Remarks by Andy Elfers
19 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 1
- Play at 7:28
“I call the meeting of September 21st, 2026 to order at 6 PM.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 7:52
“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.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 9:52
“Yeah, I'd like to make a motion to adopt the consent agenda of September 21st, 2026. Is there a second? Second.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 32:42
“Yeah, thank you, Jason. I just was curious, can you just remind the council and anybody listening, just why do we have so much in reserves? It's quite a bit in our budget that we've had in the cash.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 33:51
“Okay, and then just a follow-up question on that, and I think... We talked a little bit about it in the past, but I just wanted to reiterate, as far as spending it now, and I guess I can, why is this a good time, as far as staff goes, as far as spending this?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 35:05
“I'LL JUST SHARE MY VIEW ON THIS. I'M IN SUPPORT OF THIS. I THINK ONE OF THE REASONS I THINK THE TIMING WORKS REALLY WELL IS WE HAVE HAD SOME PRETTY HISTORICALLY LARGE PROJECTS LIKE THE WHITE RIVER RESTORATION PROJECT AND SURE ROAD BRIDGE THAT HAVE BEEN ON THE BOOKS FOR A LONG TIME AND WE my understanding, Jason, is that we are past a point in those projects where we feel like there's this financial risk of those going over budget. Is that accurate? Okay, perfect. Yeah, so I think that's one of the reasons I support it. The other reason, I think we had a golf course the city owned. We sold…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 38:43
“I just want to, just for discussion, I just was wondering if it would be just for this individual or is it for the whole night? Because we do, I think we did create the rule because of people coming on. So I'm just curious if it's just, if we amend that motion to just be this in a case-by-case basis.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 43:11
“I'd like to make a motion to adopt ordinance 2979, amending Sumner Municipal Code 2.100.680, holidays. Is there a second?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 46:51
“that lodging tax, we meet maybe once or twice a year. I think once this year, I think the next meeting is going to be in March, so not a very often one, but we collect the sales tax, or special sales tax from hotel and lodging, and we include Sumner, DuPont, Ruston, JBLM, unincorporated Pierce County. It was my first meeting, so I learned quite a bit about how it works, and then the plan, so everyone else knew, so they spent a lot of time explaining what's happening, which is which is fine. And so I think that the plan they had on the spending was to do some money for barricades and for…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:14:00
“Yeah, thanks, Jason. I just was curious. Out of 218,000 expenditure on the budget, can you tell me how much of that is grant funded? Yeah, approximately 32 per... Let me check my notes. 218 million. 218 million. Did I say a different number? Yeah, 218 million.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:14:35
“I got two questions. So the other question that I had was more about the how, because I think one of the things we keep coming up on is, like, if there's a plan to say we're going to build a park and we say, well, I wanted a swing set, do we get a vote on, like, whether we get a swing set or not, or how does that work? Cause I think there's a question here on who's involved. I think there's been some talk about like, do we on like the heritage park one, for example, has come up a couple of times. Can you explain how that works as far as policy versus execution?”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:23:41
“Yeah, thanks, Jason. I just had a couple, just kind of more detailed questions, but... So we talked a couple times at our retreat and things like that about some items like fund number 002, which is just this fund that's not been used for years. And it's a, so I'm just curious, when are we going to deal with in this process? Can you help me understand? Like, so are we going to, we talked about saying, hey, we should move that. And then there was also a discussion about, like, we have an 8% reserve amount in the general fund. Are we going to increase that or change it? Do we need to? And then…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:43:36
“I really appreciate the, on the revenue debt side of things, I was just going to ask, I think it'll come up at another meeting, but I really do, I'm always really curious on, like, if we could provide the terms on that, like you said, the really low percentage, like what percentages and, you know, I think some of those, there's some, the ability to retire them, I think with these types of ones, we probably, maybe it wouldn't make sense to do that, but I'd sure like the information of when is it able to be retired and what's the interest rate on those loans. if that's possible for when we go…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:51:28
“Yeah, I think I asked a question earlier about how do we drive these costs down, and you kind of answered it in your presentation about capital facilities. But I am looking back at the debt and that list of debt items on the revenue side. They're pretty recent. If I'm looking at that list of items, they're probably, I'd say, 80% of that debt is within the last five years. Are we going to discuss...”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:51:54
“Yeah, we were both part of that. So I think that was, are we looking, are we going to discuss looking ahead? Like, cause obviously if we have more big projects coming in the next five to 10 years, it'd be really helpful for us to kind of, I'd love to know personally, like, are we expecting to issue more debt or, or is this kind of like, these are like 20 year projects? Cause the debt goes out to 2045 on these big projects. AND I'D SURE LIKE TO KNOW IF WE COULD TELL PEOPLE AND REASSURE THEM, HEY, THIS 5% IS GOING TO STAY 4 OR 5 OR 6%, OR SAY, HEY, ACTUALLY, BRACE YOURSELF, LIKE, WE GOT BIG…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:53:45
“I'm assuming with the public works facility, that's a 40-year project, hopefully. And then we're doing like 30% of the wastewater treatment facility. I believe we did a percentage, and that was pretty close to somewhere in that range. So it's a pretty big upgrade for them. And the other ones are not as significant. Anyways, I think you guys have a good plan. I think it'd be helpful for me to understand. I'd love to at least have information about like, hey, is this going to go down? Because I like this graph, how it goes down. But it makes me think like, oh, somebody's going to come in here…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:57:03
“I was trying to form my question, but I think that one thing I was curious about, so the general fund we had, the golf course, wasn't productive yet. THE COUNCIL MADE A DECISION AT SOME POINT, HEY, WE'RE LOSING MONEY EVERY YEAR. IT'S NOT WORKING. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING FOR TAXPAYERS. SO WE ENDED UP USING THAT. AND WE TOOK AWAY SOME NEGATIVE ON THE EXPENSE SIDE AND BROUGHT IN SOME CASH TO DO SOME OTHER PROJECTS. SO I'M JUST CURIOUS ON THE UTILITY SIDE, I'M JUST THINKING, IS THERE AN EVALUATION HAPPENING THAT IS EVALUATING, LIKE, UNPRODUCTIVE ASSETS? I KNOW, LIKE, WE DID THE TOUR OF THE The…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 1:58:34
“Yeah, I just was curious if it's something we thought of, because I just think that getting rid of a golf course that we didn't really, wasn't productive. And then I just don't know if there are assets, because I think I wasn't aware of the watershed until we did the tour. And I was like, this is really unique. So I don't know if it's a good idea or not. I'm just saying, talking about it, sometimes you find things that we didn't think about. Sure.”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026
- Play at 2:25:22
“Hey, thank you, Jason. I just had a couple of questions. Some information that would be really helpful for me in this is I looked at the notes, and some of these were included in the rate studies, so it's not really affecting anything. Some of these are enterprise funds, so they're really, like I said, they're already there. It would be helpful to understand that from a numbers perspective for me. Some of it, you said, we're already paying a lot of it or maybe almost all of it in contract labor, so we're switching it to an employee, so there's not as much. So those would be helpful tidbits…”
City Council · Sep 21, 2026