City Council - Regular Meeting

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America

Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation. We really appreciate you and all the work that you do. I am one of those people that do run that walk badger quite often. And I do see the impact that you guys have made in our community. Some days it's pretty much bumper to bumper. And I do know that a lot of these people come from out of town. So with that being said, do we know how many people on an annual basis visit this location? That will be one question. But the other question would be, If you can provide roughly what the tax estimate that is coming into our coffers, because your guys' har

Yeah. The next question will be, you know, I volunteer once in a while, but it's very hard because when it's hot, it's almost impossible to be out there in the mountain volunteering. And so obviously you're looking for people to volunteer. How can we, the city, but the city residents can help you? I know a lot of the times it's very difficult for you guys to get people to go out and help. So how can we help the organization that is helping us so immensely?

Just real quick, thank you so much. This is fantastic. I'm very excited about this. My kids don't always like it, but we do Badger a fair amount. But also, it's a great thing for our city. And a lot of people that come and visit, we actually go hike Badger. And this opportunity to go from Little Badger all the way across Candy Mountain is fantastic. Thank you for all the hard work and so many hours and the donations that have gone into it. I'm excited. Now we just get to connect to Rattlesnake, right? There we go.

Yes, you gave me a great tour of not just what currently exists and the future plans, which I'm totally excited about, but also the geology of the area, which is quite amazing. It's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible what you've done and the benefit to not only the entire community, but to the world and what we have here and appreciating that. Thank you.

Yeah. Well, could I add, encouraging people to talk to you if they want a tour? Yeah, absolutely. Can I advertise you? It's a great tour. It's well worth the time.

Move to approve the consent calendar as read.

Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. I've been on both sides of decisions and planning like this over the course of my career. I wanted to ask a little bit about range penetration specifically. have both been somebody whose range penetration dropped as a result of a reorganization in an organization, and I've also been the person who had to tell somebody that, you know, your pay isn't changing, but your range penetration is. One of the things on both sides of the table that I sort of, I don't know, I'm not a professional human resources operator for sure, but A lower range penetration is...

Yeah, that's one of those areas where I think there's always room to look a harder look.

Thank you. Council Member Jones. Yeah, thank you for the presentation. Glad that we have professionals like you to be able to break it down for us and bring it to the street level. So obviously, there were a couple of individuals that came and spoke about this. And I don't know if we have really addressed that question directly to them in regards to, is that going to affect my pay? Am I going to now earn less than what I did last year because of this new matrix that we implemented? and how that is going to affect me. Do I need to move to a different organization because now you're pushing my s

Chris, thank you. Just a maybe humble observation. For me, one of the leading indicators of the fiscal management of a city is their parks and the grass in the parks. You go and look at different cities and how well those parks are maintained. Often parks are the first thing that gets cut when there's a lack of fiscal responsibility. We have great parks, and I thank the city staff for putting us in a position fiscally that we can do that. And as we've talked before, even regionally you can see that. And we have green grass in our parks. We've replaced park equipment. We have a wonderful divers

Yeah, thank you very much for the presentation. Glad that you're here and that you're excited about the number of parks that we do have and they do require quite a bit of maintenance. So curious about maybe We have to think outside the box. We have a lot of land to care for, a lot of tax money that needs to go into those facilities. Sometimes we just don't have the money to do it. Even though we want to be able to fix everything, at the end of the day, there is so much that we have that we can do as a city. And so the question is, do we have maybe or can we start looking at other partnerships

I so move, being the liaison to Parks and Rec, that we adopt resolution number 2026-104, adopting the City of Richland Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Comprehensive Plan.

Council Member Samuel's fine. Madam Mayor and City Council, I just wanted to report. I was honored and delighted this past week to have the opportunity to stand in for the mayor as her delegate at the ribbon cutting and official proclamation ceremony in recognition of Tri-Cities Cider House. their new ownership and their continued investment in our community. That was a well-attended event. I really enjoyed doing those, so thank you so much for delegating to me. And finally, I wanted to thank citizens who generously volunteer their time and their efforts to city boards and commissions. I atten

I attended the Association of Washington Cities conference in Spokane and learned lots from security cameras and the issues there to struggles of other cities across the state from large places like Mercer Island down to Dayton, Washington, and to see what their issues are. Very interesting. Also, I'm disappointed the people that spoke about Lawless Park have left. That has always been near and dear to my heart, as Tim Lawless was my sixth grade student, and his father, Judge Lawless, who is highly respected in the community, was killed a few years after that. And the feeling was always that P

Yeah, thank you. I want to say to everybody, we really appreciate you coming out and giving us all the feedback. I think that is very important for us to hear. You have invested a lot of time by coming over here, raising awareness of what you consider to be an issue. I'm not an expert at data centers, but I appreciate people coming to us and bringing those issues so then we can rely on professionals to help us make decisions. I'm not a lawyer, so I cannot tell my attorney what to do. lead us in a way. Same thing for the city manager. We do want you to participate. We want you to be part of the

Yeah, I'd like to thank the Friends of Matcha Mountain for their presentation earlier this evening, and I would also like to extend a thanks to all their members who volunteer to take care of that wonderful asset. It's a great asset for quality of life and also for local tourism for the city of Richland, and I appreciate it every single time I go visit, which isn't nearly enough. I would also like to mention that I would be in favor of a town hall for data centers or any kind of a more comprehensive presentation to citizens in some respect to bring some more people, bring information to people

That was an awesome event. So... I will say that working with Julie Piper for the Arts Commission, she does like to have fun, but she does take her job there very seriously, and she does take fun very seriously. So that's all I've got to say.

Thanks. I just want to remind everybody it's still July. Bus fare is still free on BFT this month. And if you feel some kind of way about that, feel free to fill out a comment card or let them know whether or not you appreciate or approve of fare-free fixed route transit. the interest of time we'll just summarize recent library board meeting talked a lot about a broad range of cultural events that the library staff organizes and and that's I strongly encourage folks to check out their website to see the upcoming events some folks have expressed shock to me that it's not just stuff for kids. Th

Sure. A lot of this is building on similar comments. City Manager Amundsen, thank you for the comments that you gave. All of them, I think they're really good, helping clarify a lot of things. Building on what Kurt said, I also liked how the city sent out a blast in a couple areas asking for volunteers and where the different areas people can volunteer. That was excellent. There was a good update that came from the Veterans Administration, the Washington State one, on an update on the Veterans Cemetery that is proceeding. I was really happy that they provided those updates. They had promised t