Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. I'd like to call to order. The Pierce County Council today is September 1st, 2026, and the time is 3.01 p.m. If the clerk could call the roll. Oh, I don't know why your thing doesn't turn on either. I can't turn.

You have seven members present. With seven members present, we do have a quorum. Thank you all for joining us. In a moment, I'll be leading us in the Pledge of Allegiance, followed by a moment of silence in honor of Victims who have been impacted by flash floods in two parts of our world. In Arizona, along the Grand Canyon, flooding resulted in the loss of life and many are still missing. And then in Nepal, the catastrophic flooding has resulted in significant loss of life. At this time, 939 people with thousands still missing. We pause to honor those who've lost their lives, who remain missin

Chair move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

Second. It's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda as presented. I'm going to ask one more time just to make sure. Candy, not present. If you're online, raise your hand. Not seeing anyone, then I'm gonna open this up for public comment on the consent agenda as it was presented. This is a time to provide comment on any final action item. Again, not scheduled items. Is there anyone in chambers that wanted to address the council on our consent agenda? I have to ask. I always assume no, but you never know. Okay, not seeing anyone, Mr. Dominique, we'll go online.

Okay. Seeing no other hands, we'll close public comment, bring it before the council. Any further discussion on approval of a consent agenda? Seeing none, can the clerk call the roll on the approval of the consent agenda?

With seven ayes and zero nays, the motion is adopted. Thank you. That brings us to section six, messages from the Executive or other county elected officials on August 20th, the executive transmitted the following ordinances, which were signed and approved. Ordinance 2026-453, which was granting a non-exclusive franchise to Citizens Water Association. And Ordinance 2026-544, which was vacating portions of 174th Street, East Gold Street, and East D Street in Spanaway Boulevard. And then a second message with The following ordinances, which were approved and signed on August 27th, which was ordi

Thank you, Madam Chair. So this is a proclamation of the Pierce County Council and Executive proclaiming September 2026 as Emergency Preparedness and Community Resilience Month in Pierce County, Washington. Whereas the safety and well-being of Pierce County residents are of the utmost importance, and preparing for emergencies can significantly reduce the loss of life and property and help the community recover more quickly. Emergencies can occur at any time, often without warning, and may result from natural disasters such as earthquakes, flood, wildfires, and severe storms, as well as from hu

Thank you. Let's give them a hand. So thank you for joining us. I know we have some slides specifically from our department. So we'll start with you and then we will invite whoever wants to go next after that just for simplicity here. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you so much, Katie. Appreciate it. Next guest.

Thank you so much for being here and our last guest, unless there's the 4th person somewhere hidden in the audience or online comes over dense and I'm looking for you to. Okay.

Thank you so much for being here and the work you do every day. Are there council members that wish to speak on this? And Council Member Krueger, I turned your light off. Do you want to go first?

Sure. It's, you never know when you're going to be in an emergency situation and it behooves you to be prepared. I always wonder if I'm prepared or not because they tend to have a reason to forget things. But I did want to mention that I did receive an email from a constituent a year or so ago who said thank you that I had put out in an e-letter that in my district where Chaplain Dorothy was putting on a program for emergency preparedness. and there was a situation that fear or deeply cut or injured and he was able to minister to his wife who had a very bad accident and he knew how to respond

Thank you. And we will go to the Vice Chair.

Thank you, Chair. Appreciate this coming forward. It's really important in this community. We have lots of examples of flooding and then many other things. I'm sure some people can remember the 2001 earthquake and that was my first time of, I think I just got a cell phone and then all of a sudden the cell phone didn't work and I wanted to call my family when that happened. And I didn't have a plan and I felt very helpless of what was going on. What I like about what's in this, it says emergency preparedness and community resilience. That's really important. We saw an example of this just recen

Thank you. And we'll go to Council Member Denson.

Thank you, Chair. I'm always really shocked and surprised at the number of volunteer groups that we have in Pierce County that work on these issues. We have our professionals, the Department of Emergency Management, and you all are wonderful, and you're everywhere in the community. They were just out at Airport Day the other day, and they always seem willing to go wherever and whenever. But the groups like Citizen Corps, Homespun Ministries, I know we've got the Geek Harbor Key Peninsula, PCNet out there in the rural area where I serve. We've got the 4x4 groups and the horseback groups and the

Thank you, Councilmember Denson. And I will just express my gratitude to those of you that are here and to those that may be listening later or right now. Thank you. Thank you for the work you do before an emergency happens. And thank you for the work that you do selflessly, sometimes for a full-time job or sometimes as a volunteer role. You show up and say yes and put yourself in harm's way to help the community. So thank you for doing that. We're going to take a picture, and I think we have a couple other guests that maybe are here as part of this. I'm not 100% sure, but if you're here for t

so this afternoon we also are going to kind of under this proclamations recognitions and awards we are gonna get an update from the Pierce County library system during this open public meeting as they are an entity that serves so many in our County and so Gretchen Casarotti is the executive director of the library system and so she is going to come up and do kind of a what's going on in library

Okay, I waited long enough. Council Member Morrell, and then we'll go to Council Member Denson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Appreciate the presentation. Always a pleasure to have the library folks here, especially the new guy in the tie there. He's looking pretty dapper. My question is on your slide where you had, you know, visits. How do you measure visits at a library?

Okay, so I can, you know, do my spy stuff by trying to figure a way around these sensors?

Okay, because I was... It was interesting because when the White River Bridge went down, the Parks Department put up a sensor that counted people. I didn't know they had it. So, you know, it was just a beam that you broke and that counted. So just curious to see if you had it at the entrance or just throughout the library. It's just the main entrance. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Okay, now I have a couple. We'll go to Council Member Denson first.

just a couple of comments and a question appreciated the presentation appreciate your continued focus on people and people helping people because i think a lot of us just love coming into the library seeing librarians that that we know and trust and and there's just something about libraries and librarians i think that makes us feel so safe and comfortable i just just love it and so it's great that that's being retained in this continually evolving world where technology is here and it's important, but it's also nice to have that personal connection. Appreciate all the work you are doing in th

Thank you so much. That makes sense. And thanks for all you do.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Executive Director, for this update. And touching on a point that you made that, you know, libraries aren't just great resources now, but will, I think, play very critical roles going forward because in this age of AI and in the age of This information and all these different things. Um, I'm curious and I live with a senior and I get to hear all the, the stories and the frustrations from, you know, the. The social groups about, you know, there's a lot of information that. you can't always verify and you can't always tell what's ai and what's not and you k

i know you know i you know frequently go out to mid county uh community center and you know even sometimes the the text messages that even just some of us get sometimes it's hard to distinguish and sometimes you know you can look for the signs but it would be help it's helpful to know that those resources available to be able to at least have some basics that you can kind of figure out um but i appreciate that being available we

I appreciate that. And it just shows that, you know, yes, that technology is going in a certain way. And yes, libraries are being tested, but it continues to demonstrate how important that our libraries are, not only now, but that continue to be relevant and even more important as we go forward. So I appreciate it.

Hey, Chair, real quick, I appreciate Council Member Yami talking about libraries are being tested in some aspects. I'm this old where our family couldn't afford Encyclopedia Britannica, so if I really had to do research for a school project, I had to go to the library and Look it up there. But times are changing on that. But my question for you today is Sumner is chomping at the bit, and so am I. He just told us that the bidding process is over. When can we hear the first hammer hit the nail?

Thank you. I'm not seeing any other questions. So, Director, thank you so much for the update. Appreciate you spending so much time with us. Sorry, not sorry, but my comm director is with me today. It's all good. So we are now at section... which is resolutions, we have proposal R2026-189 before us, Vice Chair, for a motion.

Chair, I move proposal R2026-189 for approval. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Can the clerk please read it into the record?

Thank you. And Ms. Long, you're going to do a brief introduction of the policy side, and then we're going to turn it over to the executive to do an introduction.

Thank you. Executive Mello, welcome and thanks for being with us.

Thank you, Executive Mello, and welcome, Ashton. We'll let you do a brief introduction and then see if there are any additional questions.

thank you again for your time and the opportunity to serve i look forward to working with each of you to advance a strong resilient and inclusive economic future for pierce county thank you so much for joining us and that introduction for those of us that have not watched the eidc meeting i'm sorry i really meant to and i just didn't get it done um so i appreciate that i'm going to see if there are additional questions from members of that committee or the two of us that were not present we'll start with vice chair herrera thank you chair

And I appreciate you coming back. We asked a lot of questions at the Economic and Development Committee, and you answered them pretty good. There's a question I have here a little bit when it comes to just like the committee's name, economic development and infrastructure. My question to me would be for you is, how will you weave infrastructure and economic development, I guess, either into your program? Some may say those two kind of do matter. We have freight corridors that need to be connected or finished, or any other type of infrastructure that may help economic development.

Thank you. Any additional questions? Okay. Well, I'll ask mine. So I have the honor of representing Joint Base Lewis-McChord and would just love to kind of hear some initial thoughts or ideas that you have around how we can support both people exiting the military and also their partners or family members that really struggle to find work close to home in a meaningful way where they're not commuting and just wondering initially just things that maybe you've done in the past or ideas that you have just to throw a curve ball at you?

Thank you, Ashton, for putting the winning application in, and for Executive Mello for seeing the value in bringing you forward. You have a great team that you can depend on, because I can't tell you, you've got big pumps to fill. But, You know that a county's economic development is totally different than a city's ability to navigate. So I will be looking forward to your strategic plan to move the economy forward. A lot of things in Pierce County, as some of my colleagues had mentioned, Our incentive packages are far and few between that we can offer. We can offer, hopefully, quicker permitti

thank you and we're just going to go down the line here and go to councilman bryala

Thank you. We're going to go to Council Member Krueger.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Allison, I had the pleasure of your acquaintance at the LTCH meeting, and I appreciated your attendance because that's probably, for me, it's a very important committee. And I'm wondering, I'm in a very rural area. It is very highly regulated. Very few opportunities exist for advancing economic development. I'm wondering if you've had any epiphanies that you might pursue that will help in the rural development areas.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And now we're going to go to Council Member Yambe.

Thank you. Yeah, that committee meeting the other day was fun to hear the rapid-fire questions and how you were fairly nimble at answering them, and I appreciated the thoughtfulness that you gave your answers. Now, this week, the executive's office, as you know, unveiled some of these project labor agreements, expanding opportunity for our workforce and partnering with labor and partnering with business and different entities to give more opportunity. And I'm sure that you're aware of the one in about eight You know, youth across Pierce County, I think they cite about like 14,000 who are eithe

I think that, you know, we and not only the executive's office, but council, you know, recognizes that this is an untapped, you know, group and it's really hard to make the inroads, but it can pay serious dividends down the line. And so I appreciate that. So thanks for the answer. Thank you.

Well, thank you. I'm not seeing any other questions. So appreciate you being here and spending so much time and with our committee, I'm going to go ahead and open this up for our public comment portion. So, I don't know if you want to sit down. I don't know if anybody will have any, but we have to do this. So, at this time, if any member of the public would like to provide comment on resolution 2026, 189 in chambers, we'll start in chambers. Anyone in chambers have comments. No one jumping up, so we will go online, Mr. Dominique.

No hands raised. We'll close public comment, bring it back before the council and see if there's any further comments from any of my colleagues. Well, thank you. I'm not seeing any lights come up. So thank you for being here. It seems like you, just in my very brief, just this meeting, I'll have to go back and watch that meeting. Sounds like I really missed out. So just truly appreciate the thoughtfulness to the quick question I answered and just the information that you've been able to share with us. And at this time, I'm going to ask the clerk to call the roll on the approval of R2026-189.

With seven ayes and zero nays, the motion is adopted. Congratulations.

So I believe as we've done before, we're going to pause and take a quick picture. We've been going for a little while. So I'm not going to formally put us in. I'm going to take it. We've been at it an hour and a half. So we're going to take a five minute recess. So we're going to be back at 439 so we can take a photo and then we'll come back and call the order and take on our next item. So we are in recess till 439. Thank you.

And we're going to pick up on item number two, which is resolution 2026-177. Vice Chair Herrera, we're going to you for a motion.

Thank you, Chair. I move proposal number R2026-177 to be approved.

Thank you. And we've all practiced saying this word, but we're going to turn this over to Ms. Kelly to brief us and tell us what this does.

Thank you so much for the introduction and the work of my colleagues to really pull this together and get us to this point. I know it took a while to get to this point. So I'm going to start with questions. Are there any questions from council members regarding this legislation?

Council Member Morrell. Thank you, Madam Chair. I had asked a few questions pertaining to gateway drugs, and I guess I was dating myself because it is no longer called that. It's called common liability models, or now what they're using. And I appreciate Ms. Kelly running that down for me, answering my questions. I think there again, I am constantly trying to educate myself on this, and I appreciate you answering that question. So thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for the question and learning. We should always be learning. Other questions before we open this up for public comment? Okay, Vice Chair Herrera.

I'm not really going to ask a question, but again, I'm just going to reaffirm why we brought this forward. We did talk about this in committee, and it's kind of a different one, especially coming from a former law enforcement officer, a former undercover narcotics detective. Why are we doing this? And for the public, I mean, you know, being in law enforcement and actually seeing the hope in people's eyes disappear, having no hope because of their mental illness, either it being from PTSD or other things, and especially for my veteran's friends as being a veteran. I think that this legislation

Thank you for the comments. Not seeing any other lights come up for questions or comments. So we're going to go ahead and open this up for public comment. I had two that signed up on the form that I have. So I'll call on you and then anyone else that's here to speak on this one, we'll just kind of queue up behind that. So I have Sarah first. Sarah Razor and Matt Metzger are the two. You'll have up to three minutes and the timer should be right there on your little light up thing.

Thank you for your comments and for your service. And I misread that. There's an Anthony, and I wasn't sure if you wanted to speak to this item. It didn't say. Okay, Anthony, come on up, and then we'll open it up to anyone else in the room. Thank you for signing in. I just...

Thank you for your time and your service. Anyone else want to address the council on this item before we go online? And we do have a couple of hands, but just want to. Okay, no one's jumping up. So, Mr Dominique, we will go online.

I'm sure no other hands raised. I'm going to close public comment. Bring it back before the council. Is there any further discussion on this item? Council member Denson.

Yes, thank you, Chair. Councilmember Herrera expressed much of what I would like to say. I just want to thank Councilmember Herrera for his partnership and his leadership on this issue. I want to thank the advocates, some of which are here today in person or on Zoom. It has been a long road, but this is a topic that, for me, was very new and required a lot of educating, a lot of asking questions. Now, when I came to Council Member Herrera and broached this subject, he knew all about it already because of his vast interactions with the veteran community. So already, he's like, I know, I know, I

Thank you for the comments and the leadership, both Vice Chair Herrera and Council Member Denson. When this came up on the, do you want to sponsor? And I was like, what is this? And then I was like. Okay, I have some research to do. I just so appreciate that you really both dug in and then made sure that Ms. Kelly was ready to answer the myriad of questions that all of us brought to her and bringing the voices, the different voices that came to speak on the benefits of this. And while it is not formally legalizing them, which I know is the end goal for many in this room, it is creating a pathw

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm kind of looking for some clarification on something, because I remember listening to an interview on this, and my understanding from the interview, and both gentlemen had used it, but it's a very intense, very intense discussion. use what happens it's almost as i don't know if that's right or if i'm if i'm correct in understanding that it isn't something that it's done without someone else there because it can be so profound on what it what it does and i'm wondering if so we'll start with miss kelly but i know we have some actual trained people in the audience who m

I guess that's what gives me hesitation in that when there are interactions that can be with other drugs that if it becomes legalized and we're getting into another arena where what will happen with kids? I don't know. How do we keep it where it's... where the microdose, you don't need to have someone else in the room, but the others where to get to that breakthrough, you really need to have a professional with you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the questions. So we now have R2026-177 before us for approval. I'm going to ask the Clerk to call the roll.

Aye. You have seven ayes, zero nays. With seven ayes, zero nays, the motion is adopted. Thank you all for your time and advocacy. We have one more item to work on today. We have resolution 2026-178. Councilman Morial, I'm going to you for a motion, but I didn't give you a heads up, so there you go.

It's been moved and seconded. Can the clerk please read it into record?

Thank you. And this afternoon, almost this evening, we have Ms. Mary Connolly, a policy analyst, to brief us on this item. Ms. Connolly.

Thank you, Ms. Connolly. I'm going to pause and see if there are any questions from any of my colleagues. Council Member Murrell.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Connolly, you should be able to answer this. What is the timeline to use these funds? Is there one?

It says that they put together 24 million in private funds. And you verified, I mean.

Okay. And then this is a question that either one, Brian, you might, you could center at the podium. Why are we taking the money out of the Maureen Howard Affordable Housing Act versus Therapeutic Court Behavioral Health?

Yeah. Okay. And Mary Connolly, do you know if Behavioral Health Therapeutic Court, do they... um pay for capital projects or is it just services i would need to double check on that okay Okay, I just want to make sure that, you know, I understand based on what was stated that this is a capital housing project, unique for Pierce County, but I just want to, you know, if people ask, well, why are you using affordable housing dollars for this? um when we need so much affordable housing out there so um that i just wanted to see if someone could take a shot at that question and we're okay with that

Okay. If you could do that and follow up, I was not going to hold up my, my vote on this. I just, you know, and looking at this, making sure we're taking the money out of the right pot. And since we have both of them, because I assume that Truve may ask at another time to take funding out of the behavioral health account also, but that's in the future, so. Those are my questions. Thank you.

It's team sports staffing the county council in real time.

So, it sounds like we could pull capital out of either or.

Appreciate that. Okay, any additional questions? Okay, thank you. Mr. Schmidt. Thank you. Ms. Kelly for phoning a friend. That was great. Um, and we're going to go ahead and open this up for public comment. If anyone would like to address the council on resolution 2026, 178, we'll start in chambers. No, 1 signed up for this 1, but just in case. Not seeing anyone jump up. Mr. Dominique will go online.

With no hands raised, we'll close public comment, bring it back before the council. Is there any further comments on this item for my colleagues? Well, I will just urge support on this one. This is a need that was identified. We've continued to collect data and really see a growing senior population with needs and a growing population that needs basically supportive housing around behavioral health or mental health. True Bay has Applied for this pot of dollars explicitly, because they have figured out a way to make this work and are willing to do business in Pierce County and the state of Wash

You have seven ayes, zero nays. With seven ayes and zero nays, the motion is adopted. Thank you and congratulations to Today, we have no ordinances this afternoon, and so we are going to move directly to Section 10, which is community forum at this time. If there's any members of the public that would like to provide comments. Let me just read the script. Community forum is an opportunity for members of the public to address the council on any topic of significance to or affecting Pierce County government that did not appear on the agenda for final action today. There is a three minute limit.

Thank you for your comments. There we go. uh not seeing anyone else signed up or raising their hands for community forum we're going to go ahead and close that portion of the meeting and bring it back before the council is there any other business or announcements this afternoon vice chair i'm going to go to you okay thank you real quick

Just a friendly reminder of District 2's having their in-district meeting on September 9th, which is a Wednesday, at 5.30. The theme is social enterprises in District 2. We're going to be featuring Step-by-Step and St. Francis House, two non-profits that... Don't take too much government money and kind of our self-licking ice cream cone that help people in the community. We're also gonna have Rogers High School ROTC presenting the flags. And we're also gonna be doing a very important proclamation on suicide awareness. So we invite everybody to come down to listen to some of the great presentat

Thank you. Looking forward to the meeting. Council Member Denson.

Thank you. I just wanted to let folks know, especially since we have some KP folks here, that the Key Peninsula Art Walk is this Saturday from 10 to 4, and it's at the Key Peninsula Civic Center. Typically, it's right in the middle of town, which I think is a lot of fun, but people get irritated trying to drive through. So it's going to be on Saturday. It's going to be all day at the Civic Center, which is a great venue, and we hope to see some of you there. I will be there.

Thank you. I'm not seeing any other lights come up. So seeing no other business before the council, we are adjourned. Have a wonderful evening, everybody.