City Council - Regular Meeting

is now six o'clock and i will call the meeting to order uh clerk please do the roll call mayor frederick here just doing the audio levels okay deputy mayor winkler here

Thank you. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

one nation under indivisible with liberty and justice for all now is the time for public comments uh clerk anyone call in or email some comments no we have no written comments and no one's online okay and i see no one in the audience so um we'll move on to the uh approval of the agenda Do we have a motion for that? Council Member Barrow?

Do we have any further discussion? Okay, I'll call for the vote then. All those in favor say aye. Oppose? The agenda is approved. So first on our agenda tonight is item 6.1, which is our 2025 budget overview and 2026 midway budget. And Tara Dunford is here tonight to help us with that along with Keith. So go ahead, the floor is yours.

Um, I'm just curious, um, are we not going to talk about pages two and three? Cause I had a questions about them and they go and they do pertain to the general fund.

You were so thorough. I didn't recognize it. Thank you.

Yeah, and I can't thank you enough for how detailed this is and the specificity, each page being at this part, it's really great work. Really, it's exquisite. Thank you for that. I can only imagine how much time that took you. So I wanted to talk two things. When you look up at fines and penalties, was it like 1,056,000? And then you go down to court costs, 250. Is that 250 in court costs, the cost it takes to go when we have a, someone's appealing their camera ticket or something like that. How do those two go together? So we're bringing in this much, but we're losing that much for an overall

And then one last question. When you talk about the percents underneath, that 5% is absolutely frightening. Thank you, Mike and Beth, for being such good diggers a few years ago on that. What is recommended to have in terms of that ending fund balance? Is it like 22%? Did I get that right? I was kind of crazy Googling.

And one last quick one. What is other non-departmental? Because it's almost $200,000. What would that be that we're paying for non-departmental? Hang on. Just a couple. I didn't have to have a list itemized, but... I can tell you those.

um are some of the highlights okay okay thank you that's good just give me some idea that's perfect deputy mayor workler uh thanks mr mayor and my thanks too for the detailed report my preference is stays detailed i really like the numbers i really appreciate it so i i'm The format worked well for me, and if it works well, I like to see it continued in that detail. But I assure you all my questions will get fewer. And I also want to thank you for answering the questions I sent in advance. That's greatly appreciated. I'm going to make an observation after having reviewed my questions and your a

Okay. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Again, thanks for the detail.

We got a question. Deputy Mayor Winkler.

More of a statement again. Thanks. I really like the detail in the fact that you answered my questions. I just want to share that. I agree with the rest of my console. My peers up here that when we get in that budget process, although it shows a nice jump between the 2 after reviewing all this and your answers to the questions. Yes, contract settlements is going to greatly affect that. We have some vacancies that are going to affect that if they were filled. I think the admin had make some tough deals and they're doing that to make sure everything stays in balance. But we need to be aware of t

We have another one here, Council Member Walton.

I'm sorry I have so many questions, but I just, this is the way my brain works, and I have highlights and questions over. So if I'm looking again at page three, am I reading this correctly, where we have police, I'm just giving an estimate, like 4.3 million, and the current last column is 3.7 million. So that went down. Is that correct how I'm reading that? Or, okay, is that the projected? And then it looks like the police went down. up a little bit, is that correct? From 3.5 to 3.7, is that correct?

Yeah, fire. How do you, how is it that we have a group and the payout for salary is going down in a time where I know we're doing six bargaining units in Puyallup and I guarantee you no one's going down.

Okay, and kind of echoing what Mike was saying. So we're into two years without a police contract and 2025, the end of 2025 was fire. So we're about half a year with that. and i know from bargaining and education things it's retroactive so when we do get that contract we go back and make those adjustments i'm just curious i think i think it's gonna be crushing i'm sorry but i just a two-year contract two years back is i don't even it makes me nervous makes my palms sweat um because all of this is other people's money it's our taxpayer money so with that can't we possibly get some estimate of t

Hi, I just have a couple of questions. Probably Keith can answer these. On the greenways, we actually had budgeted $100,000, but it looks like we're at the end of the year only going to be spending $25,000. Where are we saving that? And there must be something in there.

And then lastly, facilities. We're like at 77%. What did we do this first half of the year?

We have Council Member Thakur with a question.

Yeah, I had a few questions and comments, but I thought I will save it for the last and I will. But just to expand something on what just Susan said about police and fire contracts, and we have a two years in, but also we have to remember that this is an ongoing process. I don't know if say they agree for two years or three years, then we are already over with that bargaining and we have to restart. So this is like an ongoing process for us and we need it to be more better doing budgeting and our physical responsibilities and all the physical management. And I think that is only my comment is

I hope you don't mind the interruptions. Again, thanks. I really like the detail. This is actually my last question on my list, but it's more a statement that I'm going to ask the council members to also look at. I just want to bring something to Council Member Elliott, and I think she'll agree with me, and I have been concerned about. For a couple of years is the downward trend in our sales tax after you take it out. And if you look at accommodation, the food services sales tax and you look at a wholesale trade sales tax, both of those years, they went down. Not only did it go down in 2021. t

What I find interesting about that is our tourism dollars, I mean, our expenditures in tourism went way up, and yet our accommodations and food services are going down. So does anybody know why? And I guess, what was, why did tourism go up? What have we done differently?

We have another question here, but one of the thoughts I had on that was that we had some golf tournaments and things going on, but council member Gassick.

We've got questions that aren't getting answered. So my question is where are your department heads? Why aren't they at this meeting?

Well, we're going over the budget. So it's a pretty important meeting. I would think that they should be present to answer questions that we might have about line items.

Yeah, and maybe it's on another one. I tried looking at the broad picture, the 10,000-foot view, the 100,000. But I had just a question when we talk about mayor, council, executive, legal, fire, police, engineering, et cetera. the next two pages. What exactly are services? Because some of them are as high as $176,000. Some are 101. I think one was, oh, this one in fire is 339. The one for police is 924. They're pretty substantial amounts. I did add them up and get a grand total. And again, not an itemized list, but that's a lot of money for something called services. And so I'm just curious wh

But you're saying insurance would be the biggest chunk for all of the different departments, irregardless of what they do.

Yeah. And what police was 924. So I'm thinking, you know, if it's insurance, that's a big discrepancy of like $600,000. But are there? Can there be a discrepancy based on number of people or, um, or job?

That would be great. And last question on page five, what are central services? Everything else was pretty self explanatory, accounting, legal, etc. What are central services? What would that entail?

Okay. I didn't know that. Thank you. So IT is kind of central services.

so then does that chunk of money come out of the general fund then okay and then we could we could if we needed to we could transfer money from the other two funds to make the other one whole okay thank you yes correct um so on page nine is

So if we talk about... Councillor Wolton has a question.

Oh, no. Go ahead. Go ahead and finish, Tara. And then I do. Thank you, Ron.

So it's already two years behind. Correct. So the cost. So a million.

And Tara, what number from page eight would that come out of? I'm sorry, I was trying to circle and now I don't know what I circled. From page eight, like let's say 700,000.

Yeah, I just wanted those numbers. Do they include overtime in this? Because I didn't know if that was included.

Oh, yeah, I just wanted to comment. I think this is one of the best presentations we've had. So it does provide all the detail. I mean, I think more detail is always good, in my opinion. But I just I thank you. I think this is just this is what we've needed. So thank you.

Okay, so I have one question about which has not been asked so far, which is about the interest revenue. So if you can go back to that page, wherever it shows in the general funds, and it shows that we have received only 29% of the interest. Why is so?

My question, again, I don't think I got that, or maybe I didn't understand your answer very well. But so we are having only 29% received means that are we still getting more interest revenue?

One other thing, Councilmember Thakur, is we didn't used to get as much interest, but since Keith has been here, we started using the sweep accounts to get maximum interest off all of our funds that aren't being spent.

Thank you, Jewel, because I went back to that one too. I know there are positions that we are going to need to fill in city's role, city government. Have those estimated salaries been put into this when a finance director, whatever it is, are they reflected in the budget as well? Because that will also be more money going out. Does that make sense?

Just a quick question. We were talking about the 10% worst case on the police and fire, 775. How is it distributed? Is it going to be a lump sum that happens when it happens, or is it going to be amortized? How does that work when that takes effect?

When is the next meeting for contract negotiations with fire?

Okay. I asked that about a week ago and I haven't gotten an answer. I'm very disappointed with how this is affecting the budget. I don't even know where to start. I appreciate the detail in the budget. So thank you for the work that you put into it. But I'm not liking the message at all.

um we're skipping ahead on this the page 13 street depreciation um 43 824 actual through june 26 is is that what we have left to work on our streets Because in 21, I mean, I know variations depending on when projects start and end and all of that, but $43,000, where are we on the whole street improvements too? Because I know that's a big thing as well. How does that factor in? That's

okay thank you for that just trying to council member so it's a good question from uh council member walton and a good answer from you and uh explanation but the depreciation word itself is not should be the bringing the revenue in my opinion and having that as a uh you know one of the fund doesn't make sense totally

Yeah, it doesn't make sense. And that was my one of the comment I put it on to say, I don't know why we have no revenue and depreciation and still it's on as a budget item. Yeah.

So I think we can look forward from the city staff recommendation on how to move this and get it out of our way. Yes. Okay, thank you.

Oh, yes. The transfer out that $500,000, where did that go out of that fund for this first half of the year?

So I think this transfer in and transfer out also always all the pages has it. And I had a question and I'm like, I think it would be nice to have a line item underneath just to show. So we don't wonder that where the half million went to or where does the half million is coming from? Also, there are transfer ins and I'm like, where does the half million is coming from? So even if it's going from one fund to another fund, And if it is just spells out underneath that, hey, this went from specific fund to a general fund, that will be very, very helpful. So we don't, we avoid a lot of questions.

in the positive overall in the in the water utility fund and tara our public public works people and our city engineer uh in previous meetings have uh informed the council about coming projects and you know like our hoffman hill reservoir and other things that are going on so some of that money will in fact be drawn down perfect

Yes, if we could go back to the page 22 stormwater utility, just correct me, is that also money that we can use for sidewalks? Did we talk about that? Is that also a fund we can draw from for the sidewalk improvements?

Well, they're not here, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah.

That's also going to be a subject matter for the next council meeting too. We're going to talk about that.

Okay. And I, I do want to echo, um, Shauna statement. I think moving forward, we do budgets. It would be nice to have, um, the heads of those departments just so that question for instance, could be answered today and not two weeks later. So if we could kind of note that moving forward, I think it just would like expedite things for all of us. So, okay. So that is something that, that we will talk to at the next council meeting to put on the agenda. Correct.

And it'll involve this fund possibly being used for that. well this fund and maybe other funds we have a number i just want to be really specific because my question is can we use stormwater utility fund for sidewalks and you said oh you know a little gray area got to be careful so i just want that question to be posed and answered at the next council meeting so i'm not pushing it again for another two weeks so thanks council member at the court

So I guess I'm going to say my few words. First of all, I have to say a huge thank you to our staff for the report format and the presentation. As you might remember, asking twice during the last meetings, I made the comments that because of my personal business experience and accounting methods and using the softwares, These reports are really the best reports we can read out of. And we do not want to see the reports which is presented in the Excel spreadsheet, which can be very well manipulated at any stage by anyone. So I'm very happy to see that. Also, second thing I wanted to point out, t

Okay, well, I want to thank you so much. I know Tara that you and Keith and did a tremendous amount of work on this. This is the best budget report I've ever seen. So I really appreciate your work on this and we'll look forward to more such reports and as we're going to be developing our next budget over the fall months. So this will give us good information as we move forward and develop that budget. So again, thank you very much. We'll move on to the next item, which is 6.2, which is the item we discussed briefly in individual meetings about data centers. So Keith, you got a few comments on

Questions for Keith on the data centers. Council Member Elliott.

Yeah, I have a question but a comment. And I thank you because I've talked to several citizens who have brought this up and it's a big interest to everybody. So I'm glad we're moving forward on this. So thank you.

Yeah. Any other questions for Keith on that? Okay. Well, I wanted to make clear also that we don't have any current applications for data centers or any such thing going on. This is just kind of a get ahead of the curve type of thing and give us six months to kind of study the situation and figure out the best path forward in the event that we do get some applications in that regard. At this time, we have approval of the consent agenda items. There's one item on there. I would like to delete the former on the council meeting minutes for the last council meeting, July 28th. We inadvertently had

Councilmember Wargo and move to approve the consent agenda items for 11 August 2026 as amended Councilmember at the core second.

Okay any further discussion? Seeing none I'll call for the vote all those in favor say aye opposed Okay, the consent agenda has been approved. We'll move on to the mayor's comments. The only comments I have is that I would like everybody to pay attention to all the different activities we have coming up in August and in September. There's a lot of different things. So for the public and the council members and everyone, keep an eye out for all the different activities. things like facebook or bits and bytes that tell you all the different things that are happening so with that i don't have anything else do we have council comments okay council member barrow

Yes, I just want to talk about what happened over the weekend. Last Saturday we had Museum Day and it was Dino Day. And thank goodness we had lots of volunteers because we had over 212 people sign in. And I know there was at least another 20 to 30 people that bypassed signing the book. So it was quite the event. Everyone had a really good time. And I just want to thank all the volunteers. And I'm glad everyone had fun.

Yes, and I don't know if this is a question answered within this, and if I step out of bounds, someone please tell me, but I think it goes without saying that we're all concerned about the status of our negotiations with fire and police, particularly from a financial standpoint and all the other pieces that come with that. I believe some of us had requested that we meet and I don't know, do you call it executive session for those kinds of situations? Not to talk about contracts, that's not our role, but we do as council approve contracts. And this is getting, in my personal opinion, we're in a

Well, just kudos again to the dyno days. I thought I broke my bike by there and it was packed. So good job museum folks. Good job, Carol. And the second thing is last night I attended the planning commission meeting. Just I happened to click on the calendar and I saw that they were doing comp plan stuff. And so there's a lot more work that's going to be coming through the planning commission on doing revisions to our comp plan. And with a new law that the legislature passed right after we completed our comp plan. And kudos to Lisa Parks, who's our consultant doing planning. She did a really go

Thank you. I'm the second person that requested to have the meeting regarding contract negotiations being past the expiration date. And there's no date on the books for the next discussion, at least with fire, as far as I know. And I think that you've got an issue because you have 12 firefighters. Eight of them have applied to work elsewhere because West Pierce is hiring for about 40 positions and those offers will be extended to them September 14th. So we have the potential of having four firefighters left by the end of the year. What do you think is going to happen when you have four firefig

Okay, so... As you know that we have a some of the sidewalks in the streets and has some kind of a war going on at some point in the city and I think I have a one just a suggestion that if it's possible as you know I travel a lot and some of the states. And some cities put the sign on the street saying that your tax dollar at work. And it also says where the money came from. Sometimes it says, hey, it came from a state grant or the federal grant and what's happening. Or sometimes even people, I have seen signs which actually says that how much money is going to be spent for the improvement of

Yeah, I guess budget concerns and questions just carried us away. But I do want to say a huge thank you to city staff. I mean, that was no means it was a small event and making that happen with a few handful of you managing thousands of people in our town, almost half of the size of our town was not easy. So thank you so much. And I was part of the event and I really enjoyed every moment of it. It got a little hot on that day and a little dusty too, but I, you know, and also a huge thank you to Nesqually tribe. They did this to in our town and you guys work very hard in the long term for a lon