City Council - Regular Meeting

You think we've had a few other events stirred in my life to this particular age. I feel it's 700 p.m. Amazing.

It's 7 p.m. on Monday, April 20th, 2026, and I call this regular city council meeting to order. Council member Browns, will you lead us in the flag salute, please? Pledge 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. For the record, I'm noting that all council is present today uh along with planning manager Stalenecker, uh public works director Madden, uh finance director Robeck, and police chief Hernandez. The next item on the agenda is uh is citizen participation. Do we have the list?

Angelie, could you bring the signup sheet, please? Thank you. All right. The first person on our signup sheet today is Joanne McNal. Joanne, if you would just come to the microphone and give us your name and uh city.

I want to speak about the sidewalks coming on 23rd who are in front of my home. The um estimate that I see on the website gives an account of how much you're willing to pay for my property, but there's no picture of my property to show the total impact of this. The u 10 feet up to my on my front yard would put the sidewalk 10 feet from my porch, which really is a devalue of my property. Um, it doesn't affect my view, but the property has taken up most of my yard, my front yard. So, I was just wondering if anything was I noticed everyone was given the same dollar amount for the square footage, but did that take into consideration the impact of what's happening to the homes? I noticed all the pictures in the uh project were from the other side of 23rd with no picture showing my house or Pierre's house. And if you really look at the picture of my home and his, you'll notice that we're pretty much close to 23rd as it is. And it has a total value. It's a loss of value on my home. I've been there 50 years and I'd like to stay another 10, 15, but it's getting kind of sad to look out and see people walking down the sidewalk in front of my front door. So, I was just wondering is there's a way you can take into account the impact of this project of the effect on my house. Uh, I feel like I can open the window and

offer a cup of coffee to people walking by. Buck 50 I can make a person, but it's got to be something um that could be looked at as far as compensation for the loss of value on my home. Uh, it's just it's a it's a big impact. It's twothirds of my front yard and like I said 10 feet from my front porch. So I'd like somebody to take that into consideration. Thank you for listen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Uh the next uh person that's on the signup sheet is Ephine uh Almarez.

Good evening and thank you. My name is Ephra Almarez. Just want to make quick three points. First, Easy Fiber still has not corrected the unsafe enclosure at my home despite multiple promises from company representatives and a visit from our own public works director. Weeks later, nothing has changed. That raises serious concerns about oversight and accountability. Second, I'm concerned about city continuing to assign police officers to duties that pull them away from core public safety. Whether it's animal transport or truck route enforcement, the trade-off is the same. when officers officers are doing those tasks. They are not responding to emergencies in the field or arresting bad behavior. Third, the traffic camera fund does not appear to support the claim that it's making a lot of money. The figures show at a study session reflected about 92,600 in actual fines revenues with 148,000 transfer from another fund. Nearly 240,000 expenditures, which leaves us about $818 of profit if you don't count the 148,000 that was pulled in from another fund. Um, so it looks less like a windfall. My concern is that Milton is shifting limited public safety resources into programs that clearly do not justify the trade-off. Meaning, under our own uh admission, we had a million and a half uh res or people go through the cameras with 5,319 infractions. And I can do that math. That's less than a half a percentage of violators or people going through. That's a little bit more than a quarter of a percentage. So if we're not even hitting a single integer, we're re putting resources to watch uh these cameras or to watch the tickets or if we're taking resources away from officers arresting bad behavior as it's happening and responding to emergencies from the field. We have an officer who would have to stay in half of the time to look at the stuff and hand out these tickets, which again we haven't hit 1%

of violators. the I understand that if you go through Milton Way, you'll hit four cameras and therefore those numbers probably aren't true, a million and a half. Well, then that goes to the fact that perhaps then we don't have as many people coming through as one would suggest, a million and a half. It can't be both, right? We can't have a million and a half people going through, but it's not really a million and a half, you know, when it comes to it. So, if we were to divide that by four and we still are less than double digits on percentages of violations, I I haven't done that math, but I can tell you, you know, a million divided by 5,319 isn't anything to throw resources at. When it comes to surveillance or when it comes to cameras, just remember this. The only way you can feel good about the purchase you made for putting surveillance cameras is if something bad happens. And let's say it works. For some reason, this these signs work. Well, now you feel bad that it's good out there and you have to pay for it. It's it's it's not a cycle that you can chase, right? It's a self-defeating cycle. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, sir. And the last person on our list today is Jacqueline Whan.

Good evening, council, staff, and guests. A few brief comments. sort of a report card topic of the fiber optic construction done uh on my street and I'll zero in on my uh portion of the right ofway just to say that I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned installing the fiber optic cond conduit I'm certain is it's it's a messy job but it really was underrated in terms of how impact impactful it was on people's lives. I sent you and all an email late and I apologize it was so late and I don't even have my notes in front of me, but I do want to say that it just seems as though this sort of a business is fraught with serious problems. The franchisee e could have done a far better job of preparing the community for the impact. I'm still dealing with the damage that the contractor did to the right ofway in front of my property. I've already cleaned up their mess from when they were at our property. End of January. 75 days later, you'll see in the email they've paved a sinkhole. They cut a hole in the street to retrieve a boring tool uh to tunnel across the street. And the hole didn't get fixed until multiple complaints. And I pulled aside the head honchos who showed up here during your study session last week. We'll fix it. I got a paved sinkhole in front of my house and they still have not dealt with a very obvious sub uh subsidance in the shoulder of the road in front of the house. It's sad. It's wrong. I don't understand the decision where vaults where multiple conduits are joined together like your electric junction

box, the one at my house, I'm not going to be able to install underground electric conduit. The area is already jammed up. It's It just doesn't make sense. Uh you'll see in the pictures what I mean. And boy, I really hope that the franchise contracts that you're looking at tonight that part of the discussion from staff will be here's what's in this agreement that we've learned our lessons and put into that agreement because from what I've learned research-wise, it's sort of common practice to just bulldoze in and fly on out and make all the problems that are left behind the responsibility of the citizens. Thank you.

Thank you, Miss Whan. Um, is there anyone else in the audience tonight that would like to speak? Yes,

Susan Johnson Milton. The franchises for communications are very complex. I mean, you have multiple corporations. They hire people because they're not here. They hire people from outside. Easy Fiber, I think, recognized, if I'm correct, their original group was not doing what they were supposed to do. Also, I felt they shouldn't have started in the fall and winter. It's rainy, it's cold, nothing gets fixed during that time. In the long run, I think it will be a value to the city to have these communications under ground for the versus on polls. Uh they've made mistakes. They were here, if I understood them correctly, said they were going to rectify them, but we've been in a rainy season. March showers, April showers bring May flowers. Hopefully by summer they will bring in the better group to do all the repairs. And I will confess I'm very lucky. On our street there was no problem. On two of the other streets there were no problems and they listened to all of the neighbors and they put everything back. I think the weather impacted their first group they hired was ineffective. Um they were all from out of state mostly what I've heard of the workers. So, um, when you're looking at this franchise, you know, it's sort of interesting. The ones we're looking at now, um, they're originally they're a foreign entity owned by a Canadian company owned by NFC de uh, Northwest and then Easy Fiber. One's with the revenue department, one is with the state secretary of state. The communications

companies are complex. There's no getting around it. But the value, if we can get past the anger, let them fix it, it will add such a value to the city with everything going underground. And I hope someday everything will be underground when we look at the weather. I do not believe that our easements are completely ease used up. We have room. You have companies that Century Link was under there and they're not anymore. So, I understand the anger, but the new group that came in and I think with public works, they were a little bit behind with them trusting the stuff with the weather and that's what happened. It was a mixture of forgetting and so I think they'll rectify it.

Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. Anyone else wish to speak this evening? See none, we shall move on. Um, are there any requested additions or deletions to uh tonight's agenda? Seeing none, um, we'll move on to the consent agenda. Does anyone want to pull any item off the consent agenda? All right. I would entertain a motion. Anyone? Council member Cedar. Uh move to approve the consent agenda as presented. Second.

All right. It's been moved by Council Member Cedar and seconded by Council Member Hall to approve the consent agenda. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right, moving on to the regular agenda. Item 6A is the truck route ordinance 2137-26, which is an action item. It's on page 19 of your packet and looks like chief is going to Good evening. Presentation on this item.

Good evening, council. Tonight is uh bringing this back. This is an update to the Manilton Municipal Code 1042. As we previously discussed on the April 6, 2026 council meeting, the city code is currently written for chapter 1042 was deemed uninforceable by the administrator of the courts and the city attorney. Therefore, the Milton police do not have the ability to issue citations for commercial truck traffic using Milton Way for non-local deliveries as the code was originally intended. A revision was prepared by the city attorney and reviewed by me to clarify definitions and update the code to be properly enforceable. Um, and so the this is a primary a clarification on the modernization effort to improve enforcability and protect infrastructure and reduce truck traffic on our local streets. Uh, under the current code, we designed we designated specific truck routes, primarily SR 161 and SR99, but the language does not clearly prohibit trucks from using other city streets. This creates ambiguity ambiguity for both drivers and enforcement. This proposed update shifts to a much clearer framework. It establishes that trucks over 10,000 lbs are prohibited on all city streets except for those designated state routes. This creates a default prohibition which is easier to understand and is more enforcable. We also added clear operational rules for local deliveries. Trucks are still allowed when they have a legitimate destination within the city, but they must use the most direct route and stay in Ontario whenever possible. This helps reduce cut through traffic in residential neighborhoods. A second a significant addition to this update was a 28t trailer length restriction on city streets. This is for safety and infrastructure protection measures. Longer truck configurations create challenges with turning radius, visibility, and roadway wear, particularly on the smaller uh local

streets. So, I'm asking for action by council tonight. All right. Would anyone like to make a motion? Council member Whan. Well, just just a question. We still have our 10,000 lb signs along most of the roads or some of the roads. What would this do to that? What would that sign now say if we had to make a major change to allow heavier trucks?

Uh the signage is uh specifically in the uh document itself. So 10420 sign requirements on page 23. The public works department shall post restrict restricted streets with signs containing the following w language. No through trucks or vehicles above 10,000 lbs GVW violators subject to fine per ordinance number that it's assigned after tonight. So that there'll be an upgrade to the signage.

Yes. where we have room, we will keep the original sign, but we will so that it's universal picture of a truck with a slash through it. But, uh, this code specifically requires this particular language. So, they'll they'll also populate other areas in the city because we've we've not had new signs, correct? For 20 years. Yeah. In a lot of the different areas. So, the city will be populated with signage correcting our concerns. Correct. Throughout the city. Correct. Thank you.

All right. Before any u further discussion, could I get a motion? Council member Poor. Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve ordinance 2137-26 as presented. Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Yes, Council Member Turnis. I'm just wondering how this is enforced. I I order um should they speak to their motion? Oh, yes. Sorry about that. Council member Poor, would you like to speak to your motion?

Uh, no. I'm good. Thank you, Mayor. Okay. Council member Cedar, would you like to speak to your second?

Yes, thank you. Uh, Chief, thanks for bringing this forward. I just had a question about section 1042 080, which is on page 25. Um, so this provision says a police officer shall have the authority to stop any truck to determine and then gives us those things. I I'm just curious about that definition of what truck would be because it seems overly broad and I don't see it defined. I see I see the 010 definition of over 10,000 lbs. But if the goal is to stop any truck to determine its weight, can you just help me understand that? Like how how an officer would decide what truck they're going to stop? It's on page 23 at the top 1042 under 010. Uh it talks about the weight rating and then also there's a picture on the back of uh 24 um of the vehicles that we're talking about,

right? cuz I know that the truck definition had been an issue and we had brought that to the attorney and the attorney gave this back to us and said that by having this it had already been tested in the city of F and we have the picture and then that was his definition of a truck but the pictures in in that subse don't include all vehicles that are going to have a GVW over 10,000 lbs. I mean, you don't have to have a tractor trailer combination to be above 10,000. In fact, most vehicles that are not tractor trailer combinations are above that. So, um, when I look at the 010 definitions, it just says, you know, it has a GVW above 10,000 lbs. And I mean, I guess I'm just want to make sure that our officers understand what their authority is because I think this I think your officers will have the authority to pull over any truck that they suspect is over 10,000 pounds. And I I think that that is a good thing for the goals of this statute. I also just want to be clear. I don't think that it's written in an over broad way that it gives them discretion to pull over like a pickup truck like an F-150. I I think it's correctly written and I just want to make sure that you share that understanding. Yes. And that was the understanding that I had with the attorney because that was under our old code. what the administrator and the city attorney um had brought to our attention is that we were not specific enough. And so this was the newer version to make it more contemporary, more enforceable. And so of course whenever we roll rule out roll out any new MC, we always do training with our officers to make sure that they're clearly in the know so that we are enforcing whatever new MMC that we have correctly. So, there will be some training and understanding of what to look for. And

and when we talk about enforcement here, um I've, you know, I just had some personal experience. I think your officers have always historically been very responsive to trucks on side streets, but has this been something that you've historically done already? And it's just that we need to modernize our code to catch up with the this new reality. We have been doing this and the problem like I mentioned earlier is that when we wrote a citation for a truck that ripped off the pedestrian button at the corner of 28th or whatever street it might have been, the courts have kicked them back to us and said, "You need to fix your code." And so this is more of a reactive response to the lack of enforcability. But this is something we've attempted to do throughout the years. And so we keep getting jammed up on, hey, you need to fix your code.

So passing this code was my last thing for you and I appreciate that, Chief. Passing this isn't putting some new administrative burden on your officers that they didn't already have. Correct. Thank you.

All right, Council Member Turnis, and then I'll come to you, Council Member Whley. I I really like the idea of keeping these big trucks off of our streets and I like the idea that the police are able to enforce this law. My concern is how do you pull a truck of this size over on our already narrow streets and actually issue citations without it hindering people walking or could even be potential danger. Um, is the camera system available to give them tickets?

No, the camera system currently doesn't uh capture semi-truckss the way that we would like it to because the issue is is when there's a trailer plate, the trailer is usually not the same as the tractor that's pulling the trailer. So those trailer plates come from all over the country and so it it's not working the way that we would like it and and there's no way to fix that currently that I'm aware of. Um but the uh yes, you're right and it is always difficult and one of the most difficult things that officers can do is traffic stops because trying to find a safe location to be able to uh stop the tractor trailer. Um, but officers use common sense and so they're not going to do something that would jeopardize the motoring public or the pedestrian public. And again, usually it's that we get the call that, hey, a semi just ripped off the pedestrian button and it's currently going down Milton Way. And so there have been times where I personally have stopped a tractor trailer because I looked for the damage that it incurred when it hit the the the uh pole because usually those things get called in as a hit and run because they're a lot of times don't stop. And it could be because they don't realize it or it could be that they realized it but they just for whatever reason they're going to keep going and they just think that's part of driving a truck. But

how have you handled the situation that you've already encountered? Like where do you actually pull them over? Do you go into a business parking lot and do the citation? We have to follow them until we find a safe place to pull them over. It's like any other traffic stop because even a regular police or a vehicle if you try to pull it over in certain areas in Milton Way, it's just not feasible. So, you have to wait and use common sense and get the the person to yield. And then sometimes even they might stop. You go up and you contact them and go, "Hey, we need to move down the way or can we pull into this parking lot cuz it's not safe right here." So, we do everything we can to try to make sure that we do it as safely and as efficiently as possible. Thank you.

All right, Council Member Whan.

We've had a 10,000lb limit for a long time and we've had a 10,000lb limit that has been very seldom enforced. Is there how are we going to do this better going through the new code and so forth and actually have a structure where we can take the 10,000B Dodge pickup truck from the factory and stop it on our roads or a tractor trailer to stop it on our roads even if it's on Milton Way is going to inconvenience a lot of people. That inconvenience is worth doing if it's going to stop other particular problems. But we've always stepped away from enforcing it because it's inconvenient because our streets are just too two lanes. How do you enforce a code like this on the two lanes without interrupting traffic and having people understand that this is a viable concern that we have for the safety of the general public? How does it happen?

Well, again, that's one of the things that police are often tasked with is doing the impossible. So, again, we would do our best to make sure that we are able to conduct a stop that's safe. And if we're not in a safe location, we might ask them to move. We might call um for uh additional unit to help with the traffic control. But we haven't had that situation. Again, we always try to use common sense when we're dealing because nobody wants to get ran over. Nobody wants to cause an accident because you're trying to conduct a traffic stop. And so again, part of this taking a look at the code closer is because council in the past has said this is an important issue that they want to be enforced in the city of Milton. And so we've tried to do that and they said you're need to rewrite your code. So that's what we've done. And not to be flippant or anything, over 25 years on council, I've not seen a tractor trailer pull off the side of the road on Milton Way, which is the primary problem. The traffic on Milton Way had slowed down quite a bit because there were different enforcements and lights and so forth, but it's gravitating back up. And I I just I wish you luck in trying to solve this problem even though it's in code. It just seems we were we regurgitated every so many years and so forth. But I don't think anybody's ever seen a tractor trailer pull off to the side of the road on small arterials or even metal way and so forth. I don't know if anybody's ever seen one happen. and you know damn well it's happening. So, I support this, but I'd like to support a way to actually enforce it besides just putting it in code.

Thank you, Council Member Whan. Council member Hall, I have seen the police uh pull over by the gas station. They had pulled them off enough that they could by by by the gas station. Which the one right at Spirit? Yeah. Well, Spirit's got a nice little shoulder site. Yeah. That's probably the only place that I can think of on Milton Way that has a shoulder access to do those things.

Yep. And then I've also seen um right over here on 10th truck got stuck. There's still damage on the road from it. There was another one that got stuck on 10th coming. I don't know if it was up the hill or down the hill, but it was there for hours. They're both there for hours because it takes time to get somebody to pull him out of there. Um the one gentleman GPS did it. Um but he said he knew as soon as he went up that hill, he was in trouble. Um if you don't know the area, it's hard. But they are dangerous. I see them very early in the morning. Um, and they're barreling down. My Can they get a ticket from the camera though if they're speeding down the hill? Because that one the other morning that I saw must have pulled a ticket on

again. Uh, the trailer are registered all over the country. So, the trailer is what presents the issue. What does that do to the to the camera? I mean, the judge the judge will not uphold that infraction

because again, you're coming with all over the country and they're not unless they're like a private LLC, that trailer typically is not registered to the individual driving the vehicle. So, you have all of these random trailers from all over the country that are moving through being pulled by tractors. Then I think it's even more important that we have this and we have good signage on it. Um, it just is. Thank you. Any further discussion? Yes, Council Member Roberts.

So, we have trucks coming through just passing through, but we also have trucks that are, you know, stopping at work sites, etc. So, I'm just curious about the discretion that's going to be used uh to enforce this. So, for example, every time you your for sees a truck, will they pull it over? No. No. Again, it's a we don't have we don't have enough people to do that. So, we're not going to be out there uh hunting the semi. Usually, again, this is the call that they've struck something or they've gotten stuck themselves and we're like, why were you on this route? Do you have a local delivery? And so this will give us that tool to be able to actually issue an infraction and have the infraction upheld by the court. Okay, makes sense. Thank you.

Yeah. Any further discussion? Council member Whan, I want to add something to this. What do we have in code? You have to speak English to a officer, not misunderstand it and so forth. And when you get into that particular circumstances, what does the police department do? They don't, shouldn't, and hopefully never allow them to continue if they can't speak English. Is that something to incorporate in here?

No, that's not something that we've incorporated in there. And we have not run across that very often.

Okay. One time is one too many times. So, where should we incorporate that within our traffic codes, traffic law in the city of Milton that you must be able to speak English before you before a police officer allows you to transfer for whatever reason they stop you for. If you can't speak English, you don't drive. Can you fab uh develop something that protects the citizens of Milton from non-English-speaking drivers?

Well, I'd have to have a discussion with our legal team and also with the attorney general because currently in the state of Washington, they don't have that restriction

is my understanding. But I think we as a citizen corporation so forth can have our own whether they have one or not. If you can't speak English, you don't transit through the civilian along with violating any other code which is generally what generates that personal contact between an officer and a um problematic driver. So maybe not here, but I think that should be incorporated soon. in the city. Thank you for your time. Any additional discussion?

No. Okay. Seeing none, um it has been moved by council member Poor and seconded by council member Cedar to approve ordinance 2137-26 as presented. All in favor? I.

Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. on to item 6B uh which is the franchise agreement with Ziply Fiber Pacific LLC for fiber optic internet services uh ordinance 2138-26 and uh this will be presented by uh public course director Matten. Thank you mayor councel. Uh the item before you tonight is a follow-up item. It's an action item. follow up to last week's study session um where we discussed uh a franchise agreement for both Ziply Fiber and um the NFC uh who they use to install their their underground fiber. Um the I the uh one of representative of Ziply is here tonight if you have any particular questions. Um, as discussed uh in last week's meeting, Ziply originally had a franchise that the council had approved. Um, because they had some internal changes, they uh elected to uh void that franchise agreement and come back for a new one that had uh their uh construction um partner in mind, NFC. Uh just as a reminder, Ziply Fiber will own and transport the fiber line that connects the central point of presence, the POP, uh in Milton to the broader internet. This connection is what brings highspeed internet. This transport line will be in the city's rightway. At the POP, Ziply Fiber will hand off to ownership of NFC, which will own the fiber facilities in the city through the public rightway. This will connect the internet directly to residents homes, business, and community. So, we've got a

two-part uh item before you tonight, and it is for an action um to uh potentially approve Simply Fiber and NFC franchise agreements. Are there any questions or a motion to open discussion? Would anyone like to make a motion? Yes, Council Member Wayland. Just Just a question. Can we Can we make the motion first? I I'm sorry. I do not have my hearing aids in, so you you got to use your mic. Yeah. Can we make the motion first before questions? I mot Yes. Council member Turks. I motion to approve the franchise agreement with Ziply Fiber Pacific LLC for fiber optic internet services ordinance 213826.

Second.

Okay. Uh, Council Member Turnis, would you like to speak to your to your motion? Well, just based on our past already approval of this happening and just with the shift of their what's going on internally, we've already approved it. Um what I've heard from um Mr. New House's um I really like their company. I think especially I think it's been a benefit for him to have heard all of the things that we've been dealing with with Easy and he has said that they there nothing like easy fiber and I think it's good to have a little opposition. I think it gives us more to choose from with the city, but um they look like it's just upstanding company and I wholeheartedly agree with them. Thank you.

Council member Whan, would you like to speak to your second?

Appreciate what you have just said, but just just a question. Putting fiber optics in the ground doesn't get you to the house, it gets you to the pole. So these all have to climb the pole eventually and connect to the house. Is that how they work? It's not directly in the ground to my house. It's an overhead just like Comcast right now. So uh that is not within their franchise agreement is a definition of that. My understanding is there's two ways to move forward. you can have a direct line from the pole if they are, you know, hanging on a pole. If it's underground, um it will be direct buried to the house. So, if you're on a if you're on a pole scenario, likely they'll hang it. It'll be an aerial connection, but the resident may have an option to go underground if they want come down the pole and underground to the house.

So, I have overhead from Exfinity. I don't want overhead from anybody else. I have to pay for the connection to come under my ground to get to my house to connect to their service.

That is a discussion that yes, you would have to have directly with Ziply whether you want to connect. Um I I don't know. We can ask them to speak to that if you would like as far as a structure, but this is just the franchise agreement to allow them to work within the city right away. Um, and I know that what I've seen from Easy is that these fiber facilities are in the rightway and then Easy has direct conversations. It sounds like sometimes easy will help install that direct connect, sometimes the residents pay, sometimes they don't. I It's hard to understand uh from a you know public works perspective because we're not involved in that. It's on private property. I think to get an agreement with them, we need to understand what the impact to the consumer is and what has to happen on their property or what um Ziply is is responsible to do it. If I wanted to get service from them, I don't want to pay for everything else to get to my house. It's in the It's in the rightway in front of my house, but I've got to pay to do all the structure to get it in my house. I'd like to know what their what their franchise agreement would incur. And I don't think I've seen that in the documentation that we have right now. So I think we're looking at this a little bit more pre more more prematurely than knowing what the impact would be on the citizens. Understood uh your point of view. I think that your situation is somewhat a specialized situation where you've got a a potential to have an aerial connection but you want to go underground. I don't think that would be the norm in the city. I don't think anybody on my block has an underground fiber optic into

their computer system. It was most of us come along with the overhead, you might say. Exfinity. Now we're changing from the Exfinity which they connected to the house and put in the house to a franchise that may be underground that I may have to dig up my driveway or how to do this.

And you would not have if if that was not agreeable to you to dig up the driveway or to pay for that connection underground, you would not be required to connect to Ziply or to Easy. I couldn't even choose to do that by the expense increased by their transit of the information through the ground to my house and opposed to the overhead.

So I I think there needs to be a little study and understanding of what the impact would be. I may I I I I live on threequarters of a mile, maybe a half mile street and I can't see how they would even try to make a profit putting one in and undergrounding it as opposed to providing that service without the general public or the enduser being required to pay for that connection. This is a little bit different than when we first started with fiber fiber optics. U it's just a little I'm trying to see what the future's going to bring and I believe it's going to bring more cost to the end user than it does than it has been in the present and present circumstances.

Understood. Um would council or the mayor like uh Ziply to speak to that talking point about cost of connection? I think it's sort of outside the purview of this of this ordinance but and it's if he wishes to he certainly may. Very good. Uh is there uh any other discussion from council? Yes, council member poor.

Yes. So I had some questions I was hoping for some elaboration on. Uh section 8 work in the rights away. Um says franchisee shall at all times post and maintain proper barricades, flags, flaggers, lights, flares, and other measures as required for the safety of all members of the general public and comply with all applicable safety regulations during such period of construction as required by the ordinances of the city. So, uh, can you elaborate on, uh, Zipley's kind of procedures, um, and timelines for correcting issues that they cause if they have issues similar to easy fiber that they need to rectify?

Uh, I don't think it would be in this work of the rightway section. Um so what this is saying is that essentially they have to have all safety measures in place. Um and we all know that EZ's had multiple stop work orders because their lack of safety protocol. They've also you know were removing one of their general contractors from the city. And so this the section 8 is referring to that um as far as keeping the safety and welfare of our residents um as uh top priority. As far as how long do they have to uh repair any damages, um that is in another section uh and I believe that it is 90 days. Uh uh so I think what the question is is how long is it going to take them to repair the both the individuals that spoke um during public comment period those sections are not completed yet which is why the repairs have not taken place and so what we need to do is close these out um and focus these fiber companies on one area at a time. Easy was allowed to open up quite a few tickets. Um we hadn't been through this process before and I think we learned a lot of lessons. So right now we've got multiple rightway uh permits, you know, on my desk that are being held until they close out some of these other areas. Um and that's how we will proceed in the future to minimize resident impacts. it's going to stretch out these fiber builds significantly because we are going to slow their progress through the city. Um, so I just want to make sure everybody understands that it is somewhat of a give and take. Uh, it'll take longer for people to be able to

connect to these fiber facilities, but the city will have more control over restoration and um just safety overall. Does that answer your question? Yeah, thank you. Okay,

Council Member Hall, did I see your hand? because I'm familiar with labor and industries and looking up contractors and um right now I do not see where NFC Northwest LLC it's saying that they're inactive. Um so somebody could speak to that. We want to make sure that you know we I I see Ze uh Ziply Fiber is there. It gives me their number. Um, there's two of them, but the the Northwest is says it's inactive with the number that I came up with.

Uh, okay. Um, and that is and we can address that since that's the next agenda item. Any Yeah, we could. We could. Yeah. So, any uh any further discussion on this agenda item? Both of these um paragraphs are in both of them identical. All right. Yeah. All right. Yes. Council Council Member Miles. Thank you, Mayor.

It's my understanding that we can as a council request a pause here. We can even request some additional studies, impact studies, safety studies, um saturation studies. Those were the three things in our right to further consider franchise agreements, safety, public interest, and saturation. And um I think the timing of this might be unfortunate for these two franchises that are requesting to come in, but I also recognize that they also had timing issues and corporate issues that effectively voided the agreements that we had with them previously. I don't think that the city is under any obligation to um feel obligated to honor those agreements when the company itself voided those agreements. So, um, I don't know how anyone else feels, but I just wanted to say that from my perspective, we might just want to press the pause button on fiber franchises for short time and do maybe maybe do some more studies.

Understood. Um, I will say that there's a significant cost with those studies and so we we would want to uh understand exactly how the city was going to would facilitate those. Um, but yes, I think that is a a fantastic idea. I will say that most of our unimproved shoulders are somewhere between 5 and 10 ft. Uh, we currently have one UT outside of our water which is mostly in the street. We have one um fiber in that five to 10 foot section which is what my feedback was last uh meeting about. Um I feel that we've got adequate rightway uh currently and also with Zipley's pull attachment agreement that they put forward um there there may not be as much impact to the rightways as we've seen with uh easy.

Thank you. And if I could just follow up on that, I if we have three different fiber franchises and they do end up going underground and they're in separate trenches,

is there a required space differentiation between the ditches? uh not fiber to fiber, although you know 6 inch to a foot would be ideal just to make sure that you know it doesn't hit a rock, go off off target and uh take out your competitor's fiber. And we could conceivably um hypothetically be looking at 12 to 18 months of constantly digging up the right ofways on our streets and in front of our residences with one company finishing up and then another company coming right in and there's no coordination and then we have other city infrastructure impacts on our streets. I mean, we could be living in a construction zone indefinitely. From what from what I pick up from this, I I love competition. I think competition is great. I don't um you know, I'm not opposed to that. I just don't want to be living in a construction zone. And I had one other question, too. Do the franchises pay for using the city right ofways other than the permit fees or is it just the permit fees?

Uh it is the permit fees and then there is a an kind of a nominal application fee that essentially covers legals expenses to review. So no, it's not a huge financial benefit to the city to be going through all of this. Not from a a city revenue standpoint. Uh the advantage is uh faster internet for the residents and options competition, right? Those are good benefits. I I don't deny that. Thank you. Uh I will say that there is a Thank you. Uh a pole rental agreement. So if they were to move forward on the polls, there's a small cost, but it it's by no means a revenue maker.

Thank you. Any additional discussion? Yes, Council Member Roberts. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. So, if the franchise agreement is approved, what is the time frame between the uh agreement being approved and actual work starting? Is there a time frame for that? We're we're never provided that at this franchise uh opening. We you know, I would love to get a schedule of their install, you know, before we go through this franchise process and that's just we are not given that information. It's not part of this packet,

right? I mean, the reason why I ask is if we're constantly inundated with, you know, Easy Fiber and then Ziply, obviously, there's a lot of fatigue and I'm I'm just being, you know, cognizant and aware of that and I'm hoping there's a little lapse maybe give people a little break. So, thank you.

Yeah. And and I think we are under a significant amount of fatigue. Um, which is, you know, why we've had these discussions lately. And so, that is absolutely a fair comment. Um, by slowing down where they're allowed to dig, we also reduce the impacts as a citywide. You know, we're we're not allowing two different crews to have uh lane closures on either side of a light and so you just go from one construction zone to the next or you try to go over to Taylor to avoid it, you get caught over there. So, we're trying to open one ticket now, work through it and uh and then close that out fully through restoration. Thanks.

Yes. All right. Anyone else? Yes, Council Member Whan.

That's a good topic to That was a good topic to talk about because the impact on the city of Milton with what was presently happening is far beyond what I think we ever thought was going to have to happen. Now to have two competing to do the same thing or coming in later and digging up the same hole that somebody else used, which is probably a potential in this circumstance. We need to be a little bit more smart. And I don't mean we're not smart, but a little learn to be smarter about how the impact of this type of changes in the city is taking place. Do I want to go through somebody else digging up 13th? No. I'm sorry. Do I want to get 13th repaired? Definitely. Do I want somebody to come in later and dig it up? No.

So, it there there's a there's there's like a rush to get all this stuff done, but the planning to get there, we may not have thought it through 100%. Nor may they have explained it 100% what could happen. So, we're we're not in a situation right now that it's very in very it's very difficult to get the general public to approve something that is been a pain in the ass. Excuse my language for the last 6 months. Mhm.

And there's no precise what's happening. I mean, you you drive down um Taylor and you see one guy with his feet out of the hole, with his head down in it, whatever the hell he's doing, it's not safe. And there was a lot of different examples going on. So, um are we moving too fast? Do we not know enough? Do we not explain exactly what we want this to look like and not negatively impact the citizens? 13th Avenue has been negatively impact for 5 months. Still not finished, but all there is is a wire in the ground. They don't go to anybody's house yet. Now, what's going to happen with that? Is it going to cut in the ground to everybody's property, or is it going to go in overhead? And so it it's just kind of foggy.

Yeah. No, I'm not going to support this agreement until there's some more information.

I do want to speak uh to one thing. Last week I attended I was going to bring this up at uh at the end, but I think now is appropriate. Uh I attended a UCCC meeting for underground contractors uh last week. That's not an organization that we typically lean in and work with, but I went because of the issues that we're having. And there was it was fairly full room. Uh Easy Fiber I believe had eight people there. Uh Forge Fi Forge Fiber uh one of our other franchises was there. Uh we had a lo couple locator representations and contractors. Um and everybody was kind of reeling from what's going on with these fiber installations right now. And because it's happening not just in Milton, it's happening all over and um in Washington. And what the takeaway is is that the 811 system for call-in locates was never designed to take on this amount of square footage. And so we are working in a broken system of what the 811 is allow able to provide locators and contractors. And so that's uh you know it's I'm leaning in on those discussions from now on because I really want to get it right for the city of Milton. But uh this is catching the amount of disturbance in the area that these contractors are working with these poor companies. Um is taking a huge impact on the region as a whole because there's not enough locators to provide accurate locates. PSC was there also their head of safety. He's going to come do a tailgate meeting with our shop. uh in the next couple weeks. Um but yeah, we're it's a it's an industrywide problem and while I would love, you know, I don't want to point the finger at easy, but they're a scapegoat that we've had some issues with, but there's a couple issues happening side by side

and the way that we can control that moving forward is control the pace at which we allow work to happen in our rideways. Yeah. Just just to add a little more information from me. Um, do we have a very complicated underground system? Is it documented very well, designed very well? And if you, somebody came in and said they want to put a cable here between Oak and Taylor on whatever street it is, can we define exactly where everything we have is and where it's located?

Uh, no. But we're not alone in that. We what we have is an archaic paper system that we are le we are onboarding into open gov which the council has invested significantly in. Uh I will be um at a conference next week talking with open gov about how we bring our 811 locates into our GIS mapping system to you know try to give our our team one more tool in the field to help give an accurate location. The other thing we're doing is anytime that they, you know, easy or F forge fiber or or Zip, please um find something that is unmarked, they're reporting that information back to us and Axel, who's our GIS coordinator, is then uh updating that information in our GIS maps. So to your point, we're getting there, but we're still in that position of we are taking all of our old paper maps and we're putting them into a a online format.

And that's appreciated because I I I being here 50 years, I I know a little bit about what's going on in the paper maps and yeah,

I think it's here. You write it down and it may not be and you probably experience a few that. But that's very important to do because this is this is the next step towards a much more complicated life and integration of services underground or or even overhead and so forth. So it's uh it's just something we want to do very right and I'm not sure you know being asked to uh franchise agreement for another company that I don't know enough about makes me uncomfortable. Thank you. Uh Council Member Turnis

uh last study session on Monday which I know you weren't here but um and Mr. new house can speak to this, but I believe that your company doesn't go below ground, which is one of the selling points for me is that we're not coming in and we're not digging up a whole bunch of more streets that it's above ground. And maybe you could speak to that. Yes, please. Yeah, please come up.

Everyone, Mayor White and council members, thanks for having me again this evening. Um, yes, Council Member, you weren't here. We talked a little bit um not necessarily the the differences, but um um just the way we operate as as a company, a Pacific Northwest company with a proud track record that we've been in this area, and we're very proud of that. Our our leadership all live in this in this area. This is home for us. We live in in in communities like this all over the Pacific Northwest. We've offices in Kirkland and Everett. Um and uh it's it's unique to us because again, this is home. And uh to to speak to some of the things that were mentioned here, the city is in charge. We only go as fast as you allow us to go. And our approach is um communicate, communicate, communicate. We don't do anything until we have a pre-construction meeting uh with your public works director. Um we review everything from um initial plans to that implementation, how we want to go about it. Is it underground? Is it aerial? And speaking out aerial, our preference is always aerial. Um, if we if we can do that, um, sometimes cities don't want us to do that. Uh, sometimes residents see it as more clutter and they don't want to see it overhead. Uh, they prefer to be underground, then then we will do that. Um, but you're in control. And the way we start too is always very slow. Maybe one permit, one job. We want to make sure that we're doing everything correctly in terms of the build, in terms of the implementation, in terms of one of the most important parts which has dominated a lot of the conversation is the restoration. What I've seen in this industry too often is that vendors get too far ahead of themselves. And it's all about, and I understand it because a lot of them get paid by how many feet they get done, you know, every day, every week, etc. But the problem is

that they forget that you're impacting real people's lives, right? Or there are safety concerns. Well, safety is our number one concern always. We never want to leave a pothole open or or any kind of equipment or anything that anybody could get hurt over. We want to make sure that it's always safe, but most importantly that we're timely with our restoration because again, we know the impact that it's having not only aesthetically, but functionally as well to people's properties. So, we always follow up and we follow up very quickly. We have um a very robust uh customer service and complaintbased uh portal where anybody can uh put in a ticket. we will get back to that individual within 24 hours always and then we will put a plan together to fix whatever that might be. Uh maybe the the lawn got damaged or flowers got damaged or um maybe in some cases it's it's it's it's something else but we will always do the right thing and we'll always leave it better as good or better than the way we found it. Now I forget the question that you had over here council member way that you wanted me to uh uh to to speak to was it uh about excuse me

the cost

oh the cost um just like I think you said exfinity there's there's no cost to you other than the service so the service is connected you're paying your $35 it can even go as low as $20 if you take advantage of some programs that we have and and other things because we do have a lot of discounted programming or uh discounted um uh prices um for those uh um individuals um maybe lower income individuals that um need obviously um need um internet service for education, for health, uh for their job. So, we want to make it as accessible as possible. We also don't do um any uh background checks or credit checks. Anybody that can pay the 20 or $35 a month, they're going to get service from Ziply Fiber, which is unique in the in the industry as well. We we don't do contracts. As long as you're paying for it and you're happy with the service, we're happy to give it to you. And we have speeds up to 50 gig, which is the fastest internet speeds in America. Now, we just recently just uh received that award. So, it's a very superior service. Thank you for your question. Is there any other questions I can answer at all?

Since I'm up here, sorry. I I don't have a question, but I have a comment. So, I like what you're selling. I appreciate what you're saying. we haven't, you know, we've heard that from other companies as well. So, please, by all means, stand to what you're you're saying here and respect the city when you're doing the work because I speak for the entire city. Trust me, everybody's really upset about the previous work being done. So,

yeah. No, I I I appreciate that and I appreciate all the feedback that I've heard, not just tonight, but previous Monday as well. Um, so um all of that is taken to heart. Believe me, I've shared everything that I've learned here with my team already um about uh what has happened and what we need to be cognizive of and making sure. But some of that is already taken just in terms of the way we operate um based on what what I'm hearing in terms of the communication. Like we go out to every household and we hit them at least twice letting them know what's going to happen and what the process looks like and when we're going to do the restoration. And if the restoration is not done to your standard, we give them a process to make sure that we fix it for them. So that communicate communication piece is really important. Um because too often if they don't, you know, if a resident doesn't hear uh what what the issue is or how they go about fixing it or why we're even out there, then they're left to, you know, what's going on here. And I completely understand that. So, we always want to overcommunicate and making sure that they understand the process, they understand how long we're going to be there, and then they understand if they're not happy with the restoration that we're going to get that restoration addressed as soon as possible. And a lot of times I give out my own personal business card to people when I walk the the the the areas and is everything going well? Are you happy? Is there anything we can do better? Or is there something you want to draw my attention to? We do that all the time. I do that personally myself because I want because everybody, not just in Milton, but anywhere else. Anybody's a potential customer and our brand is obviously important to us and we want to make sure we live up to it, especially because we're a Pacific Northwest company. You know, that's really important to us. Um, this is home for us and we want to make sure everyone has a good experience. Thanks for the uh the reassurance and you know um unfortunately like everyone

else has said you're falling behind you know easy fiber so you're taking the brunt of everybody's frustrations judge us on our own merits but yes I totally understand so anyway we look forward to working with you appreciate your uh your comments thank you council member I appreciate it Jared can you speak to NFC and their LNI status I see that they're uh they've got they have no debarments but it looks like they've have a a recently opened uh account with LNI. They're they're currently working with Ziply, correct? In Washington State.

So, um yeah, let me explain that relationship. So, NFC Northwest and there and Ziply Fiber Pacific and basically NFC Northwest is kind of our funding arm because construction and developing a network is very expensive proposition. Um so basically um under this model NFC Northwest owns and invests in the physical fiber uh infrastructure for long-term investment and resilient network assets which is really important. And then Ziply Fiber serves um basically serves the businesses and serves the residents in terms of delivering that internet service, operating and maintaining the network and then owning the the the back hall. Um, and thank you for putting some of these uh comments in your uh in your uh introduction to this as well. So, everything is done through Ziply Fiber. Residents, businesses never have to deal or even know about NFC Northwest. There's one point of contact for every for your for your for your bill, for your service, whatever that might be. It all comes through uh Ziply Fiber. So together the the two franchises establish like clear lines of responsibility and ensures uh regulatory compliance which is obviously very important and then public protection and it delivers the benefits of a modern fiber network to residents and businesses not only to Milton but any other city that would that would have us. So that's the relationship. Thank you. You're welcome.

Yes. Uh, I didn't know I've spoken. I didn't know if anybody else had. I have closing question. Uh, look, it looks like it's just you, Bob. Uh, council member Wheran, have you ever met Craig McCau? Craig McCall? Yes, I have. Actually, I used to work with him. Oh, wow. In aviation, communications, so forth. Just to give you a little connection. Gotcha. It's a fun time in my life. Absolutely. You were on the cutting edge. one. All right, we we still have some more uh we have uh several agenda items ahead of us. So, uh thank you. Yeah, thank you so much, sir.

Thank you. All right, it's been moved by uh Council Member Turnis and seconded by Council Member Whan to approve ordinance 2138-26 adopting Ziply Fiber Pacific LLC franchise agreement. All in favor? I.

Any opposed? Nay. Okay, motion passes uh 6 to one. All right, moving on to item 6C, which is on 59 of your packet. It's the franchise agreement with NFC Northwest LLC, ordinance 2139-26. And this one is also going to be presented by our public works director, Madden. Thank you, Mayor, Council. Um, as we've just heard, this is the second part of Zipley's uh installation process and ownership separation. Uh, the recommended action at this time is move to approve ordinance 213926, adopting NFC Northwest LLC franchise agreement.

I'd entertain a motion at this time. Yes, Council Member Turnis. I move to approve franchise agreement with Ziply Fiber Pacific LLC for fiber optic internet services ordinance 2138-26. Second the motion the wrong one is point of order. I'm sorry. Point of order. Yes, please state your point of order. Didn't we already do ziply? This is

Oh, thank you. I move to approve the franchise agreement with NFC Northwest LLC for fiber optic internet services ordinance 2139-26. All right. Second the motion. All right.

Council member Turnis, would you like to speak to your motion? just that I approve it. Thank you. Council member Roberts, would you like to speak to your second?

Um, not necessarily to the motion, but I did have a uh question. So, um, council member voted nay earlier um on the franchise vote. So, I was just curious, is there ways to handle that different? Could we amend that or in some other fashion? because obviously there was a extreme concern uh you know wanting additional studies and things of that nature. So I was just wondering if there's a process we can do I know it's very I guess lengthy but is there a way we could kind of uh address that without just saying

um at this at this point since the ordinance has passed um it understand we can't we can't ways to retract motions from my understanding so or vote other ways but God am I mistaken I'm I'm under the impression you can do that if there's enough council members to amen you would have to you would have to make a new motion correct in order to do that we can't yeah we can't undo what has already been done okay sorry to uh derail the meeting so all right any uh any further discussion on this motion Council member Miles,

I I don't want to state the obvious, but since council member Hall pointed out that this company is inactive and there are some other concerns pending this company, I'm not sure it would be responsible for us to approve a a franchise with a company that we have concerns with and that may not be an active company in the state of Washington. Madden.

Uh there may be other ways to go about this. Um but one way may be to um approve with an amendment that no business will be approved or conducted by NFC until uh their LNI profile has been updated. But I I think it's a fairly new partnership, which is why the LNI sheet reads the way it does. So I I feel like I'm in a position of advocating for these franchise agreements, and that is not where I want to come from. This is a responsibility that public works has to bring forward. Um, and I am happy with whichever direction council sees fit to move forward. All right. Any uh any additional Yes. Council member Hall,

could you speak to that? Um Elani, because they could be behind, you know.

Yeah, it could be just a a paperwork issue. I I am not um um uh privy to that side side of the business, but um but if I if it is an error, I will make sure that that is uh addressed immediately. Um, as as the public works director mentioned, if you wanted to have an amendment that you we can't go forward until that's addressed, that's fine. But I'm I'm almost positive that that is not the case, that we are are are inactive in in any way because um uh I I've been um do doing these franchise agreements with a lot of municipalities. Uh this has not come up um at at all. So um uh so I'm not quite sure. I would I I would have to look into it. I guess because it hasn't come up, but it hasn't come up at any other city or county actually um that that we've had these discussions. So, okay. Thank you.

Yes, Council Member Poor. I had a I had a question for you if you don't mind. So since this is a separate company but a partnership, um can you kind of speak to whether you need them to install here or um whether you can like if we disapproved of this company, could you still operate and

it's it's like a package deal because NFC is is is part of the Ziply family and they're like our funding arm to the uh to to um uh to really help us build out our network. Um so, um yeah, the two pieces uh go go together. Um and that's partly because, you know, uh building um uh America's fastest fiber network is an expensive proposition. Um doing it uh across all over Washington state and Idaho, Oregon, etc. Um so this is a way for us to to do it and do it do it the right way. Um so that's that's the the route that we chose.

Thank you. And since it is a separate company, um, do you guys vouch for them that they will have the same customer service and rectifying all issues? You you would they no one would ever interact with NFC. They just own the assets of of of that part of the network. All customer service, all all um uh billing, everything is done through Ziply Fiber. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. You bet. Thank you. Any further discussion? All right. I apologize to the audience. I I noticed the last two items. I didn't ask if there was anyone that wanted to speak to the action item. Yes, please come forward.

Susan Johnson Milton. I'm a geek. I love fiber. We headed back east and I'm glad it's coming here. You don't have to buy into the service. So there's no cost to an a citizen unless they say I want the service. So there's no worry on that. As to them being the history of the company very quickly, it's a Canadian bell bought out in August 1st of 25 is when everything was happening with Easy Fiber. It's an American communications company, but they're both Northwest is a foreign LLC. They both have UPI numbers. They're both registered. I did see that um Easy Fiber, I mean, I'm sorry, Zippy Fiber has an expiration with uh their UBI code uh of 2023. So, I didn't see anything after that. Um I did find that um they uh the mother company in the US is registered with the secretary of state but Ziply itself right now it's the time limit of the change that's going on. So there was a big buyout and so it's the whole group comes out of can Canadian bill become American foreign investments foreign element LLC's. So I just I think their rep is just like any others. There's hits or miss anywhere. I believe slowing down is what our public works has said. We just we learn from easy fiber. I think it gives advantages to the city because if we get more younger people, they want fast internet and Exfinity right now has the market on it

and so the more competition we have, it's better for uh the citizens. Their f their definition the definition of the FCC broadband definition is 100 MBPs down and 20 MPBS's up. So that's the criteria from the communications FCC and they give the rules and I will tell you when I was on council the one thing I always thought what is the risk of the city being sued. It wasn't their fault that they were bought out by another company. But you always have to have that in the back of your mind when you make a decision. And I think public works w learned. We've learned and nothing should be started in the fall in the winter. I'm sorry, you know, and not everything at once. So, um, we're old city, but we still have things to learn. But the more internet we get, fibers, I wish everything was underground. But anyway, that's just the research I did.

Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. Uh, any other comments from the audience? Yes. question. No, just to this one. Yeah. Uh going forward. It was. And like I said at the beginning, I apologize for for missing the public comment on that. Let's finish this one first. Anyone else want to speak on this particular item? Yes. Come forward. Give your uh name and say

Whan Milton Washington. Uh thank you for the opportunity to comment. Uh first I want to say thank you to staff uh with what's been going on in our rightway. It has to be a steep learning curve that's been extremely painful. And I just want to uh thank staff for their willingness to advocate for the community and uh learn the lessons and work forward from there. Uh I appreciate the comments from the representative from Ziply Fiber. Uh but I would love to learn if it's possible how this agreement franchise agreement prior has changed uh with the lessons that the city has learned. Uh, are there things in there like is there a full-time uh uh pro uh a full-time project manager that Milton could hire that is watching what is happening in our rightway right away and a full-time basis. I think it's pretty tough for a project manager to be managing six projects and then the proliferation of construction going on in Milton. Um it seems to me that that could be uh something maybe done with easy, but certainly is that an option in the franchise agreement. Uh and um preconstruction documentation I think is another really important thing in managing the project. So there isn't this he sheds he said she said about um what things were like before the damage was done to try to get things made right. Thank you for the opportunity to make the comment. Thank you.

Thank you. Any further comments on uh on this action item. All right. It's been moved by Council Member Turnis and seconded by Council Member Roberts uh to approve ordinance 2139-26 adopting NFC Northwest LLC franchise agreement. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Nay. Motion passes six to one. Did you want to come in and and and speak on the the truck issue

you from Almarez resident Milton just like to speak to the truck ordinance practically right let's just say that this happens you would have to put the signs in F and all outside of Milton because if you have a class A like I have a class A although I don't know all the truck routes because that's not a part of the class A curriculum is to have knowledge of where all the truck routes are. You would have to be on outside of all the city streets and have them a way to egress out from coming into Milton, right? Just like if you were to cross a bridge and the bridge was too low, you need to be able to egress out of it. Second, Milton Way used to be a truck route if I'm not if I'm not mistaken. So that poses its own problem. And third, practically you would have to pull over every truck that was above the 10,000 threshold or you would have to rely on your stereotype, right? And that's not some sort of publicity that the Steve Milton or the police department is really going to want to get involved in. And speaking to that again, when you are following people or following them to their job site or asking them where they are, where they're coming from, what you're not doing is arresting bad behavior and responding to emergencies in the field. There's a lot of residents here who are truckers and they park their rig in their in their house or at their in their residence. And so is it expected for them every time that they drop off their trailer and park their truck in their house or to work on for whatever reason that you're going to pull them over or they're going to be cited or you're just going to have to rely on your officers to recognize that person, right? And that again poses a problem because if you pull one person over because an officer knows them and they're part of the club, then the other person may see that as being stereotyped and getting into this ticket. this isn't a problem, right? We we're gonna have a horseshoe over there that's going to divert that traffic that that you're

concerned about, right? They want to get from 161 to the five. And that's exactly what we see down there with that horseshoe with the the state of Washington is performing. So, we're finding problems for solutions. Just Thank you, sir.

Moving on to item 6D. uh rightway acquisition offering uh on page 91 of your packet and uh can be presented by public works director Madden. Thank you, mayor, council. Uh the item before you tonight uh is for the approval uh and the authorization to allow the city to initiate offers and finalize offers with the associated property owners for acquired said rightway um along 23rd. And I'll have some visuals here for everyone. Um that will be brought to a future council meeting. It's on our agenda for the first meeting in May. And the hope is uh that if council grants public works the authority uh to to finalize these documents um that we will be able to acquire this small section right away on each of these residents. um finalize it in the first meeting in May and then we'll be in a position to uh go out to bid with plans that have already been completed for the northern section and I will get into that more right now. So this item has seven parcels uh for consideration and this is a very busy map. This is uh our parcel map that I look at probably 20 times a day but it shows you where these parcels are located. So, five of the parcels are at the northern edge. They're actually at the King County border um on Alder Street. And what we have there is we have a a street that uh essentially functions as a two-way street uh but it is maybe one and a quarter lane of required width to have two vehicles going past each other. Um, it's been a long-standing subpar street. And what we would like to do is acquire the rightaway required to make two 11-oot lanes and put in curb gutter uh storm

facilities and sidewalk. This section of sidewalk will then connect um Alder Street, which is where we have uh high density of elder care um and and some other facilities up in that northern region of the city. It'll connect them through sidewalks uh directly to Milton Way, which will take them to to parks, commercial infrastructure, and so it's part of this overall buildout. Um so that's five parcels to the north. Uh the two parcels to the south about four or five months ago, we brought a rightaway acquisition to council. We'd been negotiating with the property owner and we acquired 680 line or square feet of her parcel at this time. The two parcels that we have at the southern end are just north of the church across from the lake. Uh Salvation Baptist Church just across from the lake and those are 10 ft wide. So, getting up to the northern section, uh what this will do is um as I said, it'll widen the street uh but only to two lanes. Um we working through the design with the homeowners. Uh we started this discussion years ago. Uh last summer we were in a position to make an offer and we had the design underway. We had a couple of residents um want to kind of negotiate that price. So we halted the project that time. We also had one resident who was not interested in selling. So because we had potential to go down an imminent domain path because this is a a safety improvement needed for the city, we decided to take a pause um and go through the appraisal process for these five houses. that appraisal process um it went through uh last summer and in the fall we started negotiating that

price. We shared the appraisal. We shared the designs with all the homeowners. We had meetings um with each homeowner. We took their feedback um and we added the addition of some traffic control uh to reduce speed essentially a large speed hump in this area. Um we also took away the on street parking that was proposed and that was from feedback directly with the neighbors. So at that time, two of the parcels um their rightway that the city needed to acquire was reduced um because they we no longer needed the on street parking and that is the two homes to the south there in that picture. So when we went through the appraisal process, um the appraiser went through a rounding uh exercise and you can see that on uh page 95 for example um of 146. And what it said is, you know, this they felt that the square footage was $25 a square foot. And then they went through a rounding exercise. And what that did is it came out with a variety of costs per square feet because of the rounding process. So we came up with everything from 1742 per square foot to 26.94. Now we we had the resident come and speak to council about his desire to to make a one-way street. Um that resident has since agreed to move forward with this effort. So imminent domain is is may not be required. Um but uh when we went through that imminent domain process and we well we started to and speaking with legal you really need to have an airtight defense and you need to make the highest offer reasonable to to those residents to go through imminent domain otherwise the city potentially

would be on the hook for uh legal costs of of this of this party. So at that time what we did is we spoke with legal. We looked at all of these different costs per square foot because they were being evaluated at kind of different rates. As I said, low-end 1742, high-end 26.94. And we said, rather than continue to do these appraisals, uh, and spend 3 to four grand every time that we do one, let's take our old information, let's go with the highest square footage price that we know is defensible if we have to go through an imminent domain process and let's make that offer. So, the numbers that you see in front of you today are a result of that. It is the highest uh not average but the highest square footage price. And you know rather than spend the city's resources on additional appraisals that may not get us what we need, it's not going to make the resident more happy to find out that someone else thinks that their dollar per square foot should be less. Um and it's just going to keep this project kind of lingering. So that is where we are today. Now, we've got these five parcels to the north, and as I said, that's going to connect uh the sidewalk from Alder Street uh down to 23rd, which will go all the way to Milton Way. Um and then our next area is down just north of Salvation Baptist. Now, the only thing connected about these seven or these two areas is they're both on 23rd and they're both part of this overall corridor strategy of building out sidewalk on one kind of uh thoroughare and corridor and kind of creating a a skeletal structure of our sidewalks. Um because we're a city built on a hill, so we likely don't need sidewalks on every hill going up and down. What we need to do is make an intelligent design and create a corridor of sidewalks that allows people to get

from north to south, east to west. So this 23rd is is part of that build. As I said, we acquired the parcel to the south um about four months ago and the two indiv Miss McNally who came and spoke, thank you. Um, what we did is we took that highest dollar square footage price and applied it to her resident. And that square footage price is at 26.94. In negotiation with the neighbor to the south, uh, the price there for the city was $1470 a square foot, 10,000, and that was an an a price proposed by the resident. And so, um, you know, I feel like we could go back and do more appraisals, but as stated, they're 3 to 4,000. Uh, if we get a property owner that just says absolutely not, um, I feel like we're in a position on those northern properties to go through the imminent domain process down here, we would need to stop, uh, do a full appraisal that, you know, takes into account views. Um, but with that said, the property to the south was significantly less and from what I've seen, the appraisal dollar per square foot would come less than what we're currently offering. And that was by design in case we had to acquire these parcels through imminent domain. Um, what Miss McN said about 10 feet. That is accurate. So, her front porch, um, what we've got here, and I've got some more slides. get rid of that. So, this is the parcel that the city has already acquired. Uh you that's going to be hard to see, but that's what 10 ft looks like on this map and an overall impact to the parcel. Now, as Miss McN

stated, her house is very close to the front. Um, I've got another image that will show that, but as far as overall impact, that is what the city is looking to acquire. What that will do is it will make a consistent sidewalk, planter strip, and bike lane south of the skate park. Uh, we've got one little area next to the wetland that we still need to acquire and work on. Um, but we would have that consistent bike lane planner sidewalk all the way on 23rd. That's what we're trying to build. So people, a rider or a user knows what is coming. It's not uh sometimes there's a bike lane, sometimes there's not. I got to go up on the sidewalk. So we just want to be consistent and that's what led to that 10 ft acquisition request. Um so I am uh the item before you tonight. Here's another view of Miss McN's parcel and just kind of the impacts and which I acknowledge. Uh that is a sidewalk that's you know significantly fairly close to the resident. Um I live downtown Sumar. We walk a lot and there are many houses that are about this far from the sidewalk setback. Um I think it's good for the community. Uh we have a school to the south and this would allow sidewalk access and and bike routes uh to the Salvation Baptist uh early learning facility or or school that will be coming um in the next couple years. So that is what is before us tonight. Uh, as stated, what this authorization would allow is the city to initiate offers um to associated property owners for the acquired said right away. And if we have a property owner who absolutely we're at a a logger head and we can't make progress uh at

that point we would go through the appraisal process and then potentially the imminent domain if we felt that it was necessitated by public safety. Yes. Council member Cedar. I move to authorize initial offering of acquiring right of way along Pierce County for the seven parcel numbers listed on page 91 of our packet along 23rd Avenue. Point of order requested. Yes. Second. Second.

Yeah. It's been moved by council member Cedar and and uh and second by council member Hall. We'll we'll come to you as soon as as soon as they speak. Did you have a point of order? Okay. What's your point of order? If if we want to amend this before we vote on it or discuss it, do we do that now before we make the motion and second the motion? After. It's not a point order. That's a question. Thank you. Okay. Question about the order of things. Okay. Bring up that question. It's after. After. Yes. Okay. Council member Cedar, would you like to speak to your motion?

Yes. Thank you. Um, consistent with my motion, I am moving to approve this because Milton has a for years now said that we are committed to sidewalks and improving the walkability of our city. Uh, we have recently reiterated both in our um long-term planning and in as recently as Saturday at our council meetings that we want to be the most attractive city for families. Um, and doing things like this is hard. It has real impacts and I'm aware of that. It it not something I do um or want to support without some hesitancy. I don't like that. But for purposes of consistency of our planning and because there are other places in our city where we are going to have to make these same hard choices and most notably I think of 28th which is a stretch of that has even worse right of way than 23rd. this is what meets our goals. This is what we've stated our goals are. And if we want to stay true to that, we have to make those hard choices.

Milton has a lot of old houses. I happen to live or grew up in one that has things about it that are just not easy to solve. So, for instance, in along our road, we have a stretch of ditch that simply will always exist. You cannot walk up and down Emerald Street without walking in the road because of the way the water was laid out half a century ago. And it will always be like that in parts of Milton. Unfortunately, the parcel that we heard about in the citizens comment tonight is one of those where the house was built based on the old street and so much has changed in Milton that now it finds itself close to the right of way. But that is the city's right of way. And if we have to make a hard choice to get to the outcomes that we've stated we want for the city of Milton, sometimes it means things like this. So I don't have any questions for you. Director Madden, I appreciate the work on this. Um and I appreciate you addressing the discussion about the one way which um you know I think there were some alternatives that didn't pan out in the planning. So I think this is the best solution that maintains our goals for long range planning. Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Hall, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, it is difficult and when we talk Saturday on the retreat um you know but again we have somebody that comes in that you know personally so it it does pull at your heartstrings. Also pulls at my heartstrings is that is a street that will be used by kids. That's by the school that's by the skate park. That's by the church. Um, I'm about safety. I really am and about our kids. Um, so that's why I support it. Thank you. Any further discussion? Yes, Council Member Turnis.

I just want to say thank you for this work on this and it's very generous. I feel like that you've presented this in a very generous way, but I personally my issue with that street, I've always been scared to walk down that street. It is there's no safe way to walk down that street. So, I am thankful that you have this proposition before us. Thank you, Council Member Roberts.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, so I agree with u uh Council Member Cedar's sentiment as far as making hard decisions. Um, so that being said, is there any additional compensation or consolation we could do for residents that have sidewalk 10 from the front house or front door, excuse me. Um, I'm not sure what would appease that. I don't know if some kind of barrier of some sort. I mean, I don't know how we could, you know, kind of ease the pain, so to speak. Mhm.

Uh there are we're happy to work with the homeowners. We worked with all the homeowners on the north side. Um speaking with Miss McN's neighbor, uh he had a couple areas that he wanted, you know, graded out when we were there that are, you know, 3 ft away. No problem. We'll we're happy to provide those, you know, takes 10 minutes or five minutes with the right piece of equipment. We'll be there. We'll be building. Um, so as far as is there additional room to negotiate, I I feel like this is the city's best offer that we should uh pursue. It was the highest uh overall uh cost per square foot of of all of the acqu or the appraisals, you know, that have taken place. Um, so I do feel like it's our best offer. The other thing is it's a very odd position to be in that negotiating role when you've got two different neighbors there and you know it's a sidewalk project for the street. You know I want to think of it holistically and I want to give everybody the best offer. You know I don't want to pinch pennies at the cost of residents. Um, and so I I do feel like it's our best offer. But if the answer is no, we they think they can do better at that point, we would stop on those lower parcels um and do the appraisal. And if it came back less, our offer would be less. Um, we would just be out the three to $4,000 for that appraisal process.

Council member Mouse. And thank you. And for the record, I also support sidewalks, right? Um it is a a ne necessity, but when I went through the packet and I saw that everyone was getting the same compensation per square foot, but not everyone is being impacted to the same uh percentage. it. Um, couple of questions come out of that. You said that you paid for some appraisals. Did you appraise anything on the lakeside that had a view or were the appraisals all on north of Milton Way?

Uh, all of those appraisals were on the north side of Milton Way. the uh the 1470 per square foot for the acquisition to the south of Mrs. McN's parcel that was proposed by the by the previous owner. So, we're happy to stop do some appraisals there. Uh I will say that you know while the front is heavily impacted those are long lots and so the overall impact I'd say we saw we're seeing a greater impact to the overall parcel in the north than we are to these ones to the south because of the size of the parcels.

I think when it comes to fair market value um there are ways without paying for an appraisal and I had an appraisal recently. They're only $990. I uh for the ones that you know I'm familiar with. So 2 or 3,000 I kind of maybe that's more than one parcel being appraised. But fair market value I think needs to be firmly established either by an appraisal or by two or three. Just not treating every property the same. Um, and then I had a question about the right of way itself. For the families that are selling the 10 ft of land to the city, does the right of way go from like the middle of the street back 20 feet? Is that the right of way? Or will the right of way shift and change? Is it from the edge of the sidewalk or the middle of the street? How do you define the right of way for the record?

Yeah. uh that there's a reason that these segments of missing sidewalk have been missing for the last 25 years and it's two-part reason. One is money. Uh we didn't have the money to build them. The other one was the rightway is not consistent anywhere in the city. And so I'd love to be able to give you an answer because it' make my job a lot easier. Uh saying that there was consistent rightaway. It is I I'd be happy to sit down with a parcel viewer and Angelie can speak to this also, but we have um we haveund almost 20-year-old city that was built on the rightways were built for a logging community and so they are not consistent anywhere which most of these sidewalk sections that we need to build out will have some type of rightaway acquisition with them because of this. So is it potentially

there be a new um a new imminent domain in the future on the same parcel that would encroach right up to the front door.

So no yeah so right ofway is from property line to property line. So the in this case um you know the property line on the you know if we're looking at the northern half the property lines on the west are not changing we're just adding 10 ft on the east. So if you look if you go to like the county um they have a GS mapping you're going to see those property lines um they're in gray. So when we talk about rideway, it's property line to property line, what'sever's in there. So that could include the street, it could include sidewalks. A lot of times people think it's their yard because we have no sidewalks, but if you actually look at where their property line is, um, a lot of times it is 10 ft back. In these cases, it's, you know, it's different. Um, but that that's how you, you know, at some point along when they created the neighborhoods, there was a streets and they made the grid system. there was parts that were dedicated to the city for rideofway and it's if you look at the maps with the county um how they determine that is it's property line to property line. So, I hope that helps. And it could be various, like I said, it could be various distances because different things were dedicated at different times.

And I would love to get the contact information of the appraiser. Uh we can do that offline, but it's incredibly difficult and uh expensive. And that's, you know, 3 to 4,000 per parcel. Yeah. And maybe it's because it's municipal, maybe it's just a different format that they have to follow, but it's uh it's a lengthy endeavor and expensive. Thank you. Yes, council member Poor.

Uh thank you for explaining that stuff. So, uh did I hear correctly that the appraisal that happened that kind of gave the the high end happened on the north side?

Correct. We we did uh almost 13,000 of appraisals for those parcels on the north side. There's five of them right together. Um the only other appraisal that we've done in city limits is down by Edgewood with a a decommissioned water facility. And so this is not something that we do on a regular basis. We had some uh rightaway acquisition included with Porter Way that all went through an engineering firm and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars uh for them to negotiate on the city's behalf. And so that's I I felt like we had uh got a a range from you know 1470 on the unappraised side to you know 17 to $26. Um and that's why I was kind of being consistent across the board. But if council would like to either approve, you know, our our authority to make these offers, we can always work if the resident doesn't want the offer or wants to get an appraisal. Um, we can go back to the drawing board. Absolutely. On those southern two parcels.

Thank you. Um, so the north ones is the five, right? Correct. I I really like that we're offering the top end to all of them. I think as a homeowner, I would appreciate that. I also uh have a little bit of experience in real estate and so I know that home to home, land to land could be wildly different values, right? Um, looking at your picture, uh, yeah,

it looked like the south ones are close to some water and there might be a view from that land to that water, right? So, if that land has a water view, that could affect the value of it. It can also a little bit more unduly affect the homeowners because people who are looking at the water as they walk by might be standing there longer which might make them feel some kind of way of do I need to feel like this person is going to, you know, stay here for a long time. Are they going to are they here for the view? Are they here for my house or what? Um, so since we took the appraisal from the north side, I feel that that's appropriate for the north side uh homes, but I feel like it could be beneficial to separate these two. Um, talking about a uh doing an amendment to this. Could we approve the prices for the north ones and then allow you to kind of uh look into maybe appraising or whatever negotiations might need to happen separately for the south ones if there is that. If council moves forward and approves uh the authorization for the city to initiate offers uh nothing stops us from halting on this south end. I will say that that 10 feet in front of their uh their home um you know this is somewhat of a best case scenario because there's no vertical elements that are going to end up blocking their view. There's no on street parking where people can block it. It's also not buildable. So it's not like you have a empty parcel that the view is taken into account for. Uh the overall property value may be more. Um and we will stop on these two parcels.

we'll go back do the appraisal. You know, my fear is that it comes back lower and we have to make a lower offer, but that's what it is. Okay. So, I think if what I'm hearing is that uh if they do appraise it at a lower value, then you'd have to go based off of that. You should. Yeah. Okay. Um maybe if somebody if somebody has something to say in the public comment phase of that they could speak to whether that's something they would you know whether they would not like that or you know think that that could be advantage to go with what is already presented.

I don't think we would have to go with the new appraisal. Um, but if it was lower, you know, maybe we would make the same offer of the the 26 uh 94. The city would just be out that appraisal money, but we would have peace of mind knowing that it was accurately appraised and we gave fair market value, which I think is a good stance for the city. Okay. Thank you. And did I hear you correctly that that this just authorizes u the city to make those offers? Correct. Doesn't require them to be accepted. Correct. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any further discussion? All right. It's uh it's been moved by Council Member Cedar and seconded by Council Member

Point of Order. Oh, I'm sorry. Again, thank you. This is an action item. Is there anyone from the audience that would like to speak on on this issue? Yes, please come up.

I do approve of sidewalks. In fact, I told Dustin at the time he came out, "We definitely need those sidewalks. It just doesn't seem fair to me, excuse me, that I'm losing twothirds of my yard and somebody else is losing 10 feet of their one acre frontage for the same price." And it just doesn't seem fair. I mean, P and I both have homes close to the road. They've been old homeless for many years, and we know things aren't fair. But it doesn't seem fair to us to accept a $17,000 value for our homes when others are getting a much larger value for their 10 feet of theirs because they have more property. It's just it's it's almost like apples and oranges. I have no problem with sidewalks. I really encourage them. But just to see the value you're putting on my property, his property versus what you're going to be paying other people for their property with much larger properties. It's not a good concession. It's just not fair. And I won't accept the offer. But that's something that you all have to deal with, I guess. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience who'd like to speak?

Yeah. Um I'm Janette Brashier. I'm Joann's daughter. I live in Edgewood. Um but I will say that I just wanted to point out when you're looking at references of um how much from an accepted offer that was just the house south of my mom's. Um you just also do need to realize that that is a noninhabited home and it's owned by someone who's flipping the home. So, they're just looking for some, well, in my opinion, some quick cash to to help um bridge the gap. So, just know that that accepted offer was someone um who is not a community member and will not be a community member. So, just wanted to point that out.

Anyone else like uh would like to speak to this item? Okay. Thank you for the point of order. Uh it's been uh moved by council member Cedar and uh seconded by council member Hall to authorize initial offering of a quarry and ride ofway along Pierce County. Uh the parcel the seven parcels uh noted uh in the packet on 23rd Avenue. Um all in favor? I I All opposed? Opposed.

Okay. Uh item passes 6 to one. All right, we are almost at nine o'clock, which is when we're supposed to be ending our meeting. Um Angelie, how much time do you need to present your item? um taking into account. So this is a pretty indepth um proposal recommendation from the planning commission. Um so I was going to introduce it tonight, try to explain it best I can. We were going to hold a public or we scheduled a public hearing for um the first meeting in May. Um, we don't have to take action on it. Well, we don't have to take action on it. You know, that's flexible. But, um, we could definitely, um, make sure that I was thinking if tonight went really well, then maybe we'd pull a little public hearing and take action on the same night. At this point, I would say we would take action at the the following meeting, whatever whatever that would be, what the 18th. Um, so we could not introduce it all at all tonight or I could try to do sort of a brief introduction um with the idea that we would get more in depth on May 4th.

I'm just trying to to get your best guesstimate on how much time you need. So the council presentation wise 10 to 15 minutes. Um, I suspect there'll be lots of questions, but I could at least present it and then we could Okay. Would somebody like to to make a motion to extend the meeting? I would say probably 30 minutes to be safe. Uh, I actually have a different motion. Okay. Go ahead. Um, which I'll make right now. Uh, I move to move agenda item six to withdraw agenda item 6E and to have it reintroduced at the planning director, planning manager's discretion at a future meeting.

I second that motion. All right. Would you like to speak to your motion? I think we're out of time. This is a substantial topic. Okay. Would you like to speak to your second? Um, I know we'll have a lot of questions, so um, I think we should all handle at the same time. Okay. Uh any further discussion? All right. All in favor? I I opposed. All right. Motion passes. Uh so we'll No. Can we move on to council report? Yes. And may I'd ask uh I would also move to extend the council meeting until 9:10 uh to facilitate the rest of the agenda. Okay. Uh second motion. All right. Any discussion? All in favor? I

I Okay, meeting is extended for 10 additional minutes. Um, council reports. Council member Roberts.

Uh, thank you, Mayor. Um, so at the PCRC meeting the other day, we had Ryan Melo talk from the uh Pierce County Council. Also too, we had Sheriff Keith Swank from Pier Pierce County speak as well. Um, Ryan Melo was more or less just indicating all the activities Pierce County is involved with. some of the homelessness uh the pit count uh the UG which is the unified or excuse me urra the unified regional approach for homelessness. Um and along those lines as well I would like to bring that at a future meeting to discuss the UG with the council as well. Um Sheriff Swank also was uh commenting about the reduction in crime around Pierce County in general. uh he gave some um some examples of uh some crime that's currently still happening. He was referring to human trafficking and other things were um a little discouraging to hear. Um but also too with that he said the uh the crime regarding that was also on the decline as well. So it was very enlightening to hear uh officer Swank and and Ryan Melo as well. So that's that's it for me for reports. Council member Turnis.

Uh I actually met with Mayor Bakis from Auburn this last week and just I have heard from multiple people how well Auburn is dealing with um their homeless issue. They're really going into it making it a personal issue and finding the resources. So I just kind of wanted to glean from her of what they've done, which is working and what hasn't been working. So I just felt like it was a really great meeting. Council member Mouse, I just want to say thank you for the retreat. It was uh really good. Thank you, Council Member Cedar.

Uh just a quick note that I per last meeting's discussion, I drafted a letter for Sound Transit's executive board that will be circulated. It has to come from it'll come from the mayor, I believe, um for council to review. So, please review that timely when you see that in your email. Um, so we can get that sent out per our discussion and positions. Council member War. Nothing to report. Council member Hall, mine could wait till the next one. Okay. Council member Wayan,

just a couple comments. The U house that was on 15th has been torn down. the old fire, you know, the building. It looks nice. It's going to change a lot. And also appreciate the signage at the park stating its true name, which is the Milton Community Park. You'll see it in the parking lot down on Oak. You'll see it up on 15 and so forth. Keep continuity of the real name. keep that in people's minds. Appreciate that. I don't know who came up with that decision, but whoever it is, I give you a lot of credit. And that's

Thank you. Uh, director reports, planning manager of Stallmaker. Just real quick, um, the new employee, the permit tech position will start May 4th. I'm very excited for that. Um, I will be on vacation next week, so thanks to all those who get to cover for us. And um I one of the things that was brought up at the retreat is trying to remember who the contacts are for various departments. Um we have a couple I think we had a presentation early on and we and we do have an internal um uh worksheet that we give out. So I will update that and I will send that out to council if that's um okay with the mayor. Uh no comments. No.

Okay. Chief. Uh, good news is the goose is still safe. So, we're excited about that and we hope that it will continue to be safe. And if you see something, say something.

All right. And, uh, I just want to remind the the public that we have two openings on our park committee. So, um, if uh, anyone knows anyone that might be interested, uh, please please have them apply. any anyone uh uh watching this in the public if you have any uh interest in volunteering in the city please do uh visit our website and fill out an application and uh with that it is uh 9:05 and I uh uh oh f first is there anything else sorry not doing my script correctly all right seeing that the agenda items