City Council - Regular Meeting

It's always the watch pot never boils thing, isn't it? I have six o'clock, so I'll call the meeting to order. Clerk, please take the roll call.

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Now is the time for public comments. Clerk, do we have anyone called in or emailed in?

Is there anyone in the audience that would like to make a comment? Okay, we'll move on. I'll entertain a motion for the approval of the agenda.

Do we have a second? Second. Do we have any discussion? Seeing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, say aye. Opposed? Thank you. Well, tonight, the first thing on the agenda, 6.1, is our Pierce County Library Systems Update. And we have our guests here to give us that.

So when you said that, first of all, I think I should say my story, and since you are here, I have to say a huge thank you to DuPont Library because when we moved here in 2008 and all the kids were little, And we were walking all the way down from Hoffman Hill to come to library. And my wife has taken the pictures. And when I share them now, because they all are out of the house as of yesterday. So I have no kids left. And I share those pictures. They love it. And that's the only place we walked in the town to go. And they would love to come because how they were welcomed by everyone. and how

okay so the follow-up question is that uh with the you have both sides i mean you're renting the spaces and also you own the spaces financially which is the most uh better solution for the library system

Yeah. I was wondering for all of your activities that you showed, how do you get that out to the local schools? Because we get sometimes library, we have the child librarian come to our school and do a presentation and go down and get your library card. Do you do anything like flyers that your elementary kids could have sent home to their parents or?

It's when you have an image, but when you walk left, it looks like one image. And then when you walk this way, it might be a horse this way and a dog this way. Thank you, teacher. Well, I had to look it up. So I know I've seen it. That didn't come from my brain. Trust me, I Googled it. But I've seen those before. So it's the art and kind of an illusion. It's really cool. So it's great to do that. It's art too. Not a lot of that going on.

I'm sorry, I keep thinking about everything what I just asked you. And I do have some follow-up question on that also. Do you have a separate budget for doing the new constructions? Or would it be more beneficial for you just to buy the existing building and put a library there?

okay there's a one more food for thought there's a one property on sale right in the dupont downtown i don't know if you're aware but that's something if you want to purchase it i think that might fit to your possibly the square footage what you need and possibly there's a more to it which you can possibly rent out so you have some income coming in to pay for the if you don't have enough capital to purchase it

One more thing. I just want to give a shout out to Pierce County Library Systems in general. Thank you for standing really strong against some of the pushback against DEI types of things. I know from students, they feel represented in every one of the libraries that you guys serve. There is something there for everyone. from ethnicity to LGBTQ plus to you name it, they can find themselves there. And I know it takes some real courage sometimes to make that accessible for all. I really appreciate that you do that, especially for kids.

I don't see any other questions, so I'd like to thank you for the presentation. We appreciate it.

Do you say for Affinity will come online sometime this calendar year or next?

I have a question for the B&O tax. And sorry, on the first slide. Oh, yes. So I'm not I mean, I'm well aware of what is B&O taxes, but do we see that we will have a continue of that revenue stream with having the warehouses or maybe some other businesses within the DuPont will stay and continue to operate? Long story short, that confidence.

Can I ask a quick question on the PDF? If you go back to 2023, it looks, with the exception of the Affinity, which was a one-shot deal down, it looks pretty consistent, though. Like 1.5, 1.4... Is that I mean, that's a pretty good, steady indication. It is a way back to twenty three.

So this animal license and miscellaneous permits, it's a very small amount of income. And one time we were talking about how much time staff has to spend behind those license and permits. I'm just wondering, is it really worth it?

I'll share one reason why we should continue it. It ensures that our pets in our community have their vaccinations and so forth, because you have to bring that in when you apply for a permit, because we recently permitted our daughter's dog, who we babysit a lot. So there's a safety issue that we should be aware of. It just helps ensure animals are fascinated and so forth.

That's if people are honest and do the pet licensing. I was like, should we play the other side? We do. But I know...

Kaveh Khoshnood, Is it not something animal control has some our county has some kind of a control on it, that we have to have a CD do this job just wondering, we want the right. Yeah, but it's such a small revenue and I don't know how much city staff spends the time behind it. And that was some, my question was related to city staff time. And that's why we try to discuss so many times everything about city staff time. So 7,000 income or 10,000 income versus the staff time. Well, yeah. So is it really worth it? That's that. And then I would really like to see that.

I think it's a great question, OK? But I share my concern. And when we did our daughter's dog since Blue visits the house quite a bit, we were in and out of here in five minutes. We literally brought in what was required from the vet and walked up to the person behind the counter. And we were probably done in five minutes. So I'm just sharing. My suggestion is just be cautious. Even if it breaks even, it might serve a purpose. I just want that concern out there.

I will share right up front. I think that's a separate discussion that we'll have to get on the agenda. But it's on here. No, I think it's a great question. I will share when it comes. I will be opposing that. is something that we've promised to the voters. The vast majority of these different ones out there provide the very same thing. It won't be 72,000, as pointed out, it'd be much less. But to change it after the voters have approved it is, and I've been involved in levies.

Yeah, I've been involved in levy since 2005. And I've stood in front of a whole lot of forms. So I might be a little biased. But, you know, we could debate that right now. And I think it would be taxes.

I just have to say you've really done a great job. Like, it's so easy to follow this, and your answers are not so, oh, that I don't get them. I'm just really impressed. Thank you. It really is so readable and user-friendly. Thank you.

When is the camera going to be fixed? Because I'm assuming cameras are part of this $789,000, so... I just kind of slid in there. And I'm a date person. By this time, by this time, by this time, not just soon.

So the camera won't be replaced because it's no longer a four-way stop. Oh, okay. So that wouldn't have come back no matter what, broken or otherwise. Correct. Okay, thank you.

I would love to have it at the end of McNeil. I just thought I'd put that out there.

Okay, sorry, if you can go back to that slide, I thought we are going to explain this business taxes penalty. Can you? I don't know if Keith needs to explain this. Can you explain what is this means? How are we getting the penalty from business taxes?

I like your conservative approach and if more money comes in, yes, good word.

I think I might have a little different opinion here because we are at 3.7%. I understand it's high, but it's not going to go down very soon. It doesn't even look like it might go down. It might go up actually. And that's what is happening if I just raise the interest rate. So, I mean, conservative approach is the best approach, but we are cutting down by 50%, and that's not the conservative. We are just cutting it down to 50%. So if I were you, I mean, it's not a big number. 52,000 to 84,000 or 74,000 is not going to change much, but we should not be having this kind of practices. So I would

And I for a quick second. Sorry, I do want to agree with you. Sorry. I mean, next time I'm not sitting with Susan and sharing a microphone here. I don't know. We love each other. So it's all right.

Oh, oh. There we go. Okay. So I think, uh, I agree with you and so far you had a lot of conservative steps and, uh, in each, uh, slide and I totally get it. This one is just too much out of the way. So that's why I have to speak up. Otherwise I love your conservative approach. I do know what's coming up and we do know that we have a something bill, big bill to do to pay. But I don't think we should be considering this much of conservative steps, which is not an ideal way of working on any kind of budget. So that's why I'm saying it's not a much into the big piece of pie. Maybe it's not even a

Okay, and I just wanna state this. I do love you, Jugal, you know that. But I don't think it's appropriate to take the mic from a council person when they're speaking. It literally like, I'm going to say something in the mic was taken from me. I don't, I understand. I understand that. But I did have the floor at that time and the optics of that don't always look good, but I understand where you're coming from. Intent can be good, but the impact to the other person can also not be good. And they can share that space. So I just moving forward, let's let people finish and we can always pick up. U

Wow. I'm not going to go on that route, but I think to solve this problem, hopefully we have microphones for each council, so we don't have to do that. It was here to the wrong.

I will add one more comment. I stay with your conservative viewpoint. I appreciate the discussion and the different viewpoints. We have had to make adjustments because we've been a little too off or too high in the past, and I'm much more comfortable with this approach. So at least for my peers, there's no perfect answer, there's no right answer, but at least for my peers, I prefer to stay with where you're at. They might have different viewpoints.

When you get the whole budget presented, you can vote one way or another or make motions or what have you.

The auction, I think, brought in around $25,000. It happens in the first of October, thereabouts. Anyway, that's the ballpark. Yeah, I don't know where that's accounted for.

I have a question. On donations, because I think, Brian, maybe you can answer this. Didn't we also get this year, the AEDs from that guy gave us $10,000. Did that like go into the donation box or went to police? Oh, it was 26 or 25, okay.

I think I was kind of following Beth. So given that we have some retro back pay things that will eventually come and we've talked about costs of that, is it possible then to use that protocol, for lack of a better word, just as you anticipate an unexpected amount of money that needs to go out in those really unique circumstances like retro pay, something like that, and then not make it a bad habit. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like an emergency use that you wouldn't want to get adjusted and comfortable with, but at the same time, you could use it for the greater good.

I think it's something that we definitely need to look at. Since we did have one legal opinion saying not to do it, all I ask is that we have our current attorney buy off on what you're advising. I'm sure you know what you're doing. But just out of respect for our last lawyer, I would like to see a validation from an attorney that this is good.

So I think just following up on what Mike said is correct. I was at the AWC conference in Leavenworth and a budgeting workshop, and I thought that we cannot do it. That's what my understanding was. So again, if there was a legal opinion was we cannot do, and there's always a challenge between lawyers and CPAs. So we understand that. And going with that flow, yeah, that's why I clarified. I mean, they both have a different opinions, always on the one legal battle, you know? So please look into it before you make any recommendation. And I'm saying to the city staff also and to Kit that we don't

Duly noted. I do too. He's not? Sending love. Well, I hope his gears are burning.

From the PDF, the sewer, garbage, water, stormwater percentages, so you're seeing the figure of 101,800 as if a 1% was for each one.

I just want to make sure I read your chart.

Do you ever have information on cities like about our size to see what their percents are? Because I noticed that too, I'm like six, eight, 12 times kind of all over the place. Like how do we compare with them?

I would just share up front. And this connects to the other discussion about moving interests over to the general fund. We just did pretty significant increases in storm and water and water rates to do a number of projects, which we have on our capital projects. And we just went through an in depth discussion on that. So I would have a lot of difficulty going and saying we need to raise it especially when we still need to find funds to fix our sidewalks We can only ask so much from our voters So we one of the reasons I tried to keep those a bit lower than what was originally being asked But we

And since she followed up, I'm going to call it. My big concern with my experience, not only on the council, but on the school board is when it's in the general fund. we don't have a committed, it's not committed. We did major increases two years ago in our B&O and brought in, but none of that went to sidewalks. Okay. I'm not saying it's being wasted or, you know, so we have a major sidewalk issue here and I'm concerned about that. And so I just want to remind us, but I hear you, but We can't guarantee once it goes into general fund, it's going to go there or we're going to have to have the co

Yeah. But the tax rates probably should be standard across all those things instead of this, this, this, this.

We will agree to disagree, okay? We had an in-depth discussion with a lot of time invested on that, and we did, if I'm not mistaken, comparison to other cities. And in the end, we came up with a vote, we set a rate, and I hate to bring it back up, what, six months later?

Yeah. And then we want to race it again? No, not the rates, just the tax. The tax on it.

I'm just kind of piggybacking on Shauna. I'm open to hearing all of it. I mean, until we get your next presentation, all that is a little bit, whatever my vote may or may not be, I would like to hear every single option because that just makes us more informed. And then when we do make a vote, we feel we've done it with the best due diligence and the best information possible. So I'm open to all ideas.

per square foot and Seattle, 39 cents. So I wouldn't feel bad going to 20 or 25 down here, really.

We asked for this data last time and we didn't get a clear answer when we did these increases. And I supported the increase back then. And again, as it was said, Gordon's not here, so he can't defend. But there was... If I recall the discussion, there was no way to really compare it to others because some cities do it and don't. So I would really like to see the numbers. I'm sharing some concerns here tonight, but I think it's important to do. And I like to see that really solidified list beforehand because I remember that discussion in detail. And I will say, yes, I'm open to hearing, but I d

So just a quick, my opinion on increasing revenue is okay until we have a justified expenses. So we can have a revenue coming in, we can increase the revenue, but we have to also see where are we spending it. So it has to go hand hand in hand and we have to have that justification written that okay we need a two million dollar for sidewalks and we're gonna increase this much to bring the two million dollar in without justification of expenses increasing the revenue is not the right way of doing the business

And we do have justification already because our expenses go up every year, just with everything from colas to expenses of goods and gasoline and diesel and all these things, they go up every year, but we're limited to 1% to raise the property tax. And that is slowly strangling cities. So we already have justification, I think.

And I agree with that. It's just, you know, we are also an elected official. Somebody is going to ask us, hold responsible that, okay, you just increased their, you know, whatever percentage on whatever taxes. Why? Where are you going to spend? And I should be ready to respond that question. And that's why I'm asking that question. Okay. We have to have a justification of spending before we ask for the revenue. That's all I'm saying.

Very, you're really good. Great questions. Yeah, it was good.

Okay. We'll move on to item, uh, 7.2 in the study session, and this is the discussion of e-bikes, and we'll start with Chief Moore is going to give us a presentation prior to discussion here. Short break?

This is fairly brief, but you want a break? Five minutes? Okay, let's do... Five minutes, about 733. Let's make it 735.

You're being generous. Run around the parking lot and come back. What's that?

let's continue the meeting with item 7.2 discussion of e-bikes um and chief moore is here to start us on this so go ahead chief okay good evening uh mayor deputy mayor council uh

ask a question um down here in the super tiny fine print it says class three e-bikes uh are prohibited on sidewalks unless there's no other safe place but but there it says class three but you're saying bike lanes on the road a sidewalk wouldn't be the bike lane or near that

Another question. So at the top, um, you said that they showed us the state law around it and I know it's kind of evolving still, but that says local jurisdictions could regulate e-bikes, any class one, two or three.

Okay. And scooters. So if we, I'm just saying, if a city out there somewhere, says we don't want any one two or three class on a sidewalk when there's clearly an alternative we can do that but does that not bump up against state law well no state law is is it it's the the broader more general law but local jurisdictions have the ability to restrict it even further of it yes okay thank you i didn't i didn't see that thank you yes

One more question. You also said something about we can then, we could designate that our like the bluff trail, places like that, dirt trails, we could designate no motorized vehicles as well, because I'm seeing them on those trails a lot. Me and my dog almost got mowed down on the bluff trail on a fast-moving e-bike.

This was not a mountain bike that you could go back and forth. It was, it was probably a class two, maybe a three. Nothing was moving. There weren't any pedals or it was just stationary. So I've noticed an increase with that as well.

another consideration not to make it too complicated is that regular bicycles like on the buff trail they can go 20 miles an hour i mean they they can but i'm just going to push back on that a little bit something to think about i do i do a lot of bike riding so does trail riding um it takes a lot on the bluff trail to get your bike going to one miles an hour like you got to be a you know tour de france rider to do that it takes zero effort to speed on an e-bike sure And therein lies the gap between a bike and an e-bike.

Yeah, but the discussion can be, do you want the regular bikes on the trails or not?

We could have a great discussion too, but I'm just kind of focusing more on this. But there is definitely, and there's the inherent danger. I can get myself up to almost 17 miles an hour on center drive if I'm hauling. My husband and son can get up about 24, and they're hauling. But you can't sustain that. You can go that fast on an e-bike or a scooter within seconds. So that's why the conversation was kind of, for me, important to have.

They're doing that in December coming up?

That's good to know, timing's good. Just one follow-up you mentioned, I don't know if you used the word citation, so that was my word. You said something about if you're not following the rules on the sidewalk, et cetera, et cetera, there could be a penalty of some kind. My question about that though, and again, ooh, I'm, looking out, walking as much as I do, that's kind of hard unless you catch people to do that. And I'm not trying to make too much of it, but I think recently on social media, one of our concerned citizens very respectfully showed, I think it was a video, still shots of a stud

Actually, my son, when he's 23 now, but when he was in fourth grade, he was turning 10 that summer, we were doing a bike ride. We did a lot of bike riding. We're out by the golf course. We always make that the end. The sun's going down. It's really pretty. He was going just over six miles an hour because we have the speeds on our thing, fell off his bike, helmet saved him, cracked it. Next thing I know, we're going on an emergency vehicle to Mary Bridge, six miles an hour. with a helmet and the doctor flat out told me your son would have a traumatic brain injury had he not had the helmet on so

What's our, what's our current helmet law. I'm sorry. What's our current helmet law. I'm sorry, I still didn't. Oh, helmet law. Helmet law, yeah, for all kids have to have helmets or adults have to have helmets too?

I wanted to just say, if we do an ordinance, could we set hours, for example, not after dusk? Because I've noticed a lot of young people on scooters and e-bikes after dark. And we already have issues with... no light not enough lighting in the community to see them and i i can see that that would be something i would be interested in if if it's possible to say you know not before you know you could ride before dusk but after dusk then there might be an issue with that i don't know i don't know if it's well yeah i mean but right now the the scooters the kids on scooters there's no lights

Yeah, right. That's good to add to the discussion. Yeah. Yeah.

But there is no helmet requirement for e-bikes or scooters.

So I do have a question, but as I remember my kids growing up here, and DuPont is very friendly, family-oriented policing, I see in general. So sometimes they listen, they have a helmet, and they wear it. Sometimes they don't, and they just are out from the garage, and you don't know, right? And I'm not just saying that my kids did that, but majority of the kids do that. All kids do that. All kids do that, okay? So otherwise, my kids listening, then they were, Dad, you are not... But anyway, I think how do we enforce this helmet regulations and how many citations have we really issued in the p

Just a general statement. I mean, yes, they take off on their bikes and yes, they leave our garages. But if we create rules, laws, and ordinances just for the people that follow them, the rules are there, kids are gonna break them, adults are gonna break them. We still have to have the structure of rules. I can suspend students and guess what I do? They know they're not supposed to do what they did, but there's the accountability piece. So I don't want us to not be courageous in this discussion simply because kids are kids. I don't think that's where it comes from. We have expectations, we hav

And in our school district, you can ride them, but not on campus. So our school is in the middle of downtown in the valley. You get off, the minute your toe steps foot on our campus, whether it's a bike, a scooter, a skateboard, you name it, it is walked across the blacktop. It is walked out, and then there's something out there. So it's actually helped. Parents have found it valuable. And most people will comply. They really will. They want to do the right thing. But yeah, you're right. Schools too.

Um, just a suggestion for moving forward and I intended to cut off a conversation. A lot more can continue. I would suggest something similar to what we did with the parked vehicles as the next steps, uh, council member Elliott and I brought that, um, ordinance forward after direct communication with the chief and Gordon. I I'm wondering if, uh, since you two had it on the agenda, if you two would work with. Chief, Keith, and then get the attorney. And just once we see what the ordinance looks like after you all brainstorm it, just like we did with the parked vehicles, then suggestions like wh

Any other questions? There you go. I guess not. Okay. Well, thank you, Chief. I appreciate that. You're welcome.

Okay. We're getting close here. Item 8.1 is appointing a member to the Planning Commission. John Chilcott.

and he i will add a little bit of discussion he is uh he's involved with their garden um in fact uh keith you may remember that we talked to him a couple years ago down there so when they were doing their big anniversary event and so then i recently talked with him i think at the barbecue this last time and and encouraged him to throw in his name and say hey

uh and he seemed excited he was thinking about it actually a couple years ago and and so when he came over and said hi i said time to make that decision let's go for it okay i don't know any further any further discussion no i just wanted to say i think it will be great to see the pool planning commission now in place and that would be the one of the

was it's an important piece of uh you know what we need to do in city so i'm very happy and excited for it okay in that case i'll call for the vote all those in favor say aye oppose thank you we'll inform mr chilcott if uh he can get to work John, John, John. Yeah. Okay. Uh, mayor's reporter comments. I don't have anything further. Any comments from the council members?

You know, last Friday we had the community resource fair and it was a great turnout. We had lots of people come and visit. It was really worthwhile. And I think it's just going to be one of those events that continues to grow. And our police and fire, they were great. The kids had a wonderful time touring all the equipment. It was really a good turnout. So, yeah, I just want to say it was a great opportunity to to bring the community together on resources that they might not have. i'll tell you one thing the poison control guy was surprised that most people did not know about poison control an

So we had some citizen or one citizen posted on, uh, you know, social media about the historic Parker missing. And, uh, I had a talk about it and, and also we received an email, but, uh, uh, right next to this checklist trail. Uh, but eventually I did received even a response from the mayor stating that, uh, there was somebody was sent out and the historic marker has been found. and just because of the growth around the marker. So it's not been seen from the distance. So I moved. Yeah, it's not mode. But I think the main important point is that I have to take you back for one minute that when

Any other comments? Okay, city administrator.