City Council - Regular Meeting

got a picture of my mother hugging my son from last year uh-huh you thought it was you no it was me like why was she there nope nope yeah all right all right i now um call the regular meeting back to order at 6 35 p.m the minute changed on me um If there's further, should we open up doors? Oh, I wonder if they're out there still. Yeah.

He's got to get on the floor.

Nope. All right. So nobody's here. So we are now moving on to new and unfinished business, which there is not on the agenda, but does anyone have any business for good of the order? Councilmember Stecklein.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to Cat Jimenez. We had our first movie in the park on Saturday. We had over 50 people there. It was great. With everything being canceled, it was a little bit like, is it going to happen? Is it not? There was good air quality. They saw, well, I stayed there too. We watched the movie Goat, which was really so cute. The lions provided popcorn. So we... members of alliance club we were there we handed out popcorn to 40 people um so we're gonna do that again the last movie which is shrek in september um so i highly encourage folks to grab a blanket and do that and then next week is the car show so thursday the 20th is that right or is it is there a change you're stealing my thunder okay i'm excited because this is my birthday and i told everybody to go oh you're fine you can keep talking so that was it i just encourage folks to remember we have lots of fun things going even in the summer it's still here and i just really appreciate all the work that kat jimenez and carolyn do for making sure these things go off without a hitch

um i was going to prepare some of the pictures for you guys um because kat took a whole bunch of really good pictures from movies in the park so that i could share it with you but i will bring them to the next meeting

How many cars are registered for next week? I think there's like 43 so far.

Yeah. Um, yeah. And Chris got a bunch of sponsors from local businesses. So like there'll be free sandwich, um, coupons given out and, um, For the two categories, he was thinking about separating stock and modified categories and adding a separate category for Corvettes because there was a ton, a bunch of Corvettes. I'm not sure how many were submitted, but I'm not sure if that's happening, but they talked about that. We do have trophies for stock and modified categories first and second place. So that's really cool. Yeah. all right that's exciting captain chris is um having his sons come and help him so it's gonna be like a little family affair for them um yeah is the registration still open it is yeah

So if you have a cool car, get registered.

And Kat just put the registration for Trunk or Treat on the website. So we're accepting vendors for that now. And I think she was working on Winterfest also. That one's in process.

Very cool.

Yep.

Okay.

Um, I just wanted to quickly share that, um, prior to. This meeting I was at, uh, I was in community health advisory board meeting and account wall on the county community health advisory board meeting and we were discussing, um, air quality index. Obviously, that's our number 1 health concern right now. Um, and I just thought I'd share real quick that the discussion was around, um. the health departments or the county's potential role is their responsibility of issuing counseling outdoor events right things like that and it the discussion was of interest to me because We've been counseling when we've had both the heat dome and the poor air quality movies in the park and as well as our farmers market. And we did have at least 1 vendor complain about that. Um, because their statement was that, you know, walla walla hasn't canceled. There's free water hasn't counseled. There's in college places quick to cancel ours. And so we were kind of discussing that and. You know, there was a number of people who got sick during the. Jelly roll, so it's named jelly roll concert because of the air quality that people, you know, so they were questioning whether that should have been canceled. Right? And the. Pressure that that put on the county, because it's economic development as well. It would have been a huge monetary as well. Anyways, in the end. The board decided to send a memo to the board of county commissioners, asking them to kind of take this discussion up of what the responsibility is, because putting it on individual municipality sometimes isn't always the best. Because, for example, we made the decision to cancel that was based on. You know, the feeling that it's irresponsible to encourage people to be out for hours in that kind of heat and air quality. And then, you know, somebody in the meeting said, well, isn't it their decision if they want to be out there and it's like, true, but then there's staff. Who don't have an option whether they've got to be there because in the discussion came with the fairgrounds to the fair coming up. Right right.

Right. It is an L and I regulation for those who have staff out there, but with air quality and heat L and I. Pass those rules and regulations and so when we have received those complaints of other cities, not counseling it. They're ran by downtown associations are not ran by the city and any employees. So that's an additional risk that we run by continuing to have those events because we run our own.

So. So I just thought I'd mentioned that, right? Just thought I'd mentioned that, that there are discussions is going on and everybody is thinking, you know,

when there should be recommendations of when things need to be cancelled or discouraging um asking people to be out there so um well real quick too i mean you know that's the resource the county has that nobody else has is that they have a health officer and they have a health department whose whole focus is around that and the municipalities the cities just don't among other places so they they have the ability to Make an educated decision that nobody else really has the experience to do.

So, and that's exactly it because it's like, I said to them, I said, you know, it would be nice to have something more official and based on, you know, data and reasons and medical rather than my own personal opinion that we probably shouldn't be out there that kind of thing. Right? So it's, I think it would reaffirm everything. And it's probably also more. Reassuring to the community when that decision comes down from a health department, maybe so when they have a lot of structure for it already.

And when you look at the response, even doing the work we do in the shelter, as soon as it passes a threshold, I've got people from the health department reaching out and seeing what we need for resources. You know, when we look at. we look at just generally there are thresholds for um extreme weather events in general and when when we start turning on things like warming and cooling centers and fresh air is one of those things and so there already are thresholds in place that that they use for a lot of that so it would be a pretty simple thing to to add so i i hope they will take up this discussion and i hope they'll take on the responsibility because it sure seems like that makes a lot of sense

So if you hear anything from anybody regarding our decisions of counseling events or, you know, please know that that discussion was had at the county level with multiple entities, medical professionals, the county, other cities, you know, we're all involved in this discussion.

Thank you for sharing that. That's very encouraging because we get to hear the frustration from the vendors and the customers. I'll pass it along.

And I know you're on that end of having to get that. So absolutely.

Okay. Anything else? We'll go to the order.

Nothing. Councilmember Sherman. Okay. If there's no other business, do we have a motion to conclude?

So moved.

Councilmember Green, is there a second?

Second.

Councilmember Boyle, second. So there's no objection. The meeting is concluded at 644 p.m. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate you being here. Do you have a summer cold? Oh, miserable. Take care of yourself. Will do. Bye.