City Council - Regular Meeting

Leaning to order for March 11th, 2026. The time is now 7:04. Would you please stand with me for the pledge of allegiance. Pledgis to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible liberty and justice for all. We'll ask the city clerk to please follow the rule. Here Councilman Redaemon, here. Council member Hudson, here, Council Member Oliver Council Member Jero. Here. Come to my bandage to? Yes. I remember West here. Thank you. Go to item 2, approval of tonight's council meeting agenda. Council, I would entertain a motion to approve tonight's agenda. So move. Second, motion by Navor. Second by Mary in the discussion All in favor, say I, I, I opposed say no. Motion passes Uh, item 3 is community comments, and if anyone's present here tonight, they would like to address City council invite you to come on up to the podium and state your name and your city of residence, and if you could keep your comments to about 3 minutes or so, um, that would be great. Hello Hi Uh, my name's Andrea. I'm a resident of Mount Vernon. Um, I just want to thank the council for all of the ward meetings that you've been having. Um, I really appreciated the dialogue and conversation. Um, I will try to keep this quick Um, so I'm here to address, um, some of what was brought up in the committee meeting just now, um, and I just want to state very clearly. my issue is with Flock, the company, not with the Mount Vernon PD. I think the Mount Vernon PD, especially the Chief, is gonna follow whatever laws the state legislature passes down. Like, I just want to make that very clear. I have

the Mount Vernon flock contract. Mount Vernon PD flock contract. And I want to read some of this to you. Page one uh, block offers a software and hardware situational awareness solution through FO Technology platform that upon detection is capable of capturing audio, video, image, and recording data. I don't think that needs any more explanation. Um, Block has the right to collect, analyze, analyze customer data to the extent such that animization renders the data non-identifiable. And it can perform related systems and technologies, including training of machine learning algorithms. They are taking video of us driving, walking, talking, and putting it through their own machine learning algorithm. I have a massive problem with this. This is, this is surveillance. I did not consent to that. I also don't have Alexa. I don't have apps on my phone, purposely because I don't want to be tracked in this way. Um, so I'm I'm disturbed by this, um, the customer hereby grants Flock a non-exclusive worldwide perpetual royalty-free right to use and distribute such animized data to improve and enhance the services. We, the the the city, we are the product. Block is not gonna care if they get sued because this data is priceless to them. I don't, I don't know if I like need to go into any more detail about how dangerous that is to let this company gather this much data on us for 40 million images um and Flock does not need to own this data. Like it says in here that Flock doesn't own it. OK, they don't need to own it to use it for

nefarious purposes. They have it for 30 days to run through their machine learning process through their AI generative process and do whatever they want with it, with my photograph, with your children's photographs, your grandchildren's photographs. OK, I have more to say, but I'm gonna try to, I've got 40 seconds. We have a no king's protest coming up next week. That is our First Amendment rights. It is located under two flop cameras. So I have to decide whether or not I want to be able to legally go and exercise my First Amendment right? or sun stand under two cameras that are recording me, that have facial recognition data, tattoo recognition data, and I have no say over what's done with that. So please, please cancel the contract with Flock. Sounds like we already have a server in-house set up with ALPRs. This is more than just an automatic license plate reader, even if our police department doesn't use it other than that, it is far more nefarious than that, and I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you, Andrea He start Hopefully you'll forgive me reading on my phone. No problem. Could you please state your name? My name is Sage Wilkirk. My pronouns are they them theirs. They live here in Mount Vernon. I'm here to speak against the flock cameras, but I would like to start with a second plea for translation services. Last time I spoke up I went to the other room and I saw that there was a box with translation services, so you had already done some work on that. But the box is in English, so people who are watching maybe won't be able to recognize that that says you can call for translation. So just like a roving um of different translations on that same box would be great. And then a lot of the people that were in the overflow room had just had their phones with it just a, just a transcription, not a translation. They were just reading what was being said in

English. So having that up on the screen would also just help. So just two things for access. Um, speaking of flot cameras, uh, Mount Vernon currently has 8 known flot cameras, according to a crowdsourced A ALPR map, um, and 6 of them according to the MB transparency site. Two of them are at the Anderson Bridge, 2 on East College Way, one by Starbucks and one just up the street here at Chase Bank. 3 more are on the Lowe's parking lot. Um, and then 2 on Riverside Drive Bridge, Burlington has 5 mapped, um, 3 of them are in the Home Depot and 2 of them are pointing at the FedEx site. Um, Burlington does not have a transparency portal. So I'm wondering if the 3 at Lowe's even count for the Mount Vernon Police Department if they're, if they're technically their cameras slash our cameras. Um, and those 8, the 8/6 cameras that we have are not even effectively pointing at. I-5, they're like just two arterial streets. Um, we spent $30,000 of the American Rescue Plan Act funds on these 6 cameras back in 2024. These funds were designed to help governments maintain public services and support recovery efforts to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, putting funding that is designed for one-time public support in the MVPD appears to be a reoccurring habit of the city. The annual cost of these six cameras is estimated to be about $30,000 about $5000 each yearly without factoring any add-ons. Um, it's worth noting that the MVPT already has an estimated 140 non-flock cameras in the city. According to a screenshot that said it was 146 if I subtract 6 or more than 46 that's 140 remaining cameras. These cameras do collect license plates, as Andrea said, also characteristics of the driver, bumper stickers, um, our transport transparency portal states they do not detect faces, gender, people, or race, but the 4.3 section of that agreement states that all collected data can be used to train machine learning for other flock offerings, quote unquote. Um, these

cameras do store photos, um, they're uploaded the Fox servers, their AI AI enabled and not safe. Um, the MVPD has authorized the access of our flot cameras to police and sheriff offices and 49 other Washington state, cities and counties as far south as Olympia, as far east as Benton County, 346 miles are between us and the furthest jurisdiction of of College Place. A lot of people have access to our community. Um, and these searches, uh, I looked at the 30 searches from the last 20 days, 20 searches from the last 30 days. And uh 25% of them had a blank justification. Uh, 30% were vague enough to be for anything, and 15% were hidden between behind police jargon that I had to look up later. The 5 blank reasons are really alarming. We have no idea why people are accessing our data. Um, and everything could be blank. There's no requirement from Flock. We have 140 non-lock cameras. It's really time to cancel our contract, save our money, and rely on our local cameras alone. Thank you for your time. Thank you Good evening, counsel. My name is Lars Dense. Um, I went to school in Siro, went to college in Western, and recently I just purchased my first house here in Mount Vernon. So given that, I'm kind of in it for the long haul and want Mount Vernon to be a place that I can raise a family in and feel comfortable and safe doing that. Um, to start, every one of us is protected by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, granting us protection from unreasonable search and seizure? Unreasonable, kind of a fun word. What is unreasonable, what is reasonable, hope to address that a little bit more later. And with these cameras, how can we protect our citizens' Fourth Amendment

rights. Um, a counterargument to this would be some of the ALP ALPRs that are in effect, say, reading tolls but it's been determined from other court cases. that let's see, I wrote it down here. Carpenter versus the United States that be flop cameras could be considered a search because of building a digital fingerprint around us. pulling in so many photos, um, the number was mentioned earlier. That's a lot of photos. That's not just selective surveillance or drag netting, all of our citizens' information. The another counterargument for the flock cameras would be, you know, we're already being tracked every day with our cell phones. It was addressed earlier. Social media is tracking us every day. That's fine. We are we have federalism in our country that was determined on the national level, and now we can address it at the local level. Um, and this is something that since I live here, and this is somewhere that I want to be. It's, it's starting to hit really close to home. And there's just a lot of questions that revolve around it that I don't think have been addressed at the state or local level before the technology was put in place. the, the vendor that's coming up a lot in discussion right now is Flock. What if the vendor changes? The infrastructure's being put in place. Will it grow? Will it shrink? Will a new vendor have access to that same infrastructure?

and there's so many court cases right now. from Sioli from let's see, sorry, I'm trying to read my own handwriting. Uh, in Everett judge just ruled that the data's public record. which raises new concerns on who can access the public record. Wynwood had their data accessed from out of state, which begs the question if we're installing it for local safety. Why, why are other people able to access our information? And as previous speakers said before, I want to make it clear that I'm not anti-law, anti-police. I think that it will be used. in the best way possible from our citizens. I don't think the people that do not have a horse in this race. that are not at the local level that are part of big corporations will have that same view in our best interest at heart, especially when, as mentioned by other speakers, also, are public information is the product. So these are the questions I pose, and hopefully we can come to a good decision about it. Thank you. Thank you, Lars. Here I am again when Blackmore, Mount Vernon resident. I'm here because I'm very against the flock cameras I'm a the generation where we were afraid of Big Brother always watching us, and here we are, I believe once again in government overreach and city overreach. Our state fiscally is in trouble. Our county has cut services to our most

vulnerable population. Meals on wheels, and yet the city of Mount Vernon is spending $30,000 a year on these flat cameras when in fact, if you're using the FL cameras because of a stolen car, how many stolen cars have been recovered. They've driven through. They're gone. I'm very uncomfortable with audio, and as the United States citizen, I adhered to the Constitution and the Fourth Amendment says the right of the people to be secure in their persons, house papers and effects, I believe cars are effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the person or things to be seized. That would require any of these cars being searched through a flat camera that the police officer needs a warrant and has to go before the judge to get that warrant. I don't see the use. We have a tremendous Mount Vernon Police Department. We truly do. I believe if you set $30,000 towards hiring another police officer that is a much better and more palatable way to spend the money for law enforcement. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn Mm Oh uh, Gavin, I live up in Alger. You guys have heard me talk about, uh, how from a

hardware and software perspective, Flock cameras specifically are very vulnerable. You've heard me and other people talk about just our discussed with the concept of a surveillance state being implemented in the city. You've heard me specifically talk about how it's really weird that we're going to have a private company own the infrastructure of a security state. In my opinion, kind of messed up. I want to talk a little more specifically about Mount Vernon and like having these cameras in Mount Vernon, and in light of the discussion you guys just had, I thought I'd add. a good handful of questions to you. So in light of the recent legislation passing, how's MBPD going to update its guidelines and procedures for the use of the for the use of this blocked security system. OK. Why did the Mount Vernon transparency portal changed its camera count from 146 to 6 between November and now. It used to say 146 LPRs and other cameras. Now it just says 6 LPRs. um What is the punishment for unauthorized access? How are we holding anyone who's using this in in ways we don't recognize accountable. Is someone going to get fired if they leave that little slot for why am I accessing it blank? Are they going to get a demerit? Are we just let it go? Uh, is the data required to be tied to an active case? Is it it doesn't need to be traceable to a case or an officer who made the request, because right now it's just an encrypted string of blah blah blah blah blah. um how Mount Vernon PD prevent or punish Flock or other third parties from sharing our data outside of accordance with us? Do we even have a mechanism by which we can do that. Uh, what is the plan for addressing the known security risks specifically in the FL cameras we're using Uh, what administrative or engineering controls does MVPD have in place for restricting access to these cameras. What, if any, plan does MVPD have for ensuring transparency around these searches beyond the portal because right now it's just a

CSV that's not tied to anything. You can look up, we had 20 searches in the last 30 days, but not what they're for, not what case, not what officer, and not what any of the outcomes were. Um can the MVPD provide the council with the data since the installation of the of these cameras and the outcomes of their usage, the current access procedures and department guidelines for using alternative proposals should the council decide to shut off the cameras and not renew the contract, which ends in November. We've only had the cameras since November of 2024. Uh, the crime statistics and rates of decline or increase by crime category from the two years preceding the clock install, and then from the flock install going forward to now, so you can run an actual comparison on if this has had a measurable impact on crime, crime in the city. Uh, what other a list of the other companies, agencies, actors involved in the management of the data, how is the MP MVPD ensuring their compliance, uh, what level of, if any, of encryption is used when testing and transmitting the data, uh, what are the network security requirements for any network or device that's transmitting or storing our data, um what will the MVPD, will the MVPD restrict beyond what the new legislation requires that's waiting for the governor to sign it because I don't see a meaningful difference between storing uh non-hot list data for 21 days as opposed to 31. Right, that's still 3 weeks versus a little over 4. It's, it's not a meaningful change in how long the data is actually stored for, given how fast these cameras run. Um yeah, that's I don't know, just a few items to think about. Thanks, Gavin Anyone else Um,

I'm Sam Irons. I live in Mount Vernon. I want to speak on concerns of public safety first regarding Flock. I hope all of you were able to get the, read the article I sent about Lynnwood, um, being another important example of turning off and terminating flock, um, while there may be some examples of having this access has helped solve some cases. There are not enough pros in this to outweigh the cons and harms that this is causing in our communities. A comparable example is we do not give law enforcement and federal agencies free and unlimited access to all aspects of our life. including email and personal information, even though this would certainly make it easier to solve certain cases for them to have all this access. And while it's great, legislators put some safeguards in place with recently passing the bill for adding more driver privacy protections. It was only necessary in the first place because of real life issues that this mass surveillance has caused in communities across the nation. And the bill is not perfect. It was rushed and there are some flaws, and Flock has misled and provided false info in the past and has demonstrated they do not care about these rules and laws. And since trust is foundational in an agreement with an entity providing unconsented surveillance, their track record for data breaches and sharing personal data for purposes of disappearing neighbors and prosecuting people for seeking healthcare have clearly violated that most basic promise of safety and security. As a community that puts a high standard on integrity and safety. I would want to examine these issues that will remain, and I believe as a community, we would want to disconnect from entities that break trust and violate privacy. I do not consent to flock in its 24 hour surveillance in our community. Also with regard to public safety, I have to say the senior and community center is a vital safe space in

Mount Vernon. It contributes to health, well-being, and vibrancy of our community. The center and the people have provided critical access to resources and services to all people. doing everything possible to find a solution to ensure its survival is not only morally and ethically the right thing to do, but also necessary to preserve the heart and soul of this community. The outpouring of love, for it has been moving, and I can tell people in Mount Vernon really care about this. Closing the center is not an acceptable option. This is an urgent need to support and protect. This is a great opportunity to work together, collaborate and be creative. I hope that open and transparent communication can continue on both these matters. Thank you so much. Thanks. right Mayor Donovan and City council members. My name's Sarah Gering, uh, Mount Vernon Ward 2 resident. I'm here to ask the council to consider canceling our city's contract with Flock and commit to resisting the growing overreach of the AI AI-powered surveillance state. Um, the historian Timothy Snyder wrote, Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more oppressive government will want and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do. We must consider the use of the flock camera network here in Mount Vernon in the larger context of our nation's current slide toward authoritarianism. a time when citizens' constitutional rights are being regularly violated, and federal government actors are constantly deploying new ways of surveilling citizens. In many cases for the mere exercise of those constitutional rights. We have been and will continue to

be able to conduct effective policing in our community without relying on FLAC surveillance cameras and the mass collection of warrantless data. I urge you to end this practice in our city. Thank you, sir. Hi, my name is Nikki. I live in Mount Vernon. Um, I'm speaking today to address some things regarding Fox policies in regards to data sharing, especially with ICE. Firstly, a study by the ACLU shows that the standard Flock user contract includes a clause that grants Flock a worldwide perpetual royalty-free right and license to disclose the agency data for investigative purposes. This clause gives Flock direct contractual authority to comply with requests from ICE or the Department of Homeland Security for broad data requests regardless of local department policy and crucially, even if our local contract has had that clause removed. Any data sharing agreements with any other agencies that provide this access will indirectly grant Flock side door access to our data. Investigations on this same topic by the University of Washington Center of Human Rights have found that Flock provides ICE with data whenever and wherever they can. And more than that, due to confusing audit files, it is impossible for independent researchers to determine the current scope of local organizational exposure to nationwide flock users due to discrepancies between audit logs and other documentation, indicating incomplete and or intentional misleading of audit logs. All of these routes, exposures, and loopholes combined with the myriad known security flaws associated with these cameras that would allow ICE to simply access the cameras regardless of even the strictest of local stances, clearly

indicate that there is simply no realistic way to prevent ice from gaining access to this data if and and when they desire to do so. I strongly encourage the city of Mount Vernon to ban the use or operation of flock cameras within our city limits. Thank you very much. Thanks, thank you. Meg, um, my name is May. I live in unincorporated Skagitt County, um, and I, I, I have been here before, but um I, I you know, as you know, I, I do consider Mount Vernon to be my home. I do all my, um, you know, I, I work here. I do all my grocery shopping. I do, I live, I live here. um, and I am going to make unfortunately, an emotional plea today. Um rather than with facts. Unfortunately, um, the ALPRs that we see, uh, on the side of the road. in and out of Mount Vernon. Keep track of a lot of information about our cars and um not only including license plates, but about the uh bumper stickers, and if there's a dent in the car, things like that. um, which is particularly concerning for specifically women who have experienced violence. Um because that data

can be tracked. It can be broken into. very easily You can access block data specifically. very easily from an IT standpoint, you can um, hack into the network with very little effort. both manually and online Um, and that makes it very easy. for people to track women right now. especially in a time when there are a lot of um more difficulties in people with people changing their names. um they're not able to have those name changes go through as easily at this time. I think you've seen in uh Alabama, that's an issue now more than ever. Uh, and I just do want to reiterate that members of this community are concerned about Flock for a number of different reasons, and they're concerned about ALPRs for a number of different reasons and it would be very helpful for you to consider all of those different reasons. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am Anyone else Good evening, counsel. Uh, my name is Kelly Lowenstein We resident of Mount Vernon. I'm a mom and educator. Um, I'm here to echo very briefly the comments that you've already heard. um emphasizing the importance of canceling the slot contract, um, and

thinking more holistically about safety and what it means to us in our community. Um, when I think about uh Flock, I want to echo Sara Sarah's comments about thinking about it in the context of the openly and unabashedly fascist federal government that we're under, um, and specifically the complete disregard for data security just this week. I don't know if folks saw the news that some of the doge goons had removed uh Social Security data. for millions and millions Americans. Um, so these are the kinds of breaches that we're seeing happening at the federal level. Um, and so collecting data that's being held by a private company that is um very clearly benefiting from the broader political environment that we're in is not a position that we want to put ourselves in as a community, particularly as a community of uh many, many immigrants, uh, in particular, uh, with, with everything that is going on with ICE, um, and for the many other reasons that folks have have brought up that I'm not going to belabor, um, but I, I'm so incredibly moved by all of the folks who have um come tonight uh to share their views and um and I, I just wanna also step back and echo Sam's point earlier about just thinking more broadly and holistically about safety in our community. Um, I have said this before and I'll say it again, like the number one thing that scares me, uh, as a community member here is the giant Trucks that are increasingly becoming the norm in our streets and how unsafe it is to walk when I think about my child being able to walk and bike to school the way I did growing up. That is the number one safety concern that I have in this town, and a lot of the time when we talk about safety, um, it's being shaped by, uh, really sensationalist narratives about violence and crime and what gets measured and counted as crime, but the bottom line is the thing that's going to affect all of us every day are like basic infrastruc Sidewalks connecting

to our school system, the lack of bike lanes, um, all, all of these kind of basics that that get put in a different bucket. Um, and so I want to encourage counsel to think about um how we can invest in a more vibrant, uh, and safer Mount Vernon for all of us that includes the community center for our elders and all the other spaces that we can invest in more um to make this the community that we all want to live in, not a surveillance state. Thank you. Thanks, Kelly. Good evening, counsel and Mayor. Lisa Ellis and I'm here in Mount Vernon and I just want to answer the conversation, um, uh, I know you're all, we're all researching, um, and getting input from uh Chief Chrisman, and I'm curious, you know, what the conversation is, has been about the um cameras that we have, you know, on the different, just the regulars, uh police cameras that we have in the different intersections. I remember when my kid was, I don't know about Yeehai and Cub Scouts, and we went and saw, oh, you know, the room with all these, you know, monitors that had all the different cameras. I'm like, OK, I understood that was like keeping track of different things going on in the city, and you can retrieve that. And so I'm curious what are um discussion could be brought in as to how to use those more and, and put the stop to um our plot cameras as legislation is, is telling us, um, but yeah, just let's ask questions of what we can be using with those cameras to track the people, track certain specific things that we're looking for, for different um um criminal behaviors, you know, let's maximize that, um, in our city

if we need that, but um, as we clearly see I mean, there's a lot of people in our city and our county that have worked for a year on stopping these, the, you know, the legislation being that was put forward. We have many people in this community that worked with that, with many groups, um. to get that going and to talk to our legislators. So me being one of those, and um I just think other people in our community that have been a part of that and we're glad this legislation, and nothing is perfect, it's never perfect, but um it's a step in not being let me say China So there's movies about all the surveillance in China and you please watch those so you can see what these flat cameras do, surveilllancing people and regulating who can buy what, who can go where. That, that's, that's what's happening, um, when communities are using these AI um flat cameras. That's why we want to step back and look back at our Constitution and rule with, you know, bring this in. So please ask um Crisman more about the cameras and um the different intersections. How many of them? What are we doing? How can we maximize that more and, and care for our people. So thank you. I really appreciate all that you're doing and the work in many areas, including the senior center. Senior center staff, we're gonna really appreciate that too. So thank you. Thanks,. All right. I have one written comment, somebody had, uh some accessibility issues that I could make it in tonight, uh, I will read quickly. It's a little bit long, but um. you can, you can put me on a timer if you need to. 22 This is from Scott Correa of

Mount Vernon. I am disappointed beyond my ability to express myself without dropping an F-bomb in the establishment of new hoops for selection of the opioid funding recipient process. I think it is all caps high time. Yes, that's perfectly timed pun he said that the drug rehab industry members stop milking my city's resources and quietly accept the fact that public safety is compromised by drug users. We have already spent so much to help. What about me? I deserve a dog to be in the police force. I am a disabled 68-year-old that deserves a stronger police presence in my city to protect me to a higher level than today. Drug crimes affect me directly as my city is less safe today than in the past. We have funded, God knows how many crutches for addicts to try to get better, let's support the other side of the picture and fund increased support for the majority here, the non-drug using law abiding people being victimized by crimes driven by drug use. I have no problem helping people that need help were doing that really well. I have a big issue with the members of the opioid assistance industry denying law-abiding taxpayers a police dog to attempt to balance the equation. I'm not heartless. I'm an engineer and we see things differently through analysis. The analysis clearly shows us that Mount Vernon should allocate the $100,000 in opioid settlement funds to a new police canine unit because this investment directly slows the inflow of users into the local drug abuse system which in turn increases resources available per existing user and improves their chances of re co ver y Uh, today, with opioid use disorder tend to enter and leave the local system. and only 4 ways.

Uh, one, they quit trying to access help and disengage from services too, they kick the habit and achieve some level of recovery. 3, they move away, shifting the problem to another community for they die often from overdose or complications. Traditional social services focus almost entirely on those already in the system, counseling, detox, treatment beds, and recovery support. These services are essential, but they are operating in a context where the inflow of new users is constant or growing, which dilutes per person and attention overwhelms staff, and erodes outcome. How am I doing on time, Becky A modern narcotics detection canine unit is a specialized tool for drug interdiction aimed at intercepting illegal substances before they reached local streets, homes, and users. Well-trained detection dogs can reliably identify a range of narcotics and vehicles, parcels, buildings, and public spaces, and we have been shown in other jurisdictions to significantly increase the amount of illicit drugs seized and success rate of drug indictments. By increasing the probability that drug dealers, that drug s dealers and trafficking routes are detected and disrupted a canine unit affects the front end of the opioid problem. Fewer large shipments of opioids and related drugs reach Mount Vernon, the local street supply becomes more disrupted inconsistent, and risky for dealers. New potential users encounter fewer opportunities to start and casual users find it harder to maintain regular use. This is not a theoretical effect jurisdictions that deploy detection dogs in high risk environments. Observe measurable increases in seizures and disruption of drug flows. especially for substances like cocaine, marijuana, and synthetic drugs, while not every seizure prevents a new addiction, every disrupted shipment represents hundreds or thousands of potential doses that will never enter local circulation. I am going to run down Mister Crea apologize or running out of time. I'm gonna find your your final

thought here, from the pers perspective of people struggling with addiction, funding the canine unit can be argued to be the more supportive and humane choice for several reasons. It prevents some individuals from ever entering the four outcome pipeline in the first place. People who never start using because supply is disrupted, never have to face the quick kick move die outcomes at all. Uh, it improves conditions within the system by reducing crowding, which increases per person time, attention, and continuity of care for those already struggling. Put simply, if a person with opioid use disorder is in Mount Vernon 10 years from now, they will fare better in the system where fewer new users are arriving behind them. The treatment network is not perpetually overloaded. Law enforcement has constrained the local drug market so that temptations and triggers are rarer. Allocating the $100,000 to a canine unit is therefore not against abusers' interests. It is for them by reshaping the environment so that more of them reach the only positive exit kicking the habit, while fewer people ever start down the path at all. I I just need about a 10 minute break now. Uh, thank you, Mr. Crea, for writing it. Anyone else, uh, have BubbaCon? Yes, come on up. Hello, my name is Harrison. I live around Alger, and I just kind of wanted to do a quick rebuttal to Mr. Perea of I mean, if drug dogs were so effective, why have we been losing the war on drugs for 60 years, like the fentanyl like crisis is worse And we've had and like he's had a drug dog and up till 2023 it's not the most, it's not an effective tool, otherwise you wouldn't

have been losing it for. That's it. That's my whole point Thanks. Thanks, Anderson Done. done Anyone else Hello again, counsel. I'm Jack. I live here, uh, in Mount Burns, just down the street, really, and I'm here once again to speak against thought cameras. as others have said, it's not really about trusting the police department or the police. I'm sure they're all nice. I didn't, I don't come here to speak against Flock because I think all the police are mustache twirling villains Um, I also trust my wife, but I wouldn't really like it if she but cameras all around our house. So again, it's not really about trusting the police. You just don't want to be surveilled to begin with. Thank you. Thank you, Jack All right. Last chance No more OK, we're moving on Item 4, is tonight's consent agenda. It includes meeting minutes, payroll checks, and deposits, wire transfers, claims, um, I understand Council member West, you, you caught a you you wanted to pull one of those items. Is that right? Yes, yes, I make a motion to pull those items because there's a $1 million discrepancy there. OK Double, double payment OK, yeah. So just to be clear, double payment is, it's an impossibility. What happened was, I think, last month or last meetings. was included in this for payroll, right? Yeah, no one was double paid, but but item 4B is a repeat of last meeting, so we need to get that updated. OK, can we have that for next meeting or great. All right, so, um,

with a motion, we can pull item 4B, bring a consent agenda. and there's a I'll let you do the motion in a second and we'll hold on Uh, my, my understanding is that you have the intent to pull item 4B, right ? Correct. OK, and I would second that motion. Thank you. So a motion by councilmember West, seconded by Council member Van der Stoop. Any discussion on this? We'll bring it back. We'll get the, sorry about the error. Um, all in favor say aye. I. I opposed, say no and the consent agenda without item 4B passes. Mr. Mayor, I do have a another motion on item 4C as well. OK On item 4C, um, it's interesting that um councilmember Hudson, and this is from the 25th of February minutes. Councilmember Hudson seconded a motion, although she was marked absent during that meeting. and excused Are you talking about I'm sorry, February 25th. February 25th. So, so we're on the, the minutes for council meeting, correct Well, I say he was looking at 4C and I couldn't figure out what he said that was claimed, so that's where I was confused. Sorry. So there were 6 council members present during that day. Um, I was excused, but then she later seconded a motion that was originated by Councilmember Beaton. I actually didn't, just so you know. Well, according to the, I'm, I'm just reading in the. So we need, so we just approved these minutes. Um, they need to be amended. Um, uh, just for discussion, um, just so we're doing it and I'm, I'm gonna make a motion and then I would have a second so we can

discuss, but I would make a motion to amend the consent agenda to um uh reflect reality. Yeah, and we can go back and look at reality at the video and make this change. And is counsel OK with that? OK. I'll, I don't think it's necessary to look at the video. I believe that she wasn't here. She said she wasn't here, but somebody made the 2nd probably, so we'll just update that. Thanks for catching that Mary's not haunting our meetings, not really, really, I'm not good. Yeah. Point of order. Um, we had a motion and a second did we need to vote on that? Yeah, let's do it. That we did. Uh, any more discussion on that? OK. Becky, did you get the, the motion in the second? We're all here, so it had to be somebody here. Uh, all in favor say aye, aye, all opposed say no. Motion passes. All right Um, we will move on to council member comments. Uh, anyone on council I make consert down with Councilmember Vander Soup. Yeah, I'll just be really quick. Um, I appreciate all the public comments and plot cameras tonight. Thank you so much, um, and thank you to staff. Um, I know that this has been kind of a tough couple of months, and I appreciate you guys sticking in there. Um, I did just want to be on the record so people kind of know where I'm at with the flock issue. Um, I do think that surveillance is weird. I think technology we don't monitor the creep, um, it happens very slowly over time. And I think the big problem happens is when our kids are used to something that we weren't used to, um, but then the technology keeps going, but and there's lots and lots of times where I wish that technology could go backwards. I wish that I had the internet from 2016 still Um, and I don't get to choose that, and that's a shame. Um. at the same time,

um the, the, the first time that a flop camera um doesn't save somebody's life or doesn't prevent an abduction Um, everybody up here is going to have to live with that And everybody here advocating will have to live with that. And so it is a very serious discussion that we are taking very seriously, and so I just want, so you know where I'm coming from and, and how I'm feeling about this, um. it's, it's an emotional thing because uh we're, we're weighing two arms, and one of them is something that I feel very deeply, but I also feel very protective like I, I, I don't want anything to happen, but one day it might, and that's what I'm kind of balancing. So I just wanted to kind of just share my thoughts on that. So thank you. Great. But yes, Council member Oliver Yeah, I also just want to thank everyone who showed up in person today to give public comment. Um, I fully agree. I would like to see us get rid of these flock cameras. I think they're bad. Um, and I look forward to the council taking a vote on that hopefully very soon. Thank you. Council member Oliver, is that a are, are you making a motion to take a vote on that ? Any other council member comments? I do have a comment. Yes, Council member West. OK. Public and uh colleagues, I apologize for bringing in an agenda item before us but as we learned during our committee meeting earlier from Kevin. we're facing an active emergency. Senate Bill 6002 is passed with an emergency clause bringing immediate gross misdemeanor liabilities. Kevin confirmed on, and, uh, police chief confirmed on record that our police department is not yet completed the required compliance reviews. because this is an intimate imminent legal liability to

this counsel. I'm forced to make an emergency motion to terminate the flock contract. effective 2359, 12th March. 2026 Are there any seconds Point of order, um, this is councilperson comments. There certainly will be time to to do that, but this isn't that time, the time, the time for that is during the approval of the agenda. The agenda has been approved. We don't typically add to it. This is your council meeting, if, if you want to move to add an agenda item under new business. I we can, you can certainly do that particularly because of the emergency um, my point of wonder though is that this is counts person comments, there will be another time to do that. It's just, now is not the time. to, to make that, um. that observation. And, and I did have a councilperson in common if, if I could make that. OK. Now I'm caught in between because there's a motion. um Yeah, um, if allowed, if we are able to still change the agenda, I will second, uh. Mr. West's, um, thing, but I, I guess prefer to. So, your counsel procedures are yours. You can suspend them. if you want, because it's your meeting. So if you want to do that, what I would ask of the council is that there is a collective will to add an agenda item and suspend the rules. That could be framed as a motion. He would add that on your new business, and then you can decide whether or not to address block however you wish. So, if the council's willing to suspend its rules and add an

item at this point. You certainly can do so. Is it fair to say that there is an emotion and a second for exactly what Kevin described, adding an item to your Yes, and this, this would allow you to vote on whether or not yeah, do we need to first vote on whether or not we want to spend the rules. That's that's what you're voting would be, Councilor sir, to suspend the rules and add this item. Yeah, so that's the question on the table. Do we want to suspend the rules? Yes. And so because it's been moved and seconded, we will, um, entertain discussion on it. What do you think? Yes, Council member Vanderstood. Um, I, uh, appreciate the intent of what the the person was trying to what Randy was trying to do, um, so I'm not going to hold the um the fact that this wasn't before the agenda, um, against anybody in, in the future, we'll do it as the agenda's brought up and then this won't be a problem. Um. I, if, if this does um, this is just adding it to the agenda, so it's not whether or not we're voting on it. I will almost always be in support of communicating about things more Tonight doesn't seem like a good night to do it, to be honest, but I will still, I appreciate the intent of trying to discuss more. So I would be speaking in favor of adding it to the agenda, although I do not think that I will have a positive vote for it tonight. I That's my comment. OK. Any other discussion So. Um, I, I too, I would like to thank everybody for coming. It's nice to hear from the public Um, and I am similar with Andrew. It's it is a very difficult time because coming from me, um, working with children and um a lot of different issues with human trafficking,

kidnapping, which are a big deal on our I-5 corridor. You, it it's, it's a toss of two different evils. I, uh, too, I'm not a fan of Massa Raylan sight. That's not something I vote for, but in the same instance, I know of children being kidnapped and trafficked. very often around here and without those cameras, that is a huge tool for our police department. So I just think that there's a lot of discussion that still needs to be worked through and I don't, I'm not sure that tonight is the right time to be voting about it. So, but I just want to thank everybody for coming, so. And a reminder to counsel in committee, you suspended your discussion on this topic. for committee, the continuance of committee after this meeting as well. Other discussion. That was what I was going to say. No, that's OK. Thank you for saying it is, we did ask the chief to stay We did ask, we suspended our meeting. I don't know if that's the right word, but that we were gonna come back afterwards and talk about it more so I don't really feel that that's in the spirit of, of what we did, uh, is to put this out for a vote. Well, since I'm the last person to speak. I want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone that has come out not only tonight, but literally the last 3 months. for all the phone calls um, and for the emails and just taking the time I this is very, very hard for me, um, on one hand, we have an essential duty. to ensure public safety. and on the other hand, we are talking about a fundamental right to

privacy. um if we went back 35 years, I would say not only no but hell no, no one needs to know what I'm doing. But now I'm a mom and I'm a grandma and I think about my children. I think about my grandchildren, I think about my neighbors and I, I, I don't, it, it's such a weight like, like Andrew has said that if something happens um, and so I don't know if we hold this vote tonight that it's going to go the direction that I think the room wants it to go because I I'm not saying I can't get there. I just um it's just it's huge. Um it's a competing priority. I don't. and it's just a lot, um and I just don't know that I'm quite there yet with the boat, but yeah, uh, just a question of order. Um, if we were to add this to the agenda, does this immediately become the next item of business, or does this get added to the very end? You can put it where you like no, yeah, there's no rule on that. You can do it over the we are going to do this. Is it OK? I don't want to have to amend a motion. Yeah, but is it OK if it goes to the end of the. end of the new business. Let's get through the agenda. I think. Yeah, so yeah if it was at the end. OK, so the question is, can the motion be that what we're gonna vote on be we want to suspend our rules. We want to add an item to our agenda tonight, and we want to put that item at the end of new business, and that's what we would be voting on if council member West and council member Oliver are OK with that. I am OK with that. I think if the rest of counsel doesn't feel ready. um, which is

somewhat frustrating to me because we've had several conversations already. If you don't feel ready, I would be fine with voting on it at the next. council meeting. If folks feel like they would be more prepared then but really, the community is here. We've had several people, every single meeting, talk about their concerns about flock cameras. We've had now, I mean I've had 3 months on counsel to research this. I know at least 3 of us have had that much time. The rest of us have had 2+ years, um. we really need to make a decision. I would prefer to do it now. If folks don't feel comfortable. fine, let's do it next meeting, but a decision needs to be made. Let's do it now Tonight, I mean, I'm agenda, but good OK So there's no more discussion. Uh, we will be voting on this motion that I just summarized before, uh Councilmaner Oliver spoke. So all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. No. Motion passes and we will put this as item J. And abstain All right. Any other council member comments tonight? Yes council member sir So, um, I wanna thank everyone who came out to our War one meeting a couple of, uh, well, yeah, a couple of weeks ago. Um, and at that meeting, we made a commitment that we want to do this on a regular basis, which I'm,

I'm sure that all the other wards um made this similar type of commitment to their wards and so it was a great conversation and I think that it is a great exercise to have that back and forth dialogue between us, the council, and the residents of the city of Mount Vernon, uh, it was very constructive. There were brought up um, that I really had no, uh, prior knowledge of and so that put some things onto my radar to um look into, research, and and see if we can come up with some sort of uh policy on those things. So, thank you very much for everybody who came out. Well, well said, Council member um no more. Well said. It was a it was a good meeting. Uh, we got good, good feedback and thank you are at large was there well as well, so yes, I think at least every quarter we'd want to do this as long as there's public interest. and everyone's welcome. We had folks who weren't in Ward one that were, were there just because, you know, War one is large. and it affects lots of Mount Vernon, so everyone's welcome to any of ours. OK. OK. You have to please the council and the mayor. I know we typically will ask for an executive session at the end of council, and we probably will, but I would ask the mayor and city council to enter into a very brief executive session, 5 minutes, and we will go back to the jury room to discuss with legal counsel matters relating to enforcement actions, litigation or potential litigation in which the city, the governing body, where I remember acting in an official capacity is or is likely to become a party when public knowledge regarding the discussion is likely to result in other adverse legal

or financial consequences to the city pursuant to RCW 4230, subsection 1 101, I, 5 minutes, we'd come back. into open meeting at sorry, I need glasses. I need better glasses 807, unless I go out and

announce that it'll be extended very

briefly. OK. Thank you. With, with that,

we will resets. Wait right here Oh, we'll

wait for council member Oliver. Thank. OK, talk amongst yourselves. We have a couple. Excuse me I'm not to admit not to admit good. I get the I wouldn't change it for you I just a a because. I'd like to I'm all set. You bet. What's that All right, we, I will call the City of Mountverness City council meeting back into session. The time is now 8:09 p.m. Uh, we never finished council member comments. Any more ? OK, we will move on to Mayor's report. Got great news. There isn't one. So we're my first applause in 2 years. Uh, item A, it is a resolution to honor a longtime community member and beloved resident and Steve Sexton is going to introduce this item, Steve. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, council. It's the great Monty Python said, not for something completely different, and a lighter, lighter topics. Uh, once you have with you this evening is a resolution 1090, which would name the

crosswalk in front of Washington Elementary in honor of Jim Lippert and uh I'd like to go ahead and read the resolution. That works for everybody. Um. resolution 1090 is a resolution of the city of Mount Vernon, Washington, naming a public crosswalk within the city right away in honor of James Jim Lippard. whereas James Jim Lipperts was a beloved community member who served numerous charitable causes and whereas for 32 years Jim served at Washington Elementary School acting, acting as a volunteer coordinator, yearbook editor, safety expert, playground manager, and dedicated crosswalk patrol guard. And whereas Jim's most prominent crossing guard post was in the Washington Elementary School area. and whereas the naming of a public of the public crosswalk located on McLean Road. north of Washington Elementary School is an appropriate recognition for such a distinguished person. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the city council of the City of Mount Vernon, Washington, that the city council hereby named the public crosswalk located at McLean Road in front of Washington Elementary School in honor of James Jim Lipperts. And be it further resolved that city council directs that an appropriate ceremony be held to mark the naming of the crosswalk. passed and adopted by the city council of the City of Mount Vernon at a regular meeting of this the 11th day of March 2026. I don't know if there's any folks here who came for that. I saw, I saw a hat. You always look for. I saw a hat. Look the Jim Limbert. Thank you, Steve, thank you Mhm. Hello and welcome Hello, my name is uh Denise

Barrens, and I'm the one who kind of spearheaded the idea of naming the crosswalk after Jim Lippert. This is Jessica Army, who was not only a great friend to Jim Lippert, but also a co-worker, and I'd like her to tell you a little bit more about Jim. OK, I'm gonna do my best not to cry, so bear with me. I'm here tonight to talk about a man who's spent nearly 30 years. Actually, this would have been his 30th year. That's why he never retired. He was waiting to retire on his 30th year, so. I'm here tonight to talk about a man who spent nearly 30 years helping children safely cross the street, and a lifetime helping people feel seen, valued, and loved. This Sunday would have been Jim Lippert's seventy-fifth birthday. While he may no longer be with us, his legacy will forever be celebrated. It feels especially fitting to honor him this week in the very place where he spent so many years serving this community. Jim Lippert had a zest for life and an infectious jolly laugh. He gave the kind of tight hugs that felt therapeutic, and he could make anyone smile with a silly face when they needed it most. Jim profoundly impacted countless lives throughout the way he showed up for others For nearly 3 decades, Jim worked for the Mount Vernon School District. He also volunteered throughout the community and for more than 25 years brought something even more magical to life. Santa Claus at Washington Elementary School, Mr. Lipper absolutely loved his role as recess supervisor and crossing guard. Every weekday, rain or shine, he helped students cross the street safely, always wearing one of his silly hats and a warm smile as he waved to everyone who passed by. He

donated countless hours and even his own money into improving school grounds and creating a fun, safe space where kids could gather and play. Jim was also a photographer who captured candid moments of students and staff enjoying school. He spent hundreds of hours creating beautiful yearbooks and quietly bought copies for students who couldn't afford one. He collected popular children's books to read with students, to foster a love of reading and you rewarded positive values like school spirit, kindness, helpfulness, and respect with stickers. But Jim's dedication to making a difference extended far beyond the school. He was a devoted Mariners fan who could often be found at games wearing his Santa jersey and gifting baseball cards and candy canes. He was a loyal Seahawks fan who wore his jersey every Blue Friday, handed out 12 pins and cheered on his team win or lose. Jim was also a proud veteran who deeply loved his country, on patriotic holidays, he would show up dressed head to toe, red, white, and blue, sometimes even dyeing his beard. He placed dozens of flags at Hawthorne and volunteered with the Mount Vernon Elks Club, helping raise funds for veterans and families in need. Christmas and all the magic it brought was his favorite. You could always find him riding the fire truck in the Mount Vernon Christmas Parade and posing for Santa photos with families year after year. Jim Lippert had a way of seeing the good in the world. He found joy in every raindrop, snowflake, and falling leaf. He loved unconditionally and treated each person he met as someone worth caring about. Missing Jim is a sadness wrapped in the blessing of having known him, and the lives he touched will never stop remembering him. So today I ask that the crosswalk in front of Washington

Elementary School being named after Jim Lippert. and every time someone walks across it. they'll remember the man who spent his life helping others find their way. Thank you. All right All right so All right city council, a an incredibly difficult decision in front of you right now, um, just so you know that they talked about a ceremony on Sunday, which would have been Jim's seventy-fifth birthday, and, uh, that's gonna take place at Washington School is one o'clock, right? Good. That's what's on my calendar. Hope everyone can make it there. Any other, any special guests? The Mariners' Moose and Blitz the Seahawk are gonna be there. So bring the whole family, um, and we have a sign made with Jim's face on his picture on it and naming the, the crosswalk. So Jim's legacy and his light are going to, uh, gonna live on forever here. So pretty exciting. Um, any, any motions for resolution 1090. So move. A motion by Councilmember Torcero, seconded by a councilmember at Damon. Uh, any more discussion on this one? Bring on the debate. No, just kidding. All in favor, say aye, aye, all opposed say no. Motion passes, excited for that. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you very much. Item B tonight is a presentation from the

Mount Vernon Downtown Association, and Steve is going to introduce this one. Yeah the Allen. Allen's. needs. OK I I show. hm all the way to left, right. Right here? Oh thank you so much. I should have brought one of my kids with me. Good evening, Mayor and council. My name is Ellen Gamson I'm the executive director of the Mount Vernon Downtown Association. I want to thank you for having me here tonight. Um, particularly delighted to be sharing the agenda with Jim Lipper, whom I worked with since 2007. during um our annual holiday events and missed greatly. Um, but this is a wonderful way to honor him, so thank you The Mount Vernon Downtown Association. I'm gonna give you an update tonight Got some city council members that I haven't seen on the dais before. So, um, I will very briefly share with you that the mission of the Mount Vernon Downtown Association. is to cultivate a vibrant and prosperous downtown while honoring its historic character. to preserve and grow the place where community connection happens. We use the Main Street approach to um work on revitalizing and keeping our downtown vibrant. Main Street approach involves a 4 point approach involving design,

organization, promotion, and economic vitality. We, uh, gather community vision and market understanding inputs. to arrive at a transformational strategy in 2018, we arrived at with significant community input, I will say, um, the strategy of positioning downtown Mount Vernon as a hub of food arts and entertainment for our region. And since then, we've been measuring quantitative and qualitative outcomes as a result of our efforts. In 2025, I want to share with you that we had 7 new businesses. open, um, and I'll say that's a net number. So we had 4 restaurants. uh Lainarca, a traditional Mexican bakery, the Casan Cleaver Steakhouse, hot gyros, and fat bun's Cafe opened. to retailers, small spaces, and arrows aim. and two personal services, Salt and Company and Palm Collective. Um, I will say that one of those uh personal services companies has um moved out of the downtown district. So that accounts for the discrepancy between 7 and the numbers you see here, the names you see here. There's some photos for those of you who may have not yet visited some of these businesses, um, I encourage you to explore the wonderful food. um, offerings available downtown and the super friendly folks that provide it to you. Um, also, we've had some great, uh, as I mentioned, new retail and and services open up. Uh, I also like to share that with these new businesses, we're also seeing a delightful increase in diversity in business ownership. um, such that the businesses in our downtown district are more closely approaching the actual mix of of our

community, which is, uh, a delight. Um I wanna talk a little bit about the economic development programs at the Mount Vernon Downtown Association runs to benefit our community. Um, the pop-up Mount Vernon is in a city-owned space, so it's done in partnership with the city. We are provided with a very reasonable below market rent through prior counsel action in partnership for us to help develop a pipeline of support for um early stage entrepreneurs in our community. In 2025, we had four entrepreneurial guests in the pop-up. One of those immediately transitioned to a permanent brick and mortar location in the downtown, that would be a small spaces, which has just recently rebranded to Dry Inside. Um, and they are located at the south end or north end of town on the east side near the co op And the other of those um economic development programs as the Lido Collective, which many of you may be familiar with. It's a what I call a creative microenterprise incubator. In that space, we serve over 100 local artisans and makers, um, at any given moment, you'll find more than 80 folks represented in that store. And incidentally, I'd like to say that we also have created 3 jobs through that effort. Um. and recently, uh, we have begun offering additionally in that space, classes and trainings for our artists and the community. New initiatives undertaken by the Mount Vernon Downtown Association in 2025. We um had our very first internship agreement with a student from Western Washington University's marketing program, uh, you'll see her pictured.

Here's Sabrina Diamonds. Some of you may have seen her. She was with us for most of 2025 and was an absolute delight. I'm happy to say that her experience and her professor's understanding of her experience with us was such that we have just recently begun a new internship with a new marketing student from Western Washington University, Julie. Um, so, uh, that's just an excitement to me that we are um continuing an ongoing relationship with that institution. In 2025, Mount Vernon was a participant through our program in a pilot program with the state, uh uh, exploring whether the council um the American Immigration Council's belonging barometer could be applied to our work to measure our efficacy in creating community connection. You'll recall that that is an important value for us in our mission statement, and we were one of 4 communities using this tool for the first time with great success, got great um participation from our community in the surveys that we sent out, and we are actually actively using those results to help determine uh future programming and current um assessing current programming, um, as a result, I actually will be attending the American Immigration Council's um conference in Seattle just in a week and a half, um, as a guest, which is really exciting as well. And also, uh, in the 2025, we developed um another internship program in, in partnership with the um Brian Reid of the Mount Vernon High School CTE program. It's actually just now underway. We have 3 Mount Vernon, well, 2 Mount Vernon high school students and 1 Mount Vernon Christian student, um, beginning internships, um, we received a grant from the National Main Street

Organization, um to develop equitable entrepreneurship ecosystems, and then and so we have created this entrepreneurship educational experience, kind of like this triple E thing. and I say equitable because we are paying those students in order that all students would be able to have access to this opportunity. And we know that many students, um, need to work. for pay. So they are receiving pay as well as credit for their experiences. And I'll add maybe unnecessarily as so is that uh college student working with us. We um worked, uh, either, um, we solo, so produced or worked in partnership with community partners on 18 events and promotions over the course of the year. Um hopefully all of you attended at least one or more of them. Um, what you see here are photos from the one that's coming very quickly down the road like a freight train the Tulip Festival Street Fair is our signature event, an existential fundraiser for our organization and with many thanks to you, we were able to grow that event in 2025, have a much more vibrant music festival within our arts festival, which was incredibly popular and um I learned through um conversations with the company Placer AI which anonymously tracked cell phone pings to let us know that 2800 people over the course of that three day weekend returned. to that end of the affair. So it's a very well received, um, expansion of the offerings of the Tulip Festival Street parent, and thank you again for allowing that expansion of our street closures. What's next for us Also barreling down on us like a freight train is the uh Washdot. um construction project

to improve and preserve uh the West Side Bridge. We've all been wanting it for a long time. I think as long as I've been in my job, uh, people have said, why can't you paint that bridge? I'm certain Mayor Donovan heard, has heard that during his entire career with the city. We're excited that it's actually happening. We know that without pain, there would be no gain. Um, starting in May, traffic will be heading westbound. uh, only on that bridge. So we are, we actually began last week convening with our partners in Washdo and the city as well as other community organizations to um begin um coalescing around a campaign to make sure that that um 12 or less, hopefully 12 or fewer months of traffic disruption will not have a negative impact on our downtown businesses or our West Side friends. We're working on growing those community partnerships. We plan to continue to engage in the comprehensive plan update as it enters phase 2 We are working with community partners, um, just beginning to explore creative district designation. We can plan to continue our advocacy efforts around Mount Vernon, a Mount Vernon, attaining a certified local government status to open up possible and potential financial tools for small scale developers in our downtown The Planned Action ordinance to um help the city attract desirable development on our riverfront. and um also maybe take a look, look at the allowed use codes in our downtown district to reflect current. business norms We like to strengthen and grow our board and commi committee membership. I heard somebody else already pitched you guys, but if you know anybody who cares about downtown, who wants to help us shape the next 10 years send them

our way Uh, this is a year for us to revisit our strategic plan, and we want comprehensive community engagement and um a lot of passion brought to bear on that process. and that is most of what I have to say. Thank you so much for having me. Do we have any questions? Any questions for Ellen? Yeah. Uh, Ellen, I would just like to say that um you're excited that the bridge is being painted. I don't know that I would say I'm excited for that. Oh, I'm excited. I like the way you're sitting in it. Yeah, this time next year, I was kind of hoping they would give us a new bridge that had, you know, safe pedestrian walkway and things like that, but anyway, you're doing a fantastic job. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for taking care of the heart and soul of our city. Yeah. OK All right, we are at item C. It's closed record public hearing and a resolution and development services. Oh, Rebecca's here. Hello. I had Steve down for this one. Rebecca Lowell is going to present this. If you'd like to come up, you're on. But I good evening Mayor and council. Uh, if you just one second. So as the mayor stated, um, I'm before you this evening asking for approval of a resolution that would approve a preliminary plot. uh, and this preliminary plaque is named the South South Village, excuse me, Platt, uh, that will result in the creation of 2 lots and 6 tracks on the approximate 11 acre site.

And just by way of explanation, uh, the 2 lots will have homes built on them and tracks are created for amenities like your stormwater pond or critical areas that um are on a site. The lots within this platform that will have homes built on them, range from a little over 7000 square feet in size to a little over 12,000 square feet in size. Uh, there is a portion of Maddox Creek, which is a fish bearing stream, and what is called a category 3 wetland, uh, both exist across the project site. There are 2 homes on the site. One of them will be demolished and one is going to stay. Um, and the one that's going to stay, that's one of the, the large lots that's created in that subdivision. Uh, and a new road will be constructed and utilities uh will be extended. The utilities, of course, will be our sanitary sewer, storm sewer, potable water, um, and other dry utilities The two maps I have here before you, uh, the map on the left is just to get you overall in the city, uh, where this project is located and you'll see it's roughly in the middle south part of the city. Um, and then the map to the right, uh, I've got an aerial map of the site, and I've just drawn a um a, a red box just to get you more familiar. um, with where this site is. You'll see to the north of the site, um, we've got East Section Street. uh, roughly to the west of the site is South Laventure Road, and the south side of the site directly abuts East Blackburn Road. Here I have um two maps, actually, uh, illustrating this preliminary plat. Again, the map on the left is existing conditions, and I like to

provide that to you just because the plat map on the right starts to look really busy with things going on there. Um, in addition, I've colored things on these, uh on these illustrations. So they are gonna look a little bit different, uh, than the record that you have before you as well. So as you can see, uh, the map on the left you can see where uh the dark blue line I've indicated that's where Maddox's Creek is, the dark black, uh, boundary line is the, um, the extent of the property. I colored in the wetland that's in the middle of the site there, and then, of course, you can see the two homes and uh North is up on this map. and I really don't like it when I have a map that I can't put north up, but to make this so that you can actually see this on the screen. I did rotate this map, so you'll see the north arrow on the map on the right is pointing towards the right. So, um, but on there you can see uh where I've indicated in blue where the stormwater pond will be located. Of course, you can see the road extension and the cul-de-sac and then further to the north on the site, um, you're gonna see where the buffer, I've colored in green will remain on the site, and you can also see from here, um, the portion of the wetland that's going to be filled because, of course, you can see it really lightly. um, underneath where those locks are going to be located. Procedurally, uh, this is the first step, of course, to create lots that we can get new homes built on. Um, what happens, uh, when somebody wants to subdivide a piece of property. It's first they're gonna do their preliminary plat approval. Then they're going to get a, what we call a fill Permit which will allow them to install the roads and utilities, and then somebody from our department will be back

before you for final plat approval. Um, and after final plat approval, those lots can be sold and homes can be built on them Um, as you can see from the, uh, brief overview I've got here, this project started, uh, in July of 2025. Um, we had the procedural items that needed to be taken care of, uh, and uh, February last month, we had an open record hearing before a hearing examiner, and he did recommend approval of the subdivision with a number of conditions. Um, and then, of course, tonight, we're here before you, uh for this hearing. Uh. In some, um, what has been found is that the proposal is consistent with our Mount Vernon municipal code and the comprehensive plan. The procedural requirements and those are the uh uh letters that get sent out to the abutting property owners, the notices, um, that are on our website, um, and the uh legal notices that were required to publish, um, have all been satisfied. Um, the proposed preliminary plat, the critical areas SEPA, which is the state Environmental Policy Act and the trafficking currency were considered at a public hearing before the hearing examiner who, as I stated, recommended approval of this application with conditions. And as staff as or as such, excuse me, Staff recommends council hold a close record public hearing and approve the resolution that is before you this evening. Um, and one other quick thing I'll say is, um, in a close record hearing like we have here tonight, what that means is that no new evidence can be submitted, which is partly why, and I know that packet I put in your,

in yours, uh, agendas was several 100 p age s long, um, but that's the reason why we're required to do that. Um, so anyone who spoke at the lower level hearing can come before you this evening, but they would still have to testify about matters that were already in the record. So, um, with that, happy to answer any questions you might have for Rebecca on this before we open the here. OK Rebecca, so before you consider resolution 1091, I will open up the closed record public hearing at this time. Anyone wishing to speak on this item that's already party record, can come on up and do that. Going once sorry, then I will close the closed record public hearing, and counselor would entertain a motion to approve resolution 1091. I'll make a motion to approve Resolution 1091. Second, by Melissa, seconded by Novo discussion. All in favor, say I. Aye, all opposed say no. Motion passes. Great. Thank you, Rebecca. Item D is a public hearing and resolution for the 2026 comp plan docket. And do you have this one too, Rebecca? Yes sir. Fantastic. blessed. I uh thank you, Mayor. Uh, good evening again. Sorry. Um so the next item I have before you as the mayor stated, is the docket of our um update to our comprehensive plan. Um, I'm gonna go through many of these slides pretty quickly. At the last time I was before you, about a month ago. I think I verbally um had gone through this process with you, but I didn't have some

of the slides that I think, um, can be helpful talking about um uh the, the one big law that um uh our department administers, of course, is the um uh the planning nabling Act, and it's got 3 parts So the docket that I'm here to talk to you about actually falls under 3670A, which is different than the 3670B and the 3670C. Um and I always like to point that out because there's different rules and regulations that we have to comply with depending on which lane, which one of these, um, subsections of this law that we're, uh, we have an item that we're bringing before you. So with the growth Management Act requires, of course, is that the city we're required to have a comprehensive plan. Uh, the city's comprehensive plan, um, is intended to guide and coordinate development in the city over a 20-year increments, uh, and you can tell I have not updated this slide recently. So it used to be that those updates were required every 8 years. Uh, probably 2 years ago, that did change, um, and now we do updates every 10 years. So um, legislative land use decisions made by the city. under the GMA are required to take into account cumulative impacts. Um, and there are a few very narrow, uh, exceptions to what I'm about to tell you, uh, but this document, uh, the Comprehensive plan, can only be amended just once a year. So, being able to amend this document just once a year, means that we want to be careful and plan for that entire year. And that's why we have a docket. So we have a docket and essentially what that is, at least to me

as a land use planner, is, is our to do list. The council says for the legislative items. here's what your department is gonna work on this year. Uh, the docket was established with uh a resolution called resolution 491 in the early 1990s. Um, every different community in the state of Washington that has to do a docket. We all pick different dates of when we're gonna take a request to come in and we're gonna make that to do list. Mount Vernon's date that we have chosen, um, again, you know, uh, more than 20 years ago now, um, it's January 31st of about each year. So what we do is before January, we put out legal notices, we let people know, hey, if you want to do a comprehensive plan amendment, you need to get a request in to us before this date because then we'll bring it back to City council, and we'll ask them to dock it, uh, these things for the year. And really importantly, because sometimes we get caught up in this part of it is that our department does no analysis of the merits until something is docketed, really, literally, we take anything anybody asks us to put on there. And we bring it back before city council, and we say, is this something that you would like our department to work on this year or not ? So what resolution 491, what it tells City council, here's the criteria that you're intended to use when looking at the items that are on the docket. You're gonna look at the relative importance of the amendment, the relationship of an amendment to other pending or proposed amendments, the need for prompt review, the amount of time an amendment has been on the docket. It's not unusual to have items roll over, uh, more than one year if something didn't get finished. Um, and

particularly the ability of staff in the planning commission to review the proposed amendments in a one-year period. Oops Uh, so again, this is just a uh a review of that once a year cumulative process that we're required to do, and as you will see with the resolution that is before city council, we have just 2 items on the docket this year. The first one is to uh, for, um, 2025 Comprehensive plan, which of course is not completed. Um, so we do need to docket that again this year. And the second item in that resolution is to also allow um city staff to docket any code amendments that are needed to implement the comprehensive plan, um, as well. Uh, normally I would list all those amendments out, but I would ask that counsel, uh, give us a little more latitude than we usually have because we don't want it inadvertently not have something on that list that's important, um, that we do, uh, do need to adopt a code 4. So. with that, I'd ask that counsel, um, pass the resolution that's before you. Questions for Rebecca? So yes, it's. In, in all the issues that we're going to be considering with our comprehensive plan and seeing the um suggestions from the state of, of what we include. What do we considering when it comes to unit lot subdivision, like of being able to take existing lots and um. would be to use with what we're going to be allowing people to build So, uh, last

year the state actually adopted uh two different laws. One was for the unit lot subdivision and blessed the other one. I'm not recalling off the top of my head, I apologize. Um but there's no allowance for us not to allow that to happen. So, um, anybody coming into City Hall tomorrow? They said they wanted to do a unit lot subdivision. We would process it. We have to. It's state law. Um we haven't done one yet, but you know what, I would spend my day doing we would figure out exactly, there are some criteria. There, there are laws with regard to survey requirements, engineering requirements that have to be met anytime that you're subdividing property. Um, so the basics, we've got them. It's very, very similar to other types of subdivisions we do. As, as a planning department or, or I guess may I yes anyone else have any questions? No. Go ahead, customer. Um, do we have plans for workshops or to the directed at the public to let them know what is allowed or what, what. because I don't know if a lot of people, a lot of residents of Melunt Vernon't even know what's possible. We're, we're, we're going to offer them, I believe, up to like 4 model uh war plans or um that they can just come in and choose from, and that would streamline the process, is that correct? or? how's, and I apologize. I think what you might be referring to are the, um, accessory dwelling unit, the ADU I'm yes, so different, different than the, the middle

housing regulations, um, but you're correct, if somebody did want to come in, and I think that's really um one of the really, um, well, there's been a lot of great things the state, the state has done and just from a planner, um, recently, in that if somebody did want to uh construct an accessory dwelling unit on their property. They now have two new options under which they could sell. that ADU to somebody instead of having to have it on the same lot and just uh rent it or lease it out. So, as far as public education, love to I mean please give us the resources and we'd love to do that, sorry, shameless plug, but. I gotta do it Any other questions or uh a motion for resolution 1092. So I'm sorry. Yeah, we sure do. Oh, and is this one open, open records, sorry, sorry yes. All right, no more questions, I will open up the public hearing. for the comp plan docket Anyone wishing to speak, come on up Hey. seeing none, I will close the open record hearing and I missed who was the uh the motion, a motion by Navor and the second by Mary Discussion all in favor say aye. Aye, all opposed say no. which should passes Thank you, Rebecca Item E is a public hearing for the city's CDBG Community Development Block Grant Program and development services director Steve Sexton has this one. Steve, yeah, thank you, Mayor. Yeah, counsel, this evening we're have our first of two public hearings for the CDBG

process that we go through every year. Um, and I know there's some new council members, so I want to touch on a few things. I really want to start with our schedule, I think. that kind of lays out our plan, what we're going to be doing over the next few meetings if I can find it here. uh doubled up here Here we go. There it is There we go. Uh, just really briefly, tonight we're going to have our initial public hearing and applications. The applicants will do some presentations of their applications. Uh, next Wednesday, a part of the development Services Committee will be allocated to council discussions about those applications and some deliberation possibly. and that the next council meeting on the 25th. we will bring to you the annual action plan, a draft copy of that, and that is really the budget and I'll show you that what we've got to work off of tonight, and that will be requested that we adopt that draft annual action plan on the 25th. That allows us to start a 30 day comment period and that will begin Thursday the 26th. and we will close that comment period on April 27th. I can give it a couple of days extra but uh that that allows plenty of time for us to get in on the 29th We will have our second public hearing. and council adoption of that annual action plan, which will be sent to the county and then sent to the on down the line to the state and, and meet all of our requirements. So that's, it's kind of a concise, um schedule, but it's, it's, we have to get it done by May 15th, so that's why we've kind of designated it that way. Any

questions on the schedule? right. move on. Sure. So all applications are now closed? Yes. yep. yup We had 7 applications from 5 different parties. I remember correctly. I I put the applications in your packet. I hope you saw those, OK. OK. So we'll next go to, I'll show you the um work. working with here Let's get here Um, I apologize. I had it Um OK I'm not finding my, my other slide. I, I apologize for that. Um. so this evening, we do have some, I think we have 4 presentations what I got. Um, so if there's any questions, I can go ahead and no questions I'll go and start calling some folks up and we can take turns and they can present their their applications Ready for that? Any questions before the presentations about CDVG, the process. This is HUD funding that comes into the city. Excuse me. It's around, oh, you found it. I did. Excuse me, it was hidden. Yep. Steve will tell you more. Yeah, well, actually you were on a roll, you were right on. You, you probably did this a couple of times, right? All right, so this this is the actual allocation for this year. You can see that we're estimating we won't know until later in the year how much will actually be allocated to the city. This is an estimate from our, from our consultants based on previous years. It's been between 325,000 and 360 right in

there. So the estimate we're working with is 377 this year. Um, a part of that goes towards uh payment on a loan that was made in Section 108. It was a 108 loan to the Library Commons project. and we pay that every year. 66,000 goes towards our consultant or outside consultant who does a fantastic job in managing this program and all of the strings that come attached with it. Public services, the next one, you can, a maximum of 15% of the total CDBG amount to go towards public services. Here's where it gets really difficult, I think, for councils, that amount is $56,642. You see here the total of public service requests this year. And that's kind of the, the conundrum we find ourselves in every year. There's just not enough C to be CBD dollars to be distributed for all of the needs out there um. we also have public facilities. to the amount that's left over after that, and this year it comes out to $84,972. and we got uh uh 150,000 plus the community action is it or or housing authority. It's right at $200,000 in requests. So it's a tough it's a tough decision that you all have before you. These are all, I think, find them all very worthy applicants, but again, it's just a limited limited resources under this program. Yes, sir. Give me an idea of, oh, sorry, may I, um, any idea when the 108 loan's gonna be paid off? to 10-year loan, I think this is payment number 2 this year. Doug, does

that sound right? He's hiding from me. Oh. right Section 108 loan. This is your two payments, correct? Right. And what's, what's the term on that? It's it Oh, that's right. This one's longer, yeah. Oh. OK OK. it's you should probably OK is it 53 or 5? Can we get like with the flood wall 10 years. Thank you, Doug. Sorry to put you on the spot. Thank you. Steve, can you help me understand why the housing authority painting is separate from the total PFI requests. I mean, really, aren't we looking at 200,000 through that group group group. He stopped. you know, um, I'll be, I'll be perfectly honest, in my dual role with the city right now, I wasn't nearly as involved in putting this together as I normally would have been. Got it. And I don't have an answer for that, but it would, it would come out of that total of what's left to be 200,000 out of the 84 essentially, right? Right. That's what. Yeah, I was just going to ask um, who are you blaming instead of yourself, myself, myself. I was just wondering, next question. OK, yeah, sorry, I don't have a, that's OK. Well, I mean, it's 200,000, right and only 84 to OK. Thank you. OK All right There's no more questions on that one. I will start off with uh from Community Action at Sedge

County. Laura Eberhart is here for a presentation, I believe. Laura, you'll come on up. Good evening. Oh gosh, Dave I lean pretty far forward in here. OK. Oh, it said don't touch. Sorry. Can you guys hear me OK? OK. Um, good evening, Mayor Donovan, and esteemed city council members Uh, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening. As Steve said, my name is Laura Eberhard, and I'm here on behalf of Community Action of Skagit County's Family Development Center. If you are not familiar with that, that is our shelter for homeless families near Chuckwagon that has 10 private units that range in size from studio to 3 bedroom. They're intended to provide short-term shelter stay to homeless families in Skagitt County with either minor children or a pregnant person in their um, family Um, while families stay with us, we provide much more than a roof over their heads. Um, our team works closely with each household to connect them with supportive services to help them achieve stability goals. Our aim, while they stay with us, is to help them help themselves move on into hopefully stable housing. Now on to our very exciting request, um, because our units serve, um, you know, at least 10 families, 4 short term stay, there is a lot of cyclical use. Um, you know, the facilities, toilets, in your own homes, um, may have much longer longevity than those in the shelter. Um, right now we do have significant strain on our plumbing. Um, some of our toilets are

fairly old. They're not high efficiency, and our request today is to try and get 10 toilets for our shelter that are both high efficiency and high powered, you know, like when you're at a stadium and a, you know, it can really get the Hotwheel down the drain. Um, you know, we're requesting one I've ever heard funding support in the amount of $10,000 to replace the existing toilets in our residential units. Um, you know, installing high efficiency toilets will provide several benefits. First, it will significantly reduce water consumption in our facility, which helps conserve an important community resource. Second, um, the fixtures we are hoping to get funding for our more durable and reliable, which will decrease plumbing service calls and reduce long-term maintenance costs. Um, and third, reducing water usage, also lowers the energy required for water treatment, pumping, and wastewater processing, which supports a broader municipal energy conservation and sustainability goals. For our organization these operational savings matter, OK? We are a nonprofit. We need, you know, our money to be spent on direct service. So the less money we have to spend, fixing toilets, um, the more money we have to spend on direct service and serving our not the toilets don't matter, right? But like, we want to be able to do the work that helps the clients gain stability. Um, this project is relatively small in scale, but meaningful in impact. Um, the estimated cost, like I said, is approximately $10,000. That includes labor we have on-site facilities that we already pay, who can install the toilets. So we don't need to pay somebody to do it for us Um, and we are committing, committed to

being responsible stewards of public funds So we're going to shop around. Hopefully we'll be able to find a local facilitator or hardware store that will love us so much that they want to offer us a discount OK? Um, plenty of folks in the community already give to us via like our spirit of hope, um, fundraiser. So we're gonna try and leverage some of that and get a discount on some toilets if we are, um given funding for this. Um again, this investment will help us maintain a safe, efficient, and sustainable facility for the families we serve while allowing us to focus more of our limited resources on helping families. Thank you so much for your time, your leadership, and your continued commitment to supporting vulnerable families in our community. On behalf of Community Action of Skagitt County and the families we serve. We respectfully ask for your consideration of this funding request. Thank you. And before you go, any questions on this project, counsel?? question, can you, for the folks that are in the room and that might be watching at home, can you tell us when your spirit of hope is? Oh, gosh, March. Hey. March 19? OK, March 19th at Swinomish Casino. I should know that, but, but I don't Thursdays, yes, next Thursday and still register online. Thanks so much, Melissa. Thanks, shame was are you on the board, I know I should have you all memorized, but I forgive me for that. Please don't let that hinder your consideration. Any other questions from non board members. I, I just want to say that if I could give you points for presentations, you would get extra. Oh, thank you for the thing. That was, that was the best, best I've ever heard. No, it was good. It was great. Thanks for that. That's right. I mean, golly they get creative with what they decide to, you

know, playing in is, those things, so. Mm, thank you. Thank you so much. Have a good evening. Thank you. OK That's a meme in the making, I think. I wheel down the drain. Next step from Skegyleaners, we have Morgan Curry. Karen? Yeah yeah I got you Thanks, Steve, for letting me follow that. I'm not nearly as funny, so, um. Do you have sound effects, Morgan? OK. That's all right. Um, anyway, so thank you, counsel, for having me here tonight. My name's Morgan Curry. I'm the executive director of Skagia Gleaners. I have the privilege of knowing a lot of you on a personal and professional level. So, uh, thank you for welcoming me into your space tonight, and you are going to hear a budget request. for a funding proposal. For those of you that don't know what Skagit Cleaners is, we've been an organization in Mount Vernon since I was told that we started in 1984, but all of our corporation paperwork says 1988. So I'll say 1988, but we are a food recovery and rescue organization. Last year we kept 2.2 million pounds of food out of the landfill. We help families save about $3.5 million in grocery and household items costs and um uh fun fact that I like to share with people is that that 2 million poundage of food that we kept out of the landfill is the equivalent of keeping almost 300 passenger vehicles off the road for an entire year, so we drastically reduced CO2 emission here in Scatchett County. It's like some 1200 cubic metric tons which I'm not a scientist, but that sounds like a lot, so we have, uh, two

pockets of groups that we kind of differentiate our organization into one is our our cooperative membership model. That's what most people know Skaggic cleaners for We are an organization that, um, are the people, serves the people, we are the closest thing to a, a democracy-led nonprofit in Skagitt County that you'll find, uh, we have, uh, all of our participants use the services of Skaggy cleaners, but everyone also volunteers and contributes to nominal share donation of the organization, so that really creates an atmosphere where our participants are stakeholders and decision makers of the organization and then we also run a pretty comprehensive migrant program that has a, a bunch of different programs underneath it. Our family referral program gives free memberships to Skaggicleers for migrant families and families that have children in the McKenny Vento program, uh, the migrant, uh, the reason for the family referral program is because we understand that there are disparate wages within agricultural wages and so we, we don't make it a requirement for migrant families to contribute the nominal shared donation. We run a pretty comprehensive BIPOC farmer collaboration. BiPOC stands for Black Indigenous people of color. I don't know if anyone saw that article on Cascadia Daily News 2 weeks ago we invested about $50,000 in small scale farm purchases into migrant-owned farms in Skratchet Coun ty We have a culture that we partner with Catholic Community Services and a couple other organizations to do culturally relevant food projects. We have a free public food pantry that we also offer Saturday nights that was designed intentionally for migrant farm worker schedules and, and working family schedules. And then we also run mass distribution projects. So whenever we have a surplus of food, we share with all the local area food banks. Here's some pictures. Oh, here's the data that I was going to share with you, so I don't need to repeat that again, um, but here's some pictures of saggy wieners, all of this food that you see here is food would have otherwise gone to the landfill, that middle picture is me harvesting, hand harvesting some kale a few years ago. We

partner with all, a lot of the local farms in Skagit County, the berries in that bottom right picture came from Hayton Farm That top right photo shows a sample shop of what a family can get from shopping at Skaggiweers one time a week when you're a part of the cooperative model. You're able to shop in our market 3 times a week. That's how families are able to save so much money. We now serve 650 unduplicated households through our cooperative model, which when I started 8 years ago, that number was 200. Uh, we were previous recipients of CDBG funds in 2023, 2024, I was up here asking you guys for 30, well, I think it was 30, yeah, $36,000 almost $37,000 to um expand our cold storage space. We added two walk-in coolers and freezers. Well, they're coolers and free freezer dual. Uh, we can change them to be whatever they need. Um, and then we also added a third storage space for dry goods, clothing, household donations, things like that. And that has significantly impacted the organization. So since that funding request, we went from serving 26, 2,637 unduplicated individuals to 4,358. That's about a 65% average increase in service utilization across all of our programs and some of our programs like our free public food distribution are our free food pantry um, the, the metrics have more than doubled and in one case it has tripled. Our, our pondage in 2023 to 2024 that we rescued from the landfill was 1.6 million and then it went up to 2 million in 2025. And then here I'll talk about the growing pains that we're now experiencing with our public food distribution. This is the program that's offered for free Saturday night. It was established in 2023 to serve as a free food pantry outside of our cooperative membership model. We understand that there are still people that needed our services but couldn't

contribute in the cooperative model, so we opened up this free food pantry. It's offered every Saturday from 3:30 to 6:30, and it's only for low or very low income individuals. However, because it made us a partner of WSDA as subcontra ctor of WSDA, it has very strict guidelines on how we have to store the food and keep the food separate from the rest of our lier cooperative food. which has made it extremely hard to try to manage. cold storage and just storage in general. This I took this picture yesterday. So if I could go back, I want to show you look how clean and organized our um cold storage space used to be. These are two units. This allowed us to get a full semi truck of that on that truck is chicken actually. So the week that we got these um walk-in coolers and freezers. We've got 8 pallets of chicken that we were able to put right inside these these walk-in coolers and freezers, which is amazing. What we would have had to do was one, scramble and then rethink our lives. But then, um, we would, we would have just shared out with other areas or we would have like done a masculine or we would have, you know, it ' s always in that, it's there's a lot and then there's not a lot, and then we're always scrambling, so anyway, so go from these photos, nice and organized, you can walk through to now this. So we actually, this is probably an OSHA violation, but, um, so you can't even get into the coolers and freezers now. So, uh, and I think that the, I'm driving the point home and the, the program that has expanded the most through the, the coolers and freezer that you guys funded 2 years ago is that our our free public food pantry has experienced significant growth. We, we went from serving 427 new households and 632 returning households uh two years ago now to 870 new and 1,997 um new Uh, I have some other data about new clients, but the other interesting or astounding fact is that we went from distributing almost

23,000 pounds out of this program, uh, 3 times that to 82,000 pounds. So here's our request. We are requesting $55,000. I know it's a lot. I learned my lesson last time, I should ask for more money but we are requesting $55,000 to purchase a third 20-foot external walk-in cooler and freezer to expand our cold storage capacity only for our free public food distribution on Saturday nights and then that will house all that food. We no longer have to use sticky notes to try to separate it from gleaner food and, and the and the free food pantry or we also use sheets that we put sheets on stuff so we if we know that that's for the free food pantry. Here's the budget you'll see here that the unit itself is actually around $35,000. The mistake I made two years ago was I didn't include electrical costs in that, so we ended up paying about $8000 of our own money for electrical costs, um, you know, I saw that there's not enough funding to fund all of the amazing projects that you have in front of us. I will say that even partial funding for this project will help significantly. If, if you guys just get me the, the refurbished walk-in freezer I'll, I'll take care of the rest. So and that $35,000 is a little bit on the on the high end, um I did it just for budget reasons in case there are, um, yeah, higher estimates. And then here's some project impacts. So the target population that this will serve, it'll serve very low income and low income um individuals primarily residing in Mount Vernon. The household served, it'll probably serve about 1200 unique households annually, individuals served. It'll serve about 4000 unique individuals through the program in 2026 distributing more than 130,000 pounds of food. The operational impact that it'll have, it'll improve food safety, storage efficiency, and it'll meet organizations' ability to fully distribute available food resources to meet rising demand, the community benefit that it will have includes, it'll strengthen our local food security infrastructure for low income and moderate

income residents, and then how this aligns with Hyde, it will it advance HUD's performance objective of creating a a suitable living environment by addressing food access and improving living conditions for vulnerable households, and I think that's it. So any questions? Any questions for Marty? Nice job, Morgan. Thank you. I don't have a question. I just want to let you know I always enjoy how much you highlighting having an attitude of gratitude, creates the culture of a sketch cleaners. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Morgan. We don't allow stinkers in there. Yeah, hi, Hanna. I don't have a question. I just want to thank you for coming here. As you know, I love cleaners. Um, I hear you have a great garden, uh, um but yeah, thanks for coming and. being here and presenting. Thank you. I appreciate it. Can I just say one more thing, cause I think it needs to be said, especially in tonight's meeting, but I want to thank all of you. I mean, I don't know if Demi and Randy very well, but, but I'm sure I will. But I mean, Andrew, you've driven our forklift. Hannah, you've created our garden program at Skagic Learner Novo. You drive our truck every other week. Mary, you run our office. Mayor Donovan, you keep our rent low. Oh like you've invited me to speak at your rotary, like I leaners and I myself and, and it's not too late for you too. We'll, we'll get to work. I'll figure it out. Uh, we really appreciate the collaboration in the sport you guys have provided over the years. So thank you. Thank you thank you Morgan. We can catch up. Right? You got to get busy. Wow All right. And next up we

have Jason Wells from the Friendship House Mhm. No, it's up there, didn't you just leave? It's in the middle. I thought you just moved it over to the middle. Oh, you got more than one? Oh, so sorry. I can just talk. It's, I've got another number. That's about the same thing, and it's like that's the one, isn't it? Do, do you still use thumb drives? saved it right off the I'm like, you know. Good evening, everyone Good evening. Um, so we, we presented, uh, two separate proposals, one for the public services and one for the capital infrastructure. I think we've only got the slides for the capital infrastructure, but I'll talk to the differences and be happy to answer any questions. So Jason Walls, by the way, is scheduled for spouse. So this brief, this is for a roof request for our, our very first shelter, uh which is currently the men's shelter. Um, this request is to replace that roof. We've had uh a number of issues over the years. 125 year old building, I'm not sure when the roof has been replaced. Last, we've been patching it for quite some time and uh now we're to the point where we've had enough active leaks that it's it's coming to a point where we've got to do something pretty significant for it. So some of the numbers I've showed here, um, we, we, that house has the capacity of 24 beds, so we, we served 81 folks in that in that shelter last year, um, 16 Mount Mount Vernon residents coming in. So folks come from different places, but depending on how

long they're with us, um, you know, they may be coming out for investments at some point. and then you see um our exits. So from the, the, as a quick refresher, the men's shelter is a sober, structured program, and so we had 12 exits to permit housing through that program, um, last year. So, um, because of who we serve 100% of our folks are in that very low or low income category. That's one of the CDBG grant requirements. Um, we talked about why are we doing this obviously suitable living environment, you know, mold is a risk, and, and really the, the challenge for us is also not in addition to the mold um, but the structural failure. So you know, we, as we keep patching and patching we're worried that that roof may not get through the next big one, and then we've got a problem where we've got a bunch of folks in our home and we don't have a place to put them. because that particular shelter is the only place for single men who are currently experiencing homelessness to have shelter. There are many programs in this town and the county, but um very few that serve that population so this is a, uh, a priority for us. um, and so then that goes into the, the uh stated priorities for the CDBG program. So for the Mount Vernon priorities Homelessness prevention is certainly an important thing that we try to help with and, and then public safety if those folks were not able to have shelter then they might be stuck in other places, and that could create other issues. So for the uh capital improvement funding, um, this project would be fully funded by the CDBG grant. We don't have any additional funds to apply, but we did get some additional proposals after submitting this and so that $85,000 is high and I can provide additional information as we go through this process to get closer to the real target. and I think that's it for this

grant request. Any questions on, on the roof. Hey. Any questions from counsel Mm OK. Just a quick one. Uh, so if you don't get full funding what do you, what options are, are there, what, what other options do you have? Well, I think we would talk to our contractors, you know, so we've done a lot of patching, you know, our hope is to remove all of the old wrong and and try to get the new right in. Um, if there was a partial funding solution, then, then maybe there'd be some other options. Um, we don't have any internal funds to be able to apply to this, so, um, we would just keep patching it and, and go on and then um look for another funding opportunity again. OK. Thank you OK, well, I had a, a second slide deck, but this, I'm sorry, one more question. Yeah, I think one more question. So thank you for the um for the tour last week. I really appreciate that. Um, and just a suggestion to the other council members, um, these folks are doing good work. It's friendship house is uh doing really good work for for a lot of our residents. So, um, please take a tour, you know, if you, if you're so inclined. I think, uh, it, I don't know I felt better after it, so it's, it's just a good thing to do. Certainly if you're happy to, happy to host. Well, and I would just, uh, add on to that, um, serving, uh, dinner or a meal is, I know with Maia Baptist Church. I've helped out a couple different times and that's always a great pleasure. I mean, you, you see people who are truly thankful for what, um, what's being offered there and so, and, and they're really great meals that they put up for them, so. Absolutely. Thank you. The other request that we put in was a public services. So, um, so this one is actually not from the capital improvement, but there's a smaller amount that can go to actually funding folks in their

operations. So, um, in this case, um, this services would support our entire Mount Vernon campus. We call that our core campus, so that's the men's shelter that I just discussed. Also our women and children's shelter, and then we have 3 transitional homes and our community cafe. And so um that's a just a quick summary of who we're serving there. Um, it's about 533 Mount Vernon residents that we served last year through all of those programs, so quite a bit uh larger impact, of course our women and children's shelter um serves right right now there's um it's mostly children in there. There's uh it it depends quite a bit for who comes through. One of the things I want to talk about in that part um was the funding mix, so our, our men's shelter takes about $80,000 a year to operate our women's shelters about 66 and the cafe is about $210,000. So that's a total of 356, only point to say there is that what we're requesting that 56 is about 15% of what our costs are to sustain those programs just so we kind of understand that that ratio. um this was a, this was a challenge for us this past year because there was a Washington State Department of Commerce grant that we did not get, that we had planned on, and that's kind of what left us in some challenges with some of the operating costs. Um I think that's probably it. Some of this is the same for the, for the population we serve, but do you have any questions from counsel about what we would be doing with the public services. Questions on this side? OK Thank you. All right All right thank you. Thank you. Uh

And we also have from the housing Authority Sedge County, Nikki Turner and Gilbert Estrada. Good evening, Mayor, uh, city council members, uh, thank you for the opportunity, the opportunity. My name is Gilbert Estrada, and the executive director for the housing Authority of Sky County. So with my co-worker, Niki Turner, which is the property manager in uh the developer director. We're asking you for your support and assistance to improve the condition in the president apartment, you know, I know that it's a lot of buildings in Mount Vernon that are probably all in need um a lot of, a lot of money also, but this particular building is part of the history of Mount Vernon. And you have the opportunity, Mayor, to have a tour and you can see the conditions inside the building We have um a lot of uh low-income families down there. We have uh veterans. We have a section A and it's not only to make the beautiful is because after 100 years or over 100 years old, we really need a paint and we need to preserve that building, um, the weather conditions, you know, really hammered down this, this building, and we are requesting your support to uh improve the conditions. I know that uh many people and many uh Scaletonians asked for, uh, this, uh you know, uh, to paint the building, but uh we are a nonprofit organization and every money, every dollar we have, we spend it down there in um upgrade the conditions of the building inside and safety, of course, is always,

you know, a priority for us, but to improve the conditions that everybody who lives on earth deserve to live in a really good condition and a, a place that the kids can call home. And we ask you for your support, but, uh, Nikki is going to uh, show you a little bit more about our requests with uh uh presentation and an advance. Thanks so much for your support. Thank you. Hello, Mayor Donovan in council Uh, my name is Nikki Turner, as Hilberto said, and I'm the housing development director and um property manager at the housing Authority of Skagitt County, um, you're all probably familiar with the housing authority to some extent, um, but just a brief, you know, overview that we run the housing Choice Voucher program, Section 8 with, um, you know, over 450 voucher holders serving households. Um, we also run the weatherization program. We have the family self-sufficiency program, and then we also um own and manage 8 different um 8 different properties that serve low to moderate income families, um, ranging from people with disabilities, veterans, farm worker families, low income um, so the president apartments, the one we're talking about today, uh, the beautiful building downtown, Mount Vernon. Some of you are probably aware of, but the president apartments, um, is, uh, specific to um 80% AMI folks and below, but in reality, really most of them are probably more in like the 20 to 60% range. So, um, anyhow, let's get to the slide. So a little bit about presidents. So housing authority we purchased this building in 1995. Um, we've been dedicated to, uh, our mission of serving vulnerable populations, and like I said, all 38 units are dedicated to um households that meet that

80% AMI, um, so in total right now, I think there's close to 80 individuals that live in president apartments. we are in a 50-year covenant with the Department of Commerce, meaning that we are committed to serving that population of 80% or below, for another, you know, 20 something years. Um, it is a historic building. You've all seen it, and so it has a lot of uh a lot of character to it, but they're also, it's an old building and so there, there are very high maintenance costs, high repair costs, and um we just don't have sufficient capital funds for a lot of the projects that need to be done to preserve a building like President's. Um, so we're trying to balance affordability and um also maintain affordable rents for our tenants. Um, so we're really hoping that we can get some CDBG assistance to do this long-needed uh maintenance project. Um, we really do strive to provide nice homes for our families and our tenants, um, a dignified place, stable, you know, where they can uh call home. I know we did give a tour to Mayor Donovan a few months ago, so you got to see a little bit inside. Um, but for some of you, if you haven't had the chance to come inside President apartments. Um, this is just a peek inside one of our units from last month that we were flipping, so this is just showing you when we have a family move out, um, we renovate, we replace, you know, carpets, we paint, we replace appliances as needed, and we really try, we really do strive to give our attendants a nice place to live. So this is sort of a look into what one of our units might look like. Um, we do a lot of repairs and maintenance as it is, um, nearly constant. Um, we're, there's a, there's an old elevator in the building that that requires a lot of service, um. there's, uh, a lot of old fixtures, the

plumbing is old, and so we are in the process, um, with our whole maintenance staff to go through and replace all the valves to individual valves so we're not shutting off water to the entire building, um, things like that, and we did, we were lucky to receive a little bit of assistance through the um the flood relief fund recently for some of our elevator costs that we had to replace some limiter switches and things like that. So we are constantly working on it, um, but it still needs more. Um also, hopefully, some of you have noticed that we did some recent exterior improvements. Um, in partnership with Ellen in the Downtown Association folks, um, but they helped us, um, with the to get the window installation art, um from a local artist and also our, our maintenance staff installed uh electrical, we're able to put lights up just to sort of bring some vibrancy back to that corner um, and so that was a really appreciated collaboration to just make some uh temporary but impactful improvements downtown for, for the short term. Um, and so, and then back in 2022, we did have the street level painted, but our funding only allowed us to do that first kind of street level, not the whole entire building, and this is a look at what, you know, the, the whole building looks like. So the whole upper, all the upper levels and entire east side really are in need of, you know, some patching and repair and a good coat of paint to preserve the life of the building and just strengthen the envelope of it, um, so it would, you know, it's an asset to our downtown for many reasons because of the historic value and also just because it provides um stable housing to so many families downtown. Um, so we really appreciate your consideration of our request, and if you have any questions

I'd be happy to answer. Questions for Nikki and Roberto, yeah. Um, what, what prevents, uh, that building from being renovated on that, that bottom level to have like retail space or commercial space So, yeah, there are 3 commercial spaces that we do hope to be able to rent out again. My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, oh, not you, sorry. Pardon me if I'm wrong. You can correct me too, um, is that we've, um, there has been so many issues with the plumbing and leaking that we've had tenants who just can't really sustain um a business and we were trying to encourage people to get their own renters' insurance, and that often is unattainable for people, um, so I will say that I'm currently in the process of applying for um that congressionally directed spending earmark dollars right now through um Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray's office. And so I'm trying to wrap in some funding there to not only do the required life safety stairway extension that we need to do inside for fire safety reasons, but also um to get some extra money to do some renovations and repairs to the um retail commercial spaces because we would love to be able to rent those out for, you know, to have small businesses there, you know, to bring more people in, make it more attractive. It would be a small revenue source for us. so, um, we're definitely looking into ways to make it happen. We just again, haven't had the capital reserves to do something like that but it is of high interest to our, our board as well, our 5 board members. It's been a big topic of conversation. Yeah. Mm Anything else about that Oh well, you, we, we spend thousands and thousands of dollars, you know, replacing uh the

carpets, replacing the, uh, the floors replacing the pipes, replacing the toilets So, um, every, every time we have the opportunity, we, uh, upgrade something, uh the president apartments. We used to, uh, cover sometimes 200 leagues in one month. That was the or uh work recordings uh um about, you know, uh, 8 years ago. And so the plumbing is, is really old and when we uh need to repair something, we have, we have to shut the water for the entire building. Now we are putting uh individual bulks in each unit. So like that one, you know, the, uh, tenants don't suffer, you know, when we're doing some repairs But it's, it's it's a lot of, a lot of work to do and with uh the collaboration, you know with the authorities, local authorities, or state or federal level. We would like to preserve that building and, and to bring it, you know, to a better, better days. Mm Another, yeah, go ahead. I would just say that those windows look so much nicer and that's such a great job of having that. I'm sure that uh the Tula Festival, a street fair is going to really appreciate having those painted that way. So that looks really nice. Good thank you. And some of the members would like to have a tour so happy to give you a tour. inside the president of A Thank you. It's been a long time. OK, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, any condition or can you, gosh, I'm reading that. Any questions from the counsel on this process? I will bring us back next week at Development Services for some deliberation. You know, fire up the old Commodore 65 and plug the thumb drive in and email all of you the second presentation from the Friendship House tomorrow, and that, so clarifying actually some information earlier, the section 108

loan. So the section 108 loan was a way that the city paid for the floodwall. It was a 10-year loan, uh $10 million.01 million dollars a year. The current one, Doug was right, the first time he spoke, it's a 17 term, and we're 2 years into that. So 15 payments remaining. on that one. For, for future discussion, I would love to just go over that loan, um. to maybe it would, it would limit our funding for a couple of years if we were to pay it off early or something like that, but we might save some interest, but maybe for a future thing. Great. Steve, thank you for that presentation. Item F is the public hearing in an ordinance for accessory dwelling units and rebecca Lowell is gonna present. this item. Welcome back. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, counsel. Again. So the agenda item, um, that I have before you this evening, uh, as the mayor stated, is for um an extension of an ordinance uh for interim accessory dwelling unit or ADU ordinance. Uh, an interim regulations were put into place in March of 2024. Those have been extended 3 times since then. And we're back for another, asking for another 6 month extension because the current regulations will lapse tomorrow. So, um, one thing that was changed uh in the ordinance before you, um, uh, you probably noticed was that I did go through and try to what I'm gonna call clean up the language that was in there. Make it, um, very consistent with the state law, um, and I was able to, to do a little bit of research. Um, luckily, we have a few other jurisdictions that have gone through this process recently, and they've really been able to refine and make that language, I

think, much, much clearer than what was in our interim ordinance. Um, so those changes have been made, um, and just, uh, as a resource, also in your packet. I did go ahead and I put the uh the Revised code of Washington, the RCWs, um, it was right behind the proposed ordinance, and I went through and I highlighted in yellow just to make it easy, um, for you to spot the, the regulations that I pulled into the ordinance, uh, that's before you this evening. Um, so with that, um, staff would ask that you adopt the ordinance before you this evening. All right. Questions for Rebecca before we open the public hearing? Yes. I got in before Andrew. um. Rebecca So this has been in interim status. for 2 years, and I look at the exhibits in terms of the work plan and from March, you know, you know, it breaks it out into what we're doing in these chunks of time. have, but they're all the same. The dates have changed. So have we done any of this work? How, how come we're not at finalization There are a number of reasons, I believe, some of which you've spoken about in executive session with regard to our comprehensive plan and, and some of the work that's gone on, um, our staff and our department has been decimated, so to speak Um, and I can say the only work that's been done on this ordinance is the work that I just did. last week to update that language. Um, was the first time I personally but at the time, um, aside from uh, project review to look at this and have a few moments to update it. So it's a capa capacity issue. Got it. OK. Are we getting our help? We're trying, yes Yeah. Open positions posted some contracted work

we're we're trying. There is a massive body of work right now for that single that at the time just does not have staffing, that's adequate, and I want to acknowledge that I know that you're underwater and I know the department has experienced a loss, and I have been thinking about you and so, um, and I know today was tough. Mhm. I'm sorry. sorry. No there was a. So do we think that are we trying to tie this in now with our comp plan, so we're going to do it simultaneously. Do we think this will be the last 6 months? Do, is it, we're just depends on staffing. I would love to say that this would be the last 6 months. Um, I guess the good news is that these regulations are, well, not perfect. They're really close to what state law allows. So if we did have to extend it again, which I really hope we don't have to. Um uh, the regulations are, you know, they're matching, um, the state law right now, much better than they were, um, previously. Um, but it really is a dance, so to speak, when we're adopting comprehensive plan and then the associated uh code amendments and um we are trying to be a strategic as possible to get the most done with the resources we have and so we're juggling, you know, to get things done. Um, and I don't have an exact sequence of the the code amendments that'll be done yet, but it is absolutely moving forward. Um, we're diligently working to, to get that back on track and, and wrapped up as quickly as possible. Thank you for that. I, I just think it's helpful, you know, when people are watching that they understand why we are where we are. So thank you. um, just a, we're incredibly close. The only thing that I think that we're missing is the owner occupancy requirement And besides

that, we match with the state code perfectly. Um. and the only thing I was going to say is, um, at some point, not tonight and not any in the near future. Um but I'm gonna ask probably for an amendment to this, to move from um uh, sorry, it's late from gross area to floor plan or some other measurement. Um, so you're measuring the interior of the structure instead of the exterior boundaries, just cause this is how people actually look up ADU plans. It would gain a couple feet, probably, so it'd be slightly larger, but not anything super meaningful. It would just be canceling out that like 6 inches on either side of a structure, if that makes sense. Yes. When's a good time to talk about that DS committee or um, not I I, I don't want to create any more work. I have no intention of that. Um, so when the comp plan, assuming this is going to get wrapped in with the comp plan when this gets wrapped in, that's the time that I would love to just. see if there's a flavor for it. There are no more questions, I will open the public hearing for this item. Anyone wishing to speak on the ordinance for accessory dwelling units come on up. And seeing that, I will close the public hearing. Um, counsel, this is ordinance 3937, if you're interested. Some of. Second, motioned by Andrew, second by Navvora. Discussion. All in favor, say I. Aye. I'll opposed say no. I shouldn't passes. Thank you, Rebecca. Rebecca. Hey, Mayor, uh, can we do a quick, uh, how much longer do we have? Because I have to use the restroom. And with that, we are going to take a 3-minute recess we will come

back at 9:40 p.m. I don't think so. They're running out, boom, they scattered, I got it. I And it's just, it's just the intro of where there's no kind of substantive no, it's that no, it's that

sorry no, it's that. Yeah, you never got

it and I will, I got it introduced as

engineering for the institutions Thank you

All right, I will call the city of Mount Vernon City Council meeting for March 11th back into session. The time is now 9:40 p.m. We are on item G. It's a resolution for the use of the city's opioid settlement funds and city attorney Kevin Rogerson is going to present this item. Hello, Kevin. Um, good evening. Mayor and members of the city council, just not for the record, called Spam tourro. Oh, it's not present at this point. Sorry, a little oversight there. He is in the presence. I wrote to the council. Uh, before you as a proposed resolution identified by the city clerk as 1093. This deals with a procedure that would formalize the city council's procedure and how do you expand what's been entitled opioid Settlement Funds. By way of background, the city council adopted in 2018 a resolution, uh. number 941 and what that resolution did was authorized the office of the city attorney to bring legal action. which it deemed appropriate on behalf of the city against opioid manufacturers and any other appropriate persons or entities to obtain appropriate redress and relief for damages caused to the city by the widespread opioid abuse and opioid addiction. The city initiated a number of lawsuits against various entities within the pharmaceutical supply chain. And this has resulted in several joint settlements. with Washington State and the counties and other cities against named entities. There are still pending litigation and the potential for settlements or trial. So this doesn't exhaust those remedies. You still have some hanging out there. The opioid settlement agreements. require you to spend the money according to the

strategies listed in the agreements and furthermore outline a basic framework of a process. You're not required to formalize the resolution through the settlement agreement or state law, what that process is, nor are you supposed to create a new process. In fact, some cities based on my research just folded in through current legislative process. However, uh, it's been asked of my office to formalize it through resolution in the interest of full transparency of the ability to show people what the process is and if any members of the community wants, want to bring a proposal, what that would be. So before you in this resolution is two parts. There are things called recitals that just lay out the basic framework. of what you've done what's required in the agreements. and the second, which is the substantive part, what that process is. And that process includes 34 sections. a action required section, and just for the sake of brevity, no. opioid settlement funds will be expended without council action. No one will have the authority to expend those funds other than this legislative body. So that's Section 1. you will have public comment regarding such expenditures prior to your action. It can be done in a separate hearing or it can be done during general comments, but public comment shall be allowed. to, you're going to, if adopting this resolution, provide an application process. to the public, it will be uh through advanced public notice. Uh, there will be a form provided. A Forum has been proposed in Exhibit A. and then once applicants apply, then you can review such applications either in a committee or at a council meeting. It will be an open public meeting and review and render recommendations or decisions. Decisions

would be at a city council meeting. Section 3 is the North Star Process. This identifies what is currently occurred, which is you've entered into an inlocal agreement with many of the cities and the county to look at regional collaboration on how to use opioid settlement funds that in fact, through a previous resolution have set aside 80% without further council action to see if there are regional projects or expenditures that can create cumulative impacts on the economy of scale And 4th, our reporting requirements as required in the settlement agreement. Uh, so this would formalize those requirements so the community can review them. There's an application for him as exhibit A. This could be posted on your website, anybody uh who's interested, and of course it's a public record. Questions for Kevin. OK, it is resolution 1093. Um, I'll need to approve resolution 1093. OK by Mary and the second by Andrew. Any more discussion on this? All in favor, say aye. Aye, all opposed say no. Motion passes. Thank you, counsel. Uh, that NOFA and the application will be live on the city's website tomorrow. Uh, item H is a proposed ADA inclusive playground at Hillcrest Park in our parks director Jennifer Berner. is here to present this one Yo Good evening,

Mayor and council. Um, I am here back before you this evening to bring something very exciting to you, um, about Hillcrest Park Um, the Hillcrest Park playground, as you know, is 27 years old. Um, it was installed in 1999. Um, it is the oldest playground in our park system, um, and in 2024 and 2025, we worked with a community group of folks to help us redesign a all-inclusive ADA playground for Hillcrest Park. Um, the folks that we had as part of our committee where people who had called in about concerns regarding the park. We had citizens who expressed a need for having an ADA exclusive playground for either their child or their grandchild. We had, um, community groups that serve diverse populations such as Cascadia Club, which is our adult with disabilities community, um, and SPARC, which deals with our younger population with um youth with disabilities We also included Northwest Playground to be part of this, to come in and help us actually design what that playground could look like. Hillcrest is the right location for this type of a playground. It's got the right infrastructure in place. for this type of a program. It's already there, so there's not as much of that infrastructure surrounding it that will have to come in and put in place to make it ADA accessible At the council meeting in January, um, council wanted to make sure that no trees were going to be disturbed. I heard that loud and clear, um, and we want that too on the parks department side. um, and so we went back and we um did some remeasuring and none of the trees would

have to come out. However, there was some where we had to restructure to make sure that we weren't going to damage any of the roots system that was there with some of those large trees. So that did cause us to reconfigure the playground slightly and shrink it slightly. So what we ended up losing was one spinner, um, which is another one that's similar to this, um, and we redistributed where our swings would go. Um, so right here on this slide, you can see there's a pathway. We have put in that there will be a sidewalk pathway. ADA accessible, back to where the swings are going to be located right back here. Um and this would be your swing set option and you can see with the pathway going back to the regular playground over here. Um, so this allowed us to be able to not have any impact to the trees or the root systems around those trees. We had our arborist um out there as we were walking around to make sure that we were looking at this in the right way, um, and Hillcrest Park Playground project, excuse me, um, encompasses new playground equipment including ADA inclusive elements new accessible tiled surface, the installation and a new sidewalk to enter the playground and the park safely off of 13th Street. um and the project can be funded through the levee lift revenue. The 2026 budget includes 500,000 for the Park Capital projects, as discussed, um, a budget amendment would be required to fund the complete project upon approval of the

project, a budget amendment would come back to you at the next meeting for that. The city is a member of KCDA, which is a purchasing cooperative for public school districts and other public agencies. This is designed to save time and money through volume purchasing while complying with the legal procurement, um. requirements So with this staff is requesting a motion to approve the purchase of new playground equipment for Hillcrest Park through the KCDA purchasing Cooperative Agreement. Any questions for Jennifer on this? Just a quick comment. Thank you so much for doing the remeasuring. I know that that's, it's kind of a silly thing, but I, I really, and I hope that the rest of council agrees hopefully it's it's worth the effort. Absolutely. Yeah, I, I think uh how old was the last one? 20, the 27 year old playground. I'm guessing these trees are a lot older than that, so I'm really glad that we get to save them. Absolutely, yes Jennifer alluded to the Levilid lift, and again, I would just thank our, our residents. Um, they said they wanted more firefighters. We added firefighters. They wanted more police officers. We hired police officers. They wanted more money spent in parks and we're delivering a million dollar playground replacement. So, we're not messing around. There was a need there. We thank you for stepping up, uh, and, and answering that and telling us what you wanted. to see in the city If there aren't any more questions, I would entertain a motion. So. Second my Emi and a second by Melissa. Discussion. All those in favor say aye Aye, those opposes say no Motion passes. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank

you. Item I is in agreement with HDR Engineering for wastewater treatment plant and collection systems consulting in our capital projects manager Frank Reinhart. might still be here he's still here, but, uh, still. I wasn't. Oh You both can come up and share. We, we had a disconnect, uh, in the, uh, between the agenda and the packet, but I can cover this. What is it we're proving, Frank? I don't know. That's why I'm looking up. Yeah, this is back there. Fortunately, I had pulled this up earlier. in the 800 pages of council packets. So let me re pull up again. Oh, we know how many was. Yeah, well, you know We know how big it was. So thank you for your, uh, patience this evening, uh, Mayor counsel, as we worked out who of us was going to be presenting this. Uh, staff recommends a motion by counsel to approve a consultant agreement with HDR Engineering and the amount of $324,735 for the waste for wastewater treatment plant and collection system consulting services. So Oh my God. You've got emotion in a second, frame. Oh, do, do we want to discuss this? I, I actually do. You do? OK I apologize. All right, all right, let's go through it. OK, so oh, would you want me to kind of get dive into the background or do you have a question I can ask? I might be able to if you can just maybe entertain the question that might be the only thing we have to do. Um, but on the agenda, it lists Transpo Group. Yes, so

this would be the aforementioned confusion that we were talking about. I had one agenda item that was pulled related to the Transpo group, uh, the HDR agenda item wasn't mine, so I'm pitch hitting for whoever actually submitted this one. So the agreement in your packet is the correct agreement. Yes, the only thing that is in error is the agenda document which makes a reference to Transpo as opposed to the HDR agreement that is in the packet. and the council memo that's in the packet. Thank you. Mhm. So with that counsel, do you want a full presentation or have you had time to review this and you're ready to pass it? Great and Great and by. OK. Uh, all those in favor say aye aye. Those opposed say no. And the agreement passes. Thank you very much. You you passed it faster than I could scan the ecutive summary.. Um, it was Demi, then Melissa, right? No, it was Andrew and that way you don't ask me. All right. That was before That was long. Thanks for hanging in there, Frank. We are to item J, uh which was a discussion or a uh well, we might have a discussion about the plot cameras, turning off flock cameras. Um. I will turn this over to counsel for discussion. I'll begin um, Mr. Mayor, if you, if, um, since I'm the one that created this addition to the agenda, and thank you for entertaining it, counsel. I appreciate that. Uh, whether it passes or not, I appreciate you at least putting it up for a vote. So we know that um we're

not at the at the front of the train on the at least within Washington on the on the ALPR issue. we've, we've heard of many cities that have done a combination of either turning off their cameras. and or severing their contract, Lynnwood, Mountain Lake Terrace, Everett, Olympia, Redmond, Stanwood, Sira Woolley. our neighbor King County Housing Authority, etc. So we won't be at the front of the train. I understand that in government, sometimes you're, there's a fear of being first because you know, there's danger in being first. However, there's also danger in being last. You know, I don't want to be the caboose either, um, if this is going a certain direction, and we have the Olympia is one of the cities that has turned off their cameras, and that's our state capitol. And each of us took a, an oath. to uphold all Washington laws. And I take that seriously. Um, during my day job I worked for the state of Washington. So that's the reason why I wanted to vote tonight, especially regarding the imminent passing of this 6002 Senate bill. Um We know the terms of the Senate bill. I think we understand that. We understand that high level. I don't need to, we don't need to go through that in detail right now. Um however, we also know that upon signature, we will knowingly be committing a gross misdemeanor Either the city and or persons within the city um the only way to protect

us, to say that we to know that we won't be guilty of that. is to take action before it's signed. With that we've had there's been many discussions, pro and con well, I wouldn't say pro. There's been many discussions con, uh, a few points pro that I would like to acknowledge Um and of course, Chief Chrisman, this is personally from me to you. Um my policy on block has nothing to do with my feelings about the Mount Mount Vernon Police Department. And I, I empathize with the, you know, the other folks that said the same thing. you know, because they're speaking exactly how I feel. Um I'm looking at this in terms of is it legal Is it effective and what's the cost-benefit analysis? And those three things are for the for reasons that, that I've heard tonight and reasons that I've uh seen in research, those three things are leading me towards a no. Um. meaning do not maintain a flux system within or an ALPR system within Mount Vernon. 144 million roughly. images that have led to 25 convictions. roughly, and both of these are roughly. that is not success and it doesn't mean that the police department is failing. It just means that the tool has

been oversold Yeah, there are there have been things said about what if it was your family? Well, just last month February 1st Nancy Guthrie was taken from her home in Arizona and we know that the Flock cameras in that town. have not yielded to a recovery of for that family or a conviction or even a suspect So it's OK for us to realize that the system has been oversold. Those are my concerns on this Fox system. I'll yield to to the others, but those are my concerns and wanted them to be made on record. It's Mesero Um, and I appreciate Councilman West, your, your comments there. I, I do think too inconsidering this issue, we, we have had our legal counsel, um, inform us that the Attorney General's office has looked at these laws and has seen that it isn't as egregious as maybe has been characterized um by, by different people on the con side And I can't imagine that the state

legislature would pass this law putting at risk every single local municipality. and would have done that just willy-nilly. Um, would, would have just said, we're going to pass this law and we're going to put every single city council that's in the state of Washington at risk of being guilty of a gross misdemeanor. And so I think that we really have to take a better look at what this state law actually says before we know why, why did Olympia decide to vote the way it did. Why, why did Olympia decide we're going to direct this flock camera discussion in this way. And so, for that reason, I, I can't see that we also could jeopardize our city by breaching contract with with this company as well. And so I think we have to weigh very carefully what it is that we're going to do going forward. Now, we have an opportunity when this contract expires, what we want to do at that point. But I, I failed to see why it is absolutely so urgent that we do something right now changing course. When we see that Olympia didn't um outlaw plot cameras altogether. Is there something that we see that they're missing? Is there, is there something that didn't happen in those committee meetings and that discussion

that somehow we see that they didn't. And so that, that's the only thing that I would say is that we do have an opportunity when this contract comes up for renewal to say we we want to move beyond it So then that's my position, OK? I have Hannah next, and then I'll look for another hand. So a few things. One, I do not think that that is what our city attorney told us Also, I would say, and I imagine everyone in this room would say, the state doesn't always make good decisions. They often make bad decisions, and I think we would all agree with that. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here making laws for specifically our city. We would just leave it up to the state. Um Also, we do have options. We're not saying we're gonna end the contract right now. We're saying let's turn off the cameras. Let's cover the cameras so they can't be used. That does not cross any lines with our contract that does not get us into any issues. at all and that is what I would like to see us doing. I would also like to say that um I went back from the first meeting of this year. I watched every single council meeting. I looked at every single email that we have received and tallied up all the comments that we've received. We've received comments from 21 individuals saying, please turn off the cameras. er comments, saying, please keep the cameras, and we received two comments from, uh, two individuals saying, please restrict them. They're afraid of the cameras, and one of them specifically stated that they didn't like what the state has approved so far. So, before we make a decision, I just want to make sure

that the entire council is aware of the comments so far that we have received of what the community would like us to do. The comments Yes. Yeah, um, I, oh. here we go. Sorry. Um I have, this has not been a, a short, short memory decision for me. This is something I've been thinking about for quite a long time. You know, not everybody writes a comment or not everybody comes to a meeting to say something. Yes, I understand that the people, I would say most people in this room that, you know, that commented tonight actually, no, I can say everybody who come in tonight does not want the cufflock cameras, but that doesn't mean that I haven't talked to people that say why leave them, leave them. There are other people in this community. They don't have to send us an email. They don't have to come to to committee meeting and make a make a make a comment. There are other people in this community that we all talk to, not just, not just you folks who take your time and come see us at a committee meeting. I, I don't see it quite the same way that Councilmember West does that this is a failure and I'm I'm, I'm not really quoting you. I'm saying that you're, you're saying this isn't a good cost analysis or cost benefit. I'm sorry, but I think the little girl who was brought back from Michigan because she was abducted in our flat camera system helped us do that. That family is saying that's a miracle, and the flop cameras did it, and the 25 that Chief gave us that of crimes that were solved, we are using the FLA camera, those, those families are saying, thank God we had him because otherwise we wouldn't have either closure or whatever form of um I'm not sure what the right word is, but whatever type of guy just say closure that they would have had. I think

that I, I cannot in, in and, and I have thought about it and I have listened and heard everything. I, I mean, we hear the same, a lot of you come back every meeting and talk to us, and I hear you. I hear what you're saying. It's not necessary, I just don't necessarily see it quite the same way. I, um I, I feel like we, if, if somebody was abducted and we didn't have the ability to find that if, if, if, if for some reason it's it's not a perfect system. Nothing in this world is perfect. You're not going to have a 100% success at anything, but if we had, didn't have that tool in the toolbox of our overworked police department. and that we couldn't find that person, that would be crushing to me. That would be heartbreaking to me that that person, we didn't, we could have had the technology. to help find that person, but we didn't because we elected to turn the cameras off. I, I don't know that I would be able to, to really deal with that very well because I, I don't uh, you know, I don't want Big Brother anyway. I'm, I'm sorry, I'm rambling a little bit, but it's, I just feel like this is such a, a, a great tool and I, and I don't feel like we're talking about Mount Vernon issues. We're not talking, this, these things aren't happening, haven't happened in Mount Vernon. These are Nancy Guthrie, Arizona. That's not Mount Vernon. Has it happened in Mount Vernon? No, it hasn't happened in Mount Vernon. I want to look at Mount Vernon's statistics. I want to look at what's going on here. That's, I don't want to make rules because somebody else in another state had an issue with it That's not, not what I'm interested in, in really doing. I mean, I hear it and I, and I believe it. It's just, I feel like our chief put all guardrails in that he could possibly put in more than a lot of people

knew. I mean, he closed every door that he could possibly close. And I think with the the new law that hopefully we'll probably be signed into law. Um, they're just tight knitting up some more. I mean, I think the things that people wanted to see, like no public records requests. That's in there. It's the things that they tightened that rule up. and Hannah, I agree with you. I don't like everything they do. I'm not saying they're perfect, but I, and I think there was a compromise. Obviously, if you've got people on both sides of the aisle. coming together and discussing this and making a compromise, listening to the police chiefs and everybody in law enforcement and coming together and compromising to say yes, we can this we can do this, this will work. We feel like this will work Uh. I have to have trust That level, because I know my representatives. I know them personally. I can talk to them if I have a problem. I just feel like I, I just don't want to make a, a rash decision. I don't want some other kid to be abducted and we can't find him because we don't have flo cameras. I don't want some murder going unsolved because the flop cameras aren't there. I want I want to feel safe in my community and I want people to feel safe in their communities too. Thank you. for letting me ramble And anyone else that hasn't spoken, and then I'll go to council member all over again. OK, Council member Oliver Um, so quick comment, I also trust our legislators. I do want to say though that on the state bill that just passed, our Mount Vernon legislators voted differently We had ones that voted yes. We had ones that voted no. So I also trust them, but even at the state legislative level, there

was a lot of disagreement. over uh, the changes and the things that happened to this bill, it's a lot more relaxed now than it was when it was first proposed and even then it was not perfect. Um, if you're interested in seeing what the conversation was, it's public. You can look it up. um. Anyone here could have looked it up before today Um but mass surveillance is not something that the general public wants. I think we've seen that I think if you did go around and ask your neighbors? I think they would say that, um. I would like us to turn off the cameras. hover the cameras. I think that is also what the community wants to have been showing up for weeks and weeks and weeks. talking about this, and we keep having discussions and not deciding anything. And why don't we just call the question? Yeah, so. if there's no other discussion on it, I would like to make a motion to this. And you want to clarify a motion, I just, if there's any discussion first. Yeah, I'll, I'll get there. But let's clarify what the what the what the motion is. Yeah, so I would like to make a motion that we turn off all of our, uh, license plate reader cameras and that we cover them until the end of the uh

contract. And when is that November of 2026, 2020, yeah, 2026. Sorry, it's been a long day. 26 Is there a second I. I Is there a second on the motion? Yes. OK It's been moved by a council member Oliver, seconded by a council member West. Uh, we'll start the discussion now, Councilmember West had his hand. Yes, so I don't think we define a time frame in that last motion. because the my concern is the uh imminent signature from the governor that's coming. So I think we need to put a time frame in that in that last motion. If it if it succeeds, if it succeeds, I think we need to put a timeline on it. Yeah. How long would it take to turn off and cover? Oh that's a, that's a technical question. I think we can do it fairly quickly. I spoke to Mary from IT before she left tonight. She said that the Percota cameras can be turned off immediately. Um, it's just a matter of a switch. I talked to the Cedar Woolley police department yesterday. It, um, it took them about 5 days to get an answer from Flock, and then it took an additional, uh, he, he said maybe up to 10 days, uh, and that's why you saw that Cedarroli covered their cameras with a pla a black plastic bag. We can, we can bag them quickly. We have a lighter drink, right? bucket truck Good good. Thank you

OK, so we have a we have a, a motion, we have a second. Are there any other comments on this? Yes, Council Meda. I would just like to say, um, I feel like tonight, like really nobody's gonna be a winner because we have people that are concerned one way and concern the other, and I agree. I mean, mass surveillance is definitely not the way. that any of us wants to live, but I also still feel like but Mary has brought up that, um, there are a lot of instances where these cameras help all these other families, and I don't I just think we're making some big decisions on people's lives and crimes and things that we got to be really leery about what we're doing here. And um, the state has come up with a plan. They, I mean, and like Andrew said, they're gonna be doing auditing and things, so. I think we kind of need to go trust a little bit with what all of our legislators have come up with a bill. The garments before we vote OK. I'll just, if I could just chime in, um I am a little concerned that, that while we do have a process that allows us to add agenda items. um, our typical process is to have it placed on an agenda and then um it's posted and so there's a 1 to 2 weeks where the public, um, it's transparent and the public has an opportunity to speak to that. And so I, I do, I do feel that we're missing out on that by voting tonight and now, but I also agree with Councilmember Oliver that that,

you know, we're at March 11th and we've, we should probably just make a decision and move on from that decision because we've got a lot of city business that that really we need to get to. Um, I just want to say that I have heard everyone in this room, every email um, pro and con for this and I share your concerns. I deeply share your concerns. Oh, yep. Um I think it's too late for me to make a good objective opinion on this, to be honest. I think that I would like to defer this for 2 more weeks. It is my opinion I won't be here on that night. Um, just, just as an FYI. if that makes any difference I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm just letting you know. Um, I guess, uh, more of a comment than that. I'm still, um I think that we're all talking about the same thing. I don't think one person here likes the idea of being surveilled. I think that's like a normal thing, generally speaking, um but there is this other impact that we're talking about. Um, I do have a couple questions if I may, to the police chief. Yeah, for a couple of questions Sure. All right. Hopefully this isn't, hopefully these are easy. Um so, um let's, let's say that these are turned off tomorrow. Do you have some sort of plan that you would be able to, it is this going to, is this critical infrastructure that you need to account for immediately. are there things that your department has

to do differently now. Uh I'm, I'm gonna try to answer that question. Um, maybe all them easy, sorry. It's OK. You've heard me say, I mean, we are understaffed. Um I can't put an officer on the street, uh, and look for cars, can't do it. An officer um well, I'm not gonna go down that rabbit um I have nothing to replace this with. Uh it will take away a very powerful tool for us for solving crimes. I told this council uh, we convicted 4 people for murder using flock cameras and Verkatta cameras, primarily as video evidence but we just got our 4th conviction. just this last week Um, that's, that's how powerful this tool is. If it's gone, um I will not be pro it's gonna be a lot, it's manpower. It's just manpower. I have 4 detectives. and everybody else is in patrol And so by taking it away, um I just want you to know I'm gonna be coming up here and I'm gonna be saying, we have a lot of open cases. And if that's OK with council, like I said so like I started tonight, it's your decision. We will live by your decision. but it is, uh, we're gonna miss we're gonna miss a lot Oh, if I may. Yes, um do you see, uh, future in which we don't use Flock. for and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out on a limb and please somebody argue with me about this. I, I want this to be more of a discussion. I don't like third party storage. That's my biggest thing with this

right? Is that everybody's biggest thing with this? Yes. I'm getting two nods and I'm getting some other people who are not nodding. I'm exhausted. I'm so sorry. OK, Mary physically can't nod anymore. He her Yeah, my head goes down. I think everybody just would like a different system. It would be my guess instead of flock. We want something that would be here and controlled by just our police department. That's my understanding. OK. Everybody. Getting some. Does not want surveillance. Waiting on one person who still doesn't love it. That is a big concern. Not the only concern. Um, but having an internal camera system would be a lot better than the way it is right now. And I know that we've discussed that in committee as well. Yeah, so I think that what you are hearing and sorry, I'm just gonna kind of go off for just a and I know it's so late and I'm sorry to everybody. I, I just want, I'm trying to do a good job. Um what's a few more hours, right? Among friends. So I think one thing that you are hearing from the council is that and is a discomfort, right? But and I think that that's not going to go away. Third-party storage, that, that issue isn't going to be relieved. I do not want to cripple your police department. I trust you. I don't trust Amazon, and that's, I don't think that that's a controversial thing to say. What would a transition plan look like, and I'm just trying to come up with some sort of compromise here, right? What some sort of transition plan from no more flock and now we're moving to an internal thing and it's probably not going to be as good. It'll be clunkier, but we're not just turning them off and just saying that's it But fair question. Could something happen? I can give you an immediate comparison. The Pracata system that we currently have, um, those handful of cameras that we have out in the community. Uh, we have one

administrator and it is tied only to Mount Vernon. So, uh, once you're outside of our city, it's gone. Nothing that we have no uh network. um. I'm not saying it's flaw, I, I am not an advocate for Flock. I get no kickback from Flock, but it is the most powerful. software dashboard that we can use to search for a vehicle. Um, Furada doesn't have that. And so it literally is, our officers are literally combing through image after image after image looking for a vehicle that matches a description or a partial plate, um, and so it takes the officer off the road a lot more uh time than in this case, Flock. Give me another product, Another product that has comparable power and make the switch tomorrow I just haven't found it. I haven't found it. Plus, um storing offsite is what those third-party vendors do. I understand it's not perfect. I understand it's uncomfortable. Um. but here's the thing I feel like we've done everything right. Everything right. You you're right. We, we did put the guardrails in place. We locked our system down. We were one of only a few agencies in the state of Washington that didn't get a back door side door, front door penetration, as reported by the University of Washington. Our officers have done a really good job of minimizing the impact on that system or you know, when I hear people say, well, there wasn't a reason. Well they'd have to put the case number in. They don't have to fill in all the other blanks. And now, if that's a policy change we have to make, we'll do that. But they're, they're doing everything that we've asked them to do and

and yet and I, I know I shouldn't feel this way, but, and yet it feels like the police department is being punished a little bit. We've done everything well and there's not a suitable replacement for Flock. Um, Verkada one administrator and that's our lieutenant He goes home at 5 o'clock Something happens at 2 o'clock Our officers have to call him to get him to access the system. That's how clunky that system is. And that's why we migrated to Flock is because it just wasn't working for us. and beautiful Um I really appreciate Andrew's um attempt at compromise there and and it would seem like with an entire state wrestling with this same conflict, cause, cause I think you're exactly right, Andrew. It, it's hard to not sympathize with the argument We don't like the idea of a third party having this um information. And so that's a valid complaint about this argument here I can only imagine there has to be somebody in the market though, that is going to see this opportunity and through AI, through whatever, be able to offer a system that is purely a local system that can be controlled locally. And so, um, I,

I guess as your counsel, I, I would just appreciate it if you, and I'm sure you are now looking for alternatives because it, it, it does sound like going forward. clock. isn't going to be a very comfortable solution Um, and so, Andrew, I I second what, what you're saying there. Thank you. I, I appreciate that. I think what, what I'm hearing though is partially and then we've talked about the ending, sorry, just very quickly. OK, just. we're substituting technology for people. And, and that's just that we have a budget crunch. This is what we're doing. This is what we have to do. This is what you have to do, right? I wanna, I don't know about the rest of counsel Give me the numbers $125,000 for salary and benefits for a police officer that doesn't include equipment and training, uh, for every 2 police officers, we have to buy a car. Uh, that's $85,000 that we're spending, as you heard tonight, um, through public records requests, $30,000 a year for six cameras. So if, if you want just a, a side by side comparison, I would love nothing more, and you've heard me plea, please give me more officers. Um, I'd love that. Love it. Don't, but we can't. We're doing everything we can't get 11 officer per year for 6 years from the levy lid lift. We've hired our, uh, 2027 officer, and he's set to go to the police academy in April. He will be on the road solo status in 2028 about the same time that we start recruiting for our 2028 officer. That's the process We're in the middle of a

massive effort to acquire some grant money through House Bill 2015. Um we might get a couple of officers out of that. But it's taken 4 of us in the police department, just about 40 hours a week for the last several weeks to get everything pulled together. for the state. It is in the most arduous process I have ever been a part of just to get a few more officers. So Mhm. those are the numbers Those are tough numbers, um. but I think that this is at some point a policy, we're in this pickle. This is a policy decision around what we choose to spend our money on, and I just want to, just to mention to counsel that this is a choice that that we've previously made, and I think that I think that some sort of kind of equitable compromise might be other funding for maybe an additional what whatever we could possibly afford. I'm just checking. I'm looking at Doug. Um, in the future, because I think that this is, I think that this is the rub, right? And I, and I'll just say this, I have a thing about replacing um using technology to replace people. I get that it's more efficient and that it's, and it's just incredible and it's and it's just really inexpensive. Um, there's nothing tonight's not a good example, but usually there's nothing like talking to another human. Um, there's no replacement for that. Sorry, that's not a dig at anybody. Sorry. It's, it's late. I'm, I need to stop talking. But I do believe in funding to have individuals talking to other individuals. Um, so just something to bring and, and now I'm just dragging on, I'll stop there. And, it wasn't, it wasn't too long ago, Andrew,

that you mentioned CCTV and we talked about the European model and I mean, but that's really what they've done is they have cameras on every street, every corner and, and they have a real-time, uh, crime center, and they, they put their people in that crime center and they look at a wall of monitors Spokane County has one Uh, they're standing them up around our state now because we're 51st in the nation for hiring. It's, it's not Mount Vernon, but listen, we're in a pretty good spot right now. but we're, our state is struggling and so we've got to come up with some sort of force multiplier to be able to police our communities without being able to recruit and retain more police officers, and that's the position that we're in. And so, um I'm just telling you tonight that those are the numbers this, this is the power of this tool. I believe we've done everything correctly to keep our community safe. Hey, listen, I am probably your biggest risk manager, um, as far as a department head. when it comes to traffic or it comes to uh construction or engineering roadways and things like that. Um. I will, I will tell you, you know, if, if I can't handle it cause honestly, I'm, I'm probably gonna be the tip of the spear on a gross misdemeanor charge. And I don't want that either So the chief always goes down when when their subordinates misbehave I have a lot on the line. I, if I can, in my remarks here, um, I would be more comfortable with voting on this in 2 weeks, and, but I would like an action plan in that time from Chief what it would look like to turn off the flocks. I will not be here either Ha That's fantastic. Uh and I think this is that important that we need to have all 7 of us here. Sorry, Mary

No, I know, I know that's why I, and that's why I said it. I don't, I don't want to, it's an important, it's an important vote, and I don't want to miss it. So I can call a special reading. And we need you. You can't call a special meeting. I don't want to wait a month. That's not considerate to everybody who's taking time and not to the fellow council members. You could do a special meeting, uh after committee next week, you could do Could we do one before committee? Yes. So you could do it 5 o'clock on the 18th, we could do. April 1st, everyone's back. Um, I just wanna make sure, Chief would have time by next week to put the action plan that Andrew's asking you for, uh, in to a document or into a presentation. I don't, I, that's a lot and I don't know. But and we need probably clearer direction for, I was just going to say I would need to meet with you Um, as I said, we are knee-deep in this House Bill 2015 grant process, and we have, we're TikTok, uh, we have until March 30th to get everything wrapped up. Otherwise um, my finance director is gonna skewer me because they'll, they'll be fines involved uh with regards to um the process. So um my, my question to counsel is, um, listen, all of us have been through the meat grinder, all of us have been through the meat grinder over the last few months. What more are we going to get out of a week that, uh, decision can't take care of tonight, fair point. I was just trying to give you time to figure out what you would have to end up needing to do. My, my biggest fear is that we turn

these off 2 days from now, and there's something that we missed, and there's something that happens and um and that we are blamed for something happening. Um, and so I, I like the idea of having soft transitions times to contemplate, but I, at this point in time, I don't think that there is any debate up here whether or not like automatic license plate readers that use third-party systems are probably not going to be a part of Mount Vernon's future forever Um, so I was trying to see if there was some time to make sure that we were checking all of our eyes and all of our T's, but if it's not gonna do anything, then yeah. I can tell you that if they are, if they're turned off, they'll be turned off right away. If they're left on, we will continue to as we started today, move into compliance with the new legislation. Um, I think, I think we're right there. You can speak to that chief in terms of we got to move one of our cameras. Yeah, um, we have, uh, two MOUs in place with, uh, private retailers that have to be immediately terminated. Uh that started today. um. our officers, uh, will have to receive some training and um counsel has been working, uh, the better part of the day, um, putting together the framework for that. Um, I mean, there's a number of things within the, the legislature, but we've been on the phone together. Um, we, we're, um, the ball is rolling, um, you know, like I said, I've talked to Cedar Woolley, um I, I think everything's in place, um, or not in place but darn close and anything that's not in place. um, I was prepared to go out and put a bag on that one camera tomorrow morning if we couldn't get IT, but Mary assures me that, uh, that, that will be turned off first thing in the morning and

uh it'll be moved. It'll just be relocated so Mr. Mayor, I may have misunderstood the earlier discussion, so please refresh my mind. Um, I thought the first motion we had during the committee meeting was to have a further discussion tonight, but then I thought that during the council meeting, we decided that we would take a vote. We did. That's correct. So I motion that we take the vote Yeah, we have a motion and a second on the floor. We're just discussing it now. So if you wanna call the question, we can do that. uh right now OK. Um, so, to be clear on what you're voting on. Uh, the motion was to turn off the license plate reading cameras all of the license plate reading cameras in the city and to cover them. until November 26th when the contract expires with Flock. Oh, and I would call for a division. uh, roll call, roll call, OK. All right, we will, we will start with, uh start with you, Councilmember Van der Stoop. Yes Council member Oliver. Councilmember Terra? No. Councilmember Hudson? No. Councilmember Beaton No Councilmember Damon. No. Council member West. Yes. Motion passes and thank you, Chief for your emotion. What time is it Motion, yeah. Uh, thank you for your time. Uh, Bright 7. I will ask our city attorney to please call the mayor and city council

into executive session. Yes, I'll invite the mayor and members of city council too. bear with me, but we have to do an executive session for issues related to collective bargaining sessions and planning or adopting a strategy or positions related to the collective bargaining, which is exempt from the Open Public Meetings Act through RCW 423,140 subsection 4. and discussed with legal counsel matters leading to enforcement actions, litigation, or potential litigation to which the city, the governing body, or a member acting in an official capacity is or is likely to become a party when public knowledge regarding the discussion is likely result in either adverse legal or financial consequence to the city pursuant to RCW 4230, subsection 110 1 I. 20 minutes, and then we would reconvene with no final action after and then the public works and library Committee recess. would expire and we reconvene that committee. OK? With that we will adjourn the city council meeting for Wednesday March 11th at 10:37 p.m.