City Council - Regular Meeting

The ancestral lands of the Coast Salish people, we pay our respect to those past and present. Tonight's invocation will be led by Pastor Elizabeth Lawson from the Living Word Four Square Church. If we could all please stand for the invocation and then remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance that will be led by Councilmember Stuckey.

All right, this is a reminder that tonight's meeting will both be a physical and a virtual meeting. It may be viewed on YouTube and following the meeting on Facebook. We have two absent from the meeting tonight. Council Members Marshall and Wittgenstein have asked to be excused. So if we could have a motion to excuse both of them from tonight's meeting. Yes, Mayor Pro Temp.

I move to excuse Council Members Marshall and Wittgenstein.

Second. All right. We have a motion and a second to excuse Council Members Marshall and Wittgenstein from tonight's meeting. All in favor, raise your right hand. That passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Approval of the agenda for tonight. Are there any suggested changes to the regular agenda? If not, I request a motion to approve it as presented. Yes, Council Member Stuckey.

I'd like to add a budget discussion to the agenda. Okay. I would say probably obviously before executive session, but we could do it later in the meeting so as not hold up other people who are online. Sure.

If mayor's okay with that. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So, um, We have an amendment then to the agenda as presented to add a budget discussion at Section 5A right after Mayor and Council comments.

All right. And we have a second. Is there any further discussion before I call for a vote for that? All right. Is there a motion then to approve the agenda as amended? I move to approve the agenda. All right, all in favor, raise your right hand. I think I screwed that up, but okay. Passed unanimously. Thank you, we got there. All right, so I'm gonna move on to presentations. 2026 Whidbey Island Marathon Event Recap, we have here to introduce that tonight, our race producer, Jared Loringer of Fizz Events to present.

Thanks for your presentation, Jared. Are there any questions or comments for Jared? Yes, Council Member Stuckey.

Yeah, I think the, the whole unhappy pairing with that, I agree. It was a, a huge success. I know some people from out of the area who stayed and hung out at the booths and stuff. I told you I'd work on those Hills. I haven't gotten to it. Um, I do, I do see what you mean after doing it this last year that those Hills are no joke. So other than that, it's a wonderful event.

Anybody else? All right. Well, thanks again, Jared. We appreciate all your hard work on this, and we look forward to you doing this again next year.

All right, we're going to move on to public comments. Comments on consent agenda items or subjects of interest not listed on the agenda at this time. Opportunity to comment on the remaining agenda items during the meeting as appropriate. Please note comments regarding public hearing items will be heard during that portion of the agenda. We have no public hearings for today's meeting. Visit our website for methods to submit public comments. Public comments sent anonymously or from a non-verifiable address will be shared with the mayor and the council but will not be displayed. At this time, we

Welcome to the Park Board, Kathy. Thank you so much for volunteering.

Great. Thank you, Julie. Is there anyone here with us this evening that didn't have an opportunity to sign up that would like to step forward and make public comment at this time? All right, hearing, seeing no one, I'm going to close the in-person public comments, and then we received several new public comments since our last regular meeting, and we'll display those now on the screen for all of us to review. All right. Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought that was the end. All right. Now I'll go. All right. So just to put everyone's mind at ease, the arts commission, as well as a nonprofit in town are

Thank you, Maryam, if we accept the consent agenda as written.

All right, so we have a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented by Council Member Peterson, seconded by Council Member Merrow. Is there any further discussion before I call for a vote? Yes, Council Member Heisen, or Mayor Pro Tem, sorry.

Just a quick comment to Kathy. Thank you for introducing yourself. You need no introduction based on your many years of volunteering with the city, but I'm very delighted to have you on board. Thank you so much.

Anyone else? All right, all in favor then raise your right hand. And that passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Right, we are going to move on to council comments and mayor comments. First up, mayor comments. Last week, Council Members Stuckey, Arms, Merrow, Peterson, and Wigenstein, as well as our city administrator and I attended the Association of Washington City's District 14 meeting in Burlington. It was a great opportunity to connect with other local elected officials and city staff, share updates and priorities from our community, and discuss the issues facing cities across our regio

Yeah, it was his request. Nothing formal is needed. I bring it up for a couple of reasons. One, not to put anyone on the spot to give Mayor Pro Tem a chance to comment. So she was not at the meeting if she has anything. And two, we had a workshop. And that workshop was smooth. And I want to make sure that we're getting ahead of things before we get to final votes. November 4, we're voting on a utility increase. We're voting on a TBD. We're voting on a master fee schedule. And we also have the mayor's final budget coming around that time, too. And so I want to make sure that we're giving clear

Thank you, Council Member Stuckey, for bringing that up. And I know the Marine Advisory Board brought up the fee schedule. And I'm not really sure how the mayor feels. Anyway, I think that having the dredging continue, because we need that money, I am thinking I know we need all the revenue we can get, but maybe we can lower the fee to 3% instead of 5%. It gives some wiggle room. I know they're still not going to be happy, but this is money that we need to dredge. And we are doing everything we can to, you know, facilitate everything and think of ways to improve and put more money into the rev

So to address what you're proposing or what we're just discussing here, to go from a five to a three, we can absolutely look at that. David and I would have to go back and crunch numbers, though, and see what that does to the bottom line and then make adjustments and other things. And so I'm not opposed to that at all. Again, that's we're happy to do that that that's what the workshop was all about too is we're happy to have those conversations And again, we're not we're not mandating any of the suggested revenue streams that were brought forward were just they were suggestions to you all and

Yeah, and I agree with that. I'm not saying that. I'm just, we're not going to be able to not have a dredge fee. I mean, that's obvious. We need that dredge fee. You know, and I've just brought it up, and if we have to do what we have to do, I'm not opposed to it. I'm just saying...

Well, thank you, because that's more in depth. And I think people that are listening or here will understand clearly not just as a rate, but explaining that in such detail. I really appreciate that. because that brings more clarity exactly what's going to happen, because we're just looking at this, but we forget we have the whole picture to look at. So I really appreciate that, and thank you, Council Member Stuckey, for bringing that up, because that clarifies that now everybody can listen to that, people can understand better what's really happening down there. So I appreciate that. Thank you

It's very easy to become inured with the status quo that wants the adjustments of prices and all the rest, that it's a fixed matter. But in practical terms, the value of money and the purchasing power decreases. And if we don't have a perception of that, then we get an unrealistic expectation, which is just not sustainable. So I salute Mayor Wright and Finance Director Goldman and their team with regard to the budget proposal because they're trying to be working very closely to be realistic about the prospects for the future as well as the current status. We got to bear the cost. That's it. Th

I just want to also thank all of you. I appreciate the discussions like this. The one thing that I want to point out, I leaned over and I mentioned to Council Member Stuckey, the thing that's frustrating is if you go back and you look at the history of just this topic, this got pushed out through 14 different meetings rather than reaching resolution at any point in time. If we had reached an agreement much sooner in the process, we would have been further down the road at this point. It just goes to show how important it is for all of us to have these civil discussions and come to an agreement

Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to thank Mr. Goldman publicly for he submitted in writing via email a very detailed response to all of the questions that he received and I understand that I assume that it took he and his staff quite a while to get that all addressed and written down and I appreciate the level of detail that was really helpful to go over and I also wanted to express appreciation for this administration's willingness to think ahead and plan ahead because the answer to so many, you know, why is this in disrepair? Why are, I mean, is the cost of anything going up as much as it is now?

are moving us somewhere. I want it to be useful and productive and efficient. And so if we were to do something like raise a rate for, I mean, not even necessarily with Maria, but if we were to raise a rate to the point where people stop using said service or doing said thing, then there's no revenue to speak of. That just totally disappears. And so we haven't gotten anywhere and so i want to make sure that we find that sweet spot to be able to keep moving forward while keeping in mind the constant maintenance and what are we going to need 10 15 20 years from now that maintenance dredge the yo

Good to know. That's good info. Thank you. I did agree with Mr. Jones' comment about the parking fee. I think Unless there's a real demonstrated parking shortage or a need for that, I wonder if just the administration related to enforcing something like that might not be... I'm not sure if that pencils out, but... Oh, she has a, I got it. She's got a response for me. Okay.

you and your staff are going to be the ones doing the administration.

Yeah, which makes a lot of sense. I appreciate that. Yeah, there's a conversation that happens in my household where it's like, really? You're going to take the closest spot and then leave your car sitting there for three days? That's kind of rude. Let's not do that. No. OK, yeah, thank you. I think that if we're you know, exclusively concerned about the people that are there for more than several days and $20 a week. And if that's going to go specifically into a, that was my goal is to have it for like parking lot maintenance.

It's I'm, Thought we did something back in the day, but I'm not going to waste time trying to remember what that was. Where are my? Sorry, I might have. I lost my other note. But I did have a couple of follow-up questions from workshop, and I'll get those questions to David have that worked out before we have our meetings so that we're not holding up the, the vote on, on anything else. But thank you for, for the Marina perspective. I appreciate it. We, what we don't want to do is, you know, mindlessly rubber stamp everything that comes in front of us. And we also don't want to, be, you know, o

moving beyond the marina and i appreciate everyone indulging me and that's it's kind of as mayor wright was alluding to that's i'm just trying to get ahead of this having civil conversations now because there have been times where it's quiet it's quiet it's quiet we get to the vote and it's like well where did this come from so that's and there's no gotcha i'm just trying to david in in general we don't get in the nitty-gritty because i know we're meeting tomorrow and I'm looking at the City Tighten Its Belt page where it's talking about the $7.7 million. I guess my concern is I'm looking at a

I've mentioned this before this like We raise the utility tax so that we could acquire five new officers. We have not acquired those five new officers and So that money also helped with public defense, but you're right. You're right to be fair. I So that money, I understand, is most likely going to do some overtime. But it's just accumulating. What's happening with that money that we increased utility tax up for, which a good portion of that was the five officers. We don't have the officers. And maybe we'll get the five officers. I would love for us to get those five officers. But right now, i

But if we don't add, let's say, three years from now, you look at the amount of officers, and our amount of officers increased by three.

And I'm totally sensitive to the fact that you spend months and months and months looking at this, and here we spend days and weeks, and here I feel like I'm – poking some holes, which is partly our job. But yeah, I think it's going to be a combination of, for me personally, I would like to see some other place that we can trim. I understand that we're also going to have to increase some taxes. That's unavoidable. Things are going up. So I'm not necessarily opposed to all of the increases. I just think if we can try to find a little bit more to maybe offset some of those increases a little bit

Mr. Mayor, I believe Chief Slowik was trying to say something and I wanted him to have the opportunity.

I wanted to make sure you got that in. There are some things, and I'm not the smartest of you all up here about this, but when I look at, I'm just going to look at us. We got, if we look at what the city council's raise is, it's about $54,000 extra than we had last budget cycle. Combined, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What the council can spend on things, you know, going to Washington DC or whatever it is we do. And then it looked to me like there was about 412,000 for mayor and executive assistant stuff. And I'm not saying that we aren't all entitled or worth or whatever, but I'm wondering, you kno

I don't necessarily know that she's talking about salaries, though. I don't know that. Again, you're using numbers, and I don't know what the specificity behind those numbers is. So do you have anything specific you're referring to in those numbers? Well... Nobody went to D.C. this year, so...

No, no, I know. So our 20, the city council's budget for 2025, 2026 was 546,000. And it went up to 591. Mm-hm. So that's 40,000 bucks, right? 54,000 actually. So what else are we going to do?

So David, I don't, can you, I don't have my mind. I don't have all of the things.

Okay. OK. What you pay for what you get. Yeah. OK.

Okay. Yeah. all right and then and then the same since you asked i'm a little bit further down there that where it was mayor and executive administration was 2 million 700 for 2025 2026 and it's 3 3 million basically 150. and i guess that by what you're saying david that's pretty much also benefits projected out well um so looking at that so the budget for that department was 2 2.735 million right

I asked about that last time, because my math and your math didn't agree.

I guess because I'm new to the whole I speak household budget way better than I speak government budget.

Oh, I get it. I just want to make sure that if we're asking other people to pay more money, that we're not. Yeah, that's what we want you to do.

Yeah. Because otherwise, I don't think that we increased anything other than that position and then the increases and just what were benefits and other things, right? I mean, you know, there's... Because I know I didn't give you guys any raises, so...

Um, I don't need that to be on the front of the paper.

I understand, and it does that up to a big number. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

It's all of their IT stuff, too. Was that it? Council Member Peterson? Okay. I'm sorry. Council Member Merrill?

In the discussion that we've talked about with regard to the current budget proposal, which in general I think is an excellent effort, is the fact that we got $40 trillion in national debt, and it's increasing approximately another trillion every year or so. And so I envision that the finance department and the executive will be keeping in mind that this could have a flow down effect for us because the head of the Federal Reserve recently stated that, as far as he could see, that there was really no way to address this apart from, as the old expression goes, printing money, and that the inflat

And because David won't, so I will, because nobody in this room really understands what a big deal it is. David is also on the governmental accounting standards board for the entire country. That's a really big deal. And we have him in this city. So we have... someone that's really, I always tell him every day he's a genius. He likes to make fun of me, but I think he's a million times smarter than I am. I enjoy working with him every day and we're lucky to have him. He does understand what we're facing, we both do, which is why we're trying to always look for additional ways to bring in revenu

Yeah, no, I know. But I mean, still, though, is it a salaried position? Okay. There you go.

All right. Thanks, David. All right. Anybody else for the good of the order? Does everyone feel like they got to ask their questions? I know there can still be more. We're not saying this is the end all be all, but I'm just saying feel good tonight.

I wasn't correcting you. It's not salary. I guarantee you, Christina just corrected him.

Thank you, Christina. All right. Anybody else? OK. Well, we're going to move on to executive session. And at this time, the council will move into executive session per RCW 4230.110.1i. To discuss with legal counsel litigation or potential litigation, the anticipated duration of the executive session is 10 minutes. Action may or may not be taken upon returning to the open session of the meeting. Executive sessions are not open to the public.

All right, we have now come out of executive session and we'll resume the open session of the regular meeting. No action.