City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, thank you.

Good evening, everyone. Welcome and thank you all for being here. It is 6 PM on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, and I now call to order the 2183rd regular meeting of the City of College Place City Council. Madam Clerk, will you please take roll call?

Yes. Council Member Green?

Present.

Council Member Cleveland?

Present.

Council Member Stuckley? Present. And to be sworn in this evening, Council Member Lopez. Present. Council Member Evans. Present. Council Member Sherman. Present. Council Member Boyle. Present. And Mayor Hernandez. Present. And we have a quorum. Great.

Thank you so very much. Appreciate it. It's now, actually, will you please all join me for the Pledge of Allegiance? Thank you, Chief Winter, reminding me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, thank you all. It is now time for public comment. Madam Clerk, did anyone submit a written comment in advance or request to speak via telephone or virtually?

I have received no comments.

Okay, thank you. If anyone in council chambers present would like to speak during public comment regarding something that is not on the agenda tonight, please raise your hand. All right. We have Ms. Peters, you will have five minutes to speak on any subject that is under the control of the City Council. You can please step forward to the podium, press the button for the green light and just state your name and the city that you live in.

Hi, I'm Ange Peters. I'm a College Place resident and also the general manager for Valley Transit. I was asked to come tonight to do a very brief introduction. So we provide service for Walla Walla and College Place, and we have a federated board. So that means it's all local officials that are on the board. The jurisdiction of College Place typically would have two representatives on our board, but right now we only have one. So we are looking for someone to join Heather in the very fun work of running transit in the Valley. So, if you have any interest in providing access and connectivity for the valley, I'll be here after the meeting to answer questions and sometime in the near future, you guys will make an appointment so that we have someone. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. And we were for the 2 new council members, we were waiting to for the new appointments to to reassign the seat over at Valley transit because it was formerly held by council member Williams. is there anyone else who would like to speak during public comment all right see now we're going to move on to the fun stuff first is our oath of office so yes let us welcome our two new council members David Lopez and Dana Evans And City Clerk Holm will now administer the oath of office to incoming Councilmember Lopez. Just for the record, Councilmember Evans' oath of office was completed as special council meeting held on May 20th, 2026. Madam Clerk, you are up.

You ready? Okay. I, David Lopez, do solemnly swear that I am a citizen of the United States, and of the State of Washington, that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution, and laws of the State of Washington, and all local ordinances. And that I will faithfully.

And I will faithfully. And impartially. And impartially. Discharge the duties. Discharge the duties.

Of the office. Of the office. Of city counselor. Of city counselor. For the city of College Place.

For the city of College Place.

According to the law.

According to the law.

And the best of my ability.

And the best of my abilities.

Thank you. Yep. Make sure you get a copy.

Thank you.

You want to take a picture? All right. I was going to say we have some people here.

Do you want to get a picture?

You want to get a picture? The UBC, you want to go with and. And before you sit down, Councilmember Lopez, actually, if we can get a picture of our two new council members together for the UB, and then if Councilmember Lopez's family would like to have a picture taken as a family, we'd be happy to set that up as well.

Thank you.

Cool.

People want the family picture?

Sir?

Yeah.

I'll embrace them.

Three, two, one. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming guys. Congratulations. Oh, of course.

I know, right? That's the last we'll see them until graduation or something, right? all right well that was very sweet all right so moving on it's now time for our consent agenda which consists of the agenda for tonight which is may 26 2026 approving the council regular meeting minutes from may 12 2026 approving the special council meeting minutes from may 20th 2026 approving the disc filter socks really for wwtp what does that stand for uh walla walla treatment plant oh wastewater wastewater wastewater treatment plant disc filter socks that's interesting Okay, approving the purchase of water meter boxes and approving the appointment of Steve Owens to our Economic Development and Tourism Events Commission. Are there any items any member of the council would like removed from the consent agenda at this time? Make a motion to approve the consent agenda. We have a motion to and we have a second Councilmember Green. Thank you. We have a first and a second to approve. I thought it was Michael too.

Okay.

Council member Cleveland was second. I thought you were going like this, but you were pointing that way.

Got it.

All right. Sherman and Cleveland. All right. All in favor of approving the consent agenda as presented, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. The ayes have it and the motion is passed. We are now moving on to our action item, which is for tonight's agenda. And Mr. Rickards is going to present on the professional planning services to review and update city development regulations to ensure compliance with the Growth Management Act, also known as GMA.

Thank you, Mayor. As part of our developer, our comprehensive plan update process. As a follow up to that we update are required to update our development regulations. So we would like to contract with JV engineers are doing our comprehensive plan. Part of that update will include making sure that our development regulations and zoning ordinances are in compliance with all the new housing regulations that the state's been passing over the last I'd say 5 years and then, of course, in addition to that is updating our, our critical areas ordinance. There's been some changes there. So we have to make sure we're in compliance in that regard. And also to make sure that we're. I would say competitive with our neighbors. We don't have the same development regulations as our neighbors and nor do we necessarily want to have the same development regulations, but it is helpful when we are trying to attract development and growth to our community that we have similar regulations that are easy to understand and easy to info easier to enforce um so that's what this is about um we will as soon as we get this underway we'll get started on um and should have it all completed towards the end of the year so any questions right councilmember green any questions or comments I don't have any questions.

Councilmember Cleveland?

No questions.

Councilmember Stecklein? No questions, thanks. Councilmember Lopez?

No questions, thanks.

Councilmember Evans? No questions. Councilmember Sherman? No questions. And Councilmember Boyle? No questions. How'd she all right easy? Well, because I can't let you off that easy. It's not a question just a quick comment and it probably has 0 doesn't matter. But Jesse, you know, under your title on page 2, they misspelled. Development just letting, you know, and in the tier backwards. In case you want them to perfect that, just letting you know. All right. If there's no other nitpicky items, do we have a motion on this item?

I'll move to authorize the Community Development Director to execute the contract between JUB Engineers and the City of College Place updating the City's development regulations to ensure compliance with the GMA RCW 36.708. Thank you.

We have a motion Councilmember Stecklein. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Second from Councilmember Boyle. Is there any additional discussion? Hearing none, all of those in favor of approving the authorization to authorize the Community Development Director to execute a contract between JUB and the City of College Place, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? The ayes have it and the motion is passed.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. I think we made that a little too easy for you. All right, next, wow. We have two administrative reports that were included in your packet, which included the Police Department Monthly Reports and the Community Development Department Monthly Reports. If you hadn't had a chance to read those, please do. And if you have any questions or comments, please refer them over to Chief Tomaras or to Mr. Rickard here for clarification. And we're just skipping right along. We're now up to new and unfinished business. I feel bad.

Yes. I just want to give an update about city events. I don't have a formal PowerPoint prepared, but the block party that just occurred this last Sunday, we had approximately 77 vendors. Our people counters didn't work, but we're estimating anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 people, maybe more. There was a considerable amount of people there. Spring Jam for the university went on also. And I just want to say, I think it really, really made the market. It was really nice. There was a lot of positive feedback. And we have vendors that are saying, hey, sign us up for next year. We want to do it next year. We feel like it went really, really well. And we were very appreciative of everything that the university did. David, you were phenomenal. You helped us out so much. And Ashley also that worked scheduling the entertainment section. It was pretty amazing. It was fun and really good. So we also have Market in the Park right now that starts this Thursday. It goes from 4 until 7 and the market in the park goes until the end of September. Right now we have about 20 applications. Freedom Festival is coming up and that's June 30th. We have nine vendors signed up already for that. We have the movies in the park. July 25th is going to be Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning. August 8th is SpongeBob the movie. August 22nd is Grease. September 5th is Legally Blonde. September 19th is Shrek. And there's more events coming up too, but I just kind of wanted to give a quick update for everybody. And it It's great when people can attend and I think it would be awesome to have council members there. I would love to be able to post a notice of potential quorum Anyways, that's really all I wanted to say.

Thanks. Well, first of all, thank you for all your hard work on the Spring Block Party. That was well put together. And I understand some vendors actually sold out our products. So that's always great. They did, yes. And then second, Movies in the Park, can you remind me, what time are they? Are they starting at dusk? Or do we have a certain time we're going to start them this year?

I think it's just at dusk. Just at dusk. Yeah. Okay.

Which is around 830-ish, 845, I think is around the time. Yeah. All right.

I haven't received any feedback otherwise.

Okay. Just wanting to make sure. All right.

All right.

Council Member Lopez.

I just want to comment that it was really fun working with you, Carolyn, and you've got it dialed down. You have a good team this year, and thank you so much for all you did to make Spring Block Party a success. Thank you to you, too. That was awesome. If it's appropriate, it would be nice to get a letter maybe from mayor's office or from the city just thanking ASWU for the Spring Jam just because it was hard. Like we actually worked really hard to get them to coordinate dates. They wanted to do it later and they weren't sure. They didn't see the benefit of it and all that stuff. So it'd be really nice to just say thank you for having it then. It was maybe we could do it again type of hint. That would be nice.

It would be wonderful. Yeah, I recognize that all the work that she put into that. She had people going, you know, just right away. They were stacked, and I know that's a lot of work to get that organized.

Yeah, they had two stages so that it wasn't downtime, and it was really well done.

It was very.

I agree.

Any other business for good of the order from council members? All right. Hearing none, we're down to our closing. Do we have a motion to conclude the meeting?

I'll make a motion to conclude.

Nobody wants to go home. We have a motion on Councilmember Green. Is there a second? Second. Second from Councilmember Evans, her first. Yay! so that's right that makes it official so if there's an objection the meeting is concluded at 6 17 p.m we're done thank you all look at david's like yes