City Council - Regular Meeting

Well, good evening. It is now 06:30 on Thursday, 03/12/2026. I'm going to call this session of the Ridgeville City Council to order. Would you please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance led by councilor Brickell. Thank you.

Alright, you may be seated. Miss Julie, would you please call the roll?

Council Member Davis. Present. Council Member Fevella. Here. Council Member Wells. Here. Council Member Burkle.

Here.

Council member Hamilton? Here. Mayor Quotem Shipman? Here. Mayor Cole?

Here. Thank you very much. Mister Stewart, any late changes to the agenda?

No late changes, mayor.

Alright. We're gonna move on. We are gonna kick off the night with a proclamation in honor of Women's History Month. In order to do that, I've asked mayor pro tem and Iris award nominee, Judy Chipman, to read the proclamation this evening.

K. Go ahead. Alright.

Whereas through protest protest and activism, generations of women have fought for justice, equal pay for equal work, the right to vote, and for presence of opportunity and whereas International Women's Day originating in nineteen o nine from labor movements in North America and Europe was recognized by the United Nations in 1975 to celebrate women's achievements and a call to action for social and legal equality. And whereas in 1987, Congress

designated March as Women's History Month to recognize women's often overlooked contributions and to celebrate women's social, economic, cultural, and political achievements both past and

present. Whereas And whereas every year the National Women's History Alliance distinguishes a theme for the month. The theme for 2026, Leading the Change, Women Shaping a Sustainable Future is to honor the women who have and are reimagining and rebuilding the system to ensure long term sustainability, environmental, economic, education, and societal. It recognizes powerful leadership of women in creating a future that is rooted in equity, justice, and opportunity for all. And whereas when we are commemorating the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of United States independence this year, it is important to recognize women's role in shaping the story of America and celebrate the progress in gender equality and shed light on opportunities for improvement.

Now therefore I Judy Chipman for Matt Cole, mayor of Ridgefield, hereby proclaim the month of March as Women's History Month and I encourage all the residents to learn about and reflect on women's contributions to our nation's history and to continue to push for gender equality progress in the Richfield community and around the world. Dated this March 2026.

Thank you.

And here to receive it this evening, gonna have chief Doria come up.

I

think she might say. Oh, she's to answer it. Yeah.

Thank mayor Cole, council, members of the community. It's an honor to accept this proclamation. I've had the privilege of serving this community as a police officer for thirty seven years, but my roots in Richfield go much deeper. I grew up watching my mother, Gladys Doriot, serve on the city council before becoming our first female mayor. She taught me that leadership is about stewardship and lifelong commitment to public good.

We see that same spirit of service today in the women who serve on this council, and specifically, Mayor Pro Tem Shipman. Her recognition today as an award finalist, an Iris Award finalist is a testament to her leadership, her commitment to service, and her dedication to the well-being of our community. Thank you. I am grateful to accept this proclamation on behalf of my mother, dedicated women of the Ridgefield Police Department, and on behalf of women everywhere, seed and unseed, whose resilience and service continue to strengthen our community. Thank you. You.

Alright. At this time, I would like all of our women staff, our women leaders, our, young women from our junior youth council to come up for a photo so we can all be together.

It's good to be in powerful company.

Okay. We're going to move on with our agenda.

It is now time for a public comment. Anybody Anybody wishing to address the city council regarding items not subject to a specific public hearing may come forward at this time to the podium or use the raise hand feature located at the toolbar at the bottom of your Zoom screen for controls over the phone, press 9. For raise hand and press 6 to mute or unmute. Please state your name and limit your comments to three minutes. Is there anybody in the room tonight who's wishing to give public comment to the council? Come on up, sir.

Sorry. But, anyway, I'm just my question is, are there any city projects that are being done that are more serious safety sensitive than a stop sign missing in an intersection? And how long well, I mean, mean, the post is already there. The the sign the signage is already there on a post. It would just involve screwing a stop sign up to the post.

So it's been three weeks. Tomorrow will be three weeks since they knew about it. It hasn't been there for a long time, but and it's I think I know why it's not there. The first developer that developed in that area, it was a 90 degree turn, and it didn't require a stop sign. The second developer brought the road up from his development, and now it's a t intersection.

And there's no stop sign there. And I think the the city would even be, you know, liable if there was an accident there because they've known it. It's it hasn't been there for a long time, but they've known about it from me for at least three weeks tomorrow. But anyway, thanks.

Thank you for your comment.

Did we capture what intersection that was?

Did you say you said Helens View and It's

North 10th Street Street in Helens View. North Helens View Drive.

Okay. Thank you. Staff audit. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you.

There anybody else in the room wishing to give public comment this evening? Miss Julie, anybody online?

Not seeing anyone online.

Okay. Hearing none, then we were

going to

go ahead and

close public comment, and we will move on to our consent agenda. Council, I accept the motion.

I move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

I'll second.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed. Thank you. Council motion carries. And we will move on to we have a couple of presentations this evening. First up will be the Youth Commission progress update. This is our first update since we formed the Youth Commission. So I'm especially excited for this and to see what you all have been working on and how we can best support you. So we'll go over to Ms. Nontenaris.

Yeah, I have the great honor of introducing our youth commission members that are here tonight. I think we have seven of the 12 members who were able to come. You will hear from Bayla James who was chair of the commission, and Liz Abara, who is vice chair. They have been working very hard on the assigned topic of e bikes and how to deal with e bikes in the city of Richfield and have a progress report for you. And I will turn it over to them.

Thank you. Oh, actually, I should introduce also Megan DeMoss, our communications program manager. Manager, She she has has been been the the staff staff liaison liaison for for the the youth Youth commission. Commission. We'd just like to say thank you, just starting off, for inviting us here to talk to you and to give you our progress and our plan moving forward.

So we have had six meetings so far that have helped us that have helped us create better relationships and learned how to understand how to approach this topic better. In the six meetings, we have sorry. I didn't bring my glasses. We identified the main the three main issues that we have found with e bikes in our community, and and we have met with people who have helped us determine the crucial information to approach this topic.

Speaking of the topic, we've determined the three main concepts that we wanted to focus on to allow us to have a more efficient progress going forward. Those key concepts are connection, education, and safety. For connection, we really wanna focus on determining how to support better connection for users across the city of Ridgefield. So we wanna really identify what these users are using these e bikes for. Is it to get from place to place?

Is it for just Hangout? We wanna learn how to connect with these users to help us better identify just the importance of them. And where we need to continue to connect our community. Yes. And then for education, we really want to focus on how we how we educate the people who own these e bikes and how we really show them the dangers and, obviously, the fun side of them.

And we really wanna focus on recommendations for these e bikes. And just we were talking, and we were talking about how the different pieces that you can manipulate on an e bike. So, for example, you can change it to go faster. You can take safety regulations off of it. There's multiple things that a user can do to manipulate and possibly endanger themselves with these e bikes.

So, we really wanted to hone in on the different concepts of e bikes and what it really what our e bike really consists of.

Yes.

Our steps going forward, we first want to interview bike shops and riders. So this includes walking in, talking to the workers, the owners, the buyers, etcetera, and just understanding how they're using them and how it can better us to learn, like, how to to approach the situation. We have talked about observing riders and their habits and going on a trail tour just to see who's using them, how fast they're going, and just to watch them and make sure that we understand how these are actually being used. We have talked about emailing or maybe sitting down with the parks and infrastructure staff, again, just to get more questions answered because we already have talked to them and because more questions have come up since we've done our research. And then survey, both the youth about their riding habits and sending out a survey to the schools and then also surveying the public about about their opinions on how e bikes are being written in our community.

And finally, our end goal. So we want to compile information relating to e bike use, safety, and education to put forth a suggestion for a policy and campaign on e bike regulation. And we are going to work very hard to meet this end goal. Thank you. And is there any questions?

Thank you very much. Council, any questions for the youth commission? I'll start with councilor Burkle.

Not so much a question. I just wanna sincerely thank each and every one of you for your efforts in putting together information that will improve the safety of our ebike riders and our citizens. Thank you so very much and I have to suggest it was an excellent presentation. I learned a lot. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Hamilton.

Thank you. Thank you guys very much. I continue to be so impressed with all of you. It's been such a breath of fresh air. We had hopes and dreams for this commission, and you guys have just come in here. And I really want to thank you for how much intentionality and work you put into it. I could have a full blown conversation with a lot of questions right now that I wrote down, but I will refrain. A few things, though. So you said you mentioned key committees. What have the key committees been that you guys have identified?

So the key committees have been connection, education, and safety. And we broke that into who wants to work on which topic.

Okay. I did write those down. Didn't realize those were the committees, so that's awesome. Now just being around school, obviously, you're in the school district. What's your feedback been from your peers hearing that you're on the committee? Being the pilot program, I'm curious to see what people are saying.

Well, the main feedback I've heard right now is simply just why. Why are these implements going in place? Why do you want to do something something about about it? It? And it's just simply the fear of it going away. People just think that we're just gonna come in. We're gonna take it away, and everything's going to be terrible. But there's some some people are optimistic about it. They really wanna hear. They're really interested.

They think that having something in place could really benefit our youth and really show them the dangers of ebikes because people don't make the smartest decisions, and I've seen it firsthand. Just the other week, there were some kids doing donuts in the school parking lot after practice, and it's just not the safest thing. And I'm really impressed by, our peers and their interest in trying to implement something that could really keep us safe.

Yeah. Totally agree. So this is my last one, I promise. What have been what's been your biggest surprise so far being on this commission?

I think just how much more that I've been on the commission, how much more I've seen, and how much it really urges me to work harder to bring a solution to you so we can implement it for the safety of ourselves and our peers. And I've just been hearing so many more situations since I've started, and it really brings light to if you know the issue, then you're gonna see it more.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you, counselor. The

other two counselors stole some of my thunder. But one of the world. Can't that's coming alongside and helping mentor do you on what things that they think that you guys can bring forward?

I would say majority of our peers are totally on our side. They hear what we have to say, and they do see the dangers of it. So I would say that that's really cool, and I really appreciate the fact that they care so much about it. But, obviously, you're not gonna have everyone agree on everything. And we knew that going into this, so we knew it was gonna be quite

a

bit of work to try and get something that at least would get some people to agree on it. But we have some peers that just simply see it as kids are gonna be kids, they're gonna have fun, and nothing's ever gonna stop them. So at the end of the day, we can't really change everyone's mind, but we can try to do our best to at least keep people safe.

And I personally, and then we all do, I'm gonna speak for everybody on the council, appreciate you so much doing it rather than the rules coming from us, coming from internal. And they will be get a lot more respect. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. Mayor Potem.

But remember that you you aren't going to be the enforcers. All you're all you're going to do is present a program for us to give them. But thank you much for the work you're doing. We really appreciate it. Sounds like you're doing a lot of great work. Thank you. Thank you.

Great. Councilor Favelo. Thank you. What a great joy to be here during Women's History Month and like literally studying history because you are the first woman on our youth commission in the city of Richfield. And I think you should be really proud of you. I am really proud. So today in Washington, this is our last day of our sixty day short session. It legislated will end today. And out of that was a Senate bill speaking about e bikes. Have you all talked about that? Are we kind of following that? Do you know anything about that? And how would you incorporate that to the work that you're doing?

We have definitely talked about this as the session has gone on. Each meeting, we bring up the progress and those sorts of things. We see that as kind of a path for us to take, but also see that as maybe we shouldn't take some of those steps. So we definitely are taking that into consideration, and we talk about it a lot at our meetings.

That's awesome. Thank you so much.

Great. Councilor Davis?

Yeah. I guess I'll join Councilor Wells in saying that my thunder was stolen by a lot of my colleagues, but that's okay. All good things for you guys. Yeah. I just really appreciate your work. It's very comprehensive. I think you guys are taking the right steps. And I am very excited to see the final recommendation that we'll be able to work with. So appreciate you.

Great. Thank you, counselor. And I don't have any additional questions. I just want to share my appreciation for the work you guys are doing and the research you're going after and all of the outreach you've been doing. I think that's a critical component to figure out from your peers, from the rest of the community. I liked hearing that you were even going to the source about people who buy e bikes, all of that. So I think you guys are on the right track and looking forward to seeing what you come up with for a final recommendation. And if you need any support from any of us, please feel free to reach out. But you have you have a great staff helping you out. And, yeah, so we're looking forward to seeing the work you do. Councilor Hamilton, we'll close out with you.

Thank you. I am really, really holding myself back here. But I'm just so interested and so fascinated, and I'm so proud of all of you. Just being the pilot program for this, if you could create a wish list for the next program, what are some some things that you think that we could integrate next year that you don't have right now?

That's a hard question. I would say everything right now, at least just walking into this, has been pretty good. That's great. All I really appreciated the our first meeting and how we all kinda got together, and we got to really talk to one another. Because if I'm gonna be honest, I came in knowing a couple people, but not really on the deeper level. And I feel like I've connected with a bunch of my peers, and I really appreciated that.

You don't have to have a negative. I just I'd love your feedback. That's it.

Always positive. No negative. Beautiful.

I love that. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, commissioners. It's good to have you. Good to see you and again, we look forward to seeing what you come back with again. So, yeah. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

This evening. This is the 2026 digital budget book and performance metrics presentation. Mister Johnson, over to you, sir.

Thank you, mister mayor and council and residents. So, what we want to do tonight is just show you, a little bit of our budget book and then the performance metrics, that are embedded in the budget book. The performance metrics, when we get to those, those are really our report card back to council and the community for how we're meeting your seven, overall goals that you set for the city. As you can, remember, during the budget process, anytime we come back with a a new ask, operations. It could be a capital project, new positions.

One of the requirements for that is to come to you and show how it meets at least one of those council goals, preferably multiple of those council goals. So what we're gonna do is just kinda show, both both community and council how you navigate to the budget book. I believe this is the fourth year that we've had a digital budget book. Reality, you know, I don't like saying this, but people don't like looking at PDFs and going through 300 pages. But a digital budget book where you can go through and you can really pick out the pieces that you do want to look at is a lot more realistic that we're going to get participation in looking at it and really kind of seeing what we're doing as a community, to offer the services for our residents.

So, on our website, Megan's gonna navigate for us. This is if you go to the government, tab there and then go to finance, that'll get you to the page, where we have all the finance information. We have two ways on the, the the page here. You could scroll down and find it. Or if you look at the, navigation bar on the left side, you see city budget and city budget book.

The difference is if you click on city budget, it's gonna go down to where all of the the, budget information is with multiple years of both PDF and also a digital budget book version so that you can look at that. The one that said city budget book takes you directly to the 2026 or whatever year the most recent digital budget book that we do have. So we're gonna go there so we can kinda show, what we've done for this year. So it'll take us to an external site. This is the the cover page, that would be both on the the PDF and gonna show a lot of information.

And click on the the arrow there, it'll bring down, several different, things to look at. Of course, the most important is our city manager's budget message because he likes to, tell you about the budget and and what we're doing. But there are multiple things in that introduction that kinda gives you an idea of what the budget book's about, what we're doing, what our requirements are, for statute and things like that. Gives a little bit of history of the city demographics. The only drawback on the demographics is it is from the Census Bureau, and it's always about two years behind.

So, take that, you know, with a grain of salt, but it it does give some information and gives a little bit of history of how Ridgefield, came into being and the particular type of government that we are. It'll give a calendar, showing, you know, what our process is through the year to get an adopted budget as well, policies and things like that with links out to our policies that are on our website. So if anyone's interested in in what our policies are for overall financial management policies, debt issuance, things like that, they can go and they can read our our policies. If you click on the, executive summary, that's gonna show a summary of itself, gonna our long range financial plan, which is a six year summary of where where we think our operational piece will be and, what we're forecasting for our revenues and our expenses. So you can kinda look at, what the cost of government's gonna be over those six years.

And then we have our short term organizational factors. That's really kinda looking at, what are some of the threats to the city? What are some of the positives? You know? Because there's always something that we're gonna have to look at. So what are we planning for that we may have to overcome? And then what are the things that are, we're really seeing as positives that are helping us out? Then there's our personnel changes, and that just kinda talks about changes year to year and and our staffing. Then we're gonna skip over to the fund summaries. We'll come up back to performance measures here in just a moment.

Fund summaries, this is one that's really good for the community to go to. This will actually show, in each different fund or type of fund, what is being done in that fund. What's the the budget there? There's some context in there of what each of the, funds are used for, where the the revenue sources come from, how how is it, funded, and what's the expenses used for. And then each fund, what that budget is, and then some context about, where we're at and some comparisons to the previous year as well.

So that that will be the fund summaries. Let's go ahead and go to the next one. And that's department summaries. This will be specific to departments. This would be, executive, it'd be city council, it'd be parks, which is really, wrapped into public works.

So it'd be all of public works. You know, it's the administrative human resources, public safety, which is our our PD. So it'll kinda give all of that information, both what is the organizational chart for that specific department and then what does that department do and some of the department objectives and, criteria of what they do as well. Then as we go to the next one, so also you can see the key performance indicators for each department. That's gonna kinda fit in with those performance metrics that we'll talk about here in just a little bit.

Then as we go to the, municipal debt summary, we're gonna have, something we talk about here on one of the business items here in a little bit. This This really talks about all of our debt capacity, what we can do, and also what is our debt and what is our, the amount that we're paying in debt service each year as well and how long does that go for each of the different issuances that we have. And that's where it'll talk about kind of the debt by type. Now the one I think a lot of people would be really interested in is the next section, the capital improvement plan and the capital projects. Both of those are, kinda together.

The capital improvement plan is really talking about what is our plan. We use a one year plan because we're on an annual budget. So if you click on on that, it's really gonna show us what is our full capital budget for the year and what are those projects. And so you can get to those well, this part will actually talk about, give you the dollar amounts and what, different, area that those projects are gonna be in. When get to the capital projects, it's gonna actually show each and every capital project, what the project's about, how it's funded, what the full cost is, and you can click in each one of those and get the details on every single project as well.

A lot of this will also tie into our Richfield roundtable so that, we pull the information from there and try to keep it as, close to up to date as possible so that we are showing the information, especially on these bigger projects, say, like a pioneer widening or or things like that so that we can make sure that we're getting that information out to the community. It's also a resource for staff internally. So if they have questions about how a project that I'm working on is funded, especially since there's different criteria for how we may have to bid it, how we may have to work on it if it's federally funded, state funded. They can go there and find out that as well. So this is the the capital projects part.

So a lot of good information in there. So that's a really good one, to go look at. And, council, you can kinda look at this for the different things that you have approved as priority projects as well. So let's see. I think we have one more then it's just our appendix, appendix, which is it's just, you know, our glossary and and some, adopting ordinance stuff.

So, really, that's that's not one too many people are gonna go to, but it is something that's required when we go for our award each year that we do have that in there as well. So let's go back to the performance measures. So, again, what performance measures are is this is our report card back to you as counsel. It takes your seven overall goals that you first approved six of those in 2014. And then a couple of years ago, you added a seventh, goal as well around communications.

And this really shows, what we're doing on a day to basis, the different, tasks that we have every day, how that fits up into those seven goals. The first things, though, here, let's go down to that price of government. This shows how the tax dollars that we get from the community and the fees that we get from the community, how much it it, costs our community members in relation to what the average is or what the industry standard is. As you can see, for, for us, we're actually below the typical cost is around five to 6%, and we're well below that. So that's, you know, a positive for the city and how we do.

The next section, general government tax revenues, this is kinda showing this fits into what we've talked about really since 2019, where we talk about that transition from a a dependence on residential construction to more of a commercial retail sales. And with that, this is showing the growth that we've seen in how we've managed the change over, from that residential construction over to what we're seeing today. And this helps, tell the story of what we've done there. And that's a credit to what council has done with their direction and then what staff has done to build that. And then this is the big one, obviously, is retail sales and use tax.

That's a big part of that transition. And this shows, kind of where we've gone. The big piece is, as you can remember, back at one time, construction, was the biggest part of our retail sales tax, whereas that's not a sustainable source because you're not gonna have construction ongoing at the level that we had at that time. Whereas we wanna be in that 25 to 30% range of construction dollars out of retail sales, because once a onetime project is done, it's done. We want more of a sustainable sales tax, which is in that 70 to 75% range, and this is showing that we've really started work towards that, and we're getting to the point where we're very close to that 70% right now.

With that, we're gonna go down to the city council goals, and I'll let Megan kind of, walk you through. Megan DeMoss, our community our communications manager, she, worked with us this year to really set up these pages and, add this in. So instead of being a really kind of a static, page that we did in the past, now we have graphs that we're able to update throughout the year. So as we get new stats, we can add those in, and we can continue to show the work that we're doing throughout the year. So I'm gonna turn it over to Megan to talk about that.

Alright. So as Kirk mentioned, these are organized within the seven goals that council has adopted. So there's a quick summary of those just to start out. And then if you expand that menu, we've got each of the goal a kind of shortened version so that it's friendly on the table of contents. So if we drill down into those goals, as we set this up, we asked all of our staff to kind of help us figure out is there anything we're missing, any type of work that is happening that's fitting within those goals, which all of our work fits within those goals, and what what is not being captured yet.

So we have added a few new ones last year and updated the old ones to make sure that those are being really representative of the work that '20

updated the twenty

twenty twenty five five figures figures to to be be accurate for the end of the year. Originally, we put this together in October. So we had year to date figures, and now they've been updated for the 2025. And we'll get a first quarter twenty twenty six update in there in a couple of months. At the bottom below all those charts, you'll see strategies and action items.

So we took the projects, the things that we're working on that are within the budget or that we are planning to do in '26, and we organize them into these strategies. So underneath here you'll see strategically plan for future growth. We have Envision Ridge Hill 2045 the comprehensive plan update and then updating the pros plan so what you'll notice is these are not split out by department because they're organized under the goals so you'll see the work that's happening across the city that's contributing to these goals all within those strategies. And each goal has those KPIs, and it has strategies and action items underneath.

There's a lot.

So, we'll be, we're looking forward to keeping those updated throughout the year and kind of track that progress instead of just looking at it once each year.

And to add into that, this is the first year that we've done this format where we've added in where we can update these throughout the year. And we're also working on adding more of the the strategic goals down below and some more context to that. So what we're asking is, counsel, if you could review that, if you could give us ideas of things that you would like to see that you think, adds more depth to, our report card here back to you. And then if anyone in the community has ideas as well, we'd be welcome to hear that because we would like to, enhance this and make this better as we keep going on. So our intention is to make this better each year and provide, more important information.

We look at things like you saw a couple of the, action items were current, projects that council approved through the 2026 budget. But we also tie this to our six year business plan and things that are for that specific year as well. So that we're trying to tie everything together to make sure that we're, showing, you know, what we're doing and then, tying it together, as she mentioned, the city of how every department works interchangeably together to try to meet those goals and and show the community work that we're doing. With that, any questions that you may have? Suggestion.

Mister Johnson.

Some feedback?

Council questions. I'll start with Councilor Davis and we'll work our way down this way this time.

Cool. Thank you, mayor. I am just so impressed with the the the depth of information and the clean usability of this. You know, looking at how we can push this out effectively to the community, I I I would love to entertain that, you know, periodic update. I guess my only curiosity would be if we were to do something like quarterly, would there be would there be elements with the updates that maybe wouldn't tell the whole story about what's going on?

Like, would would catching something mid year, would it sort of skew what's happening or not? I mean, they're gonna have access, but, like, is there a way to minimize the chances of that? Because I wanna be able people to have access to this, you know, as as often as possible. I just don't want to be confusing in any way. And if we're doing the updates and maybe something hasn't been brought into fruition, making sure that it tells the right story. So just, I guess, how do we alleviate that on the front side so we can still be as proactive with getting this in front of the people as possible?

Yeah. That's a great point. And and we've worked with each of the departments that provide statistics to verify when's a a good time. Should they be quarterly? Should they be semiannual or annual? There are some that, yes, it it's a better idea to update on a different, timeline, and we would. Yeah. Okay. And then as far as pushing this out to the community Mhmm. Megan does send this out through social media and different avenues quite often throughout the year just to make people aware that we do have this.

And I guess the one last question I had, I found the price of government metric to be fascinating. And I just did. And I was like, oh my gosh. You know, why is ours lower? And my curiosity is is ours lower kinda because our we're

seeing

of that And

is that from the City the of Richfield, like, that kinda brings that up. What would what would go

Well, price of government, yeah, that's possible that it's it's due to the income levels out here. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of things. There's also the fact that, you know, with our expenses, we try to be as as, you know, close to what we need to spend versus once. You know, that needs once discussion that we have every year during budget and try to, make sure that we're spending wisely. You know, that's a big part of showing that metric is it's tax dollars. We want to show that we use them wisely.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but being close to half is that's remarkable.

Yeah.

And we can get more information on that too Okay. And come back to Yeah. For the tax part of it, yeah, that just shows, you know, the difference in the growth that we've done and the the real plan that we had, you know, from, you know, August ago to really start to build that up. I mean, it it really it's been talked about by council for a lot longer than that but we really put something in place more in 2018 and '19. We really work towards that. So, just shows that that work is is definitely fruitful. Yeah.

Alright. Well, thank you again. I I appreciate you and your team and and Megan for all that you guys have done for it as well. Thank you.

Thank you, counselor. Counselor Favella?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, mister Johnson and miss Megan for this. I spent some time today looking on the website just as a community member, you know, kinda thumbing around. And what I appreciate is the level of transparency and performance type information that is available to the public.

I also think this to just any community member could be overwhelming to read trying to thumb through information. So and please forgive me if I have overlooked something because I thought I was, like, checking every nook and cranny, but we have our Access Ridgefield app. And how cool it would be for just a community member to have, like, a quick dashboard of frequently asked things or what is turning that data into like a public service performance metric that is just at a quick glance. Like we did this many potholes in this timeframe, forty eight hours or whatever it was that it was reported or these are how many policing events happened this month or this quarter or this six months or whatever it is just so we have, we can do many different things like storm drain cleaning completion rate just at a very quick glance and then having the rest of this information for people who really wanna go into the weeds with it. But making sure that we have information that captures different learners and different readers and how they kind of conceptualize information would be really beneficial.

And that's all I have.

Great, thank you, Councilor Mayor Pro Tem, anything? Okay, Councilor Wells, anything? Nothing. All right. Councilor Burkle.

Thank you. Just one quick question, please. Is this information currently available to the public? Yes. It is. Do we have any idea how many people actually access this site and look at these numbers?

We we can't get that on our own. We do have to ask the, vendor, who created the software to provide that to us. I have talked with their CEO about, making that available as something we can go on because our website, we can go check, you know, how many hits we get on a page. They are currently working on that to provide that. We do periodically go out to them and ask them how many people do land on the page and what they're looking at. So we do try to get that information, but it's a little cumbersome to have to always go back to them and get it. So we are working on we keep bringing it up all the time about getting that access ourselves.

Thank you. Councilor Hamilton.

I don't have a lot. I just I want to say thank you for this. I think this is incredibly thorough, incredibly transparent. It's like it it's a real point of pride that we're so transparent with our residents. I don't know if this is just kind of thinking about what Councilor Favela just said in just accessibility. If there is something that makes it really easy for someone to maybe submit a question like right within this, like right under it, or something that they don't have to then go to another place to go to a ritual roundtable, or something else where it's just like, hey, did this make sense to you? Or do you have a question about this? Some sort of interaction that might be good for the user that isn't quite digesting things as quickly as all this information is giving. But other I mean, that is just a real teeny tiny thought that came into my head after this. After seeing this, I'm so incredibly impressed.

And thank you for all your guys' hard work.

You're welcome. And and that's a good point. I'll ask them if they can ever put a question. It's not in there now where it's available, but I will ask if that's a possibility. Now, councilor Hamilton and Favela, both of you mentioned transparency. We also have a transparency portal, that shows everything in current years and compares it to previous years, and it's updated on a monthly basis. So we do have that on our website as well. Great. So you can find that on the finance page as well.

Great. Thank you, counselor. Just for me, I love this. Love anytime we can get something interactive. I'm with you, Mr. Johnston. I don't think people love to like scroll through PDFs. I don't think it's effective. So the fact that you can kind of highlight things and it gives you an interactive tool to do that. To that end, I was curious as Councilor Burkle was about the usage of this from the public and what the metrics are from that.

It would be kind of cool to capture that now and then hopefully promote this periodically through some sort of outreach effort throughout the year just to see if we can increase viewership about it. And I say that because oftentimes we get asked about a lot of different things that happen within the city and why is the city doing this or that or and this is a comprehensive answer. I mean you can really find it. I think we'd eliminate a lot it'd do a lot to really inform people. So it'd be cool to see more people start using this depending on how many you're using already.

So I do have a question around the council goals and specifically the KPIs that are in there. And that's really interesting because I have not admittedly seen KPIs attached to our goals before. And so with that, I'm curious, like where did these specific KPIs come from?

So this came a couple different things. It was, talking with the leadership team. Previous, it was the management team. We kinda talked about it. And then, as the finance department, we kinda talked about some of the things that we could get and then talked to different department heads of what they could provide. This year, we brought it to the leadership team, which is all the leadership within the city and asked them, what do you think is important to show how you do your work and how it supports the seven council goals? That's how we kinda came up with the ones that we have right now.

Yeah. That's great. I I I think it it could be really good. I and I just as a suggestion is as we kick off budget advisory committee as we get into budget season, it might be good to review those as part of that committee and then take a look at the KPIs and see how we're performing like later in the year just to see like where are we tracking it. I think some of the stuff would be really good for council to be more familiar with as far as the KPIs and are we hitting those targets? And are there metrics that maybe counsel has that would we should include in this as well? But I really like that portion of it as well because it gets a little more granular and it helps us understand. Now that I know this is here, I'll probably go back and track it. But be good to see more of that. That's all the questions I have.

Any other questions from counsel? Any other thoughts from that? Okay. Really, really cool. Thank you very much for sharing this. And we look forward to seeing how we do this year.

All

right. Thank you. Appreciate Thank you.

That concludes our presentations this evening. We're going to move on to our business section of the agenda. Our first item of business is the first reading of ordinance number fourteen seventy five. This would be their approval of the issuance of a limited tax general obligation bond for the Ridgefield Community Center and mister Johnson will let you stay up there and have the mic.

Great. Thank you, mister mayor and council. Again, what we're looking at today, it's the first reading of ordinance number fourteen seventy five, the approval of the issuance of limited tax general obligation bonds, which you'll hear LTGO, for the acronym, acronym, for for the the community center. So what we're, bringing to you, and then we'll bring at the next meeting for, hopeful adoption, is really we're looking for the sale parameters and the authorization for the city manager and myself as finance director, to issue the bonds to be able to construct the community center. So what we're looking at for the, sale parameters is approximately 15,500,000.0 in issuance.

And what that is is 15,000,000 for the construction of the community center and 500,000 for the issuance cost or roughly 500,000 for the issuance cost. With the true interest cost not to exceed 5.5%, and I know that, probably it's gonna hit you is a little bit higher amount. Our, finance, adviser, Duncan Brown, is in the audience. He presented, to you a couple of weeks ago and mentioned a week before or roughly that, before the presentation, it would have been around 3.65. We're not saying it's going to be 5.5.

We're just wanting to give us flexibility of where to go, at the time that we do the sale, which is still to be determined. And with the economy, it it could change, you know, almost day to day. And then we're looking at a twenty year term. What that would be is not to exceed, the end of, 2046 for final payback of the bonds. And we still are looking at, what type of structure, whether we wanna do some interest only initially, whether we wanna do level payments.

That's something that with the authority that you would give, the city manager and myself, working with our our finance adviser and our, bond attorney who is online, if there's any questions, we would be able to make that decision, at the time that we're issuing. So the steps that will happen is is obviously counsel, review the, bond ordinance, then go to hopeful adoption in the second reading. As we get closer to determining what the sale date would be, then we would decide on a date that we would, go to, S and P, which is the credit rating agency that we would present to. We currently, on our last two, I believe it's our last two issuance, we are double a stable. Is that well, I I guess we've been double a stable since our our first issuance that we did back in 2017, and we've maintained that since.

So that's where we're at currently but every time you issue, you do have to go back for a new credit rating for that particular issuance. So, we would set that up. Then, we would have the the sale and we have not decided yet whether it's gonna be a negotiated sale or whether or not we're going to go out for different bids but we will work on that and then see where we're at at that time. Then, at that point, typically, you know, a few weeks to a month or so after the sale, that's when we would receive the funding which would be timed as closely as possible to when we go to construction or have the need for the funds. With that, there's really not a lot more.

We've already done presentations on, what bond issuance is, you know, kinda what we would be looking at. I guess the financial impacts over a twenty year term, we're looking at about 21,900,000.0 in estimated cost over the the twenty years with about if it was a level payment plan, about 1,100,000.0 in debt service annually. Similar to the other bonds we've issued, we would first go to our real estate excise tax fund. The other, options are park impact fees on this and then, obviously, general fund. So any revenues that would come out of the, community center, if any, which I think would be very limited, could also, help with this as well.

So that's kinda we're at. If there's any questions that you have, if we need questions for our financial adviser, he's here. If you have legal questions, our bond attorney's online.

Wonderful. Okay. Thank you, mister Johnson. Council, we'll go to questions. I wanna start with councilor Wells.

Yes. Kirk, could you explain to us what the difference is between negotiated and a bid for

the So, negotiated, do you want to have our financial advisor. He came up, so let's let him present. But he would be the best one to answer that question.

Good evening. Duncan Brown with BFM, financial advisor, to the city. It's a great question. The city's actually used both methods of sale in the past. A negotiated method of sale is when the investment bank that purchases the bonds and resells them to investors, that bank is selected up front, and they work with the finance team to structure the bonds and prepare them for sale.

And then, as the name suggests, you negotiate terms with them, interest rates, coupon rates, and compensation for the underwriter. That's all negotiable on the day of sale. The other alternative, which is what the city's used most recently, is a competitive method of sale. And in that case, the underwriter is not selected until the day of sale. What we do is we work with city staff and bond counsel to prepare basically a bid package and use an archaic but still functional and trustworthy website to offer the bonds to bid to investment banking firms throughout the country.

So on the morning of the sale, the city, we sit there and we click refresh, refresh, refresh on this website. And the city gets multiple bids from different banks, and the lowest interest rate is the winning bid. So there are pluses and minuses to each approach. As I said, the city has used both in the past, depending on the circumstances at the time. And it's pretty common for a bond ordinance to delegate that authority to make that decision because of because it is it can be somewhat market dependent as to what is the best approach.

Can I jump in real quick? I'm curious on like the bid process and how we select one. Are we obligated to select the lowest bidder like we do in other contracts? Or do we get to pick do we see all of the offers and we get to pick which one we want?

Generally speaking, the city any municipal issuer of bonds that uses a competitive method of sale will award those bonds to the lowest interest cost.

Okay.

Because everything else about their bid is formulaic. It's not like there isn't an opportunity to kind of attach terms and conditions to a particular bid that are going to be different from a different bank. They're all bidding the exact same set of bonds, the exact same structure. The only thing that is different is what interest rate they're willing to pay.

Right. I'm just more curious like if there was like maybe a quarter point difference or something like that, but the institution, the bank that'd be offering that, you could say, well, there might be a quarter point lower, but they don't really have the best serviceability of that or there's been some reputational issues that we don't associated with versus somebody who might be maybe a quarter point higher and somebody who would be more repeatable that we'd want to work with? Does that matter at all?

I think you may technically have that ability under the term under, again, standard terms of a competitive sale. I would say it's very uncommon. And if there were concerns about working with one bank or another, I think that might be a good argument for a different approach to the sale in the first place.

Sure. Other questions, counselor? No. Councilor Hamilton.

Thank you. So I was just thinking about our potential repayment sources. And given the current slowdown in real estate transactions and the use that we've done with the PIF credits, are we confident that the revenue streams that we're looking at are going to cover that without drawing onto the general fund? Or is that an inevitability?

Well, that's a little bit of a difficult question. But we did run the numbers last year as we were kind of looking going into budget and asking you to approve the project with 15,000,000, as debt issuance. So we did, through the next six years, where we would be, and the majority of that would be paid from both and PIF. A small amount would have to come out of, general fund on that is, what that did. Now with the economy, could that change?

Absolutely. But that that depends. It could be a little bit, you know, the economy, there's not a lot of house sales going on right now that can affect reading. That could affect, you know, what we're gonna have to do out of general funds. So that is a possibility. We do have to look at that. So that is consideration. I know, Duncan mentioned, our, debt capacity, we have that. Then there's a question of affordability. That's what we're talking about. And we have forecast out where we would be Okay through the next six years.

And one of the other unknown variabilities is revenue associated with the facility, is that when we're looking at it, we look at a debt issuance. And then what do we have as far as revenue streams to repay that debt issuance through traditional sources. What we are not funneling into that is any revenue streams associated with the facility. So, that's something it's also sort of an unknown and some something that we're working through in our modeling.

Councilor Burkle.

Thank you. Just a quick question. Are we comfortable with the fact that 15,500,000 will actually cover the project?

With the estimates that we've, gotten from the architect at this point, that would cover our portion of the project. And then the, it's a private partnership and the private entity will be covering the balance of that project for the recreation side and then there's you know, some shared cost with, you know, the site itself and common walls and roof and things like that. At this point, yes. We do have it out for bid now. So, when the bid comes in, we absolutely will know better. Yeah. We won't go out for sale until the bid is in at at this point and then we will have a better idea of where we're at.

Thank you.

Councilor

Favelo. Mister Johnson and mister Duncan, I know that we touched on this a couple weeks ago but when we when we go to take out this bond, where does that put us at our debt capacity that in the next four years we have a major project that needs to do? We need to go out for bond again. Are we comfortable enough that we can do this and also have cushion to be okay to bond out another in the event that we had to.

So with the assessed values going up for 2026, when we ran the capacity numbers, we were about, I think it was 24,000,000 roughly. With this, we would still have about 9,000,000. We will probably see our assessed values continue to grow despite where we're at in the economy. Prices are still going up. Values are still going up. So we we do anticipate that's gonna go up. We're actively looking for as many grants and outside funding sources that we can get for that project as well. So the hopes are that we're gonna get a good portion of that project paid with outside funding too. And we do have time to look for that.

And one other piece of that puzzle is if you remember, when we did the tax increment area work, there was approximately $47,000,000 that we were anticipating that would be available of revenue to be able to bond from, to be able to pay bonds based on the revenues for those tax increment areas. The first bond that we did was approximately $30,000,000. So that leaves about $17,000,000. So if you think about, we have $9,000,000 in bonding capacity right now. The next bond that we are we we would be seeking for a transportation project is in 2030.

And there's all in about $17,000,000 worth of repayment. So that's the that's the delta is that we're looking at $17,000,000 being what we need to raise. We have $9,000,000 in capacity right now. That will continue to increase and get closer to that $17,000,000 We just are not sure how close by 2030.

And just to add to that, we're talking about councilmanic capacity at So this if it came down to the point and it was a community priority, there is always that option. We can go out and ask the voters as well. It's not the plan at this point, but is an option. So we've got time to figure out where we're going to go from there.

Yeah. I mean, just to chime in real quick. I really appreciate the work that you guys have quarter

a

standard method of of building and pursuing a project like this. So I'm comfortable with the parameters that we've laid out. And I look forward to, I guess, seeing how the modeling unfolds. And yes, I just appreciate the work that you guys put in.

Great. Counsel, you guys did good because you asked all my questions I was going to ask you. That's good. I am still curious about some of the revenue sources that you touched on, Mr. Johnson. I'm not going to ask anything about that right now. But as we go, I know that this is about the approval of the bond. But I am curious going forward about some of the revenue sources and how we can kind of offset some of this, maybe even expedite it, get it quicker, especially with the public private partnership. But overall, thank you for the good work on that. Mr.

Duncan, thank you for coming down here today. And yes, looking forward to another competitive process and getting this thing underway. Council, any remaining questions before we wrap this item? Okay. If there is not, then, miss Julie, would you please read the ordinance into the record?

Ordinance number one four seven five, an ordinance of the city of Richel, Washington authorizing the issuance of or more serious of limited tax general obligation bonds of of the city in the principal amount of not to exceed 15,500,000 to finance cost of developing, constructing, improving, and equipping the city community center and to pay cost of issuance to bonds providing the form, terms, and covenants of the bonds providing for the disposition of the proceedings of sale of the bonds, delegating authority to approve the final terms of the bonds and providing for other matters related there too.

Great. Thank you very much. Okay, this is first reading only and it'll come back to us couple weeks? In two weeks. Two weeks. Okay. We'll see you again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, our next item of business this evening is the first reading of ordinance number fourteen seventy six. This is amending RMC chapter 33.1. The affordable housing sales and use tax to establish a residential rental assistance program. Mayor Johnson.

Thank you again, mister mayor and council. So just a quick background because we have people here that I haven't seen the last time we talked about this is back in 2018, or 2018, '19 time frame, the state, approved substitute house bill 14 o six, which, when that was adopted, it provides, funding through a dedicated sales and use tax credit for affordable housing. The city or counties were able to take, advantage of this. And it's a new funding source for us for twenty years, but it's not a new tax for those that are out, purchasing things. It's a credit against the sales tax portion that the state has.

So, with that, it provides funding for affordable housing programs, eligible uses. We're acquiring, rehabilitating, or constructing affordable housing. And then also for cities under a 100,000 in population, rental assistance. So, the maximum amount is that's received is based on fiscal year twenty nineteen taxable retail sales. It's good from when we approved the, program in 2020 through 2039.

The amount that the city receives caps about 24,500 per year. So it's not a lot of money, but that's, a source that we didn't have for something that there's also a a huge need in the community. So, ordinance number thirteen nineteen to continue the background, this is what council approved in July 2020. Again, it provides that funding source through the sales tax credit. Options, for use were presented to the city council, at that time.

Council chose, to build the fund balance until adequate funds were available for use and then determine what to use the funding for. Council directed staff to research rental assistance options in mid twenty twenty five. So myself and the community development director, miss Lust, met with multiple agencies to kind of talk about what's available, what can we do. We reached out to other communities to offer rental assistance programs. We talked with nonprofits to kinda see what was available out there.

Our current fund balance at the 2025 is just under a $138,500 and again, we get about 24,000, 24,500 per year. So what we looked at and we did a presentation to council earlier this year at a study session, and we were given, direction on some parameters that they wanted, we met with a couple of local nonprofits who already, talked with the community about, assistance needs at the Family Resource Center and Compassion three sixty. So what we are looking to do is partner with them, to offer a residential rental assistance program. So the purpose of the residential rental assistance program is to assist Ridgefield residents who are tenants living at or below 60% of the area median income who have a temporary short term need for rental assistance to maintain their housing. The criteria that we are directed, to look at was grant assistance can cover the full monthly rental payment, with each household having a maximum lifetime grant amount of $5,000.

The total of all grants for any year shall not exceed the adopted budget amount established by council each year. We will need to come back to council with, a supplemental budget later this, spring, to identify the the amount, and council directed us to bring a budget amount for 2026 of 50,000. And then come back to you in 2027 with, any information on how the program's working, what we're seeing to see if there's any, adjustments that need to be made. Eligibility for the program, you have to be a tenant residing in the city of Ridgefield at the time of the application. You need to submit an application, including all financial records, to show the applicant's household income qualifies as a low income household at or below 60% of the area median income and submit a signed landlord agreement.

So, part of the statute is we have to pay direct to the landlord. We wanna make sure that the landlord is accepting that funding. We wanna, you know, help the, resident maintain their housing during that period of short term, need. So that's kind of what we've done. We've talked and, we do have representatives from both the Family Resource Center and Compassion three sixty here, supporting the process. We've talked to them at length about this, and there's definitely a need in our community. You know, I I know we talk a lot about we have a a high income level here. There's need. And we're seeing that. They see it all the time both for food assistance, for rental assistance.

Graciously, they've accepted, the fact that they'll work with us and help look for people that do need that that assistance and send them to us with the information needed so that we can make sure that we can turn this around as quickly as possible, and then we can go ahead and get some assistance out to the community, based on what council approves. So with that, we're doing it it will be an adjustment to the code setting up the funding source and allowing for this particular program. What we've also talked with, our partners about is, tracking some of the information that that you mentioned at the, study session that was important. Why do people not, qualify? How many people are coming in so that we can kinda look at that information?

Where are they coming from? Do they, not qualify because they're in the urban growth boundary or outsider boundaries? Is it an income issue? Are there other issues? You know, they can't provide the the, needed documentation, things like that. Just so that we can get an idea, and we can come back to you next year, and we can review the program. We can give you some statistics of the help that we've been able to do and then see if we need to make some changes to the program. With that, that's the presentation. Any questions that you may have?

Thank you. Who's got questions? Everyone's got questions, Okay. Councilor Vavella, would you like to

go first? Yes.

This is so near and dear to my heart, and I feel like it's just a dream come true. So I'm really excited, and I thank you to our partners who have accepted to work with us through this. So I have two questions. One, and I don't know if mister Johnson or somebody else could answer this, but one of the qualifications is that you have to currently be a tenant or show your like, be able to show your address. And there are some women in domestic violence situations where they have a protected address or they, because of their status, they cannot give their address out.

Do we have a workaround to make sure that this population can still be served without any, issues?

So our our partners will work with people to identify them. When they come in, with their documentation, we're not keeping any records of that documentation. What we're asking them to do is bring in the information so we can verify that they meet the criteria. And then, on the application, we have a section that our staff member who verifies that will document that they've reviewed it. They're gonna hand everything back to them. They're going out the door with it. We aren't gonna keep any of that so that it's there for public records or any of that kind of stuff. We just our requirement is that we verify. Okay. And then we won't release addresses or anything like that.

Okay. My second question was about relocation funds. So if family or a single parent is in a home, they lose their rental and have to relocate, they have the money to pay the monthly rent. They just don't have money for the initial deposit first and last month. Would this be considered rental assistance for the deposit, or does this only go towards the monthly balance?

So we're gonna have to do a little bit more look into that. My understanding of the statute is it has to be rental assistance. It can't be deposits. It can't be, you know, last month's. It has to be that month's rental assistance. I'll work with our city attorney to verify that by second reading, just to see, but there there's ways to work. You know, we could pay that particular month's rent, and then they take what they were gonna pay and use that for the other Okay. You know, deposit or whatever. We just gotta verify, you know, the criteria that that you provided to us, what we're looking at, and the criteria that's in the statue. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I have.

Great. Mayor Pro Tem.

I just want to thank you for working with us on this. This is really going to help a lot of people and this is very helpful for us. Thank you so much.

Who's next? Councilor Virgil?

Please just refresh my memory. Let us suppose that someone's rent is $1,000 per month. Can they be given five months rent, or do we do it month by

month? So the need is dependent on, you know, their situation at that time. So it probably would be a month by month. We could go up to five months because what you set as parameters is 5,000 lifetime. So if they have a need to keep them in their home and it's a thousand dollars a month and they need it for five months, you know, maybe, you know, there's medical condition. I'm just throwing something out there and they go back to work after that point. Sure. That that's definitely possible. It just needs to meet the criteria and and that's one of them as we can go up to that dollar amount.

But we would probably not give them the $5,000 the first time.

We would have to know that that they have that deed for that full time. I suppose that there's a way to verify that but we do have to pay it directly to the landlord. Alright. We can't give the money to them. That's part of the statute.

Thank you.

Councilor Davis and Councilor Wells.

Yeah. Thank you, mayor. Correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't we entertain a conversation about whether it should be like within the city limits or the urban growth boundary? I think we even at one point suggested the entire school district boundary. It says in here, Ridgefield city limits. Was there anything that we stumbled upon that made us have to settle on that?

Yeah, we did have that conversation. And what what we took back from council was city limits. Mhmm. And here was the reason is the this money comes from sales tax in the city limits of Ridgefield. So people right now in urban growth boundary, they aren't paying into that fund outside of that jurisdiction in the school district. They're not paying into that fund. So, that's why the majority of council directed us in how we heard it was city limits. So that's why we set that criteria. Could you change that? Absolutely.

And that's something one of the criteria or one of the metrics we wanna track is, are there people people in the the school district? Are there people in the urban growth boundary that don't qualify? Then, we come back to you next year and if you wanna change it, then, that's completely up to you how you wanna move forward.

Okay. I appreciate you clarifying that. Thanks. Councilor Wells. I

got a two part question. The first part is if we had 10 applicants or had 20 applicants, we'd run out of money with 10 of them if they were asking for 5,000. Do we do a partial rent payment, half of the rent? How do we figure out eligibility? Thing that was I lost the second part of my question. Let's answer that first question, then maybe I'll remember the second part.

So it's first come, first serve. So as you come in, and you qualify, then we will pay the landlord up to, the total amount that council council sets aside. If we got to the point where we did the full 50,000 and I don't know that we're gonna get there, but it is a possibility. But if we got to that point, there's always a possibility that council could determine that they wanna do more. You know, that's again completely up to you and and your decision of how to direct us.

If we should decide to do more, then we wouldn't get reimbursed from the state?

Will not get more than what we get every year. It is locked in at the fiscal year 2019 tax amount. So it's between 24,000 and 24,500 every year.

Okay. And that is from January 1?

No, that's based on the state's year, which is July 1 to June 30.

Okay.

So, for for their current fiscal year, we're not getting anything else until July now. We've already maxed out with what they would give us.

Okay. Thank you.

Questions on here, Council Councilor Hamilton.

Thank you. Less question more just again, a thank you. I know that a lot of work goes into these kind of things, a lot of stuff that people don't see and people don't know about. And so thank you for being a willing partner and really identifying the true need that's within our community. I think to note, Counselor Davis, I think the cool thing about this and what the mayor mentioned in our study session is I'm really excited to watch this pilot program grow into something that we can shape and really take data from our real life residents and use that to change things. So if we see people that need a different thing or we need to switch something, I think it's really cool that we're putting our money where our mouth is and really helping people with this. And so I just wanted to say thank you.

Other questions at this point? I'm curious about the application process. And again, just to echo my fellow counselors, the fact that you guys are stepping up this, I know this is like adding another layer to what you do. We're already doing childcare and food resources and food lockers now and all these things and then to add a rental assistance thing and to say, hey, you guys deal this. Thank you for doing that.

I am curious about the application process. Is fairly straightforward, like it's kind of formulaic like a lot of things are? Or is there some gray area? Because like there's some questions around like, well, what can we give or what it's first come first serve or how much can they apply? Or like if their rent is kind of exceeding the amount of what maybe the AMI kind of rental rate should be? Like how does that get decided? And is there any sort of nuance in there that either the Family Resource Center Compassion can decide on? Or is it just kind of really just straightforward and statutory?

The statute's pretty black and white. It's at or below 60% AMI. You can't go over that. Council set the parameters for the maximum lifetime award. So, you know, again, that's black and white unless you change it. You know, as far as the application process, we modeled it after the utility assistance program we have. Mhmm. We're trying to be as, least invasive as possible and get just what we need, but we do have to verify the statutory requirement. So we will do that. And, again, we won't keep things.

We're just gonna hand it back to them. We're trying we're putting together an online application. So if the Family Resource Center Compassion three sixty, if somebody comes, they have a need, they they verify what the need is. They can refer them to the website and help them, you know, go right through that and and get things submitted. Then when they come in, you know, we're all set and ready to go. And then the main, thing is to, work with the landlord to make sure that we can get that check out to them. And then we'll have a a landlord agreement that the landlord has to sign, and and this is something that's required just to verify that they're gonna take that money and apply that to their monthly rent.

And and who who is the final decision on if the application is approved or not? Is it the organization, or is it is it us or the

It could

be the city.

Okay. Okay. Can you do you have what 60% AMI is for Clark County?

For a family of four, and I should have brought that with me but for a family of four, I believe it's right around 74,000.

74,000 for family four. Okay. And my last question is and I think you touched on I've heard a number of things kind of touched on this but I just want to want So the program fund balance right now is $134,000 and change or something like that, right? Okay. And we talked about I remember we talked about in our study session about not making this sustainable. So is there a cap on like it's first come first but it's not the whole 134,000.

How much

is it per year that we're allocating? Is it

Right now, council has told us to bring a budget amendment of 50,000 for this particular year. And then neck we'll we'll talk about 2027 during the budget process then. You know, as we get through this, you know, then it would be capped at what we get per year unless council decides that there's other sources to put into this fund if they choose.

Yeah. I'd I'd be really curious just from just being a new program. Anytime you have a new program, you always have some things you're going to learn along the way as well. I don't think we need to include this in the ordinance or anything like that, but it would be great to have a review period and actually hear from our partners some feedback like what are you hearing maybe this time next year as we go through it or from the city just say, hey. Can we it's a study session or something like that where we just we can review it and we say, hey. What did we learn? What do we need to adjust on this? Yeah.

And and that's one of the things that you mentioned at the study session, and we have talked with our partners about doing that and coming back early next year. Probably won't be right out a year because we're already into March, so we'll try to do it earlier in the year and come back with all the information that we can provide you. One of the things you talked about the application process and and, them looking at things, we prepared an FAQ of everything that's needed and what the parameters are. So they've got that so that they can really go through and make sure somebody's

not

being referred that isn't gonna qualify.

Yeah. Okay, great.

So, we're really working together to make sure that we're getting the assistance out there and we're also doing it timely because I know in a lot of cases, that's that's needed where you have to act now or or you know, they could become homeless.

Great. Okay. Thank you. I wanna give council one last call for questions. Councilor Fevella, I think you have one. Yep.

Thank you, mayor. And we might not be able answer this question. That's okay. Just looking into it. If a family will say a single income earner has a full time job, but then an event happens with their child or them where they have to take FMLA, and now they're off of work for ninety days, they burned up their vacation, they have no income. So what is the is it the annual income? If they're not actually having any income, does that put them below the 60% threshold, or is it an annual income that we're looking at?

So there's a couple things we're gonna ask for. We're gonna ask for the previous year's first page of the taxes. That shows household size. So that helps us put them at what is that 60% AMI. And then we're gonna ask for the most recent two months worth of pay stubs and or income or whatever. If they have something like they just went on unemployment, if, like you said, that they're out on FMLA and they're not getting paid or something, then that's the information that we need to show that they're fitting. And then that would show that they're under that 60%. It it's at the time that they're asking for the assistance. It's not what they made in the previous year.

Last questions, council? Okay. Thank you, mister Johnson. Thank you. We appreciate you all for taking this on and looking forward to the next steps on this one. This is our first reading of this. So, miss Julie, would you please read the ordinance into the record?

Ordinance number fourteen seventy six, ordinance of the city of Richland, Washington, amending chapters 3.1, affordable housing sales and use tax of the Richmond Municipal Code to establish a residential tenant rental assistance program is authorized under RCW eighty two point one four point five four oh.

Thank you very much.

I'd like a ordinance to motion that we number fourteen seventy six as it's written and waive second reading.

I'll second it.

Okay. It's been moved by Chipman and seconded by Wells to waive second reading and approve ordinance number fourteen seventy six as presented. Council discussion.

Mayor.

Staff, are you waiting any on anything from us before we do that?

No, that would be fine. It's thirty days before the ordinance takes effect. Just the one thing I want to remind you is we do have to come back with a budget item because this is a its own dedicated fund, and we have no expense in that fund at this time. So, we will have to do that. The plan was to come back with a budget item. The second meeting in April with adoption, the first meeting in May. You know, we could move that up as its own separate item if you would like us to.

Mhmm. But you guys there's no, like, notes of, hey. We gotta make sure we have this clarified before second reading on Okay. Your Okay. I just wanna make sure.

Okay. So, counsel, I'd I'd I would just make sure everyone understands that too because there is the budget amendment that we'll have to do that everyone's good with that. And if you want it to move up, think it would be good for staff to hear that now. Yeah? Okay. Ship it. Let's do it. Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any other discussion on this? Alright then. Miss Julie, would you please call a roll?

Council Member Davis. Aye.

Council Member Fevella. Yes. Council Member Wells.

Yes.

Council Member Burkle?

Yes.

Council Member Hamilton? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Chipman? Yes. Mayor Cole?

Aye. Thank you, council. The motion carries and door ordinance is adopted. Okay. Thank you. We're going to move on in our agenda. The next item is the approval of Resolution No. Six seventy four. This is the North 1st Circle right of way vacation. Miss Lust, over to you, ma'am.

Thank you, mayor. Good evening, council members of the public. The item I have before you this do to

I

1 overpass and interchange with I 5 before the full reconstruction of the interchange was completed in 2009. Due to its former function as a freeway interchange, the full right of way width is oversized. It exceeds that of what North 1st Circle needs now as a dead end local street, and that's shown on the image before you, the full width of the right of way compared to the aerial image of North 1st Circle along with its sidewalk, curb, and gutter. On 11/07/2025, the city held a pre application conference for a project on the site on the south side here, 6325 North 1st Circle. Among the 19.

First half we're the sidewalk and the developable site. In light of of that discussion and in order to potentially obtain this area and incorporate it into the developable portion of the site, the property owner owner has requested initiation of the right of way vacation process. Next slide will show, the actual area, that would be subject to right of way vacation. It's about 7,300 square feet. So the purpose of this meeting, again, it's the first step in the process, is for council to review the request and, if so desired, take action on a resolution permitting the right of way vacation process to proceed.

Subsequently, staff would set and advertise a date for public hearing and first ordinance reading, which state statute requires to be between twenty and sixty days after passage of the resolution. So most likely, it would be the second meeting in April. With that, mayor, I'll hand it back to you for any questions

and discussion. Is lost? Okay. Great. Thank you, counsel. Any questions about this? None? Okay. If there are no questions, I would accept a motion.

I move to adopt ordinance number six seventy four as presented.

I'll second.

It's been moved by Davis. I'm going to say seconded by Hamilton on this one to adopt resolution number six seventy four as presented. Council, any discussion? Okay. Hearing no discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you, counsel. The motion carries. Okay. Our final item of business this evening is a motion to approve the Elevated East Side Reservoir construction contract. Miss Lang, good to see you.

You as well. Good evening. So back in March 2024, council approved a professional in

And

I'm here to to let you know what our bids came in at and to seek approval. So the East Side Elevated Water Reservoir will be located on a 5.3 acre parcel on South 5th Street, east of the intersection with South 78th Place. The contract would be awarded to T Bailey LLC for the amount of $17,196,384 plus an additional $2,000,000 in contingency for a total of $19,196,384 The contingency is for unknown conditions that may be encountered, as well as some evolving site security considerations that we are looking at. The engineers' estimate was $22,581,440 The funding for the project consists of a combination of debt issuance for a drinking water state revolving fund loan for a 15 for 15,000,000 and water system development charges for the balance of the construction. Are there any questions?

Council, any for miss Lane? Councilor Hamilton.

Thank you. Would any use of the contingency come back to council for approval, or is that all within your department?

I'm sorry. Could you say that one more time?

Would any use of the contingency come back to counsel for approval?

No. Uh-uh. Not at this time.

And then does the contract include schedule projections or any penalties if we don't hit timelines that they've promised?

No. I don't. I will have to verify. I believe it does, actually. I can verify that for certain. It does. Kirk is telling me it does.

Okay. Councilor Burkle.

Simple question, possible start date?

Yes. So, we are working through that. There are a ton of submittals that will need to be submitted and approved including the actual contractor designed tank. So, that will take a bit of time. I'm assuming a month, maybe two. We have not received the contractor schedule yet. We will get that when we have our pre bid meeting.

Thank you.

Councilor Councilor Wells, excuse me.

The question I had is how much difference was there between the first and the second bidder? Can I answer that Or can I ask that question?

You can ask it. I apologize. I didn't write that number down. 1.2? About 1,200,000.0.

I left a bunch on

the table. Okay. Thank you.

Great. Councilor Fevella?

I believe you stated the engineer's estimate was about $22,000,000 and we're all in right now at a little under $20,000,000 Is there a reason why the engineer's estimate was higher? And is there anything that could happen during this process that will bump us up even with the contingency?

That's a great question. Far as the rebidding the project actually helped us get lower bids in this round. As far as what the engineer's original estimate was, I don't I apologize. I don't have all of the details with what that encompassed prices have come in better.

Okay.

So, I can get more information though and let you know.

Thank you.

Great. Councilor Davis.

Yeah. Thanks, mayor.

What was the

what was the value of the grant mine that we've been able to get that's got towards this project?

So it's not a grant. It's a drinking water state revolving fund loan.

Oh. So it's a

it's a low interest loan that it's usually a combination of state and federal funds. In this case, it's a 100% from the state. So we get away from some of the federal requirements, which is really good. Sure. I believe and I wasn't ready for the question but I believe it's around 2 and a half percent.

Okay.

So, it's a really favorable rate for us.

Sure. Okay. Okay. I appreciate the clarification. Thanks.

Air Pro Tem, questions? No, okay. My other question is, we've been talking also about what this when it's done having a some sort of mural artwork on there too just to beautify it so it's not this big blob. Is that included this budget or is that going be separate?

It is included.

Okay. Cool. That's all I have. Other questions? Oh, there it is.

Look at that. Okay.

No other questions? Thank you, miss Lang. With that, I'd accept the motion for this item.

I move to adopt ordinance number six seven four as presented. Second.

Okay. It's been moved by Hamilton. Second seconded by Favela. Any discussion, council?

That is not 674.

Oh, I'm sorry. You are right. Yeah. You are wrong. I mean, yeah. It's

He raised that.

Undo. Undo. Emerson. Yeah.

Command z.

So I'd like to do a different motion now where I move to approve awarding the contract for the construction of the elevated east side water reservoir project to t Bailey LLC for the amount of 17,196,384 plus an additional $2,000,000 in contingencies for a total of 19,196,384.

Second.

Okay. It has been moved by Hamilton, seconded by Favela to approve the elevated East Side reservoir construction management or I'm sorry, the East Side Reservoir construction contract. Any discussion council? Okay, hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you, council. Motion carries.

Thank you.

Okay. Good work everybody. That concludes all of our business for the evening. We're going to move back into public comment. Anybody wishing to address city council regarding the items not subject to a specific public hearing may come forward at this time to the podium or use a raise hand feature located on the toolbar at the bottom of your Zoom screen. For controls over the phone, press 9 for raise hand, and press 6 to mute or unmute. Please state your name and limit your comments to three minutes. Mister Jennings, good to see you.

Thank you. My name is Michael Jennings. This week, my wife and I have been dealing with two large companies that are extremely insufficiently managed. Thank you, Richfield City Managers, for your carefully logical management.

Thank you, Mr. Jennings.

Hello. I'm Joni Jacinto. This is Chris Poppert and also on behalf of Wendy Leonard from Compassion three sixty. From the bottom of our we would like to express our sincere appreciation for your thoughtful work that you put into the rental assistance program using the city's $14.00 6 funds. Housing stability is foundational for families and programs like this can make an immediate and meaningful difference for residents who are facing temporary financial hardship.

By investing these resources into rental assistance, the city is helping ensure that families can remain in their housing, children can stay in their schools, and individuals can continue contributing to the community without the disruption and trauma that housing loss can bring. Your willingness to prioritize stability and prevention demonstrates a strong commitment to supporting the well-being of the people who call this community home. Thank you. This is a little more emotional

than I anticipated. So thank you. Thank you so much for recognizing that proactive solutions can help prevent larger challenges down the road. Rental assistance programs not only support families in moments of need, but also strengthen the broader community by reducing displacement and helping maintain a stable local workforce and school population. The leadership that you are showing through this initiative reflects compassion, foresight, and a clear understanding that stable housing is an important part of a healthy and thriving city.

We are so grateful for your work on this program and for your continued dedication to supporting residents through thoughtful and responsible use of these funds. Thank you so much.

Thank you both. Is there anybody else in the room wishing to give public comment this evening? Miss Julie, anybody online?

I've seen it online.

Okay, with that, we'll close public comment. We'll move on to council reports. Council, there's anybody who is dying to go first this evening? Take a run. Oh, we'll go to Councilor Hamilton. Great.

Thank you. Well, I think just reflecting on the women's contributions is what's making my heart real full today. This has been a beautiful meeting. I want to just highlight I have a new position in my own professional career with the YWCA as their Corporate and Community Partnerships Officer. And the cool thing is each YWCA takes care of the need within their own community.

So our specific need that Clark County addresses is we're the only domestic violence shelter in the county. And the work with survivors and people in affordable housing and the housing transitional project, like, all of this is just like, I feel like a giant heart explosion for my heart today. So I'm just really proud of this and us. And working for this with the city has really opened me up to different public service opportunities in my heart. And so I wanna thank all of you for being so inspirational to that. And the chiefs, that was beautiful.

I don't wanna cry again.

Okay. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, counselor. Anybody else wanna go next? Councilor Favelo.

Thank you. I'm not gonna cry because I just got my lashes done this

morning. Anyway,

I had I attended the echo meeting, but just to update counsel, the interlocal agreement for the document reporting fees is expiring. So that will be coming to our draft interlocal agreement will be coming to our jurisdiction. This time it will include the approximate dollar amount that each jurisdiction is putting into that and kind of how it's being spent for transparency. And then tonight I attended the Clark Howlett's Fire Department and they Fire Commission meeting. They actually had a really good workshop on regional fire authority.

And regional fire authorities are basically their own municipal jurisdiction by vote. And just talking about the impacts that that would in all good ways, but really making sure that we as a city are paying attention to any movement in that RFA direction would be make sure it would be good for us to stay on top of that. So that's all I have. Thank you. Next.

Thank you, counselor.

Wait. I'm sorry. And congratulations, mayor Pro Tem on your nomination Oh, thank at the Iris Awards. You're a fabulous woman. It is an honor to sit up here with you.

Please. And I'm not gonna cry.

She might have just had her lashes done too.

Don't know.

I know. I know. Are mine. Thank you, counselor Phoe. Yep. So, let's I've see. Had a a pretty good couple weeks, believe me. So I had a wonderful event last week working with Joni interviewing students at the high school. What a fun day. I mean, some of these kids are so prepared for these interviews they know exactly what they want to do and they know exactly where they want to go or what their career is gonna be and some of them are absolutely clueless but we had a fun day interviewing them it was really it's just a great experience.

It's a really good way to spend the day and get to know some of the high school kids. Then this week, mayor Cole and I got to go to the Hispanic luncheon yesterday, which was a beautiful event, wasn't it?

It was. It was great.

Oh, it was great. We sat next to the to the mayor of Portland, and I was hoping to get to meet him but his person drug him out of the room before it was over. So, we didn't get to meet him but anyway, that was a great event and then today, the Iris Awards were just really beautiful. So, that's been my couple weeks.

Great. Thank you, mayor Pro Tem. Councilor Davis, wanna go next?

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, a couple big pieces. From the last couple of weeks, last Thursday, we had our second to last work session on the the Clark County Regional Parks Task Force. And there's a lot of big ticket moves that are being discussed there that the group is still working through on some recommendations.

But I think that they're gonna propose at least presenting some options that have some impact on our community. And so I look forward to being able to share those once we kinda get that finalized. Earlier this week, we had the C TRAN board meeting and the board composition review committee that is chaired by Mayor Cole. It was very much a kind of a culminating meeting for a lot of work that we've been putting in behind the scenes to try and, well, achieve three goals that we've fondly called the three legged stool, which is keeping C Train together because there are jurisdictions that have thought, well, do I even want to be a part of this anymore, prioritizing the replacement of the I-five Bridge and then stating that if that bridge is going to have light rail funding that it should come from new money, not take away from existing revenue streams. And so we were able to you know, work with the other cities and the county and find finally an agreeable spot that was voted on and approved on Tuesday.

So there was a little bit of back and forth with the comp committee, but board a that's question. To Mayor that's Cole for his leadership on it, guiding the the board comp review committee. And yeah, I I think that our city definitely rose to the occasion and and got something done for for this county, which made me proud. And I guess the last thing I will say was it was really rewarding to be at the lunch today celebrating mayor pro tem Chipman, but also sharing it with with all of you. Chief Doriot, Ms.

Nottoneiris, we are really fortunate for a

lot

of the women that we get to serve with and work alongside in class. We are talking about the reform movement. And just last week, I was teaching about the Seneca Falls Convention in 1849 when they drafted the declaration of sentiments that outlined the women's request for the vote. And I tell my kids, it took seventy years. And literal people protesting in front of the White House for years in front of bonfires to finally get it barely over the finish line.

And, you know, so to think about that period of time, and that was an era that my grandmother was born into, to then fast forward to sitting in a room like a bank room full of like, know, really successful accomplished women and being able to serve along three fantastic women. It it was just a really cool moment. So I appreciate being able

to share that with you guys.

Thank you, counselor. Can can I audit your class? That sounds interesting. I'm going back in middle school social studies. Great. Councilor Brickell.

Thank you, mayor. Just had six different meetings in the last two weeks, but the highlight was this afternoon's luncheon honoring our mayor pro tem, miss Chipman. It's just remarkable, the women we have in our community who step up and do the job and go way, way, way overboard. We are blessed and fortunate to have miss Chipman here. I would also like to recognize

the

ir we're going a to a little to Field. They have four more yards careful to clean this year, and then they will be done with the remediation process for the lots that were contaminated during the cleanup of the waterfront. Also, they're very, very proud of their new Osprey cam, which unfortunately is currently broken. One other quick comment. They talked briefly about the Oak Ridge development, upon which they hope to build about a 20,000 square foot building that will be used for the development of small business.

And that's all I have. Thank you.

Where's that Oak Ridge development?

Over on across from Department of Natural Research or Wildlife.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Okay. That's right. They have

On Discovery Drive.

That's right.

Yeah. On Discovery Dive back about a thousand.

Very cool. Yeah. Great. Thank you, Councilor. Councilor Wells.

Okay. I'm going to, now that mister Berkel's done, I'm going to talk about the port again also. And what I'm going to say that the port is Richfield Water Waterfront And Water Improvements. The final feasibility study prepared by KPFF is nearing completion. The report will provide a map for implementing the ports in water improvements, including the proposed ADA accessible kayak launch and additional day use mortgage opportunities.

That's docks for the road to Richmond. The other thing is I got another back sack here. We have another new business that's open in town. I let's see. How am I gonna word this?

I noticed mister Berkel taking advantage of it yesterday. It's our new car wash, and and he made made the tour. I went up and left. He went up. I think he went through the car wash, and I think they have an opening for twelve days free car washes.

Yeah. For the next two weeks, you can go and get a free car wash. And I might suggest it is a remarkable car wash. Absolutely. We're blessed.

And I attended two, four, five meetings since the last council meeting.

Great. Thank you, councilor. Gosh, we need that rain to let up so we don't have to wash our cars for nothing, you know?

Yeah. Put it free.

In terms of a black car, it's no joke. Thank you. Okay. For my portion, I'll try and be faster. It's where I can always tell when we're kind of getting to the end of winter and into spring because things start picking up a lot and there's a lot going on. Last week was Color Run. I was really excited to see all of the runners out. That's always a really fun one. If you've ever been out there, it's worth it. And Greet Magazine got some incredible photos of aerial photos of it and everything like that too. So look online. Those are really good. Clark College State of the College address was today. I got to attend that on the behalf of the city. Of course, the Iris Awards and then the Hispanic Metro Chamber, that was a great one.

That was a really big event. And it was really kind of cool, man. We got to sit at the table with the consular of the Mexican government, which I thought was pretty cool as well. Very nice gentleman who actually wanted to get coffee. So I don't know, I'm going take them up on that.

So anyway, and then earlier this week, Councilor Davis talked on this too. I did want to touch on it as well because it is a significant closure to I think a much longer saga than we anticipated with the Board composition on C TRAN and leading to some updated locally preferred alternative language that was incorporated into that. And really not to touch process of that necessarily, but more of the achievement and just the work that we did as a city showing up. I don't think people realize maybe how fragile that situation was going through it. There were some real times I think that there was some other cities who are and still are.

I mean, we're not out the woods yet, are felt like is C TRAN and the public transportation benefit area something that they want to continue to be a part of and you know, going back what Councilor Davis said, we had we had three priorities the whole time. One was keep C Tran together and the fact that we were able to come to consensus and to get everyone to agree. It was a near unanimous vote. I think it's a significant achievement. And the work that went into that over the last six months is not for nothing.

It took a lot of work. I think making the phone calls, like, I felt like every month or so week where we're just whipping boats going on the phone trying to go around the horn, making sure that people were aligned on things that they understood what we're trying to do. And I will say this, that was a big decision that will probably get overlooked, but it was a big decision nonetheless. And the work that we did there provided some real good. Regional cooperation still works. We kept the bridge project moving forward. We kept C Train together and we ensured that everybody in Clark County will still have access to public transportation and that those communities will be heard when it comes to big funding decisions pertaining to the bridge project. So I'm really proud of that. I want to credit Councilor Davis, of course, Mr. Stewart, Ms.

Parker, and everybody else who was involved in that because it was a really a team effort. And I think we did really good work. And I'm proud of the work we did. Thank you. Listening to tonight I'm going to take a soapbox moment. But listening to all of the things we went through tonight between Women's History Month and the Rental Assistance Program and all of that. I think a lot of times we do government. And we think that is the stuff that we're doing, is it just procedural? Does it really matter? And I think that this is a lesson learned that local government can still impact people's lives.

And the work we're doing here is real. So I'm proud of that. So that's it.

Thank

you, mayor, members of the council and the community. I have nothing to add to what you all have said. You have all said it very gracefully and very well. So thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Any questions for Mr. Stewart? None? Right. You're off the hook. Mr. Thamert.

All Just one update from public works. Earlier today, our utility supervisor, Steve Sampson, attended the annual American Water Works Association conference and he submitted a sample of our water again in the

best tasting water contest. And for the second year in a row, we won. Yay. Yeah. Why is there not cups here, again, mister Sampson? So

we're now eligible to go to the regional conference like we did last year and and compete there as well.

Is there a bracket for this that we can follow or anything?

That's good.

That's great.

Love it. Good. Any

questions for public works for mister Thamer? Alright. Thank you, sir. Good news. Mister Johnson?

And just one update. In part of our partnership, with that we have with other governments for Clark Reed or Clark Callets Fire and Rescue, we will be closing on the mitigation properties on Monday. So the property on Hillhurst will be closing on for the city, and the fire district will be closing on their property for the new fire station. Just wanted to bring that, update to you because that closes out the, mitigation and really helps the community with the new fire station on the the West Side here eventually.

Great. Thank you. Any questions for mister Johnson? Alright, thank you, sir. Whoever's city attorney, miss Parker.

I have nothing to report this evening but I we will be having an executive session to discuss some potential litigation after the report.

Thank you. Questions for city attorney? All right. Miss Luss in community development.

Nothing to add this evening. Thank you, mayor.

Thank Okay. Miss Nontanaris? Alright. And lastly okay. Chief doesn't have anything either. Okay. We're good. Okay. We do have an executive session we're gonna go to.

And, mayor, we actually are gonna break that up into two executive sessions, if that's okay with you?

Yep. Do we need to do one at a time? Is that how that works?

Yeah. So we would do the one the executive session, the second one first. So the one to discuss potential litigation. So if you wouldn't mind, please go and taking us into executive be to

that. And we'll we'll be returning at 08:48PM. All right. City Council has concluded its first executive session. We will and we'll be taking no action this evening.

We are going to take a five minute break and then go into another executive session pursuant to RCW 42.30.1101G to discuss personnel matters. That should take about forty five minutes. So, council will return at 08:50 p. M. I'm sorry, excuse me, 09:50PM. Thank you. All right. The time is now 10:54PM. Counsel is returning from executive session with no action, and this meeting is hereby adjourned.