 training aircraft and for the VFW post 7952 Cook Erickson honor guard for their presentation during that ceremony I also would say that I attended the Tri-Cities Recruit Academy for the graduation of class 26-1 and RFES had over, well it was half the class that graduated there so that was really cool to see and I welcome all of them to the Richland Fire and Emergency Services and I hope that they have a wonderful and long career with Richland. I will also say that Pat Holden's comment about the LIGO Visitor Center, I have been to LIGO and I have done the tour, and I would absolutely recommend everyone go there. It's a blast. And the science that is behind that facility is literally mind-boggling. So I would highly recommend everyone who hasn't gone to that to make the time to go do that. And I would also say that it was fun to see the hydroplanes in the area for practicing. Get a little preview for water follies. It's always awesome to see. I'm really glad that the weather was amenable to that and the river was cooperative. Those things were flying across the water. It was awesome to see. So I can't wait for it. Can't wait for them to come back. That's all.

Thank you. Council Member Meyer.

Yeah, I'll start with something that's been, we had comment about it today. I've been, of course, getting a ton of emails about it, people talking to me about it. Everybody's worried about data centers. And I'd like to point out that nobody so far has brought up objection to actually processing data in the city of Richland. So I would suggest to people that it's not necessarily the existence of a data center that folks are worried about. It's the externalities that come with that data center, right? It's the effect that it has on its surroundings. And so I'm going to keep saying this until we build some strong safeguards in our in our city code, but if we're worried about somebody affecting the quality of our drinking water or if we're worried about somebody introducing pollution to our city, if we're worried about somebody consuming a tremendous amount of a specific resource, then we need to craft our policies to prevent that from happening, whether it's from a data center or from any other person or organization that might abuse the resources that we have. We've made some good starts. I think there are a lot more opportunities for improvement. And I'll bring up again another example. We heard today about a bunch of technologies associated with data centers that would mitigate a lot of these concerns. But we always hear it in the terms of, well, they could do this, or we could do that. And so I think we continue to urge the city of Richland to pursue policies and code changes that ensure that the only way to operate is the clean way and the way that doesn't impact our citizens. And it's easy enough to say that they have to bring their own power, but all that means is they have to buy it on the open market, which is the same place we buy some of our power. So if they're bidding it up, There's not a lot we can do about that. And so we need to make sure that we are in a position to win as far as getting these things landed, getting the businesses up and running, getting the data processed, and doing it without negatively impacting our community. And then the last thing I'll say is for anyone who might need to hear this, if you get in touch with city staff about an issue of great import to you and receive in response the process that you need to go through in order to resolve that issue and you don't like that process, that does not constitute an emergency on the part of city council. And it certainly doesn't justify being rude or aggressive to the professionals who work for the city of Richland. And there have been a lot of, there's been some vernacular about how, well, it's not up to staff, it's up to council. Well, guess what? It's all up to council. We hire a city administrator. We trust that city administrator to hire good staff. And because they're professionals, we trust them to do their job correctly. If somebody's not doing their job correctly, then we need to hear about it from the city manager. And under no circumstances do we need people harassing or using invective that is inappropriate for the workplace in any communications with our city staff. I get that emotions run high, but the fact that you don't like a given process is not a justification for this rude behavior that I've been seeing in certain circumstances. So please don't take it out on the people who work here. We need them and we like them. We'd like them to stay. Thank you.

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Van Dyke.

Thank you so much for saying that. I support that wholeheartedly and I appreciate that response. I also am It's interesting as you have opportunities to get to speak with other people in different cities and other officials. We are incredibly blessed with the staff that we have here and I appreciate the support and defense for them. On a similar note, I'm excited to see in the future, hopefully soon, I believe the city's doing some pretty good research and due diligence on how we can appropriately mitigate the risks of our data centers and look for a win for everyone. Then I think my favorite part of last week was being honored to join Ryan in the Recruit Academy class. It was wonderful to see them all there. They won some really great awards, and the video that they made was hilarious and fun. I appreciated the 16 weeks they put into that. I'm looking forward to those great people joining our city to help protect us. That's all, Mayor.

Thank you. I'd like to just comment on LIGO. When we have guests come into our community, there's three things that we have them do. Hike Badger, walk along the river, and visit LIGO. It's really an interesting place. And if I recall correctly, they did make a presentation here probably within the last couple of years. So I encourage you to get out there and check it out. I'd like to just comment about this council. I really believe... I've never seen a council more engaged, showing up, attending things. Council Member Samuel, the way you worded that experience was just perfect. Thank you. I am just really thankful and grateful for each one of you. I really appreciate the staff also. So Council Member Meyer, appreciate your words. And so with that, This meeting is adjourned at 8.09.