City Council - Regular Meeting

I have six o'clock on my watch, so I'm going to call a meeting to order. Clerk, please take the roll call.

Do we have a motion to excuse Council Member Gassick?

Mr. Mayor, I make a motion to excuse Council Member Gassick. Do we have a second?

Okay. So moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Thank you. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

First tonight, we have a time for public comments. This excludes new business and public hearings. There's a three minute time limit. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make public comments? Okay. We'll move on to the approval of the agenda. I want to make one brief change and that's to move the proclamation 7.1 right after the approval of the agenda, since we have guests that are coming just for the proclamation. Do we get a motion as amended?

Okay. Do we have a second? Second. Any further discussion? Okay, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? First tonight, we have a proclamation. For as we celebrate America 250, we recognize September 17th, 1787 as the day the Constitutional Convention drafted the Constitution of the United States of America. And whereas the Constitution of the United States of America is the world's longest surviving written charter of government, making the United States of America the world's most enduring beacon of liberty, freedom, and democracy. And whereas it is fitting and pro

Thank you very much. Good job. We'll move on to item 8.1. We have a public hearing tonight. The council will hold a public hearing on a proposed data center.

Oh, I jumped ahead, didn't I? Okay, to item 6.1. That's the RMSA member standards, OPMA and public records training. And Sabrina's here to start us off on that. Go ahead.

So if we find our, uh, if there is a chain emails going on or the text message or anything is going on, right. And the, if emails are on the, are in on an official, uh, you know, uh, emails or anything, who really, uh,

How long after our elected term are we required to be able to provide documentation?

No, I'm saying when my term ends, I'm a civilian again, how long or am I required or how long back? Yeah.

uh how long you keep records uh retention on depends on it depends on the content of all the state retention schedule but well i'm i'm like so if there's a requirement and i was you know a council member um and but now i'm not are are you going to know to come and ask me or am i even obligated after i'm out of office to even give up any document or anything on my phone from when i was

So I had a follow-up question from my last question. So what you answered is that talk to city administrator or a mayor, but then I was thinking about some of the situation where presented when I was in AWC conference last time. So based on those, these are two types of question here is what if you report to the mayor and city administrator and still nothing happens? So it's kind of a whistleblower situation, right? And a second thing is what if somebody is fearful to even report it or to initiate that conversation? So that's where the whistleblower word comes in. So it's an anonymous place an

So is this reporting is only for the council and or is it for the city staff also in terms of say the city staff observe something and if they want to report it?

Okay, next we're going to put council member Thakur on the hot seat. He's going to talk about establishing a youth program in the city of DuPont. Amy, why don't you come up here to sit at the table. We have an extra seat and you might have some information for us about the history of some of this stuff. So go ahead.

Thank you, Mayor. And I'm sure It will be a very exciting to hear this, but I think one of the thing happened to me, this is how I started thinking about the youth program and youth council program. So when I become council member, some of my kids, I was talking and they were so excited and they're like, yeah, dad, you know what? I like it, I love it. And maybe I should think about running for election or becoming something, you know? And some of my kids are like, I absolutely hate it, dad. I don't want you to do it, and I don't want me to do it. So I asked them a question. I'm like, why would

Am I in? Really? Oh my God. As an administrator, I guess I like the idea, Jugal. I just have some concerns. It seems like an idea right now without a systems, how do we get these kids involved? Seven council members, mayor, what if more kids than seven were interested? Who's going to train the students? Where would the training take place? When you want to start student groups, even within the confines of the school itself, it's a lot of work, not impossible, but an outside entity is even more problematic. Not that it's not impossible, but it has different problems. And I'll just be really fra

Yeah, so I think I was thinking about it and I do some research online. So there's the two cities which I found has already this kind of youth council program in place, which is a city of Scrim and city of Federal Way. So I look at all those, you know, their application, their eligibility criteria and what they do. It doesn't sound very complicated. And this was something also I thought maybe I should check the interest of the school district. So I did send out an email just to check the interest to our school district admins. And they said that they will be interested to do it. And to answer

So were you talking about every single council meeting we had that we would have a mirror student council when it comes comes to fruition? Is that the idea? Would you have a mirror for the mayor, a mirror for each one of us is what you're thinking? Or is there going to be more than just seven or in between?

My suggestion would be to do at least the body who gets selected or elected, they come at least once a month. So not two meetings a month at least, but if they can come once a month. So that's part of their learning process. And one of the other benefit also we have to think about it that many times our colleges are very competitive, right? And they need something above and beyond to show and prove that, hey, I did something. And especially when it comes to the civic duties and the governance, it's pretty good. It looks pretty good on their resume. So I think it's a yes, we can make that happe

Can I ask a question about that follow up? How do these students get elected? Because, and also just to caveat a little bit, anytime you have an outside agency and a school, if a school supports your plan, the school also has certain liability that they're responsible for. If something happens to these students, if something was, so I'm just saying that's a little more complex than, you know, it's delicate balance to have those two, public and private. But let's say, you know, 20 people wanna do it. how how is the election and who votes because the whole like stillicum high school votes there

we can put some another criteria in place that you can be a mayor only if you are a senior or you can be a deputy mayor if you're a junior something like that so these are the ideas we have it and definitely we all can put in our two cents into it while we are forming the how do they get elected? Now, that's a good problem to have. First of all, we should have the seven people or seven students or nine students should be ready to come.

And if- But I'm basically, what if 20 want to participate and we have seven positions?

I haven't thought about it, so I don't have a specific answer.

Then you'd also need to answer to, I'm assuming, the high school principal or someone, maybe a civics teacher, and to those parents, why my child wasn't selected. And believe me, they might ask. So I'm just saying, those are things that until I hear really, really specifics, it's hard for me to do a lot of yay or even nay. I'm just like, ooh.

yeah so i don't have a specific answer for it other than if any other council member has an ideas i would love to see the answer to this question

i would agree um amy i hate to put you on the spot but uh are you willing to share for those of us who've been around for a long time a little bit of the history what worked what didn't in and um and be candid uh because that's why i'm looking forward to hearing whatever happy too so i am going to pull up um

Harry, can we pull up the city of Federal Way, the council, and maybe we can look at some of their bullet points of eligibility criteria and what they do. And I think that will clarify a lot of things rather than I say a lot of points. Let's see here.

Okay. So I think if we just read through the terms, it says it runs from September 1st to August 31st, and it's a two-year term, and all commissioners serve without compensation. So that's pretty basic term. We can come up with a four-year term. We can come up with a year term. But something we can, it just outlines what term looks like. And then the eligibility criteria, also it says the grade 9 to 12. That's exactly what I was talking about. And they must reside within the federal city limits, they say. We can talk about maybe living within the school district limits rather than the city lim

Would it be possible, Carrie, to, I mean, and then put it back up again, shrink that down where the bulleted list. There, yeah, and show that piece down a little bit. Okay, so when I'm looking at that and I'm looking at this as a school principal, that's a full-time job for somebody to do that. I mean, that's a job description, to be honest. You're going to coordinate annual events. So my question is, who is doing all that? Because I don't think we have the city staff to take that on. And I don't know if you want to take it on as one person. I also want to point out, and I just looked it up, t

Let me piggyback on that a little bit. Good points there. Any type of program like this requires a champion.

Someone who's going to really get after it and do those things. And what happens with that is that a program could be successful with the efforts of that champion. Of course, when that champion quits doing it, a lot of times the program will die. because there's only so many people that want to do that sort of thing. And the other concern I have you already brought up is about staff time. We have a small staff and we don't have the ability to do these type of things. So if you have a champion who's going to do these type of things and recruit other people to help and stuff, you could potential

You know, I was, you know, Jugal and I went back and forth on this with some of the concerns and potential issues. There are some definitely pros and cons to it, but I'm not, I am thinking it, what we're probably trying to get out of this, Jugal, and correct me if I'm wrong, is not necessarily a yay or nay right now as far as, but more of a, more of a, are you okay as a council that I go and seek this, make the charter, make it, you know, develop the situation? so they can come back at a later time and present that. And if that's amenable, vote on that kind of thing. Is that right, what you're

Yes, thank you for that. And I think this is all trial and error based. And this is in looking for the youth's leadership development. And there is always going to be a trial and error. And if we don't try, then we don't know, you know, the answer to it. So this is like you said, it's, you know, just giving it a try. And if we work together and if there is anything possible, we should, I think, give it a try to make a civic leaders out of our high school and give them a first hand experience of what it looks like being on the city council or being a mayor and And like you said, as a champion,

Can I circle back onto something that you said, Tom? Like we're saying pursuer and I'm going to be honest, I'm not I'm not yay or nay. I don't really want this to be pursued until a few more details come our way. And I think if you're going to talk to a very busy high school principal, the details need to be really ironed out because that administrator is ultimately responsible for the entire thing, including student safety. So. I think you, we, whomever goes in with a very specific plan, very small scale, nothing like that. I think you go into it with, if people wanna volunteer here to lead i

Basically, I think what Jugo is trying to do is pitch the idea, but not necessarily the 100% plan. It's not even really a 30% plan. It's a develop the charter kind of thing. talk through the holes, talk through the negatives. And if it's not something that we can actually do and it's not viable, then we don't proceed. So there's a lot of those RFIs or requests for information that he's got to, or we would have to get answered in order for us to move to whether we're going to do this or not. So I guess it's really more of a thumbs up. Should we try to develop this program of instruction kind of

i'm thinking you you want to at least give it a go and put something down i think you give it a go and then come back to us with this is what i i just think all of us as a collective group i don't think i don't want to be represented by any by this body with a stillicum high school principal using my name to be honest until i can say yes i'm aware of that program we talked about it we did multiple study sessions here's the main person in charge, here's the locations, here's the calendar. Certainly not something, I think you would need all year to be frank, to really put that together. You're t

So the only question I have with that, do you believe in what you want to do, that there will be RFIs to the school district that you would need to, like as you're developing this plan, you might have to ask the superintendent or someone, hey, what do you think about this kind of thing?

Yeah, just like I'm floating the idea here. I don't have anything. And without the approval of everybody, there is nothing we can do. And we all have to be on board. for an example, even the students are sitting here or the parents are sitting here. So we all are, there is a city's liability comes in here also, right? So, I mean, there's a lot of things are there, but the way I see it, it's not, too complicated, I think I want to make it as easy as possible. And I talked to the superintendent actually, and she did not say no to it. Actually, she said that I would like to set up a meeting with

Could we do this? Could you come up with even a fairly skeletal version of what you want to present to the Steilacoom School District so that you have our backing to do so? it seems like we're going to them and then coming back to figure out how we're going to support it. It has to originate here, well thought out, pretty planned, and then go present to the school board obviously would be a part of that too. It just feels like I would like to know more before the DuPont City Council goes to talk more. Does that make sense? And ultimately, are you running this? Who's in charge?

No, I mean, I am definitely afforded as a volunteer, and I can volunteer myself for next three and a half years. And I can be coming here. That's on record.

Yes, but I can't say right now. I just want more details. Right now, it's very pie-in-the-sky-ish, and I would need a little more specifics.

Mike was also part of the school board report. And if he wants to be part of it, and Tom is also the liaison for us for the school district.

I don't mind helping you out with the plan at all. But as long as it's like, we've got concurrence that we're okay to operate outside of this council. Because like Susan says, if we... if we're not in agreement that we can go and at least do some questioning or, you know, because they may come back to you and say, it's just not going to work for us, right? Do something on your own, DuPont City Council, and then we have to do something internal. You know what I mean? There's probably going to be inquiries I would think that you would want to get and check the block off that it's not gonna, it's

Yeah, give us something to say, wow, please take this and pursue it with the school district's telecom. before it has our name on it as a unified group. So right now, my answer would be no. I'm not comfortable having conversations with anyone until that gets ironed out.

I would definitely think we would have to vote yes or no. We're actually going to do this.

One other thing to look at is that a certain amount of this needs to be driven by the kids. They have to... uh you know you need to find go down and find out where the interest is if you don't have anyone if you don't have anyone interested it's not going to go anywhere right so uh we have to bring them or you have to bring them into the loop to see uh how many kids you got that are really interested in doing something like this you know maybe you have a bunch i don't know maybe you don't have any so that's the type of things you have to find out but i still need to have an uh approval

within us to move forward and at least look for some more. No?

Well, what I'm trying to say is we need more information. We need you, Tom, whomever to come back and say, hey, here's what our plan would look like that we would like to run by the superintendent and the high school principal. Students are gonna meet once a month in city chambers from six to seven. And we have a tentative agenda of what that would look like. Maybe on day one, they do a little background knowledge of what is city council. What do we do? What do we not do? Maybe they take a vote on who's gonna be the mayor. There's a scope and sequence as there is with good curriculum and teach

And what kind of funds would you be putting in?

What kind of funds and what parts of city government? There's some hot topics and some of them we talk about as educators and some of them we stay away from, quite frankly. So I want all of that because at the end of the day, it is our name collectively as the DuPont City Council and mayor And city that would be supporting that. So if you guys could come back with that, I'd be happy to email you just the 2 of you with what that could look like. But right now it's an idea. It's not a system. And I need to, I need to see the system play out.

And I can agree with that. So let's do the schematic that you want and the vision that you have, right? And let's put it into some type of analytical way and then we can come back.

And you've got a couple of examples that you found out there that you can look at and work with. again we're starting small is what i hear and what i feel and uh so uh and then of course once everyone gets a general consensus that this looks good then the stillcomb school district may say well what about this or that but you've given them a template at that point so i i think what i hear tom and you're both saying is Tom is, you know, let's look at, you know, to create that template, that schematic, take the Federal Way one, dig into it more deeply, try to simplify it as much as possible, incl

risk management kind of adding on that mike we if you're within the still looking high school let's say those teachers go through boundary training all of this stuff in order to work with kids um and they also have the confines of the school system as a place of support when outside entities come into public ed it can work but it's a whole different ballgame And ultimately, no matter who's running it, it is the Steilacoom School District that will be responsible for the dialog that takes place, the conversations, an appropriate encounter.

No, we don't do transportation. It'd be like, you know, they would do that. But you're right, Mike. There's some really dicey things in dealing with students that are very liability oriented.

We have Henry as a point of contact. There we go. That you can reach out. And I don't want to speak for Henry. But that just needs to be, you know, at least when it comes back to the council. Federal Way does this. Squim does it. But yeah, I mean, I took a look at squims and it's pretty specific on communication with students. And as a retired teacher and a volunteer, I totally understand that. And that's just one more check that we need to be careful. that we get at least that initial.

And remember, those school districts have probably been doing it a while. I would be interested in learning where they started, because they didn't start with that big bulleted list, I guarantee it.

Maybe reach out to SCWIM. SCWIM would be more like us. Yeah, smaller, yeah.

I think I can reach out to the SCWIM, yeah, the city staff, as well as the council and mayor, and find out how they do it, and I can present it. however some of these questions what we were asking and talking about it dealing with the kids but i think amy just said that there was a at point we had this program in place this similar kind of not exactly same but we were dealing with the students and the council kind of program took place so then we did check had a lot of check boxes done right from what we are talking about here i'm hoping

But that was, what year was that though, 2016 and 2018? I would be hard pressed to think those are still the same standards when it comes to things like, you cannot have students give you their cell phone numbers, absolutely not, even if it's voluntary. So some of those rules that might have been in place back then, have changed. I know they've changed at the elementary level, because I have sixth graders. So I'd be, you know, worrying about that, too. But I would definitely start with a smaller, we're 43 schools, we're not Federal Way, we're never going to be. But maybe we're more like SCWIM.

So, because we've been going for almost two hours without a break. All right. I'll be the first to speak it up. And I don't, what I kind of hear is we're, we're comfortable with Tom and Jugo and, doing more of a skeleton plan, and then coming back and bringing with, and they might go and do some research, they might go to the SCWM, they might go to Federal Way, and they might look up at different sources, but try to create something that is a little more detailed for us to look at. Okay.

Not just that conversation before we do take a break. I'm going to be really honest. I don't want city staff to have to spend time on that. We know how busy they are. We know we are short staffed. And I will not... I will not support something that this has to be done independent of the city staff. They are maxed out. We watch our finances. People are doing double time. We all know that we appreciate them. And it just, like I said, even half of that bulleted list is, is a full-time job to really keep up on. So I think this has to be something done outside of our city and I won't, I cannot supp

Okay. Let's, uh, we don't have a, we don't have a whole lot more, but it's probably good to take a, take a break here. Uh, uh, let's, uh, let's be back. Let's be back at eight o'clock and we'll finish this up.

Right. The public hearing earlier is what happened.

He's like, I'm a freaking dentist. Okay.

So they have figured out ways to make communication with teenagers. Whereas we don't have access to those systems in place.

I guess the only other way is to go through their parents, right?

Or their email. But then a private email of Jubils to a private email. Oh, boy. Can we get everybody here?

I might as well get started. We got everybody back. So, uh, I think we can go ahead and get started here.

Tonight we're number eight, 8.1, right? So tonight the city council will hold a public hearing on a proposed data center moratorium. Is there any council member has a conflict of interest concerning which would prohibit them from participating in a public hearing? Okay. People wishing to be heard at this hearing should call 253-215-8782 with webinar ID 845-6439-2846 and passcode 262-391. The city clerk will admit one at a time. Once called upon, please state your name and address for the record. Three minutes will be allowed per person. It is now 8 o'clock and I will open the public hearing. T

First, has the clerk, has there been any written comments submitted about the data center moratorium other than the ones that were already submitted to the council?

Okay. Written comments can be submitted to the city clerk until the close of the hearing. They will be entered into the record and sent to city council members. In addition, if anyone has any questions on the subject, please do not hesitate to call our main line and staff will assist you with getting answers to your questions. I will now call up anyone locally here who wishes to testify. Is there anyone in the audience that wishes to testify on this subject? Okay, no one has come forward to testify. At this time, I'll ask council members if they have questions or comments.

I just had a quick question. When you talk about the six months, whatever work plan, what would be involved in that work plan? Would it be more specific details about where there could even be one and the implications? So just a deeper dive into the bigger questions that you presented on the slides.

Okay. Well, it's, uh, 8 0 7 and there'll be no further testimony. I will close the public hearing at 8 0 7. And next we have the, uh, ordinance. Yeah, we're getting to that, but we, we gotta go, we gotta go to the ordinance here. Now we've had the hearing. Now we have the first reading of the ordinance. and uh lisa do we have any additional information to put out on the first reading of the ordinance it was in the packet for everyone to read correct nothing additional it was in the packet nothing additional okay so uh in that case we can uh entertain a motion to uh on the ordinance can i go

I would like to make a motion that we establish a six-month moratorium in DuPont, Washington regarding data centers.

Could you just change that to move it to a second reading first?

I would like to have a second reading on data centers moratorium in DuPont, Washington.

Thank you. We need a second. Second. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. We're voting to move this to a second reading. So all those in favor say aye. Aye. Oppose. Okay. Now we need a motion to approve the ordinance.

Okay. Any further discussion? Very good. I'll call for the vote then. All those in favor say aye. aye opposed the ordinance is approved so thank you director for that uh next we have um the consent agenda do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda mr mayor moved to approve the consent agenda items for 8 september 2026. do we have a second second okay any further discussion seeing none i'll call for the vote all's in favor say aye aye opposed thank you Next, we have the mayor's report and comments. I just have one thing. I wanted to remind everyone that we do have a 9-11 ceremony in Ross

Okay. Any questions for Keith? Okay. It is now 8.10, and I will adjourn the meeting.