City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I would like to call the City of Mount Vernon City Council meeting for Wednesday, August 26, 2026 to order. The time is now 7.01. Would you please stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance?

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

I will ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Councilmember Beaton? Here. Councilmember Damon? Here. Councilmember Hudson? Here. Councilmember Oliver? Here. Councilmember Tessaro?

Here.

Councilmember Vanderstube?

Here.

Councilmember West?

Here. Thank you. Moving on. Council, are there any motions to place items on a future agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to item three. It's approval of tonight's meeting agenda. I would entertain a motion to approve.

Move to approve. Second. Second.

Motion by Mary and second by Melissa. Any discussion, Council? All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed say no. Motion passes. And on to community comments. Before we talk or invite our guests up to the podium, I want to check and see if there is anyone online tonight that would like to join us. Adam, do we have an online guest? Not tonight? Okay. Thank you. All right. With that, if you are in council chambers and would like to address city council, please come on up to the podium. State your name, your city of residence, and if you could limit your comments to about three minutes, we'd appreciate that. Anyone want to address the city council tonight? Yes, please come on up.

Nice to see familiar faces. My name is Dan Malk. Good evening, you guys. Thank you for having me. My name is Dan Mall. My wife and I have an Oak Harbor address. We live at the north end of Whidbey Island. And I'm here to strongly support the passing of Ordinance 3944, which would prohibit cryptocurrency kiosks in Mount Vernon. These machines look like regular ATMs. They convert cash into crypto, and it's a one-way deal. They don't give cash out. You buy crypto with it. And because these transactions are fast and difficult to trace, crypto ATMs have become a favored tool of scammers. Banning them is not a comment about cryptocurrency. That's a whole separate argument, whether it's good, bad, up, down, side, whatever. That's not the issue. The issue is the vehicle that's being used by the scammers. So for the past four years, I've been a volunteer with AARP talking to scam victims. I probably talked to roughly 2,000 victims. And what I've noticed and what's supported by FBI statistics is that crypto ATMs are increasingly being used by scammers to get paid to rob victims. Since 2019, losses in these machines have skyrocketed by over 2,000%. investigations by attorney generals across the country, 80 to 95% of the transactions that go into these machines are victims paying scammers. And it's easy to sit here and think, well, I'm smart enough. I won't fall for these things. But I can assure you that there is a scam for everyone. I talked with a woman a while back who was a nurse. She was called and convinced that she had missed a jury duty, a grand jury summons. And she was being asked to be part of it because of her medical experience. Very convincing. And I think some of you are aware that there was a victim here in Mount Vernon that lost $54,000 in an Amazon refund scam. They over-refunded her. She had to pay the money back. Anyways, the scale of this is just staggering. Facebook removes roughly a billion fake accounts every quarter. 168 million adults receive scam texts every week. 3.4 billion scam emails are sent out daily around the world. So we can't stop a lot of these scams. We can educate ourselves, but banning the crypto ATMs is one way to limit the scammers' tools that they're using to steal from our people. Anna Cordes, LeConnor. Several other communities have passed bans. There's, I believe, five states that have passed bans. And there's seven countries. Canada is actually proposing a ban also. So I wanted to commend you guys for acting on this, both Mayor Donovan, the city council, and the Skagit Valley Chamber. for leading the way here in Western Washington to protect the residents and on behalf of future victims that I won't have to work with and Mount Vernon residents who will be spared the financial loss and emotional agony of this, I wanted to thank you very much. Thank you, Dan.

Anyone else? Come on up.

Andy Mayer, representing the Skagit Valley Chamber of Commerce, as Dan mentioned. I wouldn't even have known about the issue except for Dan. In fact, he shared it with our statewide chamber executives association. And I didn't read the email all the way. I'm like, I don't care about, well, I don't know much about cryptocurrency. I don't know what this is. Dan followed up and said, okay, let me, let me explain. And, um, I and the Chamber now pretty much do understand what the issue is and why it is so detrimental. So the Chamber Board adopted a position a couple of weeks ago supporting what you are considering, the ban on cryptocurrency kiosks. I'll just read part of the statement and then just leave the full one here for you. So the resolution supporting a ban on cryptocurrency kiosks in Mount Vernon. Skagit Valley Chamber of Commerce supports a strong local economy built on legitimate commerce, consumer confidence, responsible business practices, and the financial well-being of residents and businesses. Chamber supports technological innovation and legitimate digital commerce. However, physical cryptocurrency kiosks appear to provide limited benefit to consumers compared with the significant risk that they will be used to facilitate financial fraud and exploitation. Protecting consumers from fraudulent activity is also good for business. A healthy local economy depends on public confidence, responsible commerce, and protecting community wealth from being lost to scammers. For these reasons, the Board of Directors of the Skagit Valley Chamber of Commerce support the City of Mount Vernon adopting a prohibition on the operation of cryptocurrency kiosks within the city. This position is directed specifically at physical cryptocurrency kiosks and the consumer fraud risks associated with them should not be interpreted as opposition to cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, or legitimate forms of digital commerce. So thank you very much for taking up this issue.

Thanks, Andy. Anyone else in the audience? Come on up.

Good evening. I'm Dale Reagan. I've lived in Mount Vernon for about 40 years. I had a business, a private retail business for 30 years. We sold paint down at Carl's Paints. So I got old enough to retire and I did that, but The Democratic Socialist of America, also known as DSA, would destroy the American way of life. The DSA wants to do away with the Defense Department, abolish the Senate, ICE, and national borders. DSA wants to remove the police and the prison system. DSA is seeking to overthrow capitalism. A good example of capitalism is when a youngster wants to have a lemonade stand on a hot day. and borrow money from their parents to buy the ingredients. The money they borrow is called capital. After a day of selling lemonade, they pay their parents back the money they borrowed. They hope they produce a profit. This process is called capitalism. Capital and profit is the lifeblood of America. The DSA yearns and promises medical care for all and to get the wealthy to pay more. Some DSA members have suggested illegal immigration should not be prevented. A 32-hour work week, free education, universal health care, rent control, they all want to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. The DSA platform proposes drafting a new Constitution with significant change to the structure of the U.S. government, abolishing the Senate, replacing the President and the Supreme Court, with leaders picked by Congress and allowing all permanent U.S. residents to vote. The platform of the DSA is Worker Deserves More. The DSA platform calls food, education, medicine, and transportation, common goods and utilities, to be run by government through public ownership of the large corporations. The DSA would cancel all student debt, which would add about $2 trillion to the national debt. The Constitution is also on the chopping block, which makes the District of Columbia a state, expanding the size of the House, also abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College. They would like to replace the President and Supreme Court with an Executive and Judiciary chosen by subordinates to Congress. If this process doesn't work, it threatens to destroy America. The people of America have to be very careful in how they vote in order to remain a viable country.

Thank you.

Hi everyone, good evening. It's been a little while. I wanted to start with a couple quick thank yous. Thank you to Andrew and Hannah for a great ward meeting last week and to Jennifer and the Parks folks for bringing the conversation about e-bikes. I know that's going to be an ongoing conversation and we'll love especially those of us who are members of the Skagit Valley Bike Coalition to keep that conversation going about what it looks like to make biking safe here in Mount Vernon. And thank you to the mayor and all those involved in working to figure out how we can protect Little Mountain. I wanted to just continue to voice support and thank you to all of the folks here in this room and the four people online and everyone else who's been involved in trying to mobilize to figure out how we can prevent the logging of our community. And I just want to encourage council to think of this as an investment. And, you know, I don't want to say whatever the amount of money, because We don't want to be extorted by a logging company. But I do think it could be worth it to spend money to protect Little Mountain from having a gash on it for the rest of our lives and our children's lives. And lastly, I want to thank Dale for reading the DSA platform. I just want to encourage all those here in the room and those online in our community to get to know the Democratic Socialist America. We are really excited about expanding our political imagination, what we believe is possible, thinking about our budget and how we can reinvest it in the things that are going to make our community really well, make our community thrive, make our community safe. I am going to be traveling a bunch in the next couple of months for work, so I'm going to miss some of budget season. So I have banked like the last six months of public comment. I'm going to try and make it fit in three minutes. I wanted to kind of start with a framing of thinking about what has been defunded in our city budget. And when we look at that simple pie chart, right, of our city budget and think about where our money is being invested and where are we not spending money, time or attention. Likewise with our city org chart. One of the things that's top of mind for me is who is dedicated in our city to think about climate resilience, to think about making sure that our community is safe in the near and in the long term. And what in our budget is really allocated to make sure that we think about the floods that we had last year and all of the things that are going on? We have smoke in the air right now. Where is the investment and where is the leadership, the dedicated leadership and the personnel to really make sure that we're set up for that? And so there are a couple areas of safety that I just wanted to flag for your consideration as we look ahead to budget season, because I might not be here to speak then. The first is road safety. I know this is a concern of council. There was a conversation about a helmet law during the bike meeting last week. I want to strongly, strongly encourage council to reject the idea of a helmet law. A helmet law, we have seen many transportation advocacy groups across the country document the way that these laws unfortunately disproportionately impact young black and brown folks, especially boys, teenagers in our community, that we want to be encouraging to ride bikes and think instead about investing in infrastructure. Traffic calming measures, bike lanes and specifically protected bike lanes. I'm sorry because I haven't gotten to see the updates to TIP, but when I last looked at it, I saw zero plans for protected bike lanes in there. I want to also encourage us to think about preventative measures outside of our police departments so that we're not spending our city dollars sending multiple armed officers when we could just be sending the social worker as our first response. And lastly, thinking about that climate resilience more broadly and making sure that we're really investing Restoring our tree canopy greening our streets and making our communities safe for the long term.

Thank you Anyone else All right, I believe we may have had a person or two join us online Adam do we have a name of the first person that All right, Susan if you are online Would you please mute and turn your camera on? And you have three minutes. And if you would please also state your name and city of residence at the top of your comments. Is Susan with us?

Yes, my name is Susan Eppard.

I'm sorry, go ahead, Susan.

I'm here to talk about Kratom. Is there any agenda?

It is on the agenda and you have three minutes to talk about Kratom.

Okay. I just wanted to say that I support banning all forms of Kratom. My son died in 2021 from Kratom leaf powder, the least potent form of Kratom available in the United States. He didn't have anything else in his system. no other drugs, no alcohol, nothing in his system. And he died just from Kratom. And this was back before semi-synthetics or synthetics hit the market in 2023. And I really... It's just getting old. More and more people dying from this garbage drug. And it's confusing to me why our government is not protecting people. And I just really... I'm at a loss for words anymore. I've testified in so many meetings, and I don't understand why more and more people are saying, yeah, my loved one died from kratom, and our government isn't doing anything to stop it. And it's not just synthetics or semisynthetics. It's all kratom. All kratom. In fact, the semisynthetics require kratom as the basic ingredient to make them. So that's all I really have to say. And any questions are welcome. I have so much knowledge on this. And thank you.

Susan, thank you for your comments tonight. Adam, do we have other folks online? Okay, just that one. Ask one last time for in-person comments if anyone in council chambers would like to address. Okay. Seeing none, we will move on. Item 5 is tonight's consent agenda. It includes meeting minutes, payroll, claims, routine agreements, and a street closure request for the 7th Street block party. Council like to move for consent agenda adoption.

Salute. Second.

Motion by Navor and a second by Debbie. Any discussion on this? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no. Motion passes. We'll go to council member comments. Any council member comments this evening? Yes, council member DeSera.

Yeah, we have Ward 1 is going to have our ward meeting on September 14th. That is a Monday. It's going to be at 6 o'clock. It's going to be over at CATS 2.0 because we really would like to focus on the west side. And you don't have to be from the west side to show up. You can be from wherever in the city of Mount Vernon. But we certainly would like to talk to the people that are over there to find out The effects of the bridge closure, and so we're going to be talking about that with the people over there. And also, we're going to be talking about the e-bike policies as well, or the proposed laws that we're going to enact. So, yeah, and whatever other issues anybody would like to bring up at the meeting. So, September 14th, Monday, 6 o'clock, CATS 2.0.

Thanks, Council Member. I'm going to double up on your announcement during Mayor's report, just saying. Okay. You had something, Council Member?

I did, yes. I just wanted to thank the community for coming out on Monday night. It was a gorgeous evening, but people showed up for our Ward 3 and at large meeting. Our parks director, Jennifer Burner, where'd she go? Is she still here? There she is. She gave a wonderful presentation on e-bikes and what we're proposing, and we had a lot of good feedback. We're very thankful to have Chief Christman there as well. He provided some good operational side of the house questions that the legislative branch doesn't always have the answer to. So thank you so very much for that, Chief. We had Planning Commissioner Adair Orr was there. We always enjoy seeing Adair. And then we had our mayor show up. And we are thankful for your support. And we just had a great turnout. So thank you all.

Thanks for the invitation. I thought it went really well. Any other? This way. Yes, Council Member Oliver, then Council Member Hudson.

Firstly, I just want to thank everyone who gave public comment today. We all want to represent the community, and even though we sometimes disagree, we can't best represent the community unless folks show up and email us and come in person. So I just want to say thank you. Related to that, I also wanted to thank everyone that came to our ward meeting At Hillcrest Park, we also had a wonderful presentation from Jennifer, our parks director on e-bikes. We talked about roads that need fixing, impact studies on new development, traffic, adding trees to our neighborhood streets. We talked about Little Mountain, local transit options, the bridge downtown, city walkability, street cleanups. and a whole lot more. But I just wanted to quickly thank everyone that came and hopefully we'll see more folks next time.

Thank you, Council Member. I just wanted to remind everybody that school started here in Mount Vernon today. And that means that our driving patterns and traffic flow is changing. So just be aware. There's buses and kids out there now when we haven't seen them for a couple months. So just be looking around, head on a swivel. Make sure you're taking care of the littles. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate that. Any other comments? Then we will move on to the mayor's report. For mayor's report tonight, I wanted to acknowledge two items. I'll call them legendary employees who are wrapping up their careers of nearly a quarter century of public service in the city of Mount Vernon. Gary Owens is our equipment maintenance division manager. Gary runs the city shop. He assures that all of our public safety vehicles, parks, vehicles, and equipment, everything that the city owns and operates that has a motor. Gary has been our guy for 23 years and he will definitely be missed around here. And so we'll John, Torgerson, our construction inspector in development services. John has been serving Mount Vernon residents for 24 years in this role, and we're sad to lose his expertise. But we are excited for both Gary and John as they head into the next chapter of their lives. So well done, gentlemen. Congratulations. We are so grateful for your years of dedicated public service at the city of Mount Vernon. And next, you've heard so much about this e-bike, these e-bike presentations that Jennifer is doing the circuit. She's on a citywide tour giving an e-bike presentation. Our community is seeing more people out on bikes, which is fantastic. Many of those bikes, scooters, or other mobility devices are powered by electric motors, and that's a relatively new development in transportation. We want to support safe and responsible use and so we're reviewing our current regulations and considering what updates might be needed in our new codes we don't like to legislate without getting input from the public and so right now the city is inviting the public to look at proposed codes for regulating electric motorized transportation devices and we would like to invite you to provide comments on the code by visiting the city website or by scanning that QR code that's on your screen to find out information and to make suggestions on this topic. And you can also attend the next e-bike regulations presentation, which will, again, take place at the next Ward 1 meeting on September 14th, 6 p.m. at CATS 2.0. So CATS Westside Stories is a... It's a bar, and this is a next-door venue, which is for all ages. It's right next door to Katz. That's why they call it Katz 2.0. The address is on your screen. It's 720 West Division Street. And because it's all ages, if you've got kids that are interested in e-bike rules or just how local government works and giving input, they're welcome to attend as well. I'm sure the Council Members Award one would like to have all ages at that ward meeting. But put that on your calendars, if you would, please. And thanks for all of the input that we've already received. And we're looking forward to getting more on there. That is your mayor's report for August 26th, 2026. Thanks, Adam. On to new business item A. It's a resolution to amend the 2027 to 2032 Transportation Improvement Plan. And it looks like our Public Works Director, Chris Phillips, is here to present this item. Hello, Chris.

Hello, Mayor. Good evening, Council. Good evening, public. My name is Chris Phillips, Public Works Director here for the City of Mount Vernon. I'm pitching for Frank tonight, so here to talk about the adoption of the amendment to the 2027-2032 Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan. Staff recommends City Council adopt the resolution to amend the adopted 2027 2032 six-year transportation improvement plan what's included in this are two changes One would be to design our 2027 design budget for a Riverside Drive improvement one the project to incorporate two hundred sixteen thousand dollars in additional federal funding Our funds were approved for the city's project phase in July 2026 through redistribution a redistributed obligated obligation Authority funding The second item is a new project, which is on North 15th Complete Streets Project. It was inadvertently left off the originally adopted TIP. Moreover, public hearing for this amendment to the TIP was held on August 12th, 2026 at City Council regular meeting. No public comments were received at that time. And again, we're here for City Council to adopt this resolution pending your questions.

And this is the updates, the amendments that Council reviewed in committee last week. Public Works Committee. Council, questions for Mr. Phillips? Otherwise, it's Resolution 1110. So moved.

Second.

Motion by Andrew and a second by Navor. Any discussion on this? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Motion passes. Item B is an agreement with the Lincoln Theater Foundation. Special Projects Manager Adam Pearson will present this item.

Good evening, Council. As you'll recall from actually my update a couple months ago, but also about an hour ago, but for the public's benefit, the Lincoln Theater Foundation has been pursuing a bank loan to complete their capital improvement projects. That's been complicated by the fact that lenders place liens on property as collateral when giving a loan, and as a publicly owned building, a lien cannot be placed on that particular building. An alternative has been identified where the city can sign a release. It would allow the lender, in this case, People's Bank, a security interest in foundation-owned assets in the event of a default. This would allow the foundation to close and continue their financing, continue the construction project without involving city-owned property. If you have questions for Kevin or myself, we're here. Also here tonight is Jessica Wagner, the foundation operations director. But aside from that, tonight staff recommends the city council authorize the mayor to execute the landlord's release and consent substantially in the form provided subject to final review and approval. By the city attorney.

Council questions for Adam or Kevin? Or motions?

I'll make a motion. Council authorize the mayor to execute the landlord's release and consent. I'll second.

Motion by Melissa and a second by Demi. Any discussion on this?

I just want to say I'm really grateful that we found a way to make this work for the Lincoln Foundation and that they can move forward on their project. It's too good not to do.

They have been working tirelessly to find a path and we're just helping support them along the way.

So thankful for that.

Absolutely.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no. Motion passes. Thank you, Adam. Thanks for being here, Jessica. Item C is a proposed ordinance to prohibit virtual currency kiosks. And City Attorney Kevin Rogerson is here to present.

Thank you, Mayor and distinguished members of the Mount Vernon City Council. Before you tonight is ordinance identified by clerk number 3944, which if adopted tonight. would prohibit virtual currency kiosks within the city of Mount Vernon. Virtual currency kiosks, also known as crypto ATMs, are frequently used by criminals to manipulate, intimidate, and threaten victims into using those kiosks to send cash. Once sent, these virtual currency transactions are quick and largely irrevocable, so that once a user transfers or deposits funds, that money is generally unrecoverable. In 2024, an FBI report found that adults ages 60 and older accounted for over 85% of the reported fraud losses involving these machines. So the proposed ordinance would render it unlawful for any person or entity to host, allow, operate, permit, locate, or place a virtual currency kiosk within the city of Mount Vernon. Any virtual currency kiosk existing in the city as of the effective date of this ordinance, and by operation of law, we would publish this in the Herald and be effective five days after publication. After that, it must be removed within 30 days after the effective date. Usually takes about a week to two weeks to get that published. A violation is a civil infraction subject to civil penalties in the amount of $500 per day, not including statutory assessments. And in addition, the City of Maine Council will revoke the business license or registration of any virtual currency kiosk operator in violation of the proposed ordinance if adopted by the City Council. Okay, council questions for Kevin?

I'd move to approve ordinance 3944. Second.

Question by Mary and a second by Navor. Any discussion on this? Yes. Council Member Oliver.

I just wanted to quickly say I know that we're moving through a lot of these things quickly But I just wanted to mention for the folks watching online and for the folks here This is something that we've discussed at least two other meetings We discussed it last week which was recorded if you wanted to look back at what our discussion looked like The meeting before I don't think we recorded it because we hadn't started recording our meetings yet but I just wanted to say that quickly before we vote that we have discussed this thoroughly and

Thanks for adding that. And the next item as well. Yes. Did anyone else know what crypto ATMs or Kratom were when they ran for office? Anyone run on that platform? No, I didn't either. We've learned a lot in the last couple of months. Any more discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed, say no. Motion passes. Item D is a proposed ordinance to prohibit the sale of Kratom products in the city of Mount Vernon. Kevin has this item too. Kevin.

Thank you mayor members of council before you as a clerk's identified ordinance 3945 if adopted by the council tonight, this would. Prohibit the. Sale or distribution, but not possession of great within the city of Mount Vernon currently lacks any federal state regulations and is not subject to government mandated safety checks. The United States food and drug administration has determined that. The ingredient 7 and I'm not going to try to pronounce the scientific term, a naturally occurring found in the creative plant is a dangerous substance. Creative products, which contains 7 and related compounds are sold at various retail locations in the city. The ordinance would make findings that that poses a risk to residents, including youth and vulnerable populations. This proposed ordinance prohibits the selling or permitting to be sold, distribution, or advertising for sale or distribution of any Kratom product as defined in the proposed ordinance. This would be a ban of Kratom products. Possession is not included in the prohibition. If found liable, it's a civil penalty, $250 fine, not including statutory assessments, and a potential business license or evocation from the business conducting any unlawful activity.

Council questions, comments, or clarification for Ordinance 3945? Council Member Cicero and Council Member Van Der Stoep.

And I guess just for the public, we want them to know, as you pointed out, possession is not part of what the ban is, and neither is the purchase of it if the person who is selling that is outside of the City of Mount Vernon, correct?

Right. Your jurisdiction ends at the city limits.

Councilmember of Andrews do I was just gonna ask you to give it another try with that scientific name Emotions Oh Sorry councilmember West.

Yep. So just a quick correction before we vote or clarification for me Make sure I'm reading this properly. It looks like section 8.70 020 Ordinance three nine four five is labeled seven dot five five Incorrect should be chapter 870 o2o.

Thank you. You're creating a new chapter at the Municipal Code That is a scrivener's error on my part Thank you. We typically at the end. We'll put in I Call it the if we find an error that scrivener not something we can make the change and you see that at the end But that's a very good catch

So moved. Second. Motion by Councilmember Cicero. Second by Councilmember Banterstube. More discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no. Motion passes. Thank you, Kevin. Don't go far. For item 8, I'm going to ask you to call the mayor and city council into executive session.

Yes, I'd invite the mayor and members of city council to enter into an executive session to discuss with legal counsel matters relating to enforcement actions, litigation, or potential litigation to which the city, a governing body, or a member acting in an official capacity is or is likely to become a part of in public knowledge. Regarding the discussion, it's likely to result in either adverse legal or financial consequence to the city pursuant to RCW 4231 10 subsection 1i. We will enter into executive session for 15 minutes. Reconvene with no action after. 751 calculation of 15 minutes from right now.

The end of our agenda, the end of our mountain and city council meeting for Wednesday, August 26, 2026. We stand adjourned at 736 PM.