City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the North Bend City Council meeting for, what is it, August 26th? September 1st. Excuse me, correct me. I just want to make sure you're all live out there. September 1st, 2026. It's almost fall, so I can't even believe that. Will the click please call roll?

Thank you, Susie. Would you be kind enough to lead us in the flag salute tonight?

Okay, good evening once again, everybody. Mayor Pro Tem, I'm going to ask for a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

Thank you, Mayor. We will also first request to remove item 11 on the agenda and move it to our agenda for the September 22nd work study. So with that amendment, motion to approve September 1st, 2026 agenda for city council meeting as amended.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Jocelyn. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you again. We're going to go into a closed session, executive session as it is, pursuant to discuss collective bargaining and negotiations pursuant to RCW 42.30.144 with expectations of being in a closed session for about 15 minutes. We will return. There will be no decision made and we'll see you in a little bit. So thank you for your patience tonight. Appreciate that. Thank you, everybody, for your patience tonight. Let's go forward to approval of consent agenda. Can I get a mo

Second. Thank you. Motion made by Mr. Tremolato and seconded by Mr. Brendan Elwood. All in favor? Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you so much. Moving on to audience participation. One of my favorite things to do is to encourage our public to come and speak to us. So if there's anyone here tonight who would like to speak at the podium, you have three minutes to speak. Please state your name and spell your name for the clerk. If you don't mind, this is your time. And we welcome that. Good evening.

Thank you, Elizabeth. Anybody else? No, thank you very much for this. Thank you. Sorry to confuse you. All right. Hi, Jane.

Does council have any questions for Jane? Hold that for a moment. Jump the gun, Jane. My big question for you. Thank you.

Jane, is the museum accepting any donations toward this auction?

Anybody else from our lovely community? Thank you. Welcome. You bet.

If you wouldn't mind just closing. Okay. Thank you for that.

Anybody else from our lovely community? Thank you very much. Welcome.

Thank you so much. I think if there's anyone else out there and there's no one online tonight, Phil, am I correct? Thank you. All right, appreciate all the comments this evening. Let's move on to announcement presentations and appointments. Tonight, we have a presentation from Encompass and Nella Cumming, Executive Director. We're welcoming you with our open arms and can't wait to hear what you have to tell us. So I look at these giant things.

Well, you can move the mic. Just put this right down. Yes. Thanks for being here.

Thank you, Nella. If you wouldn't mind just staying for just a moment in case council has any clarifying questions or any comments they'd like. I'm sure way.

Hi, Neela. Thank you. So I really appreciate Encompass and your program and you stated 60 years, which is a really long time, but I would like to plug it because My daughters are in their 30s now, and they started Encompass in North Bend in around 1999, I want to say. And they are successful in all the data that you said. It's true in my case. But also you got my eldest daughter, her first boyfriend at Encompass when she was four. Oh, okay. Are they married now? No, they're not. No, they're not. But that's where her boyfriend life started. But anyways, thank you. Thank you.

That's awesome. That's lovely. Any other comments from Council? Mr. McFarland.

Thank you, Mayor. Hello, my friend. Hello. Don't you think you're getting away? Shout out to my also former board member, Jane Kosher. Jane Kosher. In the agency formerly known as Children's Services of Snow Valley. You can call it Encompass if you want. Now, a couple of questions, one fairly broad, but I'll make the easier one for capacity at the preschool program. Are you at capacity or is there?

Thank you. Thank you for that. And just because my fellow council member gave her back story, I'll throw mine in before I ask my other question, which is, you know, one of my early involvements was used to be a babysitter's club. Yes, babysitter's. And apparently I learned pretty well. And similar to your summer camp program, I ran a summer camp program this summer for my granddaughter. And 100% of those attendees gave it high marks as well. And so I'm in competition now with you. You kind of alluded to this, but could you just give a little bit more flavor on how the encompasses funding budge

So you're not a government agency, not a public agency.

Well, I'm just going to take one more quick brief look around. Oh, good. Thank you, Vanilla. I'm actually shocked that you kept me up so long. I thought I'd have the hook by now. Well, you did a wonderful job. Thank you for all the information tonight. Yeah, well, again, I'm so proud to work here.

Have a good night. Okay, we're going to move on to number nine, Proclamation Suicide Prevention Month. And let me begin. Whereas September is known globally as Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and was created to raise the visibility of the mental health resources and suicide prevention services available in our community. And whereas the goal is to start the conversation about mental health and the impact of suicide to help destigmatize the conversation, and help connect people of all ages with the appropriate support services. And whereas most youth do not struggle with suicidal thoughts or

Thank you. Council, I'll give you an opportunity when Helene has completed her mission of giving us information that's very important.

Sounds great. Council, do you have any questions or comments for Helene tonight?

Thank you. Have a great evening. Thanks for being here. We have one more proclamation. We're a bit heavy on proclamations tonight, but both of them are very exceptionally important. So I'll carry on. Whereas every person deserves reliable access to nutritious food in order to live a healthy, productive, and thriving life. And whereas food security... is essential to the health, resilience, and economic vitality of our community, helping children succeed in school, supporting seniors, strengthening families, and creating opportunities for all neighbors to thrive. And whereas despite the strengt

Thank you for both being here tonight. Thank you. Certainly. Yeah. Thank you, Kayla.

Any questions? Yeah. Any questions from council for Caleb?

Thank you so much. Appreciate all you do. Okay, we're going to move on to introductions. Item number 12, this is going to be our first item, AB 26-077, Motion Authorizing Contract Amendment with Peach Global Solutions. Mr. Henderson, would you like to inform us tonight about this? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Anderson. We already have some questions. Mr. Mayor Pro Tem.

So just, I think you explained this well, but just to be clear, the intent of the amendment would be to continue to build this out and get it kind of tracking the KPIs and metrics we want. And then either you, your department, or if we add an FTE, that department would manage this kind of process. assuming there's no speed bumps, but the plan would be to hand this off to our internal team.

Thank you. Any other clarifying questions, Ms. Colon?

I think I have two questions. The first one is, can this website wait until we have a hotel, the project belay is up, the middle fork is in process? Can it wait until we potentially get this new employee? And the second question is, can our IT department or the intern that we have in the summer run this until that time?

So who is currently running our North Bend City website? And to add to that, could we not work together with the Downtown Foundation has a website, the Chamber of Commerce has a website, the City of North Bend has a website. Now we have Adventure North Bend website. There's a lot of competing websites that I'm wondering if they could be together.

Can I make an interjection at this moment? My belief is that this would expand us globally, potentially. So far reaching, just to be clear, council is aware.

Thank you. Any other clarifying questions this time? Mr. Farland.

Thank you. James, is there a link from the North Bend main site or purposely choosing to keep those separate?

One more look around if there's anyone I've missed who wishes to make a comment.

Clarifying, when you just said that, what you're saying is the contractors that we would be paying are going to make that link from Adventure North Bend to our sitting website? Is that part of the contract?

We all good? All right. Community and Economic Development Chair, Ms. Torgerson, I believe you can make the motion at this time. Sure. Yeah, great. Thank you.

Motion to approve AB 26-077, authorizing the mayor to execute and administer a contract amendment with Peach Global Solutions in the amount not to exceed $18,000 in a form and content approved by the city attorney. Can I get a second?

Thank you, Mr. Elwood. Ms. Torgerson, would you like to speak to your motion? Sure.

We have a revenue problem. And doing something like this, which is actually not that expensive, $1,500 a month, to get a website up and running to potentially reach out to businesses to fulfill buildings we have that are empty, is going to help the entire city. And I think this is a good investment into hopefully getting more businesses here. You know, the more businesses we have here that are helping with our revenue situation, you know, the better everyone in our town is. So I think it's definitely worthwhile. Thank you very much.

Excellent. Any other council member wish to make a comment at this time?

miss colin i am really wondering if we should wait a little bit longer i'm not saying no at all to this project but i'm not quite sure we're ready to go live thank you any other council members oh mark thank you um

Yeah, it's a work in progress. I agree with Council Member Torgerson that we're hoping for a return on investment from these monies spent. I think to pause at this time, you then need to recover and put pieces back in place. The hope is to continue to move this forward and build a solid foundation such that it can be passed off, maintained, and become a new landing page that pays benefits to the city going forward. So I will be voting in support. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Jocelyn. Anybody else I might have missed? Okay, motion to approve AB 26-077, authorizing the mayor to execute and administer a contract amendment with Peach Global Solutions in an amount not to exceed $18,000 in a forming content approved by the city attorney. All in favor? Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Thank you again. Moving on to number 13, our last item on our introductions, AB 26-078, Motion Authorizing Contract with Creative Financial Staffing. Ms. Morse, take it away, please.

Questions? Thank you. Any clarifying questions for Ms. Morse from council?

Ms. Colan? Is this a union requirement or is this a union position? It is a union position. It is not a requirement by the union. So it's not in their union contract?

Okay. Any other clarifying questions? One more? Okay. Got it. Sorry. If

this person were to quit, what would you do then? You'd be without them for a time and you would have to rehire. So I see this situation as sort of, I mean, I don't want this person to quit and I want them to have their time off. I'm just wondering other alternatives to hiring temporary staff.

I guess I meant, is there a way to not have someone contracted? not to get rid of the employee or any of that.

Anybody else from council have any clarifying? Okay, thank you, everybody. This came through F&A, Finance and Administration. Chair Rustick, would you like to read the motion when you're ready? Yes, thank you, Mayor.

Okay, we're in a toss for that one. Ms. Torkeson, I'll just turn my head to you. All right. Sorry, Rob. Next time. Okay, would you like to speak to your motion? Sure.

Thank you. Ms. Torgerson, do you have any comments you'd like to make?

This is kind of standard. I mean, if you're running a business and you had a similar situation, this is exactly what you do is you go out and contract for help in the meantime. So this is kind of basic. And so, yeah, I'll be supporting it.

Thank you very much. Any other council members wish to speak at this time? No. Okay. Motion to approve AB 26-078, authorizing the mayor to execute a professional services agreement with Creative Financial Staffing LLC in an amount not to exceed $47,424 in a form and content acceptable to the city attorney. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. One and all. for that fantastic end of the introductions we had. So we're going to move on to Mayor, Council, and Administrator Concerns and Initiatives. Mr. Elwood, would you like to lead us off tonight? Or not?

This colon. I would just like to say I'm grateful for all our nonprofits that are doing wonderful things for our community members and our citizens. It's really important and I'm appreciative and we are so lucky to have what we have in the valley. So thank you. Miss rustic.

Low-hanging fruit. School started this past week. as we know. And so there's school buses and kids. There's fewer kids during the day, but traffic patterns are impacted. The days are getting shorter in terms of sunlight. So just be aware and be mindful. I also want to echo Council Member Cohen's comments and all of us. There's a lot of unity here on Council in terms of support for uh, social service agencies, human service agencies, and, uh, public arts institutions were engaging that conversation as we head into the budget conversation this fall. And I am endlessly thankful for all of you who

Thank you. Um, first I'm very disappointed that, uh, Council Member Elwood did not lead with a song, but in deference, I'm not going to share one tonight either. A couple of things on my mind, a little bit to repeat. Yes, I'll lead off with thank you to the agencies that came. What they danced delicately around was the massive defunding from the federal government that we're experiencing today. for human services, whether it's food bank, whether it's the critical services for our children, mental health, you name it, being wiped out across the board. So that I'm willing to say from the dais to

Thank you very much, Ms. Emery. Would you like to say anything tonight? Oh, Mr. Mayor Pro Tem, my apologies. Right next to me. How could I ever miss you?

Well, I speak on mental health every meeting here, and I think... There's not much to say because we had two great proclamations that I think touch on some of the hardest issues hitting home, both suicide prevention and food insecurity. So I'll just reiterate what I've said weekly, which is check on your friends, send the text, make the call, go grab a cup of coffee. And if you're struggling, don't let the hard days win.

Thank you, Errol. Appreciate that. No updates from me tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that catch, by the way. All right. Stage two of the city water conservation ordinance went into effect on August 31st. Thank you, Mr. McFarland, for letting the community know about that. To find out more about when you can water your lawn and garden during stage two and other water conservation tips, please visit the news section of the city website. blood works northwest is hosting a blood drive at city hall tuesday september 8th from 9 a.m to 3 p.m yes there is a uh very big need for blood acr

Well, you know, we're all human. But speaking of humanity, we really care about what you do and the federal government, all the churning up in the world right now. It affects each and every one of your great operations. We do care. I know this council and myself do. So, again, thank you for all that you do. And thank you for your presentations tonight. keep doing the good, hard at times work. It's appreciated. School is here, as we all know, and please be careful out there. We had an awful accident. I don't believe anyone was seriously hurt. I don't know that for sure, but it's very scary when

Thank you very much, one and all. Please take care of yourselves and each other. Have a great night.