City Council - Regular Meeting

I call the meeting of September 21st, 2026 to order at 6 PM.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to adopt the consent agenda of September 21st, 2026. Is there a second? Second.

Nice to meet you. Thank you guys. Much respect to all of you for doing what you're doing with our little city here. I love it. My name is Jason Tonneslin. I've lived here for 20-plus years, and I own two properties over on McKinnon Ave. And really, my only complaint right now is the construction going on right next to me. It's kind of rough. The thing I'm here to talk about tonight, I really don't know if you guys have control over it. But I feel like it needs to be heard. I wrote up a whole thing, but I'd rather just tell you what happened. I was walking down Main Street with my five-year-old

Yes, I'd like to make a motion for Ordinance Number 2980, Enacting a Public Safety Sales and Use Tax.

Yeah, I think we may have covered and asked and answered this in our study session. We can only do one or the other. We're not able to do the tax as well as apply for the grant, even though it's the same criteria. I'm just curious if there's any benefit to that or risk to that.

Yeah, I was just wondering if you can do both.

Yeah, Jason, on one of the previous slides, there was the note about having a minimum level of police officers at one time. I think it's three. Is that going to be set in policy, or is that just like hope and expectation, but we can't quite guarantee that until the chips fall and everything?

Yeah, I've just been kind of floored recently with the chief presenting and just talking about how sometimes we have two officers and sometimes they're taken in different directions. And I remember I had an incident a couple months ago and we had two officers show up at my door. And now I'm thinking that means that they weren't out in the rest of the city. Thankfully, there weren't other calls probably that they were needed at. But yeah, I think it's great to move forward on this. I'm supportive of it. And I would love to shoot for that goal of at least having minimum three, you know, As we ca

Thanks, Jason. I'm not in favor of having my taxes raised, especially if I'm the one raising them, but the one last year, the tenth of one cent, as you said, I've lived for a long time, public safety, roads, traffic, that's the two main things, and both of these are going forward, and I can't... That's why I'm in favor of both of these. Another thing, too, and I can't... I don't know if you can give me a number, but my assumption is that We know who the big sales tax people are in the city, and my guess is that some of the rights are probably paying 25%. I have nothing where I got that number,

Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve Ordinance Number 2978, amending the 2025-2026 biennial budget.

Yeah, thank you, Jason. I just was curious, can you just remind the council and anybody listening, just why do we have so much in reserves? It's quite a bit in our budget that we've had in the cash.

Okay, and then just a follow-up question on that, and I think... We talked a little bit about it in the past, but I just wanted to reiterate, as far as spending it now, and I guess I can, why is this a good time, as far as staff goes, as far as spending this?

I'LL JUST SHARE MY VIEW ON THIS. I'M IN SUPPORT OF THIS. I THINK ONE OF THE REASONS I THINK THE TIMING WORKS REALLY WELL IS WE HAVE HAD SOME PRETTY HISTORICALLY LARGE PROJECTS LIKE THE WHITE RIVER RESTORATION PROJECT AND SURE ROAD BRIDGE THAT HAVE BEEN ON THE BOOKS FOR A LONG TIME AND WE my understanding, Jason, is that we are past a point in those projects where we feel like there's this financial risk of those going over budget. Is that accurate? Okay, perfect. Yeah, so I think that's one of the reasons I support it. The other reason, I think we had a golf course the city owned. We sold that

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I agree with the Deputy Mayor. It's an old park, and we're putting it into a park, so that's the way it should be. Just really quick, Jason. So it's $20 million to Loyalty and $2 million to Bennett?

That means that we're going to have like five and a half or so on Bennett.

The 5.8, that's roughly almost halfway there. Enough for a good start, right?

Yes, I move that we suspend the camera roll for tonight's council meeting just for tonight.

I just want to, just for discussion, I just was wondering if it would be just for this individual or is it for the whole night? Because we do, I think we did create the rule because of people coming on. So I'm just curious if it's just, if we amend that motion to just be this in a case-by-case basis.

I move that we suspend our camera rules for this presenter in this moment. For a one-time only use.

Sorry, is the question whether or not the motion is appropriate? Yes, I believe the motion is appropriate. The suspension of the rules can be done by the vote of the majority of the council. It does not specify whether or not the suspension can be very narrow or very broad. So I think that the motion to just have a single speaker at this time is appropriate. Or on this topic. Only, correct? If the motion was worded that way.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt ordinance 2979, amending Sumner Municipal Code 2.100.680, holidays. Is there a second?

Yes, so good evening. I am chair for the Public Safety Committee. And so just a quick update. Everything, actually our numbers are looking really good. Crime is down, which is always fantastic to hear. And the fire department opened a couple new locations, Prairie Ridge location and another one. And I believe to Holly and so our fire numbers are our our specific ladder and medic trucks Calls are down because it's been they have closer access the only thing that we covered was just working on the new the park rules for for uh the uh suspending the park rules for the bennett or i'm sorry the um

that lodging tax, we meet maybe once or twice a year. I think once this year, I think the next meeting is going to be in March, so not a very often one, but we collect the sales tax, or special sales tax from hotel and lodging, and we include Sumner, DuPont, Ruston, JBLM, unincorporated Pierce County. It was my first meeting, so I learned quite a bit about how it works, and then the plan, so everyone else knew, so they spent a lot of time explaining what's happening, which is which is fine. And so I think that the plan they had on the spending was to do some money for barricades and for downto

I have nothing to report tonight, Mayor. Thank you.

Just quick anecdotal evidence. I was watching Seahawks yesterday on Park Street, and my friend was complaining about kids ripping around on e-bikes. And then I said, oh, we just passed something, you know. And he goes, it's weird. I've noticed last week that it's been... I haven't seen any kids on them, so maybe it's working already. I don't know. And obviously e-bikes is very big because I don't really watch it very much, but the whole episode of South Park last week was about e-bikes, and Cartman got an e-bike, so you know that was trouble. But I think that the e-bikes, anecdotally, the new

Thank you. Yeah, I think you're referring to Deputy Mayor Elfers on his e-bike tearing up town, so. Or you. Or me, yeah. All right, so just some quick business here. Public Works Committee met last week, and a couple of things, one of which we passed tonight in the consent agenda was extending the contractors construction support management contract for time and with a little bit of additional money. There were some delays with the construction schedule, so we needed to extend that out for the operations facility. Again, this is going to be a new administrative building, kind of vehicle storag

Thursday the 17th it was my first meeting with the Pierce County Regional Council and just reporting out on that there was a lot of conversation around the our hazard mitigation plan. We have a five-year plan that's finally FEMA approved. I guess that's a big deal. There was a conversation around a Pierce County comprehensive emergency management plan not to be confused with the hazard plan that's starting its five-year refresh process right now. A lot of talk around the success of the FIFA World Cup being managed and Well, and a lot of great interaction with the Puyallup tribe on that. So the

Yeah, thanks, Jason. I just was curious. Out of 218,000 expenditure on the budget, can you tell me how much of that is grant funded? Yeah, approximately 32 per... Let me check my notes. 218 million. 218 million. Did I say a different number? Yeah, 218 million.

I got two questions. So the other question that I had was more about the how, because I think one of the things we keep coming up on is, like, if there's a plan to say we're going to build a park and we say, well, I wanted a swing set, do we get a vote on, like, whether we get a swing set or not, or how does that work? Cause I think there's a question here on who's involved. I think there's been some talk about like, do we on like the heritage park one, for example, has come up a couple of times. Can you explain how that works as far as policy versus execution?

I did not have a question until Deputy Mayor asked his question. So $35 million of the 218 is grants? Is that just assumptions? Or is it not grants we have in hand right now, right?

So $35 million already, and who knows? That's not counting what we get in the next two years, right? Yeah, that's awesome. Mr. Coase. Don't want to pat him on the back too much. He's right there. But no, yeah, that's very good. It's very good. Thank you, Michael.

Yeah, just, I mean, thank you, Jason. For clarification, though, just to help put a point on this, in our previous council meeting earlier tonight, we appropriated the funds to be moved for, say, Heritage Park and Bennett Park. And then all that means is that money is now set aside for the executive to look at that and figure out how to do that. And at some point that will come back before council to say this is what we're planning to do. Can you approve what we're planning to do? So it's really an order of operations than when we think about the budgeting this way. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah, just for, um, thanks Jason. Um, just for clarification, will we be asked to act and vote at each of these stages as we build on this?

Yeah, thanks, Jason. I just had a couple, just kind of more detailed questions, but... So we talked a couple times at our retreat and things like that about some items like fund number 002, which is just this fund that's not been used for years. And it's a, so I'm just curious, when are we going to deal with in this process? Can you help me understand? Like, so are we going to, we talked about saying, hey, we should move that. And then there was also a discussion about, like, we have an 8% reserve amount in the general fund. Are we going to increase that or change it? Do we need to? And then t

Uh, just to clarify, as we're, you know, um, the mayor kind of called it bumps in the road along the way. If somebody has a problem with something and says, I can't support that, you're looking for majority to support that kind of removal or change or whatever that is. So if it's just one voice, we're kind of moving forward as is type of thing. But if you're sensing that most of us are feeling like we don't support that or want to make a change, that's where we're starting to make those modifications in the process.

Halloween, I think, is on a Saturday. I don't want to come in in my costume, just to be clear. That might be fun. What? Bring our kids.

I totally want to come in in my costume. Thank you. I think Councilmember Kenna helped clarify, it sounds like we will be doing kind of small votes or small directional kind of consensus conversations as we go along. So there will be some type of voting activity throughout the process.

But hopefully not that we'll get there, but there will be points where we'll sit down and say, there's four of us or four that's move on.

Thank you. What percentage of employees at Sumner are part of a union or bargaining units? Ballpark. That's a tough one to put you on the spot, the B team. Slightly over half. So half? Yeah. Okay. Out of 140? Okay. And then sales tax had 3% growth for the next two years. So I'm sure, I mean, I'm always concerned because of working with Dave Enslow for eight years, but I didn't mean to bring up your father-in-law. Anyway, sales tax on construction. So has there been, I guess, with the new apartments going in, but we have some more coming. So is that, I'm sure... Knowing Cassandra a little bit,

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jason. On the funding operating assumptions, the general fund, you have the percentages, and I think it might be, you know, not to answer tonight, but helpful just to know the absolute numbers associated with those two. So when we talk about, you know, lines, the property tax and sales tax being the lion's share of the total dollars, it would be kind of nice to see the dollar assumptions next to those percentages, too, just so we can frame it. Because when you look at it this way, it looks like everything is a dollar and five cents here, three cents there, on

Where we're starting and what the 1% would move it to. I think that would be helpful just to understand that chart better.

I really appreciate the, on the revenue debt side of things, I was just going to ask, I think it'll come up at another meeting, but I really do, I'm always really curious on, like, if we could provide the terms on that, like you said, the really low percentage, like what percentages and, you know, I think some of those, there's some, the ability to retire them, I think with these types of ones, we probably, maybe it wouldn't make sense to do that, but I'd sure like the information of when is it able to be retired and what's the interest rate on those loans. if that's possible for when we go ov

Council Member Wilsey. So I'm kind of new to government spending, but curious. As far as debt goes, is it an asset to have debt? Are we building credit of any kind or is there a purpose for calling out a debt over using our own cash on hand, liquid cash?

Yeah, I just wasn't sure if carrying a debt did us any kind of service. Okay.

I'm just happy to see that that is in there, to pay off that debt, because somebody messaged me today, a person that may or may not have been on the council before, but talking about, he was talking about in May, we have some... have some extra maybe money now, and I hope that maybe some debt gets paid off. So this person, he or she, will be happy to hear that. So thank you for that. That's good. I like that.

I may be jumping ahead on this. I know at some point we're going to have this collision of operating budget and funds coming in. And I'm just hoping, I don't know if it's part of this budget conversation cycle, but talking about recommendations from the city on how we might address that down the road. And I don't know if that's part of our current budget talk, but just throwing that out there is something that I'd like to hear about.

Yeah, I think I asked a question earlier about how do we drive these costs down, and you kind of answered it in your presentation about capital facilities. But I am looking back at the debt and that list of debt items on the revenue side. They're pretty recent. If I'm looking at that list of items, they're probably, I'd say, 80% of that debt is within the last five years. Are we going to discuss...

Yeah, we were both part of that. So I think that was, are we looking, are we going to discuss looking ahead? Like, cause obviously if we have more big projects coming in the next five to 10 years, it'd be really helpful for us to kind of, I'd love to know personally, like, are we expecting to issue more debt or, or is this kind of like, these are like 20 year projects? Cause the debt goes out to 2045 on these big projects. AND I'D SURE LIKE TO KNOW IF WE COULD TELL PEOPLE AND REASSURE THEM, HEY, THIS 5% IS GOING TO STAY 4 OR 5 OR 6%, OR SAY, HEY, ACTUALLY, BRACE YOURSELF, LIKE, WE GOT BIG PROJ

I'm assuming with the public works facility, that's a 40-year project, hopefully. And then we're doing like 30% of the wastewater treatment facility. I believe we did a percentage, and that was pretty close to somewhere in that range. So it's a pretty big upgrade for them. And the other ones are not as significant. Anyways, I think you guys have a good plan. I think it'd be helpful for me to understand. I'd love to at least have information about like, hey, is this going to go down? Because I like this graph, how it goes down. But it makes me think like, oh, somebody's going to come in here an

Council member will see a quick question came to mind. Um, so if we issue a debt and we end up with a grant, can we pay that debt with that grant? If we end up with a debt, a grant that will allow us to pay within that pot, is that, you know, is that, is that possible or is the, the grant have to compliment the, the actual, um, project?

I just wasn't sure if a water funding grant came through and we had this debt service we knew was kicking around, can we...

I was trying to form my question, but I think that one thing I was curious about, so the general fund we had, the golf course, wasn't productive yet. THE COUNCIL MADE A DECISION AT SOME POINT, HEY, WE'RE LOSING MONEY EVERY YEAR. IT'S NOT WORKING. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING FOR TAXPAYERS. SO WE ENDED UP USING THAT. AND WE TOOK AWAY SOME NEGATIVE ON THE EXPENSE SIDE AND BROUGHT IN SOME CASH TO DO SOME OTHER PROJECTS. SO I'M JUST CURIOUS ON THE UTILITY SIDE, I'M JUST THINKING, IS THERE AN EVALUATION HAPPENING THAT IS EVALUATING, LIKE, UNPRODUCTIVE ASSETS? I KNOW, LIKE, WE DID THE TOUR OF THE The wa

Yeah, I just was curious if it's something we thought of, because I just think that getting rid of a golf course that we didn't really, wasn't productive. And then I just don't know if there are assets, because I think I wasn't aware of the watershed until we did the tour. And I was like, this is really unique. So I don't know if it's a good idea or not. I'm just saying, talking about it, sometimes you find things that we didn't think about. Sure.

Thanks, Jason. I'm trying to wrap my head around 11 new I'm just having trouble right now, but I have two months to wrap my head around it some more, I guess, and I'm not saying they're not needed, but that's just about a 10% increase, I think, and I guess the good news, this is my napkin math, 11 new employees, you're looking probably a little bit over a million dollars or something, but your saving is $450 on interest payments, so as you're going to be, without seeing the whole budget, other cuts in revenue and different things, but I'll get there, hopefully. That just seems like a lot.

Hey, thank you, Jason. I just had a couple of questions. Some information that would be really helpful for me in this is I looked at the notes, and some of these were included in the rate studies, so it's not really affecting anything. Some of these are enterprise funds, so they're really, like I said, they're already there. It would be helpful to understand that from a numbers perspective for me. Some of it, you said, we're already paying a lot of it or maybe almost all of it in contract labor, so we're switching it to an employee, so there's not as much. So those would be helpful tidbits for

Yeah, Jason, two of the departments that you said since 2020 haven't had staffing increases. I know HR was listed on there. We did have an HR specialist maybe join this year, I think, right? But whenever I think about the capacity growing in our staff, HR is one, as you alluded to, that we generally need support for those new staff. So was there not an ask from HR for more because we have this new specialist that came in this year?

Okay. And then, conversely, finance had the grant accountant, you know, position there. Are they feeling like they, even though they haven't had staffing increases in, you know, since 2020, as you mentioned, are they feeling like they can make do without?

Last question. I know you provided the, I think it was 12 and three-quarters staff over the last six years or whatever. Can you give us a... general understanding on a biennial budget how often we're asking for new staff is that is it normal to ask for a couple here and there like what's that trend line look like on a biennial basis I don't have it in front of me right now but is something we prepared for the retreat and presented to you so you know we have added staff in the last five years no doubt

Thank you, Mayor. Just adding to Deputy Mayor Elfer's questions, that was kind of where I was going on or was thinking about going. It was just, again, highlighting the cost avoidance that we gain or cost offset, meaning we would have spent this out of the left pocket instead of paying it out of the right pocket. It would be great to see these as we're considering each of these as we go forward because I think there's a lot to Deputy Mayor Elfer's perspective. I think a lot of this stuff is already done. I'd also love to see when we're highlighting unfunded mandate hires because it feels like