City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello, everybody.

We have a little technical difficulty, so we're starting this meeting tonight at 632 instead of 630. My name is Douglas Orr. I'm the mayor. It's Wednesday, July 8th. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Director, can I get a roll call, please? Francie? Here.

Bacon. Oh, he has to be excused tonight. He's not well. Hodgkin. Here.

Hubbard.

Here.

Moynihan. Nipper. Here. Prado. Radjic. Here. Shaw.

Here.

Swore.

Here.

Taylor. Wilson. Here. Orr. Here. Thank you. Thank you.

I'd like to make a motion to excuse council members Taylor, Moynihan, Freyjo, and Bacon. Second.

Is there any discussion on this? All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you.

If you'd like, could we stand for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. And we'll go to Council President Sporff for approval of amendments to the agenda.

Motion to approve today's agenda.

Second. It's been seconded by Council President Ratchick. Is there any discussion? All in favor, say aye.

Aye. Be composed. Thank you.

And on to public comments. If anybody would like to make a public comment, please come up. Limit your time to three minutes. Start with your name and your board or your city, please.

I'm Nancy Kyle and I'm here for GST 98520. And I hope when you came in, you were able to look at the new display that's downstairs in the lobby. And if you didn't, that may be a quick time to do it on your way out. It is, well, I talked to you two months ago about the out of many one project that Aberdeen was going to participate in. And we did a survey. And this is what one, the Mosaic, mighty results from a little seed where the seed is the Union Business Services. And so we put that downstairs and once that selection was made by the community, our terrific volunteers took off. And first thing they had to do was clean up the mosaic. There was about 60 years worth of dirt on it. It didn't go through the fire, but it was stored over in the museum annex and it kind of, you know, by the wayside for a few years. So anyway, we cleaned that up, and then they created a design of how it would be safely displayed. They built it, and then they moved it over to History 9 at 5204 to first Friday display, and then picked it up yesterday and hauled it down here and set it up beautifully as it is. So I'm pretty proud of what it looks like. So I'd like to recognize some of the significant contributors. This is in alphabetical order, not the order of the amount of work they did. So Les Fulton, Ed Bridgestahl, Gary Emberley, Barb and Fred Goheen, Jim Niekler, and Scooter Sherbury. And on behalf of H2O, I would also like to thank Grace Harper Stamp Works, who pretty incredibly back in the late 50s, early 60s, made all those buttons and many, many more. So there's over 8,000 buttons on that display. They made all those. And then when we told them we were having trouble with one little area that we really needed to fix, they dug through their records and they actually found buttons from 1962 to put together for us. So it was pretty cool. So we thank them and the Grace Harbor Labor Council who not only encouraged us, but also provided financial support for building this display. And finally, of course, the City of Aberdeen. So we appreciate their support as well. In the Aberdeen Museum collection, there are actually four of these missives. And another one is just gorgeous. It is a large American flag on a gold flagstaff. And anyway, we really hope that We'll continue to find some support and both financial and encouragement to fix the rest of the displays so they can all be shown. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm nervous to be getting right here.

My name is John Bolton. And if I start talking loud, I'm not yelling. I don't realize it.

Can we get your city or ward, please? What? The city or ward that you live in.

Oh, one. Councilman Taylor is mine. Okay. So I'm coming up here because I'm picked off. About the firewoods. I respectfully ask the council, this is really short, I respectfully ask the council to consider prohibiting consumer fireworks within the city limits of Aberdeen for adopting significantly stronger restrictions and enforcement. While fireworks are a tradition for some, they also create preventable risks that affect the entire community. Fireworks burn at extremely high temperatures and can ignite roofs, dry vegetation, fences, and other combustible materials. Every year, they cause fires, injuries, and property damage that place unnecessary demands on our firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical personnel. These are preventable incidents that consume valuable public resources. Fireworks also affect many of our most vulnerable residents. Veterans with PTSD, individuals with autism, older adults, young children, and many others can experience severe anxiety, sensory overload, and sleep disruption from repeated explosions. Pets often panic, escape their homes, or injure themselves trying to flee, and wildlife is also negatively impacted. Homeowners should be able to enjoy their property without worrying about burning debris landing on the roof, loud explosions shaking their homes or fireworks entering their yard. One person's entertainment should not create a fire risk or safety concern for their neighbors. I encourage the council to strengthen protections for our community by considering a ban on consumer fireworks or adopting stronger regulations meaningful penalties or greater enforcement while encouraging professionally managed public displays as a safer alternative. Also, you know, I was in the military. I've never been in war, but when you're hearing boom, boom, boom, loud flashes, whistling, and then it feels like someone threw that sledgehammer and tried to get in your house, that's not acceptable.

Thank you, sir.

Is there any other public comment?

Hey, I'm Ralph from word for speaking of fireworks. I just wanted to share. We did a clean up on Sunday on South side on the favorite favorite basin trail. 6 of us showed up. We did pick up some fireworks. We got just a lot more general garbage. We did between 2 and 3 miles worth of distance there, including talking to several residents and neighbors who came out to. See what the heck is going on, including what looks like a community park down there and a couple of old dudes like through thought over casually and then announced that they had been building that part, which I thought was. Like, really cool just to see, like, people building up park in our own neighbor in their neighborhoods. Anyway, had a great time. I'm not sure when the next 1 is, but I told you about it beforehand and so I'm going to tell you what we did and that's what we did. Thanks. Bye. Thank you.

Any other public companies. Okay, thank you. We'll close it. Oh, yeah, sorry. Hi, good evening.

My name is Jacob Brownby. I am one of the newest residents here in Aberdeen, Washington, board of four. Or, I apologize, fifth board. So, the reason I'm here tonight, I'm here to voice my profound concern regarding the Aberdeen Police Department's use of FLOC safety surveillance cameras. Mass surveillance systems like FLOC represent a fundamental violation of our constitutional right to privacy. Great public speaker, if you haven't noticed. Mass surveillance systems like FLOC represent a fundamental violation of our constitutional rights to privacy and is a dangerous slide towards an authoritarian surveillance state. These cameras do not just target criminals. They cast a permanent digital dragnet over everyday law-abiding citizens. They log our commutes, our private routes, and our daily locations without warrant and without a shred of suspicion. A recent University of Washington Center for Human Rights Audit revealed that FLOP allowed federal agencies backdoor access to Washingtonians, getting familiar with that term myself, Washingtonians' vehicle data, even in cities that explicitly voted against it. By keeping these cameras active, this council is letting a private third party corporation harvest our residents' movements, directly threatening our civil liberties, Beyond the severe violation of privacy, we face major legal and financial liability. When Skagit County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Yost ruled that FOC footage fell under the Public Records Act, cities like Stanwood and Central Woolley turned their cameras completely off because the legal administrative burden was too great. Furthermore, Washington State Legislature passed Senate Bill 6, SB 6002, which placed Strict legal guardrails on this technology. Under SB 6002, violating these data rules is a criminal gross misdemeanor carrying up to 364 days in jail for individual misuse. And this opens the floodgate for civil lawsuit against city. Without an independent public audit, this council is operating entirely in the dark. Has our city attorney verified that Aberdeen is actively purging data at the 21 day mark required by law? Or are we currently violating state law every single day? Our right to live, work, and move through Aberdeen without being indexed by an AI machine is not negotiable. I strongly urge this council to reject mass automated surveillance entirely. I demand that you remove these flock cameras from our streets and you terminate the common times upstream and pass an ordinance permanently banning automated license plate trackers from the city of Abing thank you thank you sir city clerk right here you can you can put them in that um right over there thank you any other public comments there'll also be another public

Right, so now we'll move on to Council President Spor with the Consent Agenda.

Motion to approve tonight's Consent Agenda, which includes minutes from the June 24th meeting, accounts payable and payroll. Second.

It's been seconded by Councilperson Francie. Is there any discussion? All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Okay. Mayor's report, I'll try and keep this brief. I went to Spokane a couple of weeks ago with the Association of Washington Cities Conference, and what a beautiful library they have. It would be so wonderful if we had at least half of that. Any of that would be great. But anyway, really, if you haven't been to that city, it's worth seeing. They have an old hotel there called the... Thank you very much. What a beautiful a larger version of our Mark Hotel, what it could be. Anyway, there was a speaker. I'm not going to go on about the whole meeting, but there was a speaker, Doug Griffith. They're a wonderful guy. It was like reading my brain the whole time. And he wrote this book, 13 Ways to Kill Your Community. And I strongly suggest anybody get that book if you haven't heard of it. It's a wonderful book. mind-changing kind of book. And for the council members, I'd like you to know that on June 22nd, he'll be doing a Washington Association of Cities is also offering his speech. So you can register for that before July 21st, and it's free. And it'll also count as one point towards your municipal leadership certificate. I did also go to one of the sessions was on Robert's Rules of Order, and I just wanted to take this second to ask that just three reminders. One, if you want to speak, please raise your hand before you speak and be acknowledged before you start talking. Number two, this is for Council people. And then also allow a say or a chance to speak before you start or raise your hand again. And then number three, and I thought this had helped me out the most, is if you want to make an amendment, please write it down and submit it to me so that you don't have to, but it would sure make it easier for us trying to get the exact wording down and just make it easier. So if you know you're going to make an amendment, just write it down and give it to me in advance. I really like that. All right, that's the end of that. Let's move on to council reports. Do we have any council reports?

I am going to try. When I first wrote this up, it was like 10 minutes long, so I'm going to skim. So I also was at the AWC conference. First, I just want to thank council for letting me go to this. Absolutely one of the most amazing experiences that I've had, and I've been to a lot of professional conferences. This was so well done, and it was so educational. We had four days of sessions. I went to a short course on local planning, one on fostering stability in public service, one on ethics pitfalls, and then the keynote speaker, which Mayor has already spoken of, 13 Ways to Kill Your Community, was absolutely amazing. standing ovation worthy good. It was like he was talking about our town. It was so great. I felt so strongly about this that I actually bought a book for everybody on council and I have them right here for you. And I will make sure that you all, everybody has a copy because I just really feel that strongly that everybody on council should read it. Also, I want to second what the mayor said about the webinar on July 22nd, it's from 10 to 11. And it is free to all AWC members, which is all of us. So please, please, please, please, please, please go attend this webinar. I can't stress how important it was. I also attended one on empowering youth in local government. And that was probably second to the 13 ways one that was probably the most impactful for me. And I will be bringing up something later. You guys all have some things I printed out. about doing a youth council in Aberdeen because of that. We also went to an economic forecast breakfast, which was a little depressing, but with a lot of graphs and a lot of math, and it wasn't the worst news, but it was still a little sobering. The other one that gave me pause was the energy economic development and the environment, and where I discovered that we in the state are not only running out of power, but we're running out of ways to transmit that power. And so that was a little sobering. But we also had a lot of really cool, upbeat things. We had a scholarship fundraising lunch, and we broke records for how much we raised. Just during that lunch alone, we raised $16,000 to send youth to college. And that was probably the other great thing that I love. So all in all, Four days, so many sessions. I remember six or seven sessions every day, and it was great. And if anybody on council has not been, you should go. And if you don't go, I will take your spot next year.

Thank you. Any other council reports? Council President Sparrow?

I have a comment on it, and also a couple of reminders to come up from this end. Typically, the EDAC would have met this week. We rescheduled that for the holiday small view meetings of committee Monday the 3rd. My family and I attended the Red, White, and Boom Festival. That appeared to be very successful, especially given that it was an inaugural event. Many kudos to Downtown Aberdeen Association and their group for putting that together. And a couple of reminders from my end would be that we still have three open seats for community stakeholders on the EDAC, Economic Development Advisory Committee, sorry, after ministry. The legislative break will start after the next meeting on the 22nd, and we'll go until the meeting on August 26th. And the second budget workshop is to be held on September 2nd. So if it's not on your calendar, please make sure you do so.

Thank you. Any other council reports? All right. Director's report. Administrator. Thank you, Mayor.

um as council presidents were stated um our budget process has kicked off next to um finance director williamson securing a date for the workshop september 2nd next week the directors will receive their budget books and then they'll have about a month to work on them before we start um visiting them with the mayor and myself and director williamson We pushed back, due to the holiday, we pushed back the July Parks Board meeting. But at the last meeting, we had several things to go over. We have some aging facilities that I want to make all of you aware of. The Little Leap Grandstand experienced some breakage and parts of it had to be replaced. Our carpenter is um has examined it and determined that we probably need to replace more than just the boards that broke itself um so well more to come on that we can wait field bathrooms have been vandalized multiple times in the last month causing us to replace some things so we decided to close the the bathrooms down and we'll open them up when there are games. The operating system for the splash pad at Finch Park failed and had to be replaced. We've temporarily fixed it, but that will be a request that I'll put in for the 2027 budget. So there are a few more things that we've had that we'll have to address in the 2027 budget, but it just kind of seems like it has been a perfect storm of things failing in the Parks Department. So that's something that we've been tackling and addressing as they come up. I really want to thank Assistant Director Austin Webber for his help. He's been tremendous in managing a lot of the issues and handling of the entire park staff. I'm just so honored to work with all of them. One of the great things that they were also able to accomplish is that the Parks Department passed the WCIA audit, which is our risk management pool. They basically review anything that's at risk for the city. And I did not realize like where the public works audit had 50 questions for parks department had 250 questions because of the risks associated working with youth and children. And so there were a lot of things that we had to go through. And so I'd really like to thank HR director Danny Smith for facilitating that as well. We just heard today that we received a $145,000 grant to create an alternative response team. This will assist our frontline staff, police officers, EMS folks, public works workers, code enforcement to address folks in our city that are in mental health crisis, experiencing homelessness. or substance use disorder, this will, we'll be partnering with CAP. This is part of the conversation that we had, the coordination conversation that we had with different folks around the city. So more to come on that. We'll be meeting with CAP on Friday and figuring out processes and what our teams will look like. Part of the grant, the request for the grant will go to pay for part, a good portion of our code enforcement officer salary. So that will save the city about $45,000. And then lastly, just, you know, I was out for a couple of weeks and came back and saw the new sign was put up and that was, I just would really like to thank Rick Sanger and Nick Bird for their help. They did a lot of coordination. There was a lot more engineering for that project than I had anticipated. So the public works team and engineering team really stepped up and assisted me with that. And a lot of credit goes to former parks director, Stacey Barnum. as well. And just a reminder, I know that this sign was met with a lot of positive reviews, but then there's some negatives. When we issued out the survey for the sign to be selected, 498 people voted in that survey, and that was the sign that won. So, you know, just just I see that I hear that there's a lot of like, so I just wanted to equip all of you with that that data so that you can take that that 400 and almost 500 people had voted in that survey and had selected that something. So are there any questions with my.

I want to say thank you so much for finding that grant and applying for that grant. All right. Are there any directors that would like to make a report? Okay. Moving on to presentations. Tonight we have Grace Farber County Drug Task Force. Chief Green is going to talk.

Hi, Council. This is Gannon Lavin here with Placer AI. Thank you so much for having me. Excellent. Am I, am I good to go?

You're ready to go.

Okay. Again, thank you so much for having me. My name is, like I said, Gannon Lavins with Placer. Um, I'm going to be sharing my screen here and giving you a short presentation. Um, I am, please forgive me. I am not used to using Teams. So hopefully I do this the correct way. Um, is my screen sharing? Yeah. Yep. Okay. Excellent. So Placer is a mobile location analytics platform that helps cities get information on what's happening in town. So we use mobile data essentially to give you insights into things like your economy, tourism, parks usage, transportation, roads, things like that. Now as a business, we have two major pillars that are extremely important to us, accuracy and privacy. So the accuracy component is pretty straightforward, right? If you're going to be working with a data company, you need to be able to trust the data that you are getting from us. We're hoping that you will make decisions with that data and tell your city's story with that data, and you need to rely on us to do so. But the big part of it is privacy. Now, I only work with local government. Privacy is a major, major part of our business and is how we are still operating today. The way we get our data is we've gone out to about a dozen mobile app providers. So I'm sure many of you have downloaded apps on your phone before, and it gives you that option to share your location or not share your location with the app. We've gone out to some of the biggest apps that require their users to share their location. And the deal we've made with them is that, Hey, we have no desire to get any personal information on anyone at all. No cell phone numbers, addresses, phones. Not no at no names, even right. Zero personal information. All we would like is the bulk of their anonymized location data. So through them, we've built a sample size of about 30 million cell phones, which is about 10% of the phones in the United States. So when phones go to a certain location, right, we can extrapolate from that sample size by using things like machine learning and census data and data algorithms to measure the usage of a park, for example. Now, how do we know that this data is accurate? Well, we have private sector customers that already have hard truth data, like AMC movie theaters that sells tickets, right? So we can go to AMC and say, how many tickets did you sell on January 1st last year? And then we can compare their numbers to the numbers of what we see is how many people show up to their theaters. And our numbers come out to about 92% to 97% accurate, pretty consistently. Now, I personally work with cities all across the Pacific Northwest. That's the territory that I work with. I'm happy to send you some names of some of those cities in post. And there's typically about nine or 10 ways that we help our city customers, whether it's building the economy through things like retail recruitment and business attraction, supporting your local businesses and helping them with resources that they wouldn't typically have. Whether it's helping you analyze the events in the parks that you put so much work into, are they benefiting the community or are they not benefiting the community? Understanding tourism and the impact that it's having on your community as well. as well as roads and transportation and lots of funding decisions. Now, our app is a web-based app, so we don't collect any data from you. All we need from you is email addresses, right? You come log into our website, and what we're doing is drawing geofences around specific properties or markets and just measuring how many anonymous cell phones walk through that line. I do like to be upfront about a couple of things we can't do real quick. All of our data does come from us. So we do not have international visitors counted in our panel. There are certain properties that we will not give you information on because of our privacy policy, like churches, places of worship, K through 12 schools, women's health clinics, rehab centers, government buildings, legal institutions, those types of things. And then typically we do like to measure when we're looking at an event. Usually it's an event with about a thousand people there because of the sample size we're working with. Now I have two things pulled up that I want to show you today. First of all is the geofence of the city as a whole. Now we are about to make some inferences about the cell phones that come into the city. Are they a resident, a worker, or a out of town visitor? Now, Like I said, we are a privacy by design company. It is the most important thing to us. Someone offered me $1 billion right now to find their address on Placer. I simply couldn't do it. It is not that kind of product. But if a random cell phone happens to be in Seattle every night after 11 p.m. and then it shows up in the city, we can infer that the owner of that cell phone came with it. So we can say, all right, we probably had a visitor from Seattle today. Same with workforce. If we're trying to understand how many people are coming into the city every day to work, and we see, oh, phone is here from nine to five every day, we can get a lot of information about your workforce in general. So if we want to measure tourism, for example, we can say, how many people have been to the city that live over 50 miles away or something, or 75 miles or anything of that nature? Our data goes back seven years, so we do have pre-COVID numbers. It also updates daily with a three-day lag. So if you have an event on a Friday, we can tell you by Tuesday how many people showed up to that event. Now, getting into some of the basic data here, I can see the resident population is around 17,000. You've got about 11,000 employees in the city. This is really interesting to me. that your daytime population is higher than your resident population, meaning that more people are coming into the city during the day than are leaving during the city during the day. This to me suggests that you are a bit of a commercial hub, right? People are coming in to shop and dine or work, right? I can see out of market visitors. You had about 858,000 out of market visitors that came about 8.5 million times last year. So if we look at this graph here, The green right here is your residents. The bottom dark color here is your employees that are coming in during the week and going home on the weekends. And this more exciting orange line here is your visitors. So these are people that just don't live and work in the city that are coming in for some reason. So this to me suggests that a lot of people are coming into the city on a daily basis to do different things, right? And that can give us information about your economy. Now, we can see the top visited places, Walmart, Olympic Gateway, Safeway, Qmart, Fullsite, Home Depot, McDonald's, and we've got about 100 different top visited businesses in the city. Now, if I look at your visitors, I can see things like the fact that visitation is growing pretty significantly. If you look at this, the dark blue means that there was an increase that time of year. meaning that year over year almost every week this year you've had more visitors than you had the year before um so that's more people coming in spending their hard-earned dollars at the local community you know providing more sales tax dollars for the for the city um and and helping everybody out i can see generalized visual visitor origins so these dots are uh they are Mixed up within the census block that they're in to give you a general idea of where someone is coming from, but we can see these are all visitors to your city over the last year. So a lot of people from the greater northwest part of the country are coming into Aberdeen at some point. I can get general visitor demographics. This is based off census data that's publicly available mixed with our data. So if somebody comes from a certain census block, they're more likely to meet a certain census criteria. And then I can also see some interesting things like the top visited places of your visitors. Now, again, Walmart and Olympic Gateway and Safeway probably aren't huge mind blowing facts for you to learn that those are the top visited places. But one of the interesting things we can do is look at things like out of market. So if you're trying to recruit a retailer or a business into the area, you can see what are the interests of the people that are already coming here. Well, I can see that if I look at non-chains, right, a lot of your visitors are going to Bennett's Fish Shack in Ocean Shore, Little Creek Casino, the Tumwater Trading Post, Chehalis Outfitters, Thai Garden in Olympia. So if you are working with a retailer, for example, right, trying to fill a specific void, I know you have some vacancies in town that you're hoping to recruit for. can say look the people that come to our city are already going to these types of businesses we already have a specific specific developed demand for that type of business and it helps strengthen your argument we can also go into demographics where we can see things like total supply and demand so if we're looking to recruit a restaurant for example we might be able to say um hey we you know we have uh special food services is a an area that we are undersupplied for for our demand. And it looks like a specialty food service would fit in well in our city. We also have some things like workforce development to see where our inbound commuters are coming from. It's very similar to how our visitors work, so I won't spend too much time on it. Now, this is a market report. I want to shift real quickly to show you a property report. So this is if we're looking at a specific maybe public property or business that we want to do analysis on. Oftentimes it's a space where we're having an event or a park that we work really hard on maintaining. I have a crudely drawn geofence around Morrison Park. If you were to work with us, we would tighten this geofence up so it would match the park specifically. But I can see over the last year, it's had about 57,000 visitors come about 150,000 times, meaning that people are on average coming back about three times to the park. So it's showing you that a lot of people are coming out to the park, but they're also coming back. So they're enjoying their time there enough to come back. And you can look at a park like this and see, hey, is it worth more investment? Is it worth less investment? Are there things we might want to change about it? I can see your biggest day last year was July 4th. So I'm sure that there was a big festival or something that happened in the park on July 4th. But in this geofence, there were about 4,000 people that came to that part of the park that day. And we're quickly just to show you some last few things here. If we want to look at maybe the economic impact of a specific property in town and understand if it's bringing us value to the city. Right. We can see these are all the people that have come to Morrison Park in the last year. You know, you've got people from as far south as Sacramento, L.A., San Diego. So people from all over the country have been in that park. Someone from from central Florida was there last year. And when they're in town, are they going home or are they going out into the community and contributing their hard-earned dollars to the local businesses? And we can see that 30% of people went home after going to the park, 10% went to work. That means that well over 50% of people that go to this park go to some local business afterwards and again, contribute to the economy in one way or another. We can see tractor supply. Right. McDonald's, Marshall's, Olympic Gateway. And we've got about 280, 228 businesses that people have attended because they were at this park somehow. I think personally, as someone that looks at these reports all the time, this to me tells you that this is a very that this park drives a lot of economic activity and that it brings a lot of money into the community. We can also use it for things like scheduling maintenance. I can tell plenty of stories about how we've used it for that. And we can even go as far as looking at what amenities the park are most popular in the park. So if you're looking to make an investment on fixing a splash pad or looking at a local swing set or gazebo, right, we can open up and say, hey, people are actually really using the pickleball courts or people are actually really using the basketball courts and do a heat map to show you where people are congregating. concludes my presentation it's very very brief i'm just kind of scratching the surface here again if i were to leave you with two things here it's that our biggest commitments are um to privacy and accuracy and that is what we've built our business on thank you very much council thank you are you opening your questions i would love to answer questions does anybody have any questions for them last question

Assuming we were to move forward with the potential contract, what would the ballpark range for an annual price be?

The ballpark range for the annual price, I believe, was around $19,000. I'll double check the contract I sent over. And that would be for a one-year deal. We do have certain incentives that can make that price go down.

Thank you.

Of course.

So when we had, you know, some stuff, Gannon was nice to share some stats with us. We knew that like 11,000 people visited on World Music Day. They stopped to kind of see what was going on. And there is like a timeframe of when someone is considered like stopped and visiting. I think it's like 10 minutes. And so, or it's about 10 minutes and on. What was one thing that was like, as we're looking at economic development, I think that could be helpful is for us to understand where we should be investing. We know that, like, 10,000 people visited the book launch last year and in the last 12 months. And that's not it's not even in a place where it's like. we've invested really any time or money into it. So just something to think about, like, as we, if we pursue a tool like this, it could be helpful in helping us identify kind of the hotspots and why people are visiting us and where we could invest our money to increase more visits. So something to think about.

Any other questions? Oh, yes.

Is this something that we can use throughout the year at any time we want, or are there a limited number of times we can check and see what values go where?

That's a great question. So we try to make our business as much working with you as possible. So the way that we are structured right now is that contract is all in. So We do not work, unfortunately, for the people in this room that are in these departments. We do not work with law enforcement at any level. And we also typically do not work with fire departments. But beyond that, any department in the city would have access if you would like them to. So unlimited reports for you all, unlimited users within the city. Our hope is that we can become partners with you in a way that multiple different departments are getting value, whether that be Measuring tourism, supporting a local business, or just understanding how a park is functioning.

Thank you of course.

Thank you.

Any other questions. Okay, thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Mr mayor and appreciate you counsel for your time.

Now, we have a request for council action from finance department and. Chair Freda was not here today.

I'd like to move a motion regarding a resolution request recommending City Council authorize the Mayor to sign the resolution regarding the grant with the Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office to install turf on the softball fields at the Bishop Complex. Resolution number 2026-27. Second.

Seconded by Councilperson Hoskins. Oh, sorry. Is there any discussion on this? I'll call in favor of requests recommending City Council authorize the Mayor to sign a resolution a state recreation and conservation office to install turf on softball fields at Bishop complex resolution number 2026-27. Say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes, thank you. Move on to public safety with Chairperson Hubbard.

We just lost a report recommending City Council authorize approval to enter into an agreement with Pricer Advisory Group for fire protection system reporting, and I recommend that we accept this request. Second.

Seconded by council person in presenting discussion on this. Seeing none, all in favor of the request, recommending City Council authorize the approval to enter into an agreement with Pricer Advisory Group for fire protection system reporting. Please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Passes, thank you. and move on to public work with Chairperson Franci.

All right. We have two reports in our ordinance today. The first item is a request recommending the City Council authorize the Mayor to execute a professional service agreement with Cambridge System of Connections Incorporated in partnership with WSB to complete the railroad corridor crossing elimination and safety improvements to We have an acceptance report. Second.

And seconded by Councilperson Hubbard. Is there any discussion on this? Councilperson Prancy?

Yes. I believe Nick was wanting to make a very short presentation about this.

Engineer Nick Byrne. Thank you.

Yeah, I apologize. I was actually putting a presentation together for the support of Grace Herbert next week, and it was about this subject. And so we ran through it at the Public Courts Committee and thought, hey, you know what? There might be some value in running through this real quick. So it's just a real brief, you know, three or four slide presentation to run through regarding the project. Just a little reminder. We talked last council meeting or two council meetings ago about a number of the things that are impacted by outside sources. And so this project is one that's been sitting there for a while. Just to remind everybody, what we've got going on is we Back in 2020, there was a lot of concerns associated with the noise associated with the railroad and specifically the horns that were being used. And so a committee was put together. That committee was then tasked with trying to find solutions. We bounced around with a few different ideas. And one of the items that came up at that point in time was this railroad crossing elimination. And at that point in time, we said, hey, Why don't we look at these crossings, and so there's actually seven crossings that we're evaluating, and this is the Division of Inherent Street Crossing, Dewish Avenue, Port Industrial Crossing, First Street, Maple, and Myrtle, and the other Port Industrial Crossing in Chernobyl. Let's take a look at those and see, well, first, because we're applying for a rail crossing nomination grant, do we need those? I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that we probably will say yes, that we're going to need those roads, but we're going to go through that exercise as part of this effort to evaluate the safety mechanisms that could lead to a quiet zone in the future. That's the desired end state. And so we've gone through this exercise with both our consultants as well as Even the FRA is aware that that is our desired target for this corridor is to eliminate the use of training. So, again, just a real brief history. We applied for a $300,000 project, which is $240,000 in grants. That was authorized at the last council meeting. The local match is $65,000, $15,000, $10,000 from Hoquiam. We applied for that in September of 2024. In March of 25, we actually received the award, but then things kind of stalled out. And so we waited and waited and waited. We went ahead and issued the RFQ request for qualifications for consulting services back in February. By April of this year, we had already selected Cambridge Systematics and went ahead and facilitated the negotiation with them. under the premise that we were going to go ahead and get the grant funding, which as you guys know, we obligated that in June. The presumption is that we're going to authorize tonight to go ahead and move forward with Cambridge Justice and Addicts. Right now, we're still working on actually getting the funding still executed. So I hope you'll see an email here in the next couple of days. We're continuing to push on FRA to hopefully get that email out for signature that was authorized back in June. So just a quick touch on the project schedule. One of the most important pieces is stakeholder outreach and coordination. There is a lot of partners that we need to make sure are involved. Puget Sound Pacific Fellows, Tennessee Wyoming, the Port of Grace Harbor, and a host of others. But there's also public involvement that we do anticipate or we are planning on. And so you'll see there's four touch points, two of which are going to be bigger public meetings. And so for the community, those are going to be the real opportunities to come in and remind the project team that noise quality in that area is something that we're very concerned about. And that's a key component of making sure that your voices are heard and incorporated into this project so that it becomes a function of the record. Again, that's the desired outcome. So our target right now, as this graphic shows, is that we are looking at a July of 2027 target completion date, presuming things go according to plan. As we all know, at the presentation last meeting, they don't always do that, but our best laid plans at this point in time are to execute as it's currently laid out. So I'm happy to answer any questions, and if not, I can go sit down and guess and continue.

Nick, I'm just curious, are we willing to close the roads in order to, you know, quiet things down? We are going to have a huge increase in train traffic. So I'm thinking it's, you know, worth doing just because it's going to become even more of a nuisance, the noise level.

I'd hesitate to say yes at this point in time because it's important to understand the use and the impacts. And so when you talk about closing down one of these crossings, that is going to migrate curb cause traffic to migrate a different direction. And so some of these are likely going to be truck routes that are going to impact businesses. And so we need to make sure that we're minimizing those impacts as we're maximizing the benefits.

And that's basically what the study does, is they check for the traffic. Okay. One other thing.

So I guess the best thing would be to have crossings

uh electric electronic crossings you know how much it would cost to have those arms and installed at one of those no idea no idea but that's one of the key components associated with this project is to one frame out uh what safety improvements are going to be necessary towards to achieve our desired end state um which is ultimately that quiet zone and then to put together process with this so that question will be answered as a result of this thanks

So they don't have to blow their horn.

Any other questions? Do you have a question, John?

No, I read all the homework and I attended their webinars. And so it is a process. Yeah, six board sidebar.

All of those are a six board. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you.

Any other discussion?

All right. So I already got a first on this, right? Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thanks. Passes.

Okay. Thank you. Our next item is the first reading recommended by city council approved the amended state building section of the Abaddon Municipal Code. It's bill number 26-13. Does anybody accept this report? Second.

Seconded by Councilperson Hubbard. Is there any discussion on this? I just have one question on this. It talks about boarded up windows not being allowed more than 72 hours. So what's going to happen with like the mark?

So the 72 hours is, they had to order glass. So if it's not coming in in enough time, that provision. With the mark in particular, that's a difficult situation and we're probably gonna treat that one particular building differently because it's on the National Historic Register and the only thing that was tying that to the building were the windows. And actually they have to keep the windows and then do glass in. So that one would be a little bit particular, and we'll deal with that one separately. But for everything else, because that's not on the National Historic Register, you have 72 hours within which to order the glass or polycarbonate window, and then show us proof you've ordered it, and then we won't be issuing the fine or the ticket for that. Thanks. Thank you.

Just personally, I... I love reading every word of that on the page. We have a comment.

Actually, I do have kind of a question. When it says they have to keep the area free of pests and that kind of thing, does that run out onto the sidewalk for bird feces and that kind of thing? But I mean, it didn't seem to me like it was described in real detail. So it could be.

Yeah, codes aren't meant to be real detailed. It's just in general, keep your area free of debris. So, you know, not throwing mattresses out on the sidewalk or throwing your garbage out of the front stoop or whatever materials that you may have or that's left there. You need to keep the front of your building in a presentable place.

Any other questions?

All right, all in favor of the first reading, recommending City Council approve the amended vacant building section of the Aberdeen Municipal Code Bill number 26-13, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes, thank you.

All right. The last item is ordinance, the third reading of ordinance. The question is in council approval I don't know. Well, 26. Okay. Secondly, by council person never is there any discussion on this? Just your money. Thank you. All in favor.

The third reading requesting City Council approval of Title 17, line number of amendments, bill number 26-07. Say aye.

Aye.

Yes.

This is the third reading. It requires a roll call vote.

Oh, thank you very much, Director Williams.

Francie? Yes. Hodgkin? Yes. Hubbard? Yes. Nipper?

Yes.

Radjic?

Yes.

Shaw?

Yes.

Swore?

Yes.

Wilson?

Yes. Okay.

The motion passes.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

That's all from me.

All right. Thank you. Now we'll go on to special committee items with Council President Swore.

None from me tonight.

First all year. Thank you. Now we're going to go back to public comments. If anybody has one, please feel free to step up and start with your name and see your word. All right, there's no public comments. Now we'll move on to present the order. Yes, Council President Abbott.

So one of the things that I talked about earlier when I attended the AWC conference was the session on UConn. And I brought one for everybody but me, of course. So Ridgefield, they did a great presentation on their youth commission. And so the way it works is they put together a council of, it's eighth grade through 12th grade, and they assign them a task for the year. So in this case, their example was e-bikes. So then the youth commission tackles the entire topic. So they decided, you know, our helmet's gonna be required, What are the engine sizes that will be allowed? Are they going to ride them on the sidewalks or the streets? And then they put together a recommendation and bring it to council. That's their year project. And then you bring that to council for action at the end of their term. And I was just really impressed by this. There's also a handout here from Hillsborough, Oregon, that talks about exactly how to put together one of these advisory councils. You can assign them a topic like Richfield did, or you can let them choose a topic that's really important to the youth in our community. And so I would like to explore this and put together something to actually bring to council and be voted on. And I just wanted to see how you guys felt about that and if you would like me to dive into it and bring something forward.

That seems interesting. Awesome. Yes, ma'am. Did I understand you correctly in that they're given something to look into, or do they then, once they're formed, pick?

So Richfield does assign them one, but they specifically said that there are other communities that they let the youth choose something that's really important to them.

I'm all for expanding our involvement with youth, especially being a student council representative. I just want to be, I guess, transparent that this was the first year that we had more than one applicant. So if we're looking to build a team of more than two, we may not be successful on the first run, but I do think it's imperative that we make an effort to do so. And I would like to see us allow them to choose their area of focus.

So to that point, I did ask, that was one of the things I brought up during discussion was that we haven't had the most success in getting the school district to really, you know, get kids involved. And they said, you can't, you can't just let the school district handle it. You've got to go out and go to the schools and do presentations and you've got to go to youth groups. You've got to go to the YMCA and anywhere that kids congregate. And it's going to be whoever tackles this. And I'm more than willing to do it is going to have to, be out there really diving in the community and talking to youth and getting back there. Not just ask the school to bring us some kids and wait.

Would it be beneficial to you if we built an ad hoc committee so this is not entirely resting on your shoulders? Absolutely.

That's all I have.

Okay.

Do you want to make a motion to form a committee or we'll just form one?

Well, together and bring something that we are going to be on a pretty tight timeline. She'll notice in one of theirs, they found it out there, their timeline and how they did it. They started in like March. And so that in September, they were getting they were passing the resolution. And then by October, they were doing interviews. And so It's already July. I don't know. It's going to be a pretty tight timeline for us. Okay.

I don't want to tackle anything. Sorry. Whoever chooses to participate in the admin committee just needs to be willing to work during a legislative break on this project. Yeah. Okay.

If anyone's interested, contact Councilperson Hubbard. All right. Anything else for the go-to-the-order? I'll take a motion to adjourn.

Second. Motion to adjourn.

Second. Thank you. All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you all for coming. We appreciate you taking time out of your own business.